Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (2 page)

The only response her brother could manage was a low, tired sigh.

Amber smirked and shouldered her way through the front door. A crisp fall greeted her with its bitter kiss. Hinges moaned as the door slammed shut behind her. Ahead, birches dotted with a hemlock here and there walled the manicured island of her home. Approaching winter tinged the trees’ leaves vivid scarlet, save the massive elm by the drive that dazzled the neighborhood with leaves so yellow they nearly glowed in sunlight.
 

“I just don’t understand why you have to be such a bitch about things sometimes,” Chris blurted.

Amber’s lips tightened into a thin line. She blinked away the tears suddenly swirling in her eyes and slowed her pace, feet crunching on the dry grass. “The drive’s not that bad, and Jennifer has her mom’s card for gas. You could’ve been here if you really wanted.”

“I’ve got classes today. A test.”

Amber wiped her eye on her sleeve. “It’s okay, Chris. You don’t have to come today.”
 

“Quit trying to make me feel guilty,” he said. “There’s nothing to be guilty about.”

“I wasn’t trying to do that. You’re not coming, and I don’t want to argue. That’s all.”

“Right. Fine. Anyway, if you need anything, let me know. I’ve got to get back to studying.”

Amber paused in the drive and looked down the street. Brick houses dotted the lane, each one collared by the rustling trees isolating the road from the rest of Portsmouth. “Chris, please? I could really use you here. I’ve never been totally alone today, and…” She squeezed her cell and bit her lip. “It would just mean a lot if you did.”

Chris didn’t speak, but neither did he sigh. Amber rocked on her heels and waited. The dread balling in her belly sunk deeper the longer the quiet persisted.

“I’m not coming,” he said.

“I understand.”

“I just can’t, Amber.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“I will,” she replied.

“Cool. Text me later then.”

Her brother ended the call. Amber dropped her phone into her pocket and folded her arms. It would have been nice if one of the others had been there. At least one of them. Toby deserved that much.

A few minutes after her brother’s phone call, a polished grey 1983 Mercedes-Benz 380SL finally rolled into Amber’s drive, top down, motor rumbling so low it bordered on a gurgle. If anyone had been sleeping on their street, the car would have shaken them right from it.

Amber shook off the anger and the hurt and painted on a smile. The car squealed to a stop beside her and sat in the drive trembling like a dog at the door itching to go outside and run a few laps.

She reached for the handle, raising a brow. “Top down? Isn’t it a little cold for that?”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Jason asked. He pursed his lips in the rearview mirror and fixed the part in his thick, coffee-colored hair. Hazel eyes twinkling, he reached over and flung the passenger door wide. “What’re you waiting for? Get in!”

“I don’t know if I trust this thing, Jason. Does your dad even know you bought it yet?”

“Oh my God, you’re such a drama queen. Since when have I ever cared what he thinks anyway? Get in here and have some fun! We’re gonna roll up in school and people will be all, ‘Oh look at that hot ride, who’s that?’ And I’ll be all like, ‘What’s up, ladies?’ It’ll be epic.”

“What’s up
ladies
? Are you about to ask them where their boyfriends are in this epic fantasy of yours?”

“Hey, I’m not a home wrecker.” He bit his lip and leaned toward her. “I’d ask about any brothers or cousins first.”

Amber laughed and plopped into the cinnamon leather seats. She ran her hand along the cushion, then passed her fingers over the dash. “It’s in such good condition. Are you trying to impress somebody with this thing?”

Jason snorted as he slipped on his cobalt aviators. “Maybe. Definitely not anybody at school. Can’t handle all those closet cases.”

“Not at once, anyway.”

“I mean, if I wanted to—”

“Jason!”

They both cracked up when their eyes met, and much of the anger twisting around Amber’s heart loosened up and faded. She dropped her backpack to the floorboard as the car rolled down the drive.
 

The massive elm’s saffron leaves sighed in the breeze, throwing dancing shadows over her cheeks. A blade fell from its branch and fluttered onto the backseat. Amber turned around and snatched it up, then faced the mirror, rolling it in her hands.

