"It was you."

My head began to spin. Me? It couldn't have been me. I'd been with Mel the whole time.

"As I moved closer to the blue light and the bubbles, I could see you floating in the water. I don't remember what you looked like when you fell from the cliff and died. Everything happened so fast. Yet somehow, I knew without a doubt, that you must have looked like this. Your hair was seaweed dancing in the river current.

"I went after you. I struggled and came close enough to almost reach you, and then you reached for me, as if you had something so important to say. I yelled out in frustration, unable to understand, and thena"BAM!a"I was transported out of the lake. I found myself standing back up on the cliff, right in my truck, as if it had never happened. I was insane the first time. Nothing was going to make me leave you, so I jumped back in my truck, revved the engine and did it all over again."

"Fourteen times," I said.

"Yeah, fourteen times, but it probably would have been more if Oliver hadn't shown up." He stared across the truck bed, his face lit with adoration for his younger brother.

My arms got goose b.u.mps.

"I materialized back on the ledge after try number seven and there was Oliver standing next to my truck. If you thought that I was an a.s.s to him earlier, you should have seen me then. I was h.e.l.l-bent, literally, and he wouldn't get out of the way until I told him what I was doing. I wasn't very polite about my irritation.

"When being mean didn't get him to budgea"I lied. I told him I wasn't going to drive off again," Trevor said. "It worked the first time, but he's kind of wily. It got progressively more difficult to sidetrack him, then race back to the truck quick enough to get back to you. I was more exhausted from dealing with Oliver than I was from repeatedly dashing myself against the rocks. By the end of my thirteenth trip, he'd figured out that if he held on to the back b.u.mper, I wouldn't have enough time to get away.

"I only had one option left," continued Trevor. "I slowed down, caught my breath, and told him what was going on."

My heart lurched. I could see how important this was to him.

"It felt good to tell someone, didn't it?" Mel's voice got Trevor's attention. He nodded.

"I know the feeling." She dipped her chin in my direction.

Trevor continued. "It was incredible to have a connection with Oliver. It was actually a bit surreal. By fixing the here-and-now I apparently mended something from further back between us."

"Awwwww," I squealed, seriously delighted that they were finally on the same team. This wasn't just a superficial fix, it felt deeper.

Trevor continued. "I had nothing left after that. I didn't know how to fix any of it. Opening up to Oliver took the fight right out of me. I decided to drive Oliver and myself back to the Haven, but . . ."

"I wouldn't even consider it," Oliver said.

I crinkled up my forehead, knowing what was coming.

"Aw, Elliot, don't look at me like that." Trevor hopped out of the truck bed and started moving around. "He's a big boy and he wanted to. He's already dead anyway." His face begged me to understand. "Besides, I knew from experience that it wasn't going to hurt." Trevor took a step back as I got to my feet.

I was mad. I threw a leg over the back of the truck and jumped down, moving toward him. Somewhere deep inside, I knew I was overreacting, but I didn't care. I felt like throttling Trevor, so I kept my focus. "You should have known better. After what he's been through, what I did to him. The car accident!" My words shot out in an angry hiss.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Elliot, he's over that. Everyone is over thata"everyone but you, anyway. No one is blaming you for what happened to Oliver." Trevor threw up his hands in exasperation.

"It was my job, Elliot. I'm a Pa.s.senger." Oliver spoke gently. "It's what I chose."

I couldn't digest the info quick enough for a comeback so I sat and stewed. No one said anything for at least a full minute.

"Okay, then . . ." Trevor cleared his throat. "We decided that Oliver would drive off the cliff with me."

"He made sure I buckled up," Oliver said in a ridiculous attempt to defend his brother.

"For safety reasons," Trevor finished. "When we hit the water and the rocksa"it didn't hurt at all."

"It was fun," added Oliver.

Acid churned in my stomach, burning its way out into the air. I hadn't known I was even thinking about it, let alone going to say it out loud. Seconds before I was calm and understanding, now the words sped past my teeth.

"Tell me, Oliver, was it fun the first time you unbuckled your seat belt?"

33.

rubber

band

"What the h.e.l.l?" Trevor barked at me. He was finally his brother's keeper.

I held my ground. This I needed to know. I needed to understand why Oliver had compounded my wrong, making everything so unbearable. What purpose had it served?

Oliver grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me so that I had to see his face. I fought the ugly urge to push him away.

"It wasn't fun." Oliver's hands trembled where they gripped my shoulders. "It hurt bad, not the being killed, but the leaving people I loved."

Trevor punched Sally with enough force to make me cringe, but I stayed focused on Oliver. "Then why did you do it?"

"I did it because you needed me to, Elliot. Your soul didn't believe in itself after its first two visits at the Obmil. That"a"he glanced back at Trevora""what did you call it earlier? G.o.d-d.a.m.n-stupid-big-superhero heart of mine? It's who I had to be. You picked me to be your Pa.s.senger and we made promises." Tears ran down his face. "I promised to help you grow."

We were both sobbing now.

"You were so young. You had everything going for you." My moan was guttural. "How could I make such an amazing person die?"

"Perhaps I was only amazing because you gave me the opportunity to be. Maybe I was only a superstar because of you. Perhaps I died so young because you loved me, Elliot." He grabbed my face between his palms. "You told me, right before we jumped streams at the Basin, that you didn't want me wasting a whole life on you. You knew that when I finished being your Pa.s.senger, I could start a new growth plan for my own soul. You made me promise not to drag it out because you loved me too."

