"I don't think you consciously pulled us back, but maybe you didn't want to know how I reacted to learning who you were."

He was probably right, now that I thought about it. We'd been in my past life, not his.

"I don't want to do this anymore," I announced.

"Do what? Be dead?" There was a sarcastic edge to his voice. "You could've thought of that before you started playing with your cell phone while you were driving. Before you dragged us all here with you."

It was cruel and it reminded me of how fragile this new peace between us really was.

"I didn't kill you! I killed Oliver and it was an accident." I picked up a rock and launched it as far over the pond as I could, wrenching my shoulder with the effort. The irony that I was defending myself by referencing manslaughter was not lost on me.

"How do I know you didn't kill me too?" came Trevor's steady voice.

I gasped.

He shrugged his shoulders with a fake apology. "All I know is that I'm dead and I died right after you did. I know this because I watched you walk away from the lake, to the Haven. Dying that close togethera"doesn't that make you wonder?" Trevor scowled. "Maybe I hated you enough to kill you. And then I couldn't live with myself any more than I could live with you. No matter how you slice ita"still your fault."

I hadn't made that connection before. I'd been too engrossed in my own death and reemergence at the Obmil. My head was pounding with the revelation. Could he have really done that? I shivered.

"I don't want to do this anymore," I said again. My voice sounded wooden. I stood up and headed through the trees toward the Haven.

"Heya"where are you going?" Trevor asked. Feeling the now-familiar grip of his fingers around my upper arm, I shook him off and put the pond far behind me as quickly as I could. I wished he would storm off like he usually did, but I could hear him snapping the underbrush behind me.

I whirled around. "I just need to get away from you right now." I dug my fingers into my temples. "Why don't you go find Julia? I'm sure she could distract you." It came out harsher than I'd planned and it brought an unexpected flash of confusion across his face. Just as quickly as the vulnerability had illuminated itself, his all-too-familiar stoniness dropped into place.

"I didn't mean it like that," I pleaded. "It's too much right now. I need to get away from it for a little bit."

"Do you know the funny thing about you, Elliot? You never do the expected. When I wanted you far away and out of my very existence, you just kept popping up. I couldn't get away from you, and now thata"" Trevor's voice stopped short.

"Now that . . ." I echoed.

His face gave nothing away.

"Now that I know you better, I'm realizing how perceptive you are. I was hoping you'd get the h.e.l.l out of here and give me some s.p.a.ce. Now that you mention it, I think I will go meet Julia." His shirt blazed with the words I'M NOT BEING RUDE, YOU'RE JUST INSIGNIFICANT!

I didn't wait for another attack; instead I turned around and headed home. Let Julia have him.

a a a The sun was high in the sky, baking the back of my neck as I approached the Haven. The air had become humid and felt heavy in my lungs. Mosquitoes pooled around me.

There wasn't a soul in sight as I moved along the path. It was a relief to be alone. I was exhausted from living and reliving so many emotions. The sound of my footsteps bounced off the shadowy portcullis, emphasizing my solitude. In a flash of panic I imagined everyone else enlightened to the meaning of life, all souls having vanished from the Obmil, leaving me here on my own.

I dashed up the stone steps into the Haven. The air wasn't as moist in the lodge, but everything was eerily still inside the cavernous lobby. I wandered past Freddie's empty front desk to the now dark fireplace that was big enough for me to walk into upright. I'd hoped to find Oliver here, telling funny stories or giving piggyback rides to the little kids. I needed my Oliver battery recharged. But of course no one was herea"it was midmorning and everyone was at Workshop. I'd left on my hike before breakfast, and because of Trevor and the Delves, I'd completely lost track of time. Mel was going to be finger-tapping annoyed.

Everyone had probably been sitting there for hours, waiting for us to show up and Delve. I pictured the senior citizens playing bingo. The antsy businessmen who paced the floor might be upset, but they'd likely be more annoyed that we caused a deviation in their schedule than that we deprived them of the opportunity for personal development. Then again, maybe they hadn't been waiting for long. I wouldn't put it past Trevor to head straight there after leaving the pond. His motive, of course, would be to show me up. He'd likely Delve and find out something important without me, something even worse to use against me. Then he'd run to Julia so she could comfort him.

