Under Zenith Read online

  “It sounds like you had a magical childhood,” Hayden said sarcastically.

  I guess playing around in a junkyard didn’t really seem like a dream come true for a kid, and even though we’d grown up without a lot of the things other kids had, I’d never once felt poor. It didn’t matter that Hayden pitied my childhood or whatever he wanted to call the disdain he had for me. I enjoyed every second of my life.

  Until that last second right before my brand new truck smashed into a tree.

  That second wasn’t so great.

  “You know Tuck saved my life once?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” Hayden said, sounding a little surprised.

  “Very funny,” I countered.

  “No, I’m not joking,” he said, sounding even more puzzled than before. “Why don’t I know that?”

  I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t recall a memory that was, perhaps, one of my most important ones, but it was fun watching him lose a little power over me.

  “Since my memories are so mundane I guess I won’t tell you,” I teased.

  “You’re just making this up, right?” he asked, still troubled.

  “Of course I’m not,” I answered with a laugh.

  Oh yeah, I was enjoying this way too much. I was sure I should be more concerned about the fact that Hayden mysteriously couldn’t recall one of my memories, but the fun outweighed my concern.

  By a lot.

  “Tuck and I went down to the river one day during the summer. It was incredibly hot and humid out and we couldn’t afford to go to the community pool. Tuck felt really bad that I was so miserable so he promised me we’d find some way to go swimming,” I began, relenting and just telling Hayden the story.

  It was nice to actually have a story to tell him that he didn’t already know. Suddenly I was excited to relive this experience.

  “We went down to the river, which was pretty disgusting by the way. The water was kind of dirty, but it was cold so we didn’t really care. I think at first we were just planning to put our feet in since we were wearing clothes and not bathing suits, but eventually we ended up just splashing and swimming around, not caring that we were getting our clothes soaking wet.”

  “Swimming in rivers and playing in junkyards. If you’re trying to convince me that you aren’t an unrefined hick, you aren’t doing a very good job,” Hayden joked.

  I rolled my eyes at his statement.

  “So,” I said loudly to drown out anything else Hayden might say. “Tuck was swimming in the river and I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to jump off of a tree into the water. Just like the diving board at the pool.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Tuck kept begging me not to jump, telling me it was too shallow. He even got out of the water and started climbing the tree to get me down, but I got scared that he was really coming up to push me in so I jumped,” I said, remembering the sensation of falling through the humid heat then suddenly being engulfed by icy water.

  “The current was really strong and I was a little disoriented from the jump, so I couldn’t remember which way was up. I actually ended up hitting my head on a rock and then the world went really fuzzy and dark. For a while I thought my shirt was covering my face in the water because I couldn’t see and my skin felt like it had all fallen asleep. I remember telling myself over and over not to breathe, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “I kept trying to bring my hands up to feel my cheeks because the feeling seemed to be gone from them, but I couldn’t move my body at all. After a while, I couldn’t feel the water around me and I knew I was on dry land, but I still didn’t want to breathe.”

  I paused for a moment, realizing for the first time how similar this memory was to one I had just created a few days before.

  “I had the strangest dream while I was passed out. I was sitting in the tree branches above Tuck, and I could see him trying to bring me back to life. My face was muddy and there was blood all around me from where I’d hit my head on the rock. I kept thinking I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t take a breath, but suddenly I wanted nothing more than to tell Tuck I was okay. The desire to see him again was so overwhelming that I forced myself to take a breath.”

  I stopped speaking. My eyes were burning at the thought that my latest story ended quite differently from this one.

  “And?” Hayden asked, sounding more interested than I’d ever heard him, which was good. I couldn’t bear to have him belittle this memory that I held so dear.

  “And I woke up,” I said simply. “Tuck was kneeling over me. Praying I think. And he looked white as a ghost. I got ten stitches at the nape of my neck and grounded for a week for swimming in the river when Mama and Daddy had told us not to. I still have a scar.”

  I gathered my hair up and turned my back to Hayden to show him the now small scar just below my hairline on the nape of my neck.

  He traced it with his finger for a moment, not making any comment on my story. Though I guess he wasn’t making fun of me either so that was something.

  “Tuck was always the stereotypical protective big brother. He was always there to keep me safe,” I said, my voice catching unexpectedly as I faced Hayden again.

  “He’s still alive,” Hayden pointed out, obviously misinterpreting my sadness.

  “But he couldn’t save me this time,” I explained.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t his fault that you died.”

  He still wasn’t understanding me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice shaking as my eyes watered. “He’ll blame himself for not being able to help me. That’s just how he is. He feels like it’s his job to keep everyone safe. He works nonstop to contribute to the family. He never took his football scholarship because he was worried that if he left, Mama and Daddy wouldn’t be able to make it on their income alone.

  “He’s selfless.”

  I wiped the few stray tears away from the corners of my eyes, not wanting to think about Tuck anymore. Or how I’d never see my family again.

