Liv, Forever (24 page)

They were there to arrest Gabe for my murder. Apparently they had “more than enough evidence to indict.” They’d been to his room and discovered the strange objects. They’d found my phone—which he’d discarded in the dumpsters behind the Art Center—smothered with his prints. The clincher: his prints were all over the well. They grabbed him and held him firmly, handcuffing his hands behind his back. Through the trees I could see the flash of sirens.

“You’re wrong!” Malcolm shouted. “He didn’t do anything! He’s innocent!”

Gabe looked at me, his eyes terrified.

I was terrified, too. I couldn’t lose him. He was my hands, my voice. He was my sole connection to the earth, to the world of the living. To Malcolm. I wanted to collapse or cry or rage—I wasn’t sure which—but I was the only person who could talk to him and calm him in the midst of the chaos, so I had to be strong. Or at least pretend to be.

“If they take you, we will save you. I promise we will get you out of there,” I assured him.

“No! Don’t worry about me,” he said to me, no longer caring that a dozen cops and security guards were glaring at him. “Don’t waste your energy on me! Just fix things here. You have to get them. You have to
stop
them!”

I saw the officers exchange looks. He was talking to thin air—sure evidence of his guilt, not to mention insanity.

“Don’t speak to me,” I hissed. “They already think you’re a loon ball.”

He laughed.

“And don’t laugh. We
will
save you.
All
of us.” I gestured to the ghosts. “We will save you. I promise.”

“We will,” Ruth echoed, assuring him.

One of the officers found Gabe’s jacket on a tombstone nearby, another Wickham occult vessel in its pocket.

“Is this your jacket?” he asked.

Malcolm jumped in. “It’s mine.”

The police looked at him dubiously as they pulled Gabe’s phone from the other pocket. Gabe shook his head at Malcolm. He was grateful for the attempt, but he knew it was futile. “No, it’s my jacket,” Gabe stated.

Malcolm glared at him. “Gabe, for Christ’s sake—”

“Let it go. For now. Liv wants you to let it go,” Gabe lied.

“I didn’t say that!” I yelled. But Gabe ignored me. I realized it was the first time he’d misrepresented me.

He was surprisingly level-headed as the officers patted him down. “We can’t say anything that will change their minds. Let them take me. They’ll learn the truth eventually,” he told us both as they escorted him back through the woods toward the flashing lights.

I followed, desperate. Malcolm followed as well, yelling at the police about how Gabe was different than the other students and he’d been victimized and taunted and bullied. Grasping, Malcolm told the police this was a conspiracy against Gabe created by students who didn’t like him.

“I appreciate the effort, man, but let it go,” Gabe said, sincerely. “You know what’s most important right now: to learn the truth and bring justice. For her.”

I raced to him. I was desperate to hug him or comfort him, anything. But I only had words. “I’ll bring justice for you, too,” I said. “But how am I going to do it without you?”

He quietly said, “Malcolm.”

“But he can’t hear me! I can’t communicate with him.”

“You have to.”

“Yes,” I replied. He was right. I had to.

He then turned to Malcolm and whispered, “Go back to the cemetery with Liv, try to listen for her clues. She’ll come back to your room tonight and tell you what’s next.”

Malcolm had no choice but to agree. Especially since one of the police officers barked, “And you, don’t stray too far from campus. We need to talk to you, too.”

I couldn’t just stand and watch Gabe being shoved into a car and disappear down the road in a whirl of flashing
lights and sirens, I chased after him. But I started to feel weak. My thoughts became muddled and unclear. My limbs started to evaporate before my eyes—just as they had in the limousine with my parents. Clearly I was not meant to leave Wickham Hall. I paused on the threshold of the school, afraid of what might happen if I crossed the boundary. From a distance, I thought I saw him look back toward me through the window, his eyes unfocused, searching the air. He couldn’t see me, but he knew I was there.

AS I APPROACHED THE
cemetery, I caught a glimpse of Minerva peeking from her tomb. When she saw me, she withdrew into the darkness. But Ruth, Mary, Florence, Lydia, Brit, and Clara were all still gathered, tentatively talking amongst themselves. I had a flash of hope. We were united now. At least most of us.