With a sigh of resignation I realized there was no way I could retreat to the quiet of my little upstairs nest. Mel might not be happy that I'd lost track of time, but she would be even less pleased if I made the decision not to come at all.

I spun around, ready to head back up the trail, when I heard a noise. I froze, straining to hear where the faint moan had come from. Then it came again. What first sounded like an exclamation of pain was now a low rumbling sob. My feet moved me through the lobby and down the hall. As I pa.s.sed the dining room I realized I'd have to branch off into the residential wing. The gut-wrenching noise was coming from one of the rooms.

Part of me wanted to tear through the hall, flinging open doors so that I could help whoever was in need, but I found myself moving forward cautiously. The sobs became louder as I moved farther down the pa.s.sageway. When I rounded the last corner, it was clear that they were coming from the end room. I inched forward slowly. The door was halfway open and I was afraid to be seen. Curiosity won out and I allowed myself to sneak a glimpse over the threshold.

"Mama," the voice sobbed. I peeked my head ever so slowly around the door.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw. David was lying on a twin bed, curled up in the fetal position. He was half wrapped in and half cuddling a ratty-looking blue cotton blanket.

His room was nothing like I expected. It was a living book of memories, one layer of decoration and talisman tacked on top of another. At the very top of the room, pressed up against the ceiling, was a wallpaper border of airplanes. As I examined it closer, I saw that the blanket that David was clinging to had matching aeronautics on it.

The room was like a giant sc.r.a.pbook of a boy's life. Airplanes, robots, baseball paraphernalia, music posters. On the desk and bookcase were da Vinci models and anatomy books stacked in piles. This was the room of a child with dreams. Every inch of the place seemed to tell the story of a boy who was nothing like the hard-hearted man I'd encountered.

I couldn't reconcile it and it scared me a little. David must've created all these items and brought them into his room. Everyone did it to a certain degree. If you were bored while sitting out by the dock, you could simply create a book to read. Then, when the sun went down and it got dark during the very best chapter, a book light would appear. Rarely did anyone erase his or her creations. They just brought them home and dropped them in their rooms or pa.s.sed them on to someone else. Then, once they'd left the Obmil, their belongings left too. Anything that wasn't consciously connected to a remaining soul disappeared along with its creator.

David's room felt different than creating when a need arose. It was like he was deliberately reconstructing his childhood, collecting objects to fill an emotional void. Were they memories or wishes?

Quietly I pushed the door open further. David was making soft whispered sounds that I couldn't make out, so I leaned closer.

"What are you doing, Elliot?"

The voice behind me was soft, but it was magnified by the adrenaline already coursing through my body. I whipped around, swallowing a high-pitched squeal of fright.

"Oh c.r.a.p, Freddie, you scared me to death." I clutched my heart, trying to keep it in my chest. "Well, I guess it's impossible to actually scare me to death." I rambled through my nervousness, unable to stop myself from babbling. "I know it's silly, but I keep forgetting that I'm not alive anymore."

"What makes you think you're not alive?" asked Freddie. He leaned his broom against the wall and tucked his hands into the pockets of his overalls.

His unexpected question made me freeze in place while my mind raced. I sucked in a deep breath to give myself a moment, inhaling the scent of root beer.

"Well, I guess I would consider myself not alive because I just died recently. Although . . ." Something was scratching at the back of my mind, but I couldn't get a clear picture of what it was. I moved closer to Freddie, magnetized by his words.

"Yes, there usually is more to think about under the surface." He nodded at the layers of papers, posters, and art scotch-taped to David's walls. "Scratch that surface and there's typically another layer below it. Makes easy explanations a little bit more complicated, huh?" He pulled his fingers out of his frayed pocket and cupped an antique silver pocket watch.

He flipped it open and gazed at the face.

"Time. Now, time, Elliot, is a very interesting thing to think about." Freddie snapped the watch closed and tucked it back into his pocket.

