Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Five years ago . . .
* * *
When you feel like barfing into the abyss, the abyss barfs back into you.
Or something.
Graham Gray stared into the abyss, which in this case was the muddy ground thirty-some feet below behind the Rolvaag Memorial Library.
He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up on the library roof—a walk?
A dare? A trance? But he knew why, of all the places to explore the St. Olaf campus, he went for a roof.
It doesn’t matter, none of it matters, and it’s not like I’ll be missed and I’m so so so tired and maybe this wasn’t such a dumb idea after all God knows my folks will be thrilled but even so it’s a mess of my own making AGAIN and I can’t even blame the booze since I quit last year so what’s my excuse now?
Simple. He didn’t have one. And he was tired of blaming everything—the substance abuse, the depression, the inability to connect, the oily T-zone—on his parents. It was past time to hit the Reset button, maybe come back as a muskrat or blue whale or medical transcriptionist or cotton candy vendor.
Or would that be the Delete button? Because he was pretty sure there wasn’t a benevolent God looking down on humanity, giving them little jobs to do so they could trundle about the earth like ants, earning their tiny heavenly merit badges.
“I can’t believe I’m gonna die like this,” he marveled aloud, and the sound of his own voice—small and scared and disbelieving—startled him.
“Not to worry.” The voice came from fucking nowhere and he nearly went over, because that was way more startling. “You aren’t.”
“Excuse me,” he snapped, turning. “You can’t possibly—huh.”
A ridiculously pretty woman was standing about eight feet away.
She was tall and slender, with shoulder-length brown hair and a pale face, sporting a bright-purple raincoat and black boots with white skulls on the toes.
As she stepped closer and he got a better look at her (and at the Jack Skellingtons on her Wellingtons), he was startled all over again.
It was probably the light, but it looked like her hair and eyes were . . . deep red?
Then a lightning flash lit up the roof, and her eyes and hair were ordinary brown. Prob’ly why he’d never heard her come up behind him in the first place. Stupid spring rainstorm! Not only was he about to die, but he’d die wet and shivering and goosebumped. And in his rattiest pair of underwear.
It’s possible I didn’t think this through.
“You look cold,” she observed. “And I am, too.”
“Wow, you suicide hotline people don’t just use the phones to do your thing, huh?”
“I’m not with the suicide hotline. Or any hotline. But you’re chilled through, so you need to get off this roof. Come have hot chocolate with me.”
Annnnnd of course a pretty stranger would ask him on a pity date during his last five minutes on Earth. “You can’t trick me!”
“Pointing out we’re cold isn’t a trick.” She smiled. Smiled! Like this wasn’t a matter of life or death! Like she thought he was doing something . . . cute? “It’s an observation.”
“And don’t try to grab me, either,” he warned, though under different circumstances, he would have welcomed all the grabbing.
“There’s no need to grab any part of you. I told you. You don’t die today.”
He liked her voice, a calm, confident contralto. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“Of course I can.”
“I don’t recognize you.” He pegged her at about ten years older than he was. Maybe more. A line from his mother’s least favorite movie came to him. “You don’t even go here!”
“Correct. I’m here for the funeral.”
“So I will die.”
“Not tonight.” She laughed. “But that’s quite the ego on you, assuming I showed up early just to attend a stranger’s funeral.”
“Fair,” he conceded. “Sorry. I’m not usually this self-centered.”
“It’s fine. And it’s Ms. Gardiner’s funeral. I worked for her for a couple of weeks.”
“Couple of—” He blinked. Then blinked more, because the rain wasn’t letting up. “Ms. Gardiner? The bio prof? She’s dead?”
The stranger had no reply. Just crooked a finger at him. “Come down. Let’s get cocoa with a shot of Frangelico. Two shots.”
“I quit drinking.”
“Oh. Good for you. Straight cocoa it is, then.”
She didn’t ask, but he went ahead anyway: “Because I kept doing dumb destructive stuff and couldn’t stop.”
“It’s a good thing you quit, then,” she replied, po-faced, and he had to laugh. “My name is Amara.”
“Graham Gray. And I’m not coming over to shake your hand. So give it up already.”
“As you wish. But—stop me if you’ve heard this—you aren’t dying tonight.”
He was surprised to see she was only a couple feet away, though he would have bet money she hadn’t moved the entire time they talked. Had she hypnotized him, like a gorgeous spitting cobra? And if she had, what did that make him? Mongoose or mouse?
“I still don’t see how you could possibly know that.”
“No need to take my word for it. Here, I’ll prove it.”
She was right there, and even as he processed that fact, she slapped her palm against his chest and shoved. The world went upside down and then righted itself with crazy speed, and he had time for one panicked thought—
Why did I think this was a good idea????
—before he felt and heard the impact:
Splorch!
“Mud,” he groaned. He wriggled in the mess for a few seconds, amazed he could move, then managed to flop over on his back and gasp at the night sky while wiggling his fingers and toes.
The breath had been punched out of his lungs by the impact, and he sucked in air so quickly he was light-headed.
Or maybe that was the concussion. “God damn. A four-foot pile of muddy slime because they broke ground on the new annex this weekend. I walked past it to get to the stairs!”
He heard footsteps, but he was in no hurry to try to walk, or even stand. Then she was looming over him, which was startling all over again. He’d thought she was older, but now realized she was closer to his own age. And how’d she get down so fast?
“See?” she said with a smirk. “You’re fine.”
“I’ve got mud inside me.”
“Mostly fine,” she amended. “So . . . hot chocolate?”
They had hot chocolate. Then tea. Then more hot chocolate, this time to go, and they ended up in his dorm room.
And he told her everything. And she told him unbelievable things that he believed because, in a crazy-stupid way, they made sense.
And then he passed out in his bed because he hadn’t slept in three days or eaten in two.
And she was there when he woke up.