Malcolm sat slumped on a gravestone in the middle of them, unaware of the chatter bouncing around him. He’d wrapped himself in his wool blazer, chilled from their presence, just waiting for a sign from me.

Ruth and Mary, both Type A, had collected facts. “We died every ten years,” Ruth reported. “Not on the same day, but always on a full moon. In every case, it was related to a popular boy, one who was probably a Victor.”

Mary piped in, “We were all scholarship students.”

“Or outcasts,” Brit added.

“Freaks,” Lydia barked.

“I believe we were all murdered by the Victors,” Ruth explained. “Could it have been some sort of ritual established by the Wickhams?”

“And the ritual trapped us here …” Mary paused, afraid to say
forever.

I nodded, shrugging. I wasn’t certain about any of it.

“But I want to see my mother and father. My sweet baby sister. I’ve been here too, too long,” Clara said, weeping. She’d been here the longest, since 1885. “I want to ascend. I have seen so many others do it: the students who perished from tuberculosis, influenza. It is a beautiful thing. I want that, too.”

A chorus of yeses followed. All they wanted was to stop the curse (whatever it was) and move on to where they were supposed to be (wherever that was). I don’t know. I guess probably heaven. I was beginning to think, or at least hope, such a place existed.

“We’re going to fix it, right?” Ruth looked to me and gestured to Malcolm. “He can help us fix it.”

“Like how?” Brit demanded.

“Minerva! I know you’re listening!” I yelled, then turned to address the others. “The Wickhams were into the occult. They had to be the ones who created this ritual and established the Victors, right? And, for all these years, Minerva kept you all from talking to one another, from doing anything. There had to be a reason for that. Minerva’s the culprit. I think she started it all.”

They all nodded. It only made sense. So I turned to her crypt. “Come tell us what you know, what you created!” I soared over to her hiding place, but she was gone.

I rushed past Malcolm. “Time to go?” he asked, feeling the chill. He got up, shivering, but his eyes wide and somehow happy. All he really seemed to care about was that I was
still here. I smiled, until I looked up and saw all the ghosts peering at me curiously.

“You are in love,” Florence said.

“Madly, madly in love,” Ruth added, almost giddy.

I nodded, then rushed alongside Malcolm. I didn’t notice Ruth following us.

BACK IN MALCOLM’S ROOM
at Pitman, he cranked up the heat so it blasted onto his window, slowly forming steam. While we waited, he took out his iPhone and set it up so the keyboard on its screen was readily available to me. I needed to use the bare minimum amount of energy. So I typed dad then sam … every single stroke was excruciating. Exhausting. And I watched my consistency dilute as if the painter was mixing a bit more solvent into the paint.

“Samuels,” Malcolm said before I finished spelling it, “I’ll talk to him. Tomorrow. And my father …” he trailed off. The mere thought of confronting his father about
anything
made him uncomfortable. “He was president of the Victors, so he has to know something.”

When the window was thoroughly steamed, Malcolm used it as a canvas. “I know you can’t waste your energy drawing. So I will,” he said as he drew a girl flying—not floating but flying—gliding over a small world beneath her.

He worked slowly and carefully, and I watched every stroke. I could see slivers of his reflection in the window where he was drawing. The soles of the girl’s feet were in the foreground. Her arms stretched in front of her like a superhero. Her right pointer finger reaching forward … almost touching another hand—his hand. A boy stretched
out in the far distance, connected to the earth but reaching up and up, attempting the incredible feat of touching her finger. Nearly grasping her. It was kind of like
The Creation of Adam
in the Sistine Chapel, where God reaches to Adam and Adam reaches to God, their fingertips nearly touching. That was me and Malcolm: so close to each other yet impossibly apart. Impossibly disconnected.

Suddenly I saw Ruth’s faint bloody neck through the strokes in the steam. I lurched backward, screaming. She moved her head down so I could see her entire face then effortlessly pushed through the window into the room.

“
Je suis désolée
! I gave you a terrible fright! So sorry, but I wanted to share something with you.”

I shook my head, trying to smile and recover my composure.

She stood there awkwardly, all social graces erased over the last hundred years.

