“Something’s wrong. They weren’t supposed to die,” I whispered, standing on my toes to get closer to her ear, as Nash pressed in close on my other side.
Emma’s eyes went wide. “What does that mean? Who’s ever supposed to die?”
I glanced at Nash, and he gave me a tiny shake of his head. We really should have discussed how much to tell Emma. “Um. Some people have to die, or the world would be overpopulated. Like …old people. They’ve lived full lives. Some of them are ready to go, even. But teenagers are too young. Meredith should have still had most of her life in front of her.”
Emma frowned at me like I’d lost my mind. Or at least several IQ points. No, I’m not a very good liar. Though technically, I wasn’t lying to her.
With Emma still trying to puzzle out my odd editorial on death, Nash guided us through the crowd toward the gym, where we found seats on the bleachers near the middle of the visitors’ side and smooshed in with several hundred other people. A temporary stage had been set up beneath one of the baskets, and several school officials were seated there with Meredith’s family, beneath the school’s banner and the state and national flag.
For the next hour and a half, we listened to Meredith’s friends and family come forward to tell us all how nice she was, and how pretty, and smart, and kind. Not all of their praise would really have applied to Meredith, had she been there with us, but the dead have a way of becoming saints in the eyes of their survivors, and Ms. Cole was no exception.
And to be fair, other than being beautiful and popular, she was no different from most of the rest of us. Which was precisely why everyone was so upset. If Meredith could die, so could any one of us. Emma’s eyes watered several times, and my own vision blurred with tears when Mrs. Cole came up to the podium, already crying freely.
Sophie sat in the bottom row, surrounded by sobbing dancers blotting streaks of mascara with tissues pulled from small, tasteful handbags. Several of them spoke, mostly Meredith’s fellow seniors, reciting stale platitudes with fresh earnestness. Meredith would have wanted us to move on. She loved life, and dancing, and would want neither to stop in her absence. She wouldn’t want to see us cry.
After the last of her classmates spoke, an automated white screen was rolled down from the ceiling, and someone played a video of still photographs of Meredith from birth to death, set to some of her favorite songs.
During the film, several students stood and made their way to the lobby, where counselors waited to counsel them. Sniffles and quiet sobs echoed all around us, a community in mourning, and all I could think about was that if we couldn’t find the reaper responsible for the unauthorized reaping of Meredith’s soul, it would happen all over again.
After the memorial, Nash, Emma, and I made our way slowly down the bleachers, caught up in the gradual current of people more interested in comforting one another than in actually vacating the building.
Eventually we made it to the gym floor, where more groups had clustered, gravitating en masse toward one of the four exits. Since we’d parked in front of the school, we headed for the main doors, shuffling forward inches at a time.
Nash had just taken my hand, his arm brushing the entire length of mine, when a sudden, devastating wave of sorrow crashed over me, settling heavily into my chest and stomach. My lungs tightened, and an unbearable itch began at the base of my throat. But this time, rather than silently bemoaning the onset of my dark forecast and the imminent death of another classmate, I welcomed it.
The reaper was here; we would have our chance to stop him.
MY HAND GRASPED Nash’s. He glanced my way, and his eyes went wide. “Again?” he whispered, leaning down so that his lips brushed my ear, but I could only nod. “Who is it?”
I shook my head, each breath coming quickly now. I hadn’t pinpointed the source yet. There were too many people, in too many tightly formed groups. All the bodies in dark colors were blending together in a virtual camouflage of funeral attire, and in some cases I couldn’t distinguish one form from another.
A bolt of uncertainty shot through my heart, piercing my determination like a spear through flesh. What if I can’t do this? What if I can’t find the victim, much less save her…?
“Okay, Kaylee, relax.” His whispered words flowed over me with an almost physical sliding sensation, trying to calm me even as his eyes churned in slow, steady fear. “Look around slowly. We can save the next one. But you have to find her first.”
I tried to follow his directions, but the panic was too loud, a private, frenzied buzzing as the scream built inside my head. It interrupted thought. Rendered logic an abstract concept.
Nash seemed to understand. He stepped in front of me so that we were facing, his nose inches from my forehead. He stared into my eyes and took both my hands in his. The crowd shuffled by, parting to flow around us like water around a river outcropping. Several people glanced our way, but no one stopped—I wasn’t the only young woman having a public breakdown in the gym, and most of the others were much louder than mine. For the moment, anyway.
I clenched my jaw shut, holding back the strongest soul song I’d ever felt as I let my gaze rove the crowd, passing over the boys and adults and lingering on the girls. She was here somewhere, and she was going to die. There was nothing I could do to stop that. But if I found her in time, and if I was truly capable of doing what Nash had explained to me, I could bring her back. We could bring her back.
Then all we’d have to worry about was avoiding the rogue reaper fury.
It may have been coincidence, or maybe my very real need, despite our strained relationship, to see that my cousin was safe, but my gaze settled first on Sophie. She stood beneath the basket at the far end of the gym with a group of teary-eyed friends, arms linked in a huddle of sorrow. But none of those red, damp faces intensified my panic, and not one of them was dimmed by a veil of shadows that only I could see. The girls were fine, but for their grief. Fortunately, I would not have to add to it.
Next my focus found another cluster of young women—freshmen, if I had to guess. Everywhere I turned there were more girls, some in dresses, some in dark pants, others in jeans, the official uniform of adolescence. It was like the boys and adults no longer existed. My eyes were drawn only to the girls.
But of all the faces—freckled, tear-streaked, thin, round, pale, dark, and tanned—none held my gaze. Not one cried out to my soul.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than a minute, my gaze found Nash again. My jaws ached from being clenched, my throat was raw from holding back the scream, and my fingernails had left impressions in his hands. I shook my head and blinked away the tears forming in my eyes. She was still there somewhere—based on the unprecedented strength of the cry building inside me—but I couldn’t find her.
“Try again.” Nash squeezed my hands. “One more time.” I nodded and made myself swallow the rising sound—an agony like gulping broken glass—but this time the consequences of repressing it were very real. Pressure built in my chest and throat, and I was increasingly certain that if I couldn’t release it soon or remove myself from the source, my body would rupture into one gaping wound of grief.
Desperate now, I looked over his shoulder, where people still pressed slowly toward the exit. Everyone in that direction faced away from me, identities obscured by the anonymous backs of their heads. A thin redhead, with long, loose curls. Two heavyset girls with identical black waves. A brunette with thin, fine hair as straight as a ruler. She turned, and I saw her profile, but the panic didn’t escalate.
Then one head caught my attention—another blonde, about fifteen feet away, her entire form dark with a thick, ominous shadow that somehow fell on no one else. The moment my gaze found her, my throat convulsed, fighting to release