  Hayden didn’t respond to my story, but he very slowly moved his hand over on the bed so that it rested on top of mine. As small as the gesture was, I knew it was a big deal for Hayden to show any sort of support, and I appreciated it immensely.

  “You know, every time you talk about dying, you talk about how it’s affected everyone, but you. Why is that?” he asked after a moment.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “Are you really that unconcerned with your own ambitions and feelings that you just don’t care about the fact that your life was cut off so abruptly?”

  “Of course I care,” I answered. “You’d have to be crazy to not be at least a little upset that all of the things you wanted to do have been stolen away from you.”

  “I wasn’t going to put ‘crazy’ past you. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Shut up,” I said playfully, laughing for a moment before it was cut off by a post-cry hiccup, which only made me laugh more.

  I used the hand that Hayden wasn’t sort of holding to wipe the last of my tears away.

  “There were a lot of things I wanted to do,” I assured him. “Monica and I wanted to travel overseas.”

  I left out the fact that we were hoping to meet some cute boys with English accents, since that would probably clue him into the fact that, despite how mean he was, I was a sucker for a good English accent.

  “There was this boy who worked at the bookstore that I always wanted to ask out, but never did. Actually I’d made a pact with Monica that I’d give him my number the day after we graduated. Which would have been the day after I died,” I said in slight amusement. “I hope she went on a date with him to honor my memory.”

  “You are one of a kind, Isla Edison,” Hayden told me.

  “How do you know my last name?” I asked him.

  “How can I perfectly recall all but one of your memories?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Good point,” I agreed before going b
ack on to my rambling thoughts. “Anyway, I could tell Monica liked that boy too, so I hope she doesn’t refrain from talking to him because she’s scared I’m going to haunt her or something. Speaking of which! After these tasks are all done, can I go back to visit my family as a ghost or something?”

  Hayden laughed at this question. I’d take that as a ‘no’.

  “All I know is how to get you to your Destination. Anything else, you’re going to have to take up with whoever is on the Other Side for you.”

  “Will you not come with me?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little sad at the idea of not having Hayden around, no matter how unpleasant he was.

  “Of course I can’t come with you,” he stated.

  I couldn’t tell how he felt about the situation when he simply defaulted to his normal unhappy setting, but I liked to think that Hayden was slowly coming to think of me as a friend. He was sort of turning into my unwilling hostage and I had every intention of forcing him to be happier whether he liked it or not.

  Curious to know if he thought of me as a friend now, I opened my mouth to ask him, but quickly shut it again when the snow started to fall. I definitely didn’t want to ask a question like that when Hayden had such a perfect excuse to leave abruptly without answering.

  I could feel my eyelids growing heavy. Hayden took his hand off of mine and suddenly he was cradling my head as he lowered me into a laying position on the bed. He was actually kind of helping me.

  I fought to keep my eyes open or even to say something to him about how nice it was to have him being sweet to me, but I couldn’t seem to form the sentence. The desire to sleep was just too much.

  Just as my eyes closed completely, I felt Hayden tuck a stray hair behind my ear, his hand brushing against my cheek for just a moment longer than it needed to and I knew the answer to my question without ever having to ask it.

  Hayden was my unwilling friend.

  Chapter 16

  “Isla?”

  The word was so faint that I hardly expelled the effort to open my eyes at the sound. My body still felt heavy from the snow yesterday and my head was hurting where the bump refused to go away.

  “Isla?”

  The word came again. Only this time I actually sat bolt upright. It wasn’t the fact that my name was being called; it was the voice calling it.

  “Daddy?” I whispered to the still empty office.

  Paper crackled underneath me as I pivoted on the hospital bed and let my bare feet touch the cold linoleum floor.

  I hadn’t taken my boots off the night before when I’d fallen asleep. The only thing I could think was that maybe Hayden had removed them for me while I was sleeping. Somehow, that didn’t really match up with the normal image of my Guide. I couldn’t see him as the sweet doting type.

  Sun was still streaming in lazy beams through the shades in the office and I had to think this was very early in the cycle for the sun to still be out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hayden wasn’t even here yet. He only seemed to show up once the sun melted away, allowing itself to be subdued by the ever present fog.

  “Daddy?” I called again, this time standing from the bed and searching the small room.

  I didn’t really need to walk to search, since the room was so incredibly tiny. Still, I didn’t want to run the risk that I might miss my father, if by some miracle he was in the room.

  Maybe this was what happened once you got closer to your Destination. Maybe they let you see a member of your family to give you some encouragement or moral support.

  The sun was already starting to fade and soon the fog darkened the room considerably, leaving only the flickering fluorescent light above my head.

  It didn’t take long for me to confirm that my dad, in fact, wasn’t in the room. It didn’t really come as a surprise to me, but I’d still had a hope, in the back of my mind, that I’d be able to see him one last time.

  Feeling like I shouldn’t dwell on my moment of hallucination for too long, I put my boots on and made my way outside, assuming I’d run into my Guide there and he’d either be able to explain what had happened, or give me another impossible task to take my mind off of my own loneliness.

