Afterlife Academy (12 page)

It takes my breath away.

If I have any breath, that is.

He’s as beautiful as I remember
him.

And broken.

Really broken.

I thought he might have been in
hospital, but he’s not. He’s on the couch in his parents’ living room. He’s so
clear it’s like I’m sitting right opposite him. It’s like I could reach my hand
out and touch him, but I know I can’t, and that thought makes a lump rise in my
throat.

Poor Wade.

No, he’s not dead, unlike some
people. But he’s hurt.

His leg is in a plaster cast and
is up on the coffee table in front of him. His arm is in a cast as well and
held across his body in a sling. His face is a mess. His beautiful face. His
gorgeous brown eyes are swollen and bruised, and there are gashes on his cheeks
and neck. I can’t see any more because he’s wearing a long-sleeved top and
jeans, but his body must be as bruised and battered as his face.

Poor thing.

He must be devastated. I mean,
I’m sure he’ll heal up, but those cuts are going to scar, no question about it.
Wade always said he was good-looking enough to become a model—I bet he won’t be
able to do that with a scarred face.

Wade will be devastated to be
cut up so badly.

And to have lost his girlfriend,
obviously.

I wonder if he’s in trouble for
killing Anthony? I know it was an accident, but he did steal the car and drive
pretty dangerously. Loads of people saw us. I don’t know the first thing about
the legal implications of that, but he could be in big trouble.

And he’s so badly hurt.

My poor baby.

I should be there.

I should be there taking care of
him.

He needs me.

I bet his parents are totally
unsympathetic. I bet they think it’s all his fault and that he brought it all on
himself.

Which, okay, maybe he did. In a
way. But it was an accident and no one deserves that much pain.

I bet he really needs a hug.

God, I miss hugging him.

I miss him so much, it’s
tangible.

If I reached out my hand right
now, I could touch the toes poking out the top of the plaster cast on his leg.

Gently, of course.

I know I can’t communicate with
him. I know I’m not allowed and I know he can’t hear me anyway. But I’m so
close to him and yet so far. It’s like I’m sitting right there with him. I’m
sure he’ll hear me if I speak.

“I’ll see you soon,” I whisper.

He doesn’t seem to have heard
me.

I hear laughter filtering
through the vision but I ignore it.

“I know you’ll come for me
soon,” I whisper again.

I feel tears spring to my eyes.

Then there’s a hand on my
shoulder, and it makes me jump so much that Wade is gone.

I blink furiously and find that
Mr Nathan is standing there looking at me worriedly.

“Are you okay, Riley?”

I wipe away my tears and nod.

But I’m not okay really. Not
okay at all.

This is the most unfair thing
that has ever happened in my life.

“I know you’ll come for me
soon,” some boy at the back of the class calls out in a mock-girly voice.

Oh, bugger. They heard that?

“Danny, shut up,” Mr Nathan
says.

He turns back to me. “I know it
can be hard, Riley. I know it seems like they can hear you, but they can’t.”

“It was so real,” I whisper. “I
thought it would be like me looking down on him from above or something but it
was just like sitting in the room with him, like I have a hundred times before.
It just felt so normal. Like I was there.”

I wipe at my eyes again. I’m
angry with myself for crying in front of these people who hate me enough as it
is. Showing weakness is the worst thing I could have done.

Great. Like they needed even
more ammunition.

I had completely forgotten that
Anthony was sitting next to me until I feel his hand on my arm.

“You okay?” he whispers in my
ear.

I nod briefly even though I feel
anything
but
okay.

I just want his hand off my arm.

I suddenly feel guilty for thinking
about Wade with Anthony sitting there. Yes, Wade is my boyfriend. Wade is the
love of my prematurely over life. But even I can’t deny that the way he treated
Anthony was wrong. The way
we
treated Anthony
was wrong. Being here has shown me the way I treated a lot of people was wrong.