Before I could say or ask another thing, David began to stir behind me. I'd almost forgotten he was there.

"Freddie?" David's voice was sandpaper.

"You want to know what he's doing, huh?" Freddie stared at me, unruffled by David's ascent into awareness.

I looked back at David, who seemed to be close to waking up. The clock ticking in the background was forcing my breathing into a rapid rhythm. I wanted to hear what Freddie knew, but I didn't want to get caught here. I didn't want David to figure out that I'd seen him. But seen him doing what? Having some kind of emotional breakdown? I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my pants, and decided to be risky. I was already one up on that curious cat, being dead and all already.

"Yes. I want to know what he's doing," I said. I sidled closer.

"Can't rightly say for sure, but maybe he's remembering."

"Remembering what? He can't Delve. He's not a Third Timer. He works here," I said, trying to get it all out before I had to flee. My heart accelerated as David became more alert.

"I can only guess at the things I don't understand, but I can tell you what I do know." Freddie placed a steady hand on my shoulder. "We have a choice. We always have a choice and we can pick again any time we want to."

"What's that mean?"

"You gotta go. You know he wouldn't like knowing that you saw him in the middle of his choices." Freddie pushed me away from the door.

It felt as if I'd stepped farther away from some important piece of knowledge, rather than closer. I glanced back over my shoulder, my feet pointing down the hall but my mind glued to the intrigue of the moment.

"Remember you were saying something about not being alive because you had died?" Freddie's voice reached out to me.

I nodded.

"Well, I think David isn't alive, but it's got nothing to do with the fact that he died."

"Fred? That you?" David's words filtered up out of the depths of wherever he had been.

Freddie went inside and closed the door behind him, releasing me. I ran through the halls and launched myself out the front doors of the Haven, my mind whirling with what had just been dumped in my lap. Every time I thought I was beginning to make sense of the afterlife, something else popped up to muddy the waters.

I was never going to make it before the end of Workshop. Mel was going to be worse than angry, she was going to be disappointed. And then there was Oliver. I pictured myself lost in one of his hugs and couldn't imagine a place I'd feel safer right now.

Wait. If everyone was at Workshop, why wasn't David running his group? Where was his group? Where was Julia? Maybe she really was available to hang out with Trevor. My stomach tightened because the truth was, I hadn't been expecting that, even though I'd run my big mouth about it. I'd left him at the pond because I was mentally exhausted, but things were even worse now. Emotions shot around inside me like Pop Rocks followed by a gulp of soda: repulsion and attraction bouncing together in a hyperactive dance.

It didn't take me long to reach the Delving School because I tromped along at a pace that kept time with my busy mind. When I got to Mel's room I couldn't hear anything so I pushed the door open quietly. Trevor was relaxed in the Delving chair and the rest of the room had on their headsets and were just as submerged as Trevor was. That's when I realized Julia was in the room, curled up like a kitten on a giant pillow near Trevor. I couldn't believe that he'd actually gone searching for her, that she'd had the nerve to come back to Mel's Workshop. She had no business knowing about my past. I headed across the room toward her, not sure what I was going to do when I reached her, then growled at my own stupidity. The moment I crossed the threshold, I could feel myself sinking to the floor as Trevor's Delve dictated my life once again.

a a a The good news, if you can call it that, was that I hadn't missed much. Trevor must've just fallen into his Delve. He was staring at the Elliot from his past. From the look of horror on hera"mya"face, it appeared everyone would get to see exactly what Trevor would do if he met the girl who'd killed his brother.

"What?" The word left his mouth in slow motion, but the rest of him stayed eerily still. I watched Elliot shrink under his gaze.

"I . . ." She had to clear her throat to make the words come out. "I killed your brother." She shuffled her feet and I thought that she was going to run, but instead she dropped to her knees, bowing her head. She appeared sacrificial.

"You? You killed my brother? You're the unidentified teenage girl under protection? It was you who ran my mother off the road and killed Oliver?"

He took a step closer, towering over Elliot kneeling on the ground.

"Answer me." The words were too quiet. A hurricane was about to hit land.