“You’re weird today,” Jason said. “Something’s up. First you text me not to pick you up at like midnight, then a few minutes later you’re begging for a ride. I woke up this morning wondering if you’d gotten totally wasted somewhere or took a pill or something crazy.”

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Right because that sounds totally like me.” She hooked her thumb around the seatbelt and fidgeted in the cool leather seat. “I was just watching a movie last night and it hit a nerve. I’m fine now.”
 

“
Bzzt
. Wrong. Don’t believe you. Tell me the truth or you can be totally basic and take the bus today.”

“You wouldn’t.”

His lips puckered, his eye shifting to meet hers. “I would. You know I would. Now spill it!”

Amber’s knees squeezed the backpack resting between them. She frowned, then faced the window and glared through her reflection at the houses while she rolled the fallen leaf in her fingers. “Mom went to Borneo yesterday. Didn’t tell me or Chris. She just up and basically snuck out of the house while I was sleeping and took a redeye flight.”

“Jesus, Amber.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Borneo? Is that even a thing?”

“It is a thing. A very far away thing.”

Jason leaned back, straightening his arms against the steering wheel. A silent moment passed between them, the only sound the engine and the wind.
 

He glanced over, then faced ahead. He looked at her again, wrestling with words that wouldn’t come.

“Just say it, spaz,” she sighed.

“It’s today, isn’t it?”
 

Amber tore apart the leaf and tossed the pieces to the wind. “I wish everyone would just leave me alone about it. I’m fine. I’ve been fine.”

“Oh please, like you can lie to your best friend and he won’t know.” The Mercedes lumbered to a stop at a dead intersection. “You want to go to see him? We can skip school. It’s our senior year anyway, nobody will care.”

“Jason, just go to school.” She squeezed the seat belt and stared through the windshield, jaw clenched. “Thank you. I really will be okay. The only thing that makes it worse is bothering me about it after I’ve said I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Jason nodded and turned the radio on, something he often did when he didn’t like where the conversation was headed. They listened to some music accompanied by the howling rush of wind until St. Luke’s College Preparatory School finally appeared around the bend.
 

Girls in perfectly-pressed uniforms walked in perfectly-pressed groups toward massive arched doors. Boys flashed their letter jackets at each other or thumbed their noses at infractions by untucking part of their shirts from their khaki pants. They, too, filed inside the cavernous, ivy-draped school in tight, laughing bunches.
 

Jason’s car whined as it pulled into a spot near the back of the lot. Some of the other seniors eyed his car with a nod of approval. Others saw the driver and smirked, turning away with a whisper on their lips.

A lump travelled down Jason’s throat. He fixed his collar and checked his hair. Amber smiled and squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “You’re completely adorable when you’re worried about what other people think.”

“What?” Jason slapped his hands into his lap. “Me, worried about
them
? Screw them. I’m more worried about what they think of the car.”

“Good,” she said as they spilled out. Amber adjusted her backpack on a shoulder and took a good look at the school she’d known since first grade when their family first moved to from Indianapolis to Portsmouth.

Those were good times, exciting times. Chris still liked to play and wasn’t so casually hurtful. Her mom was thrilled about starting her career as a wildlife photographer. Her dad just got a job as a critical care nurse at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Toby was there, all smiles and laughter.

Amber blinked the memories away and squinted at the rising sun behind her school. Bricks the tired red of old blood propped up a tiled roof that shadowed the school’s many narrow windows. St. Luke’s was an old, prestigious Catholic school with a highly-publishable acceptance rate to Ivy Leagues. If a family had money in Portsmouth, they wanted their kids attending this school. If a family didn’t have money, they crossed their fingers and hoped their children would receive one of the few rare scholarships St. Luke’s awarded to particularly gifted students.
 

Before the accident, everyone always said how fortunate the Blackwoods were. Chris gained entry on a disadvantaged student scholarship. Amber and Toby performed so high on the aptitude tests they received gifted student scholarships, and so a family of middling means had the great fortune of sending all three of their children to such a prestigious school. A few of the neighborhood kids were even jealous in that cruel sort of way small children can be to one another. But after the accident, the teasing stopped, and no one said the Blackwoods were lucky anymore.