I pulled him fiercely to me. In an unromantic way, he was a perfect match for me.

a a a Somehow the four of us shook off the weighty emotions and settled back into Trevor's story.

"So we hit the water with no problem." Trevor and Oliver glanced conspiratorially at each other and then looked at me to gauge my reaction. I purposely yawned.

"Just like before, everything cleared, and the bubbling blue light glowed beneath me. I grabbed Oliver's hand and we started to swim to the place I'd last seen you."

"Can I interrupt you for a minute, Trevor? I have a question." Mel waited for Trevor's nod. "The Elliot floating in the watera"was she alive or was she dead?"

"I think she was dead. That's why it freaked me out so much when she reached for me, like she was trying to communicate." Trevor touched my arm, as if to make sure I was still really there.

"Like I expected, you were floating where I'd left you the first thirteen times. I pulled Oliver with me to try to get to you. I thought that maybe with the two of us, we would be strong enough to get you out, to rescue you." I heard the catch in his voice.

"So, what happened?" I felt oddly disconnected from my racing heart.

"Oliver got one glimpse of you and hightailed it out of there. He was like an Olympic swimmer."

"Finally, a male with some sense," I mumbled under my breath. "What did you do?"

"I was disappointed," he said, "but I went after Oliver."

The expression on his face told the deeper truth . . . it had been so much more than disappointment.

"The moment I made the move to follow Oliver, we both materialized back up on the ledge. Sally was no worse for wear again so . . ."

"So you would have gone right back out again." Mel tsked and Trevor had the grace to look embarra.s.sed. "Isn't there a famous quote about insanity?"

"I know, I know, the one about doing the same thing over and over and believing you'll get a different result. Oh, trust me, Mel, it's a harder lesson to learn when it's pointed out to you by your younger brother."

"So, what changed?" I said.

"Oliver told me it wasn't you. He was right, of course. When I checked, there you were, standing right in front of me. The moment I saw you alive and right there, something jiggled loose in my brain and everything made sense."

"Wish it made sense to me," I said grumpily.

"There is no h.e.l.l or heaven."

I heard Mel suck in her breath.

"Not in the traditional sense anyway," Trevor said quickly. "There's no destination h.e.l.l, no location for heaven. There's life and afterlife, which translates intoa"just more life." His head bobbed as if he had made perfect sense. And in a way, he had.

It was weird, the idea seemed so logicala"a complete no-brainer. I found it hard to believe that it had eluded me for so long.

"You'd created your own h.e.l.l down there in the water."

Trevor nodded.

"You could have stayed there an eternity, punishing yourself."

"I almost did," he said softly, glancing at his brother.

"So, you're telling me that the worst punishment that you could come up with was . . ."

"The most awful thing I could imagine was being unable to reach you."

I breathed in the moment, memorizing it so I would know how to find it again. I hadn't known heaven would feel like this.

What was happening between us was so much more than just touching the surface.

"Oliver, I could use an escort back to the Haven," Mel announced. "Do you think you could come with me? I have a few people I need to talk to." Oliver tucked her fingers into the crook of his arm. Together they headed down the path.

Trevor grabbed my hand and pulled me toward Sally's cab.

We reached the pa.s.senger-side door.

"Julia's gone," I blurted out. He didn't say anything.

I waited, everything inside me on pause.

"I'll miss her," he said. "We had a connection."

"A connection?"

"You."

I felt overexposed. I turned around to give myself a moment to think.

"Oh, I forgot," he said.

I pulled the handle of the truck, but it wouldn't budge. His hand was propped up against the top of the door.

"Forgot what?" I asked, turning my back to the sun-warmed metal.

Trevor leaned in closer and whispered in my ear. "I forgot how worked up you get about kissing." From the look in his eye, he hadn't forgotten any such thing. "You want me to kiss you." He twirled a strand of my hair around his fingertip and said, "This isn't the first time I've been to heaven, I just didn't know I was there before. There were moments in my last life and in this one that would qualify. I've loved you in both worlds, but it doesn't really count if you don't know it's heaven, does it?"

I knew exactly what he meant. All the different times in my last life, and here at the Obmil, that I would have considered myself to be in heavena"if I'd only looked at things that way. It was the moments of learning to trust and love Trevor, but not only those: hanging out with Oliver, being hugged by Mel, having a best friend in Julia, wearing Freddie's scented flannel. They were bits and pieces of heaven too. Even the night that I starred in the school play was a moment of heavenly bliss. How strange that it was so quickly followed by a complete immersion into h.e.l.l. Maybe life was designed to be a seesaw, back and forth.

"Trevor?" I glanced up quickly, forgetting how close he was. The top of my head smashed into his nose.

"d.a.m.n it, Elliot, do you ever make kissing easy?" he said, cupping his nose.

"Maybe you should learn not to be such a tease and get to it a little quicker," I shot back.

"So, I've got to get to the kissing before you start thinking too hard about something else?"

"Something like that," I said, reaching to check his nose. He winced.

"You'll heal in a minute," I said with a smirk.

"You're impossible," he groaned. "What have you got for me?" He winced again, but I could tell he was faking it, searching for sympathy points. If he could recover quickly from numerous truck dives, I doubted the top of my head would do any lasting damage.