Elliot lifted her head to look Trevor in the face. Her face was shadowed, fragile. Her response darted out between barely parted lips.

"Yes."

Trevor raised his hand, searching for something to destroy. I flinched, but the old Elliot never batted an eye. She watched him in a detached way, like his hand was a natural side effect that she wasn't surprised to see. His anger was an extension of the original impact that she'd created with the accident, a force that had come full circle and was meant to get her in the end. Trevor ripped at the air near the side of her head and then pointed his finger close to the end of her nose.

"I have to leave right now." His face contorted. "You need to meet me here tomorrow. You have to promise."

Elliot stared at him.

"Promise me!"

Elliot nodded.

"Say it." He took a step back and then another.

Elliot bit her lip. "I promise."

Trevor pointed again. "You owe me." Then he turned and ran.

a a a I felt the familiar sensation of leaving a Delve, but before I could find myself back in Mel's Workshop, I was whipped around, tossed by waves I couldn't see. I could smell the scent of freshly mowed gra.s.s mingling with the too-sweet smell of carnations. Trevor was unwilling to go back and he was trying to reengage the Delve, by sheer force of will. He wanted his answers. I felt seasick bobbing along on his emotional rapids.

a a a This wasn't over. When he finally settled back into himself, I wondered if I'd stayed with him by choice.

15.

optical illusion.

Still in Trevor's Delve, I saw myself close up, sitting on the bench, the grave marker for Oliver. I could almost feel the length of my leg pressed up against Trevor's. It was a different day. Elliot was wearing another outfit, sure, but I didn't need a wardrobe change to know that this wasn't the same moment I'd just left. The biggest indicator of time having pa.s.sed was my face. I still appeared tense, close to breaking into a million pieces, but there was a subtle change behind the surface.

Of course, I couldn't see Trevor because I was in his Delve, and when he suddenly turned his head, Elliot was no longer in the picture either. As he began to speak, he looked down into his cupped hands, his forearms propped on his thighs. It appeared as if he was trying to give his words a place to land so they wouldn't scatter.

"You were brave, Elliot, telling me about you and Oliver."

His leg brushed up against Elliot's as it moved up and down, as if to discharge whatever excess emotion he was feeling.

"I watched you kneeling there, telling me how you killed Oliver and destroyed my family. I wanted to rip you limb from limb. I came close."

A crow cawed in agreement.

"That's when I saw you, really saw you for the first time. I didn't intend to look at you, it just happened. It was like those pictures, you know, those optical illusions. You can gaze at them forever and see only one thing. Then when you relax your eyes for just a moment, another picture magically appears. The funny thing with that kind of visual trick is that it's really hard to go back to seeing the original picture once you've seen the new one." He sighed. "I realized instantaneously that there wasn't a thing I could do to you that you hadn't already done to yourself. You were already gone, a sh.e.l.l of a person. You stared me in the face and I knew. You wanted the hate and the rage that I was providing. You wanted punishment."

He didn't face me, so I couldn't see myself either, but I could hear my soft sobs and almost feel my shoulder pushing up against him in time with my tears.

After a few minutes Trevor said, "I'll be honest, in that first moment that I backed off, I only did it because I hated you so much. I couldn't give you anything that you wanted. It was empowering to realize that I could get back at you by withdrawing my viciousness, depriving you of punishment."

I could hear myself gulping in more air.

Trevor turned and I was once again in my own line of visiona"a horrid, weeping mess.

"That's when it happened. There was a flash of knowledge flitting across your face, an understanding that it was over for you. You couldn't bear to live like this anymore. Without the punishment, there was no way to survive your own pain. Is that about right? Were you contemplating suicide right there in front of me?"

My head nodded in reluctant agreement.

"I needed time to think, to digest my feelings. But I had to know for sure that you'd come back, that you wouldn't do anything stupid. I couldn't have the weight of your life in my hands. That's why I made you promise to meet me back here today.

"Before you start thinking something that's not true," Trevor continued, "you should know I wasn't being selfless." He sucked in a deep breath. "I need to tell someone my horrible secret. Ironically, it occurred to me that you are the only one who would be able to understand."