After You Died Read online

  While I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling is the only thing I can do. The clock ticks down the minutes, but it’s still not ten o’clock. Eventually, when I’m sick of counting the knots in the wood on the ceiling, I sit up. With a few minutes to go, I creep to my door. My footfalls are silent as I pad down the hallway.

  Careful not to bump into the pictures lining the wall, I stand a few feet from my parents door. Their snores echo inside their room. Hopefully, my dad won’t wake up when I start his car. I turn around, my heart pounding. My hand claps over my mouth, holding in a scream.

  Eden’s wide brown eyes are inches from mine. We look so much alike, it’s like I nearly bumped into a mirror. When we were little, people always thought we were identical twins. Never mind she wore pink and I wore blue.

  “What are you doing, Asher?” Her voice is smooth as silk, but too loud.

  I roll my eyes and grip the wall to settle myself. She knows, of course she knows. Olivia would have told her. After all, Olivia tells her everything. I try to swallow my jealousy.

  “Like you don’t know,” I whisper, creeping around her, away from our parents room. If they wake up, I’m dead, and it will crush Olivia. She’s been looking forward to this night nearly our entire lives.

  Her arms cross ceremoniously across her chest. “Humor me,” she says as she leans against the wall. “I want to know what you think you’re doing.” Eden has always been overprotective of Olivia, probably because she’s her only friend. This is why I usually don’t bother to bring Eden along when I sneak out.

  “Olivia and I.” My words are sharp. I want to be sure Eden knows she’s not invited. “We’re going to the Howey mansion.”

  “You’re going to get caught, that old woman calls the cops anytime a flood light so much as flickers,” she warns, a serious look on her face. Her brows are so low, it looks like they’re tangled in her eyelashes.

  “Not anymore.” I retreat to my room. Once inside, I dig at the back of my dresser, behind my underwear, only pulling back once I have my cigs in my hand.

  Eden follows, curious as a cat. Eyes wide. “What do you mean, not anymore?”

  Several flicks of my lighter later and I inhale slowly. I push the pack of cigarettes into my pocket. Eden must know everything. The power of knowing something she doesn’t thrills me. All the years of her lording information over me fades away. This one’s mine. I open my mouth, like I’m going to tell her, then I smile and clamp my lips closed.

  “You’re such an asshole. Just tell me.”

  I fall back onto my navy blue comforter. The smoke rings I blow grow as they float toward the ceiling. I cross one leg over the other, and shift so I prop myself up on my elbow. My chin rests on my hand.

  “Ugh, fine. I don’t want to know anyway.” She turns with fury toward the door. Sometimes, I swear, the only emotion Eden feels is anger. She’s got a temper worse than a feral cat.

  “Fine,” I say before she disappears, “I’ll tell you.”

  When she turns, I can see how hungry her eyes are. That makes me want to withhold the information even more. To mess with her like she always messes with me. But I know if I don’t tell her now, she’ll probably go wake up Mom just to spite me.

  “She’s in Leesburg now, at a home. The place is all but abandoned, it’s been empty for almost a week,” I explain.

  “When did this happen? And how did you find out?” Her eyebrow arches.

  “Last week, and it’s none of your business how I found out.”

  Her lips purse, and I know she wants to pry. But she must have something more pressing, because she says, “Well, you two have fun. Please bring Olivia back in one piece, I need her opinion on some dresses tomorrow.” She waves at me as she walks out. I’m surprised at how easily she drops it. Normally Eden would grill me.

  “Yeah, yeah. Sounds thrilling.”

  Propping up on my elbows I look over at the clock. “Shit!” Thanks to Eden, I’m now running ten minutes late.

  I pull on my favorite jacket, the leather is soft and worn, from years of abuse. The air is still warm when I step out onto the roof of our porch. When I get to the end, I bound off and land on my feet. There’s no time to waste climbing down the lattice.

  Closing the distance between our houses, I reach Olivia’s in a few strides. I look in her window, but she’s not there. Nerves clench my stomach, I hope she doesn’t think I forgot.