The bell dinged twice. The slowly-drifting students picked up their pace, carrying Amber and Jason through the wide doors in a stream of backpacks, sweater vests, and pleated khakis. Warmth greeted them in a chattering hall. Jason leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. “See you at lunch. Text me later.”

“See you.”
 

They parted ways, Jason to the right and Amber left. The crowds thinned. The bell chimed again, this time once. What students remained piled into their classrooms. Oak doors clunked shut. St. Luke’s halls quieted.
 

An icy breath caressed her ear, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Goose bumps rippled up her arms as a shiver worked its way down her spine. The weight of eyes pressed into her back. Someone stood behind her.
Right
behind her.

Terror latched around her heart as it lurched into her throat. She whipped around, swinging the backpack like a club. “Get away from me!”

Her bag whirred through an empty hall. One of the fluorescent lights near the door sputtered. It clicked on and off a few more times, then steadied at a low buzz.
 

She frowned, looking around. Her eye caught a dusty vent above the lockers. Dark slits smiled at her like twenty impish, toothless grins. Amber bit her lip and exhaled through her nose. Her shoes tapped lightly on the floor as she headed for class, glad no one saw her freak out in the middle of the hall.

At the classroom door, she paused. Her hand gripped the strap on her back, her knuckles whitening as she twisted the fabric. “No. Not today.”

Her chin shot up as she pivoted and darted through the hallway, the rapid
clickety-click
of her footsteps on speckled linoleum ricocheting off the hard surfaces surrounding her. She twisted around a corner and came to the looming outside doors. They parted as she slapped her palms onto the oak, and the fall once again embraced her.

Her mother hid in Borneo. Her brother hid at college. Her father? Nobody knew where he hid these days. Her entire family made sure they hid because of what happened on this day. Not Amber.
 

It took a few minutes to slip into the line of trees hiding St. Luke’s from the rest of the world. Her footfalls crunched under the brilliant patchwork quilt of fallen autumn leaves. Sunlight streamed in threadbare spears through the thinning canopy, warming the chill air.
 

Portsmouth appeared beyond the next cluster of old hemlocks. There were a few shops in desperate need of fresh paint clustered near the elementary school off Highway 1. She spotted the store she wanted and jogged for it—a quaint boutique with a green roof, white siding and two large bay windows cleared of the ivy jacketing the rest of the walls.

Amber climbed the three cracked steps to the door and swung it wide. A dingy brass bell rang as a wild weave of aromas collapsed around her like an overbearing aunt. The sickly, honeyed scents of blooming flowers rushed up her nose with each deep breath she took. A sneeze threatened, but she swallowed it down.

Blossoms of every color filled three-tiered shelves. Petals curled away from verdant stems like tongues lapping at the sunlight. Amber smiled and caressed a pink orchid as she passed, feeling the silky kiss against her finger.

A woman stepped into the aisle beaming a broad smile and smelling of earth. Soil made little black crescents beneath her short nails. One of the straps from her overalls hung loose over her polka-dotted shirt and sweat stained her frayed and wrinkled collar.
 

The woman’s toothy smile slipped when she saw Amber, morphing into a deep frown. “It’s a little early for you to be here, Ms. Blackwood. You usually bounce in after school, not during.”

“Hi, Ms. Watanabe, do you have black calla lilies in stock?”

The florist’s frown fell deeper, the intense, dark pools of her eyes full of concern. The flash of recognition bounced her brows high, and the frown curled into a weak smile that hid her teeth. “Oh. I see.”

“Please?” Amber asked.

For a moment, Ms. Watanabe looked like she might shoo Amber out the door and back toward school. But that hard edge faded, and Ms. Watanabe unfolded her arms, motioning for the shop’s counter. “I’m just going to assume your mother’s fine with you missing classes today. You’re almost graduated now. I wouldn’t want to contribute to lower grades here at the end.”

“For today, she made an exception. And my grades are fine, Ms. Watanabe.”

“I hadn’t realized today was, you know,
the
day. I knew it was soon, but I’m so bad at remembering details the older and greyer I get. Did you know I left the stove on last Tuesday? Practically burned the house down. Maury still thinks it was only half an accident.” She chuckled and paused at a door leading to the back. “I’ve got a few fresh black callas for you in the fridge. Hold on a minute.”