CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The glaring problem with the evidence in front of me was that I couldn’t remember dying. I couldn’t remember trading in this one short life (worth eighteen years, not nineteen) for any sort of afterlife.
But I did remember something.
“The article said Vivian’s car swerved and tumbled down a ravine south of Eugene,” I told Penn.
Instead of escaping, I switched off and plugged my brain into research mode.
I went cerebral, trying to transform myself into a human version of that brown leather notebook.
Fill me with facts and information. Transform my confusion into numbered, bulleted lists.
“Do you remember that drive?” he asked.
“Yeah. We had stopped at a scenic overlook, and I fell asleep,” I said as realizations stacked inside my memory.
“I had this sensation of falling, like crashing toward the pavement. I jolted awake. Vivian said—and I remember it clearly—‘A deer darted into the road, and I swerved.’” I faced him.
“She managed to steady the car, but what if . . . ?”
“What if she actually didn’t?” Penn supplied.
My hand flew up to my pulsing temple. “I had the worst headache after I woke up. I told you about the PCS headaches, but that night it was so bad, I could barely see straight. And I’ve been popping Aleve like candy ever since. I thought it was a relapse.”
“A head injury.” Penn motioned toward the screen. “You and Vivian actually flew off the road and crashed that night. You were brought into my hospital, already gone. But somehow, the Sylvie that’s sitting right here, and Vivian, were sent into some kind of . . . limbo.”
Limbo. The word stuck out like an angry beacon. His explanation made sense, but I still couldn’t place myself there, or anywhere. “I’m not fully alive, Penn,” I said, making myself admit it, even though my mouth barely fit around the words. “I don’t know what I am.”
His face carried as much of my grief as the strong planes of him could hold. “You eat and sleep and drive.” He gestured toward my arm. “You bleed. It’s like time has stopped for you, or stopped you here, somewhere in the middle.”
Time. I looked down at the ticking Vacheron Constantin on my wrist.
“I was wearing the watch when we crashed,” I said. “And it was ticking. I remember seeing it when I woke up.”
“It has to be the watch keeping you here, like this,” he guessed. “For all we know, it put you here in the first place. And Vivian too.”
Like this. But what was this? I still wasn’t close to being sure.
The pull I’d experienced toward the beautiful gold timepiece in Spines and Pines—nearly trancelike, more than magnetic—had felt like fate. It was meant to be the ticket to my future. But it stole it instead. “Why would it . . . How . . . ?”
“I’m wondering if this is all connected,” Penn said, answering questions I never finished asking. “You finding it in that thrift shop. How the watch makes my dream self appear—to you. What it did to you and Vivian after the crash.”
“We’re missing something, then,” I said as realization turned to wonder. “A link between Tía Viv and me and your grandpa’s watch.”
“There’s got to be a reason you and Viv are still here after you . . .”
Our eyes locked. I used to be the one who didn’t want to mention death and dying around Penn. It seemed flippant and cruel. “After we both died,” I offered.
He gave a reluctant nod. “But you haven’t crossed over. You’re a convincing version of real. Even if we don’t understand how that’s physically possible.”
I splayed my fingers on either side of my aching head.
“It’s not. That red Camaro is parked behind the barn at Bearberry Cabin, covered, not a scratch on it.
Definitely not totaled like the article said.
Anyone could go there and see it,” I said clearly before a strange sensation had me rethinking every word. “Or could they?”
Penn motioned for me to go on.
“Ever since we got here, I thought something was off about this entire place. My phone never worked right. Everywhere I go, people ignore me unless I speak directly to them, and even then it’s like I’m barely there. I even thought some of them were racist!”
His jaw twisted. “Let’s try something.” He pointed to the computer. “Print out the article. You’re going to need evidence to show your tía. Wait, you are going to talk to her about this, right?”
A blustering torrent swept through me. I had no choice but to break this news to Viv. This was life and death. Eternity. “As soon as I get back.”
He pointed to a sign tacked to the wall. Print ten pages free of charge. Pick up at front desk.
I caught on immediately. I’d have to interact with one of the clerks, see how they acted around me. I blurred my eyes over the screen as I marked the pages I needed and hit Control P. I didn’t want to focus on the headline or on any one of those condemning details.