  Turning the corner, I head to her backyard. Moonlight spills across the grass, dew glistens. A soft warm breeze kicks up the sweet smell of the orange blossoms. Beneath the blanket of the stars, in the distance, lightning flickers. The storm is so far off, I doubt we’ll see much rain tonight. That’s when I notice her. Sitting beneath an oak tree with a book and a flashlight. Her blonde curls dance in the wind. She looks up at me, smiling, as she closes her book.

  I explain it all in detail for him, every second I remember, maybe some of it will help.

  “I’d planned to take my dad’s car and drive her out to Howey-In-The-Hills. That’s all I remember though, just getting to her house. All I can remember after that is waking up in the hospital a month after everything happened.” I look at him, waiting, like he has some cure, some way to turn those few memories into an entire night.

  “How did you get to the hospital, did they tell you?” he asks.

  “They found me next to her, covered in blood, the cops did. After they found me, I was out of it, they brought an ambulance to bring me to the hospital.” I sigh and look toward the window. “For the next month, I was catatonic. Then I slowly started to come around.” I remember the look on Eden’s face the first day I spoke to her in the hospital. She’d been at my bedside waiting, no one else wanted to be near me. When I spoke to her, she broke down and left the room. She looked so angry, so raw. Two days passed before she came back and finally talked to me. At the time, I didn’t know what I had done, why she was so mad at me. I was confused, scared, handcuffed to a hospital bed. The first words I heard about Olivia’s death came from the cops who questioned me within an hour.

  “Can you think of any reason you would have hurt her?” His voice is calm, and even. Not even the smallest hint of accusation lingers on his words.

  I look back at him. “No, I’d never hurt her, for any reason. All I ever wanted was to be around her, to make her happy. Even if she never wanted me, if she loved someone else, married someone else, I could live with it. As long as she was happy.” The truth of it aches. I would give anything for her, I’d trade my life for hers right now.

  “Have you ever gotten so angry you’ve blacked out before?” he asks.

  “Never.” I shake my head. Then again, if I’d gotten so angry I blacked out, would I remember? I hardly ever get angry, though.

  “Is there any history of mental illness in your family? Has anyone ever been hospitalized for being mentally unwell? Been placed in an asylum for any length of time?” He scratches something out on the notepad.

  “Not that I know of.” My family isn’t the type to discuss things like that. No one in my family has ever seemed anything but sane. If anything, I’d say they try to be too buttoned up, too normal.

  “How would you say you feel now?” he asks looking at me now, instead of at the paper.

  “Sad, nervous, anxious. Pretty much all the time. Some days I think I see her. It’s all just really strange. A lot of the time I feel like I’m far off watching myself go through the motions. It doesn’t feel like this is my life anymore. All the people I care about, I can’t even see them anymore. No one believes anything I say. And the way people look at me now, that’s the worst.” I can’t look at him when I admit it.

  My cheeks flush. I shouldn’t care what he thinks of me. My eyes burn, I look away, there’s something thick caught in my throat. I don’t like people to see me cry. This isn’t my life anymore. Before all this happened, I never cried. The tears come so easy now, I feel broken. There’s something seriously wrong with me.

  With
out skipping a beat, he asks, “How do they look at you?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s like a mix of anger and disgust, I’m the worst thing they can imagine,” I pause for a minute, and take a deep breath, as I try to wish away the tears in my eyes. “Now, most of the time, I wish I’d died with her.”

  “Have you thought about killing yourself?” he asks, setting the pen down.

  “In passing, I’ve considered it. No serious plans.” I shrug. It’s a half truth. I’ve more than considered it. Sometimes, it all becomes too much. Everything weighs on me, I feel like I can’t get out from under it. Maybe it’s not worth getting out from under it. The wrong person died that night, is it so wrong that I want to correct it? I’m a coward, I can’t kill myself any more than I could kill someone else.

  “If I prescribed you something I thought would help, would you take it?” His milky eyes are wide as he looks at me, it feels like they’re boring into me, searching for the truth.

