Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (15 page)

“Good, good.” Ms. Tinsley eyed Amber suspiciously. She already had the pen in her hand, ready to scratch more notes on a page that was empty when she arrived but almost full now. “See you tomorrow. Maybe you can tell me about your project?”

“Maybe!” Amber shouldered the door open and power-walked down the hallway. The heavy door clicked shut behind her, echoing off the linoleum floors and locker-lined walls.
 

Tiffany’s convenient visit to Ms. Tinsley’s office irked Amber. But more than that, she feared it was only part of some greater plan, the tip of an iceberg the ship of Amber’s life drifted toward.
 

In the art hall, Amber hurried past Mr. Engel’s door. She would need to write an apology to him. He didn’t deserve her anger, and seeing the pain in his eyes when she screamed at him twisted her heart.
 

She reached their studio and walked inside. Jason hadn’t arrived yet, but he might not for a little while depending on how his mysterious meeting went.

Amber smirked and pulled a stool to her canvas. “I wonder who this guy is?”

Their school wasn’t that big, and Jason typically liked older guys, so Amber assumed whoever his suitor was, it must be a senior. She picked up a paintbrush and tapped it on her chin. “A
teacher
? No. No way. Would he?”

The picture she had painted rested in the corner. Toby’s blue face watched her from the maelstrom on the canvas. No matter how she tried to avoid it, his stare always lurked in her periphery. Amber stood and turned it around, then went back to her seat and stared blankly at the back of the canvas.
 

Minutes passed. Amber groaned and tapped the paintbrush on the table. She checked the clock on the wall. “Where are you, Jason?”
 

She huffed and headed for the exit. Something felt off. Too much time had passed, and a cold pit of dread began blossoming in her stomach. She opened the door and edged quietly into the hall. Just a quick check by the equipment shed. No peeking. Just a little casual stroll by to make sure everything’s okay.
I’m sure he won’t mind
.

Despite her rapidly increasing heartbeat, Amber calmly strolled down the hall. She turned one corner after another until she came to the double doors spilling into the fields behind the school.
 

Tiffany and two of her friends loitered just before those doors, chatting and giggling to one another like any other day. Tiffany noticed Amber and faced her with a viciously innocent smile, her finger toying with the cross necklace. “Amber! Hi there.”

The pit of dread became a noxious worry. “Hello, ah, Tiffany.”

“How was your visit with Ms. Tinsley?”

Amber squeezed her fists. “It went fine, thank you.”

“Good! I’m very worried about you. Everyone is.
Everyone
.”

“Thank you for keeping an eye on me. I really appreciate it.” She angled between them, aiming for the doors. “I need to get by. Excuse me.”

The girls tightened their line before the door, blocking Amber’s exit. Tiffany brushed a shiny lock of her hair behind an ear and bounced on her feet. “Listen, Amber, none of this is really about you. Just be a good girl and turn around and go back to whatever it is you do. Things will be better that way. Trust me. I only want what’s best for you.”

Amber frowned. She stared over Tiffany’s shoulder, glimpsing the field through the narrow window in the door. “Can I get by please? I need to go somewhere.”

“Do you? Where?”
 

“Does it matter?” Amber asked. She squeezed her fists tighter. “
Move
.”
 

Tiffany sighed and shook her head. “Amber, he’s not worth it. Jason’s just a slutty little homo who’s only bringing you down. You could be so much better! You could be with us, be with me. I’d teach you how to take care of yourself, fix your hair right, iron your clothes. I know I could bring a four like you are now up to at least a six or seven by the end of the year. You might not even have to take your little gay friend as your prom date. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Tiffany’s friends giggled. Amber’s heartbeat quickened. Her fingernails bit into her palms.
 

“You could even come hang out with us outside of school,” Tiffany suggested. “Forget about Jason. He’s no good for you.
We’re
good for you. We can make this year the best year of your life. It’s up to you.”

“Or you can make it the worst? Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

“It’s not what
I
want,” Tiffany snapped. “It’s what
he
did.”

“He? Jason hasn’t….” A light bulb clicked in Amber’s mind. “Jason and Ryder.”

Tiffany’s scowl could’ve burnt fire. “There is no Jason and Ryder!”