I didn’t have to ask Penn to go with me to the front counter. He hung back in full view, observing the way this orange-carpeted slice of Sacred read me.
A clerk sat behind the desk, sporting pink-lemonade hair and soot-colored roots, and a stack of piercings that made her look like a Maria Tash billboard. In the background, a noisy printer spat out page after page of my fate. Here goes.
“Excuse me,” I said.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when she kept her nose inside her paperback book. It wasn’t until I slammed my hand onto the little silver bell on the counter that the clerk even thought to look up.
There you are. I stared hard. Her eyes darted around, only briefly landing over my face before resting slightly off-center.
“Oh hello. Can I help you?” she said, proving the fact that she’d logged the appearance of something across her reception counter.
I lifted my neck. “I printed out some pages from one of the computers. How should I get them?”
“Help yourself.” The clerk pointed to a worktable against the far wall. She rose and poked into the doorway of a back office and proceeded to ask another employee to bring out a stack of materials.
“Okay,” I announced with some push behind it. I strolled over and plucked my freshly printed sheets from the machine on a short stand. I folded them in half, then in half again, and marched over to Penn.
His look said he’d clocked everything. Understood more. “Wait a couple minutes, then go back over there.”
“Why?” My nose scrunched. “She did see me, even if it took a second.”
“I know. Based on all the times I’ve been in public places with you, I have a hunch. Go over again and ask how much it is to print out some pages from the computer.”
My bottom lip sank. “As if I hadn’t just . . .”
“Exactly.” He nudged me forward.
The clerk was back to her chair and her book. This time I hit the bell first.
She looked up. “Oh hello. Can I help you?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Er, hi. I’m new here. Do you have a public computer section?”
“We do. It’s to the left, all the way in the back,” she said, my stomach sinking with every word.
Sweat pooled on the back of my neck. “Thanks. Do you charge if I need to print something out? How do I do that?”
“First ten pages are free,” she said, pointing. “You can grab them yourself right over there.” Back to her novel.
My stomach churned as I crept back to Penn. “She saw me again. I’m not invisible. But she didn’t seem to remember me,” I whispered. “That wasn’t just someone being distracted or scatterbrained.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Penn said.
My mind rewound to every encounter I’d had in Sacred.
“It was the same at Spines and Pines and with that barista at Needles, when I was asking around about jobs—everywhere. And the other day I ran into Ethan at the stables, and he acted really strange. I thought he was pissed about Del, but maybe that wasn’t it at all.
He probably had no idea who I was. He didn’t remember me.
No one does.” I locked on to Penn’s eyes.
A shiver whisked down the length of my spine.
“Except Del,” I mused. “It’s totally different with her. She’s the only one I can text too.”
I already had my half-useless phone out. I pushed send on: Hey, are you around? I need to talk to you real quick
In the light of everything new and terrifying. Not ten seconds later, Del’s reply popped up. Just leaving antique store
Which was two blocks away. I’m at the library, I sent.
Stay put, she wrote. Was on my way there anyway
I showed Penn. “She’s a couple minutes out. What do I even say? I didn’t think that far.”
“You’ll handle it,” Penn said in a bittersweet throwback to Cottage Grove Lake. He winked and scooted off out of sight.
His words filled me, like always. Yes, I could handle it.
I could appear normal and unfazed. I could get through a single conversation with one girl and not make her question who or what I really was.
I shoved the folded-up article in the back pocket of my jeans, pinching my eyes closed until the heavy doors fell open with an ungreased whine.
Big facets of knowing hit me as I turned and saw Del in the entrance nook.
This one girl saw me too. She knew my name, called it out, centering my frame in the middle of her lens.
And when she came right toward me, it was like I mattered.
Like I was known. And she’d been doing that since the day I’d met her, collecting memories and experiences with me each time.
My breathing stalled; my feet stepped back reflexively.
“Hey,” she said, dragging her brows downward. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
My reactions went haywire. I laughed—messily, the sound dark and unhinged. “I just . . . Sorry.” My heartbeat tapped a drumroll. “I’m having one of those days.”
“I feel you. Those days are shit, if you ask me.” Her face melted with pure kindness, and I could’ve broken simply because of that.