“You can visit him in his dreams, just as I visited you that night before you died. You can be with him that way. It’s just a dream, but when you’re there, it feels
very
real.”

Of course!
I almost reached out to hug her. Why hadn’t I thought of that? If Ruth had been able to do that, I should be able to also. “But I can’t waste my energy.”

“That won’t use it. It’s only when you affect the
real
world that your energy diminishes.”

“How can I get there? Into his dream?”

“Settle yourself into him while he’s sleeping. You have to
release
yourself. The same way you moved your arm through that branch. Free yourself to him, and you will find him. But, understand, you have no control in the dream. Now I’ll
go. I’m terribly sorry to bother you. But I wanted to thank you. We all do.
Merci.
Consider this our thanks.”

“Well, thank you for coming and telling me.”

She passed through the window—now covered with steam again, Malcolm’s artwork nearly vanished—back out into the cold night.

“Are you still there?” he asked. “Will you lie next to me? Let’s listen to your mix.” He called up his iTunes and put on Liv, Forever. As Bright Eyes played, he lay on his side, and I wrapped around him, trying to comfort and calm him to sleep so I could be with him again.

It didn’t seem long to me, but according to the clock, it was hours before he was deeply asleep, breathing heavily. He was still lying on his side, so I moved around to the other side, facing him. I got close and then kept getting closer. I tried to ignore the fear that I might disappear altogether or that I might get lost in his dream world. I closed my eyes and just kept moving closer and closer to him until … we merged.

I HEARD WATER GENTLY
lapping. When I opened my eyes, I was at the mountain, but it was an island, surrounded by lake on all sides—now looking more like an ocean. Where was Malcolm? I turned, and he was suddenly where he hadn’t been before. He was frozen, terrified to see me.

“I’ve been praying to dream about you. And you’re here, finally.”

I nodded.

“It’s really you?”

“It’s really me.”

He nodded, smiling.

“But, then again, I’m not really real anymore, am I?” I pointed out.

“True,” he laughed. At least we both had a sense of humor about it.

“Can I touch you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He approached me slowly. I was scared he wouldn’t feel me. That I wouldn’t feel him. He paused. We locked eyes, and I could see he was just as apprehensive as I was. Finally he reached for my hand. He grasped me so firmly it almost hurt. Pain had never made me so happy. He felt me, and I felt him! He pulled me into his arms, wrapped himself around me. “I won’t let go. Ever.”

“Not even for a kiss?” I asked.

“For a kiss? Yes, I’ll let go of you for that.” He loosened his grip so I could lift my lips to his, and we kissed.

In the history of art and poetry and music and novels and everything beautiful that human beings have fought to describe, there was never a kiss like this. Was it the dream that made it so intense? Did it matter? We devoured each other like two starving, deprived lovers. But all at once I could feel that it wasn’t entirely real. And then the setting changed. In an instant we were in the dining hall, surrounded by the entire student body dancing the waltz around us.

I pulled away from him.

“This is weird,” I said. “Wouldn’t an abandoned beach be better? Or a chalet in the Alps? Or pretty much anywhere else?”

“I can’t really control it. We’re here now … so will you dance with me?” he asked.

I nodded and took his hand. It was just a dream after all. And in this dream I was graceful, a skilled and confident dancer. We moved perfectly together—turning and spinning, not missing a beat—for a long, long time. Ages. Ages of perfection … until I noticed someone near us staring. His face was generic. I glanced at the others, all their faces bland, not even completely formed. Mouthless. Vacant. They weren’t really there. I wondered if we were vacant, too. No! It was Malcolm, and it was me—but it just didn’t feel completely real.

“Does this feel real to you?” I asked him.

“Real enough.”

Then he took my hand and led me off the dance floor and through a door. We were in a home, one more lavish than I’d ever seen. Malcolm walked me through the marble entryway, pointing out a Tracey Emin and a Warhol and a Damien Hirst unicorn. It was like a museum of modern art.

“Is this your house?”

“My father’s house. Yes.”

He led me into a library much like Wickham Hall’s, wood-paneled and stately but chilly and aloof. All the books were off the shelves, stacked in tall piles. Malcolm approached the stacks near the large bay windows. I followed him, glancing outside.