But Anthony… He’s been so nice
to me. Even though I didn’t deserve it, and if I had been in Anthony’s shoes I
would never have spoken to me again.

Wade crossed the line the night
we died. Even before the crash. Making fun of Anthony’s parents’ deaths was
cruel, even by my standards. We all knew that Anthony’s parents had died. It
happened back when we were all first years. Anthony was off school for weeks
and when he came back no one really knew what to say to him. He was vulnerable
and quiet, and shuffled around the school with his head down and his maths
calculator in his pocket. Where we should have been sympathetic, we made fun of
him instead.

Of course, Wade didn’t mean to
kill Anthony. I don’t actually know what he meant to do, but the crash was an
accident.

But Anthony didn’t deserve to
die.

And hopefully neither did I.

I miss Wade so much I can’t
breathe.

I have to get out of here.

I shove my chair back and stand
up while mumbling something about needing some air.

Then I run from the room and
sink down on the steps outside.

The steps Wade and I sat on to
make out sometimes during break time.

I put my head in my hands and
shove the thought away.

This place is messing with my
head.

I need to get out of here.

I need to forget all about
Anthony. He thinks it was his time to go, fine. Let him think that. Glad we
could help him on his way.

But it wasn’t my time to go.

I have to go home.

Wade needs me.

He needs someone to take care of
him, and who better than me? I love taking care of him. I’m always giving him
shoulder massages and bringing him lunch or cans of Coke from the vending
machine.

I have to go back to him. I
can’t just leave him sitting alone on his couch thinking that he is responsible
for my death. He must be beating himself up over it.

Not that I know that for a fact
or anything, but he looked pretty upset.

I have to go back.

That thought is all that is in
my head as I march up to the main hall and bang on Eliza Carbonell’s door.

CHAPTER 14

She has to send me home. Even if she’s been dead for
sixty-odd years, she still has to see the tragedy that’s going on here.

It doesn’t take long before she
answers the door and I push my way inside.

I’m really angry. It’s wrong for
them to keep me here. “I need to talk to you,” I growl.

“Please, take a seat, Riley,”
she says, but I am already sitting down. I might be seething mad but I have to
appear calm and rational.

“I thought I might be seeing you
again soon.”

“Clairvoyant, are you?”

Okay, bad Riley. No sarcasm.

“You just seem like the type
that would have difficulty settling in.”

“Actually, I’m not the type. I
can settle in anywhere. I’m really easy-going. Unless I’m somewhere I’m not
supposed to be.”

I wait for her to sit back down
in her own chair.

“Look,” I say. “I don’t know
what’s going on here. Some sort of big karmic payback or whatever, but you and
I both know that I’m not supposed to be here.”

“What makes you think that?” she
asks without breaking eye contact.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “The hair,
the skin, the pink necklace. You haven’t noticed that I look, oh, y’know,
slightly different to every other person in this school?”

“Of course I’ve noticed,” she
says. “But it’s not good practice to go around pointing out the students’
differences in public.”

“Funnily enough, everyone can
see anyway,” I say. “But that’s not the point. The point is, I don’t belong
here and we both know it. I’m not supposed to be dead. That’s why I still have
my colour.”

“I really don’t think that’s
the—”

“Yes, it is,” I insist. “There’s
no other reason for it. It’s why I still feel so alive.”

“Riley, you feel alive because
just a little while ago, you still were. There’s a period of adjustment that
takes anything from a few weeks to a few months to go through. Now, can I say
something without you interrupting me for a moment?”

I huff and nod reluctantly.

“I know it’s hard, but
everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. You are here because you are
meant to be here. Riley, everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen.
There is no other way because this is the way things are. Like I said, we know
it’s hard, but therapy can help. There are requisite therapy sessions as part
of the curriculum, but the school counsellor is available at all times and I’d
really like to set you up a one-on-one appointment with him. Would that be
okay?”

I shrug.

“That’s wonderful. I’ll have a
chat with him and send you an appointment within the next couple of days.”