  I shrink beneath the heat of his gaze. “If it will make me stop feeling like this. I want to feel normal again. I don’t want to feel hollow anymore. I don’t want my mind so crowded.” I chew on my thumbnail and stop talking. I’ve reached the limit of how far I’m willing to dig today. Though I want to feel normal, I know I don’t deserve to.

  “It can help with that,” he assures me. “But there can be side effects. If anything strange happens, if you feel off, please let me know so that we can adjust your dosage.”

  “What kind of side effects?”

  “Dizziness, headaches, normally. There are a few cases of more severe reactions, but they’re so rare, you needn’t worry about it,” he says with a kind smile.

  “What can you do to help me remember?” I ask him, though I’m not sure I’m ready to remember. The fear I’m wrong, that I actually did kill her, crushes the part of me that is so sure I didn’t do it. I just hope that one day I’ll wake up knowing with absolute certainty that I didn’t kill her. That hope is the thing keeping me alive right now. The thing keeping me going. I can’t die without knowing for sure.

  He looks at me over the rim of his glasses, his eyes are blue with a white haze in the middle. His lips are pressed together for a long moment before he replies. “Are you sure you want to remember?”

  I nod automatically. But I’m still torn. If finding out means I’ll know for sure I killed her, that’s not something I could live with. My breath catches in my throat. Then I have to start convincing myself all over again I didn’t do it, I couldn’t have.

  “Sometimes the mind protects us from things for a reason. There might be something that happened that night that you’re not ready to deal with. We can try hypnosis. It’s not terribly effective. That’s really the only option. And unfortunately we don’t have time for that today. I’ll let the hospital know that you’ll need to start some medication tomorrow. They’ll give it to you with your breakfast.” He smiles, and stands up, extending his hand to shake mine. “It was good to meet you.”

  “You too, thank you.”

  After

  After dinner, Sayid and I walk together back to Madison. Dinner manages to be no more awkward than breakfast, thankfully. While we walk back, Sayid gives me the general rundown of what’s involved for him to get supplies, and I tell him all about the book I’d intended to read but didn’t.

  I slump down on the back porch, belly aching, too full of mashed potatoes and meatloaf. The buzzing of mosquitoes and horseflies fills the air. Automatically, I lean back on my elbows, closing my eyes as my head lulls back. Sayid sits down beside me, and I feel his eyes on me. But when I glance at him, he looks away. With Sayid at my side, I feel the anxiety balled up inside me slowly unravel. A breath slips out of me, it’s heavy, like it’s been trapped in my lungs all day.

  “It’s a good thing I’ve got stuff stashed everywhere. It doesn’t seem like anyone found my caches since the last time I was here,” he rambles as he looks off toward the orange trees. “It’s probably going to take two weeks until I start getting a good flow coming again. I’ve got to work something out with a new guard. The guy I used last time, Scott, he doesn’t work here anymore, apparently.” He sighs.

  “How exactly do you, uh, work things out with the guards?”

  He gives me a sideways glance, like he’s waiting for me to understand something. “What?” I ask.

  He laughs at me and shakes his head. “Ah, to be young again.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “What’s the deal with the showers here?” I ask, trying to change the subject, and diffuse the heat rushing to my cheeks. Since we got here, I haven’t seen any showers, and I’m starting to think my stink could gag a pig.

  “The showers for us are downstairs. I’ll warn you though, never shower alone. If you do, you’re just asking for it. You’ll end up...” He pauses, for what I guess to be dramatic effect, “Let’s just say you’ll end up getting something I’m pretty sure you won’t like.”

  It feels awkward to ask, but it’s not like I’ve got anyone else that’s going to volunteer to help me. “Do you mind keeping watch while I shower?” I ask.

  He shrugs, “Sure.”

  After I’ve gathered my things, Sayid shows me where the downstairs bathroom is. It’s nearly the size of the bedroom we share upstairs. It’s dirty and has a musty mold smell to it. Black sticks between the tiles, making the beige seem a lighter color than it is. On the right side of the room there are six half walls separating showerheads. To our left, there are three urinals, and three toilets hidden behind stalls.