  “Bout time you showed up,” Hayden called to me, as if on cue.

  He was standing on top of a grassy hill, looking down at me in exasperation. Apparently I was able to annoy him before I’d even opened my mouth.

  “Hayden, I need to ask you something,” I said as I jogged over to him.

  I would have asked him about the voice I’d heard only moments before. I had every intention of asking him if it was possible that my dad might be here. But instead my words were cut short when I saw the brightly colored puddles that dotted the land in front of me.

  “Yellowstone?” I guessed, trying to make sense of the green valley surrounding the rocky, neon colored pools.

  “Sort of,” Hayden confirmed, sounding only mildly impressed by my guess. “Yellowstone with a few alterations.”

  “At least it’s not a junk yard, right?” I asked, trying to joke, but getting no response from my Guide. “Hey there’s a place in Yellowstone called Hayden Valley…so that’s…interesting,” I finished lamely.

  He wasn’t in the mood for jokes today. I was guessing it was because he’d used up all of his nice energy last night when he helped me into bed.

  “As long as I don’t have to fight off bears or stop an unstoppable geyser I think I can handle this.”

  “You don’t even know what the task is yet,” Hayden pointed out.

  He sounded bored.

  “I know it’s not a giant robot spider that wants to cut me in half, or a flesh eating zombie who’s after my brains. So that’s a step up.”

  “What was your question?” he asked, obviously wanting to change the subject away from whatever aspect of my personality was bugging him at the moment.

  I considered how I could phrase my question for a moment. I couldn’t just ask if my dad was here because Hayden would say I was being homesick and weak. On the other hand, I couldn’t say I’d heard his voice because then he’d be sure I was completely nuts.

  “I wanted to know how many tasks there are,” I finally said. And while that wasn’t actually the question I had intended to ask him, it was something I had been wondering about for some time.

  “I can’t believe it took you this long to ask me that,” he said condescendingly before I gave him a look that said I was having none of his attitude today.

  “There are only six tasks,” he amended.

  “Six?” I repeated. “So after this I only have one more?”

  It didn’t seem possible that I was actually this close to being done with the crazy and seemingly random tasks. This newfound knowledge meant that I’d actually need to think about if I wanted to go to my Destination or not. After all, even Hayden couldn’t tell me what it actually meant to reach it.

  For all he knew, it could mean I was volunteering to become a Guide myself. Or maybe I’d simply pass through the door and that would be the end of me. I’d be cast into an eternity of nothingness.

  “Are you just going to stand there, or is it all right with you if we get on with things?” he asked, and had I not been so deep in thought, I would have shot him another look. Instead I simply nodded distractedly. “Fantastic.”

  Hayden began walking down the hill toward the pools of water though I didn’t follow behind him. Suddenly, with the end so close, I wasn’t sure how I felt about rushing through each task in the hopes that I’d get to my unknown Destination sooner.

  Why was I so anxious to get to this place if I didn’t even know if it would be an improvement on my current situation?

  “I know it’s a bit early, but as a general rule you need to be present to complete these tasks,” Hayden called over his shoulder, stopping his trek down the hill and turning to give me an appraising look. “I don’t want to overwhelm you with that fact or anything.”

  He was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me
to make a snarky remark right back at him or whine about how mean he always was to me. It was his joy in life to do this little back and forth exchange and be as terrible as he possibly could be. But suddenly, I wanted nothing more than time that I didn’t have. I didn’t want to be forced to begin the task and I couldn’t care less if that messed up Hayden’s quota somehow.

  Instead of answering him, I turned around and began walking toward the wooded area away from both the safe house and the task ahead.

  “Isla?” Hayden asked, sounding confused at first, and I could only wonder how long it would take for his confusion to be replaced by anger.

  His anger wasn’t usually too far from the surface to begin with.

  Ignoring his calls, I stopped under the shade of the tall pine trees and sat on the ground, giving no mind to the dirt I’d inevitably get on my skirt. In the long run it didn’t matter since A) I was dead, and B) my dress would simply clean itself the next morning.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hayden asked, his previously subdued anger now showing through the vein on his forehead.

  “I’m sitting,” I replied with a too-sweet smile.

  “Yeah, I can see that. I’m not an idiot, but maybe I need to rephrase the question so that you’ll understand. Why aren’t you doing the task?”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes at his less than friendly tone.

  “Why should I be so anxious to get to my Destination?”

  “Oh please not this again,” he said in complete and utter exasperation. “I swear pairing me with you is some kind of punishment.”

  “I’m serious, Hayden!”

  “So am I.”

  “If you don’t even know what my Destination is, then why should I want to go there?” I asked. “It might end up being something bad.”

  “It’s called having a little faith,” he said, not making any move to sit down next to me, but not screaming and throwing things at me either. “You just have to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” I laughed. “I trust you about as far as I can spit.”

  “Charming expression.”