“Therapy isn’t going to help.
Therapy is a joke. I can’t settle in here because I don’t belong here. Why
can’t you just save yourself a lot of trouble and let me go?”

“I’m not keeping you a prisoner
here, Riley. This is just the way things are.”

“The way things are,” I mimic.
“The way things are doesn’t matter. What matters is that my boyfriend is hurt
and he needs me.”

“You’ve had your first
Visualisation class this morning.” She says this as a statement, not a
question.

“What difference does that make?
Wade is hurt and he needs me.”

“Riley, you have things more
important than Wade to be worrying about at the moment, for a—”

“What could be more important
than Wade?” I interrupt. “He’s the love of my life. That’s pretty important in
my book. Maybe it wasn’t in 1949, but it is now. The boy I love is hurt and
lonely and he needs me.”

“There’s nothing you can do
about that, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, there is,” I shout. “You
can do something. You can let me go home.”

“I know it’s hard for you,” she
says calmly. “But this is home now. This—”

“Just stop with all the ‘we
understand this is hard, adjustment, therapy, more adjustment, more therapy’
bullshit. You have no idea what this is like for me. You have no idea what it’s
like to be ripped away from your family when it wasn’t your time. You have no
idea what it’s like to sit in class and watch the person you love more than
anything in the world in pain.”

“Riley, I do understand,” she
says, still calm.

Unlike me.

“This happened to me too. Just
because it wasn’t in this decade doesn’t make it any less painful. I didn’t
think it was my time to go either. I had a family who I loved dearly, and it
did take a while to adjust, but it all worked out for the best in the end. I
got to come and work here and help others through the exact same thing that had
hurt me so much.”

“You have no idea,” I say again.
“Wade is hurt. He has a broken leg and a broken arm and God only knows what
else. He needs me. It’s not the same as seeing your family happily enjoying
their life without you. It’s not about that. The person I love needs me.”

“Broken bones will heal,” she
says. “Wade will no doubt have grief counselling and he will grow to accept
what has happened the same way you will.”

“No, I won’t,” I say. “I’ll
never accept this. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, and I want to go
home, so would you please let me out?”

“I can’t ‘let you out’, Riley,”
she says. “Even if it were possible to send you ‘back to your world’ as you
call it, don’t you realise that you are dead to all the people in your world?
They have buried you. There was a funeral. An obituary in the paper. The people
you love have no idea about this dimension. They have no idea that while your
body may be dead, your spirit can exist here. Everyone you know thinks you are
dead, which you are. The point is that you can’t just pop back up and shout
‘surprise!’ Your parents buried you last week. Your boyfriend was at the
funeral. They identified your lifeless body. It is simply impossible for you to
return to your home. This is your home now.”

I stop for a moment to take all
that in.

I guess I’d never thought of it
like that before. Being here, I still feel totally alive. I hadn’t really
thought about what had happened at home. I kind of thought I’d just disappeared
and turned up here. I’ve thought about the funeral, but not about the body. I
guess there must have been a body. Oh God. How am I supposed to go home if my
body is six feet under?

“Wait,” I say, thinking. “The
funeral was last week? But I’ve only been here a couple of days.”

“Time passes differently here,
Riley,” she says. “What seems like a day to you can be a lot longer on Earth.”

I nod like I understand but I
don’t.

How had I never thought of this
before? A funeral? My funeral. My body. Dead. Dead and gone as far as everyone
is concerned.

Except Wade.

Wade knows I’m here. I’m sure he
does. He will come for me. He just can’t really do much with a broken leg and
arm, so he’s probably biding his time and doing a load of research while he
heals up and then he will come.

Although he didn’t look like he
was doing much research when I saw him in Visualisation class. He actually
looked like he was watching TV.

But who am I to say that he
hadn’t been on the Internet all morning and had just stopped for a minute?

My parents think I’m dead.

God, they must have seen my dead
body.