It all made so much sense now. Jason had mentioned something about getting over all the closet cases at school. Then, after Tiffany ambushed Amber in the hall, he had joked about asking Ryder out. Something must have happened between them, and Tiffany found out about it. On the one hand, she was upset Jason never told her. On the other, she was livid she’d been little more than a tool both he and Tiffany used to get at one another.
 

Amber folded her arms. “There isn’t anymore, is there, Tiffany? But there was once.”

The two girls behind Tiffany traded knowing glances. Tiffany’s pale face turned scarlet. She jabbed her finger at Amber and started to speak, but the anger died in her eyes, replaced by a cool, calm poison and a wide smile. She lowered her hand and smoothed her shirt. “That’s for sure.”

A burst of fear widened Amber’s eyes. “You went to Ms. Tinsley this morning. You wanted to get me away from him, didn’t you?”
 

“Jason’s got a big mouth. He’s been talking about him and Ryder to anyone who’ll listen. If you had any friends, you’d know that. But you’re so annoyingly emo and obsessed with your dead brother, you had no idea. Ryder’s tired of it. Ryder’s going to make sure Jason never says his name again. You had your chance to be with us. Remember that.”
 

Amber blinked, stepping back. “Oh God, the text. It was Ryder?”

Tiffany stepped forward. “Go back to your stupid little art studio and let them take care of it.”
 

“Let me through!”
 

Tiffany folded her arms and lifted her chin, her gleaming eyes staring at Amber down the smooth bridge of her nose. “Don’t make this any harder than it is. Go back to your studio like a good girl and be artsy about your stupid dead brother.”

The air in the hall stilled. A ball of rage swirling within Amber sprouted thorns. She inhaled. She exhaled. And in a flash, her hand was around Tiffany’s throat, squeezing so hard Amber felt the girl’s pulse against her fingertips. “And nobody will care about you, either.”

Amber’s mind ripped inside Tiffany’s and tore every fear, every terror, every nightmare swirling in her thoughts to the surface. In the space of an instant, she forced the girl to relive them all, to remember them all, and to know it was Amber who brought them to life.

Tiffany gagged and sobbed, her knees buckling. Her two friends screamed and ran away. Tiffany clawed at Amber’s wrist, but she didn’t feel the pain. She didn’t feel much of anything.
 

“I could make you live them every night if I wanted,” she whispered in a voice that wasn’t her own.
 

Amber hurled Tiffany aside and kicked the doors open. They crashed apart, slamming into the school’s brick walls.
 

Bitter winds greeted her. Amber embraced them, untying her ponytail and letting the breeze toss her hair around her shoulders. The wind cooled the sweat on her cheeks as she stomped to the empty field. That ball of dark rage within her swelled, and her mind expanded around her. She sensed two figures in the equipment shed, and although she couldn’t see them, she knew one was Ryder and one Jason.

As she marched toward the shed, she heard the cries, the sobbing. Her heart lurched into her throat. Her blood heated to a boil. She still had yards to go before she reached the building. She raised a hand toward the door, and it exploded from the wall, flying clear over her head and shattering against the school behind her.
 

Amber stepped through the empty doorway. Light streamed around her, washing over the dusty footballs, broken pads, torn jerseys, and bent and leaky water bottles. Jason lay crumbled and sobbing in their midst, clutching his ribs. Bruises covered his knuckles and arms, and blood dribbled from his lips.

Someone stood behind him, cloaked in a dark corner. Her gaze slowly shifted from her friend to the figure. “Ryder.”

Ryder stepped over Jason, brandishing a baseball bat. His wide eyes gawked at the shattered doorway. He swallowed when he recognized Amber, his knuckles whitening on the Louisville Slugger. “How the hell did you get that door off?”

He glanced over her shoulder, his eyes furrowing at the empty field through the doorway.
 

“You hurt him,” Amber said. Her gaze drifted to Jason and settled there. “You hurt my friend.”

Amber’s eyes snapped to Ryder. She stepped toward him. He snarled, barreling toward Amber. “Whatever, freak, get the hell out of my way!”