  I throw my clean clothes over the edge of the sink, which reminds me of a pig trough. My bare feet stick to the tiles, and the film on them makes me wish I’d brought my shoes. I flip on the water, and wait for the steam to come. Sayid leans against the wall, and I look back toward him.

  “Does it ever get warm?” I ask after what feels like ages, the cold streams tickle my fingertips.

  “Nope.” It looks like he’s trying not to laugh at me. “The warmest water you’re going to get here is if you go stand in the rain.”

  I jump when the cold water hits me. The flow pouring from the showerhead smells off. Everything here seems to have its own strange odor. When it finally manages to get to a tepid temperature, I lose myself beneath it. With my eyes closed, the water trickling over my body, I forget the hell around me entirely.

  The door squeaks open. Since I know Sayid has the lookout, I don’t bother to turn. I trust him. Footsteps echo through the bathroom.

  “Well, well, well, now this is the kind of scenery I wouldn’t mind seeing every single day,” a deep voice says, a southern drawl thick on the words.

  I turn to find a large boy with a wide stance in the middle of the bathroom. His hands firmly on his hips, or where his hips would be if he had them. He’s heavyset, built like a linebacker, or maybe a sumo wrestler. He’s got long black hair slicked back against his square head. His large brow droops down over his eyes.

  “Oh, and it can get better,” he says, as his eyes travel up and down my body.

  “Come on, Becks, don’t scare him. This isn’t even your cottage,” Sayid says, trying to diffuse the situation, he manages to keep up his usual diplomatic tone.

  “I am well aware. I heard about the new meat though, and I had to come see it for myself. It’s just as delicious as I heard.” He runs his tongue along his top lip. “I will be sure to see you later.” He winks at me.

  Though I know his intentions are to scare the new kid, I’m more bothered by the water growing cool again. Even if Becks did bother me, I know well enough to not show it. Sayid holds the door open for him, and waves him out. I stand watch for Sayid while he takes his shower. While he’s lost beneath the water, I start to wonder, why does he want to be friends with me at all? He shouldn’t trust me. I don’t even trust me. For all he knows, he could be next.

  After

  Long after Sayid is asleep my mind still buzzes from the day. I want to tell Eden about it, share some
of what’s going on in here with her. Without her, I don’t feel like myself. Eden was my sounding board. I told her everything—well not everything. But more than I told anyone else. I slip from my lower bunk, the springs whining in protest as I stand. Snores from the other bedrooms flow into the hallway, as usual, I’m the only one awake. Even at home I had trouble sleeping. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d sneak down to the stables and spend time with Lady, my favorite horse.

  I sneak down the stairs, and search for a sheet of paper to write to Eden. Every drawer I open comes up empty. A few old odds and ends, an abandoned comb, a toy car with no wheels, a book with yellowed pages.

  There’s a school here, there must be paper somewhere.

  Finally, in a bottom drawer folded up inside a textbook I find two unused sheets of paper. And I realize how good my luck is when I also find a pencil. I sit down at one of the metal desks and stare at the white paper in the dark. I’ve never written her a letter, and now that I have the tools to, my mind is as empty as my growling gut.

  Eden,

  Do you remember that time Mom tried to take us to Miami to visit her sister? She was so mad at Dad that she took us in the middle of the night. We didn’t even have a map, and she had no idea where we were going. I’d never been so scared in my life as I was when the car broke down. She’d gone the wrong way, and we were in the middle of Alligator Alley. We walked ten miles together behind William, while Mom stayed in the car and cried. I can still remember the way the moon reflected off the pools of swamp, and in the darkness, we’d hear the hissing of the gators.

  There have been two more times that I’ve been that scared. The day I finally came to in the hospital after Olivia died. And today.

  Asher

  I fold the letter carefully. As I stand to head back up the stairs, I feel someone watching me. Though I check the room, I’m alone. I head toward the stairs, movement outside catches my attention. My heart stops as Olivia’s face comes into focus just outside the window. The look she gives me, it tugs at me. A memory I can’t quite grasp lingers at the back of my mind. Her milky eyes stare through me, haunting me. My insides twist, and I turn away. I clench my eyes closed and my heart pounds. A haggard breath works its way out of me.