whip out his cell and call an ambulance. None of these things happens. Well, not at first. After a long pause, Justin reaches into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulls out his phone. “I need to call,” he says. But he’s not looking at me.
I move forward, into the room. “Justin,” I say to him.
But he won’t look at me. I’m standing where I can reach out and touch Angela, and all she does is continue to study and chew on her fingernails, as if I’m not even there. As if …
I look down at the blood seeping through my jacket, making it look sleek and black, like a seal’s skin. Then I stand between them. “Justin?”
Angela says, “Yeah. I think you need to.”
Need to what? I turn to her, I’m standing right in front of her, and her eyes are on me, but they’re not. They’re focused on what’s behind me. Justin. I move closer to her, wave my hand in her face. She doesn’t even blink. “Angela?”
Nothing.
Oh my God. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see, now, because the tears are falling freely and blurring my vision. I can’t wipe them away because my hands are crusted with dirt and blood. I just stand there, moving from one to the other, hoping that one of them will say, Oh, hey, there you are! But Justin has his phone up to his ear and is staring at the ceiling. I can hear the phone ringing, and then a familiar voice says “Yep?” on the other end. There’s only one person I know who answers the phone like that.
“Mr. Levesque?” Justin says into the receiver.
My breath hitches. Dad.
The tears fall harder. If he were here, everything would be better. My heart twists with the thought of everything I’d done to get away from him. I was so, so stupid. How could I have wanted that? How could I have thought that would be better? I want him here. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me he loves me, that I’m his girl. Never in my life have I wanted that so much. I reach for the phone, crying, “Give that to me!” But even though Justin doesn’t move, just stands there with one hand holding the phone and the other hand pinching his other ear closed, I can’t touch him. Something is wrong. I touch, and yet I feel nothing. I reach for where the phone is, but my hands pass through it like it’s made of air. I cannot snatch it from him.
Justin says, “There’s a problem with Ki. She’s missing.”
I’m sobbing now. “No, I’m not. Justin. I’m right here.”
But it’s useless. I drop my head, letting the tears puddle on the floor, with my blood. So, so much blood. Don’t they notice that? Don’t they notice anything about me?
Justin looks at the ceiling and exhales deeply. “It’s my fault,” he says to my father. “I was the one who convinced her to come up here.”
I can hear my father’s voice on the other end, an octave higher with worry. Though I can’t make out the words, I know what he says: “I’ll be right up. I’m coming. I’m leaving right now.”
Oh, Dad, I think, as I stare at the growing puddle of blood at my feet, I’m so sorry. But it’s too late.
Chapter Nineteen
I don’t know how much later, I find myself wandering the woods in the blackness. It’s dark, and yet I can see. I’m not cold or hot, I’m not anything. My feet don’t make a sound, and though there are brambles and roots popping out of the earth, my footing is sure, as if I’m walking a well-known path, and nothing touches me. My wound seeps blood endlessly, but it doesn’t hurt.
I don’t know how this happened. One moment I was talking to Jack, and … Oh, no, I was thinking of kissing him. I wanted to, so badly. Somehow, though I can’t feel anything else, I can still feel my face aflame with embarrassment.
Did Jack do this to me?
I think of his last words. If you want to help us, you need to go across. Now.
But going across would mean … No, it’s not possible.
Dead. Am I dead? And now, obviously, I don’t want to go across. I can’t. And yet I don’t remember telling him that; I was too busy wishing for other things. But he was a vision. Only a vision, my vision. How could