As Ryder came rushing toward her, Amber opened her palms and smiled. Her body burst into grey mist. Ryder gasped, tripping on his feet and crashing to his knees as he stumbled right through her.

Her body reformed, and she swung around, clamping a hand on his shoulder. His memories, his phobias, his anxieties, his nightmares—they all flooded her mind. In less than a heartbeat Amber knew the tiniest details of everything Ryder feared and hated about the world and himself, and she brought all of them boiling to the surface.

She spun Ryder around and lifted him to his feet. Tears streamed from his swollen eyes down his flushed cheeks. The bat clattered to the floor. Amber lifted his chin until their eyes met.

The air in the shed froze. Her breath came out like smoke. Her body shifted, her hair becoming polished blond, her shirt unbuttoning just a few buttons more, a cross necklace appearing on her breasts.

“Tiffany?” Ryder rasped. “How? What?”

“Touch him again and I’ll make your nightmares last forever.”

Amber placed a palm on Ryder’s chest, and he rocketed from the shed. He landed on the field, thrown so hard by her power he skipped like a stone over a flat lake twenty yards before finally coming to a stop.
 

As quickly as the power flowing through her came, it vanished. Her body reformed into her own instead of Tiffany’s. Amber buckled, grabbing her stomach as she puked on the shed floor. She gasped, the world spinning, her fingers and toes icy cold, her knees knocking against one another.

She stumbled to the wall and wobbled to her feet. Amber blinked, looking to her friend. “Jason? What…?”

He scrambled from her, palms raised as he slid toward a corner. “Please don’t hurt me. Please!”

“Jason, I….”

“Just don’t hurt me! Please!”

Tears oiled her vision and weighed her lids. One broke free and rolled down her cheek in a hot, slick line. “I’d never hurt you. I….”

Another tear slipped free and rolled to her jaw. It dripped, splashing on her shoe. “I’d never hurt you,” she whimpered.
 

“
Just go
!”

Amber sprinted from the shed, falling to the field’s dewy grass. Vomit threatened again, but she swallowed it down. She lurched to her feet, running from the school grounds and toward the safety of the woods.
 

Her thoughts swam through a soupy fog. She pointed her steps in the direction of home, and sprinted toward it so hard her lungs ached and heart burned when she reached the door. Upstairs, she buried herself in her blankets and squeezed her eyes shut, wishing the day away.

The creaking woke her first. Amber blinked the sleep and dried tears from her eyes and peeled the covers back. It was late, after midnight according to the alarm clock’s glowing green numbers.
 

A shiver worked its way up her spine. Nothing should be in the house that could make a creak. She locked the doors when she rushed inside. Didn’t she?

Floorboards groaned as she slid from her bed. The wood chilled her soles, and she grimaced at the shock. Her mother wanted rugs for the room, but for some reason, Amber liked the cold floor. It made drowning in her blankets so much more appealing.
 

She shivered, thinking she might have left the AC on by accident. “Or I left the door open,” she murmured, searching the floor. Had she? Everything after what happened at school was a blur. Her head throbbed. The memories came to her, but hazy and distant.

No other sounds filtered from downstairs. Amber gathered her courage and straightened, smoothing the goosebumps from her forearms as she treaded toward her door, each footstep groaning as she padded toward the hall.

Little light illuminated the hallway. She prodded the wall with her hand as she walked toward the stairwell. She bumped into the console near the stairs and knocked over a picture, and it shattered when it hit the floor.

Amber cursed and jerked the picture up. Behind the shattered glass, her smiling face stared back, the snow-streaked backdrop of the Alps behind her. Her mother took her on that trip four summers ago. Amber still remembered the Alpine ibexes they photographed for one of her mom’s projects.
 

She propped the picture back on the console and inched toward the stairwell until her fingers found the railing. Step by step she descended, the lower floor lit by the diluted glow of a bright moon streaming through the many windows dotting the walls in the kitchen and living room.

When she reached the thermostat, Amber punched the temperature button, and the display lit up. She upped the temperature to seventy-five and paused, tapping her finger on the plastic case.
 

Nothing in her life made sense, and it all started with the nightmare in the graveyard. Had she really moved things without touching them? Did she turn her body to mist and reach inside Ryder’s mind?