Second Verse (13 page)

When I step in front of her, she seethes.

“Hey.” My heart thuds in my ears. After yesterday’s lunch banishment, I’ve steered clear of all of them. Not that it was hard. After Kelly told me I wasn’t welcome, even if she seemed to feel bad about it at the time, she hadn’t come to find me. And it’s not like she called me last night.

“Hey,” Stace says in a flat voice, her eyes totally blank. She settles in against my locker so I can’t get to it. Suddenly, I’m scared. I am so non-confrontational.

Not sure what else to do with them, I cross my arms in front of me, feeling like I’m not totally present, like I’ve retreated to hide in some far away corner of myself. What can I possibly say?

“I just ran into him.” She nods down the hall.

It feels so clinical, the calculating way she looks at me, the way she refers to him. “He’s in the music room, playing some new song he wrote.”

My stomach clenches. It’s
the
song, I know it.

She frowns. Somehow her sadness is worse than if she were yelling. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard him play. Ever heard him write.”

In my mind, I hear it. The sweet, perfect melody, the stunning words.
Back again, here I am. Like the wind across your hand
.

The lyrics suddenly have even more meaning.

“I hate you.” Looking down at the ground, she whispers. “I hate you so much I can’t stand it. I’ve known Vaughn forever and he’s never, ever written anything even remotely close to that.”

I just stand here, racking my brain for something, anything, to try and make things better.

“Stace, It’s not like I have anything to do with what he writes or doesn’t—”

“He doesn’t know I heard him,” she says, shaking her head, finally looking at me. “He didn’t know I’d stopped at the door.” She looks down the hall, her eyes glistening. “It wasn’t just the lyrics, which were so obviously inspired by you. It’s the music. The timeless, melancholy hope between the notes. That song felt like forever. I can’t compete with that.”

“But there’s nothing to—”

Her eyes cut to me and there’s anger there. Flashing, dangerous anger. “Don’t. Don’t tell me there’s nothing. And I don’t want to hear it from him either. Our friendship is over, you and me. Me and him? Done. I don’t even want to be in the same room with either of you. As for Kelly and Ben? I have no idea, but you will not lie to my face any more. It’s written all over you, even now. You may want to do the right thing, but I think we both know you’re past that.”

I say nothing. I may be technically innocent, but my feelings are anything but.

The hallway’s mostly empty now and the soft sound of the piano drifts down the hall. I barely move, but cock my head to
the side, listening. The melody is familiar, but he’s fleshed it out a lot.

Her eyes narrow. “You’re a terrible person, Lange Crawford. You use people and lie and are the worst friend I’ve ever had. Just go. Go to him, like you so obviously want to do.”

With a look of disgust, she finally steps to the side. I turn, wanting to say something, anything to even try to redeem myself. But the music reaches down the hall again, like fingers beckoning me.

She pushes me against the locker. “Watch your back.”

Then finally, she’s gone.

I tremble, trying my combination four times before I finally get it open. Tears sting my eyes. I know I won’t make it to first period, but I don’t care about that. There’s only one thing I can think about. I slide my bag onto its hook and make my way to the music room.

Standing outside the door, I listen. He doesn’t sing, but he plays that same beautiful melody and it breaks me open inside. I know she’s right. That song is mine.

It’s ours.

I close my eyes and listen to notes so raw with emotion it’s like I’m inside them, floating in them like bubbles. The song is like an entire life, a rise and fall, a coming full circle. Eventually, it stops.

The door creaks open and he’s there, rubbing his eyes and smiling a sad smile. My breath catches in my throat. With one hand, he pulls his hair back and holds it there, looking at me as if he’s been awake all night.

And waiting.

His hand drops, his hair falling around his face as he moves aside to let me in.

“P
IANO, HUH?”
I trail my fingers along the top of it before sitting beside him on the bench.

He wears a distant smile. “I like to switch it up. Helps me compose.”

“It was beautiful.” To hide my shaking, I trap my hands between my knees, my arms pressed tightly against me.

“That’s not why you’re here.” His statement is matter of fact, and there’s a steady look in his eyes.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” I say, taking a deep breath. With the music room empty, it feels like we’re two ants in a huge cave. I speak softly, but still, my voice seems to carry.

“I promise I won’t.”

“No really, you will.
I
do.”

“Try me.” His gaze doesn’t waver.

“Ginny,” I say. “I think I’m her. Or I was. Or, I’m not sure how it works.” I stare at the floor, unable to look at him. This is the moment of truth. The make it or break it scene in the movie where the girl suddenly becomes the school loony and gets shipped off to the psych ward.

I expect him to laugh. I expect him to run.

What I don’t expect is for him to take my fingers in his to stop their trembling. He lifts my chin so that he’s looking right into my eyes. I don’t expect his to be wide and filled with something familiar that I’ve never seen.

And I don’t expect him to say what he does.

“You are. You’re her. Well, in your last life anyway. And I’m the one who’s always loved you.”

I
DON’T BELIEVE
him.

Except I do.

Because it’s like I’ve been trying to solve the world’s most complicated riddle for as long as I can remember, and he’s just given me the missing clue.

He laces his fingers in mine and I rest my head on his shoulder. He brushes soft, barely-there kisses across my forehead while I tell him about the diary entry, what Beau said about the birthmark. What Vaughn himself had said to me.

“I always knew,” he says, biting his bottom lip. “Something always felt wrong with me. Different. Like, I never felt connected to anything or anyone. Like I was in my own world, couldn’t connect to the real one. Did you ever crave a place you’ve never been? Ever feel nostalgia for a time you shouldn’t know? That’s how I felt, all the time. It wasn’t just not belonging here, it was belonging someplace completely different.
Sometime
different.”

I think of my weird visions and the garden where I used to disappear as a kid, that constant search for another place. An escape. And those bizarre feelings that come over me like I’ve been the same place or done the same exact thing before.

“This is insane,” I mumble, squeezing his hand.

“It feels that way sometimes,” he agrees, talking fast. “And it’s always been like that. Just different, you know? Always trying to figure it out, find myself or something. I don’t know, just someplace to belong. At first I thought it was because I’m
adopted. But I tracked down my birth family and that just made things more complicated. They weren’t even close to the answer I was looking for. Everything sucked for a long time. But I kept searching, doing research.”

“How did you know what to look for?”

“I didn’t. Not at all. I was basically just guessing. I knew it had to be something … different. I felt like I was living in a fantasy world and yet …”

I squeeze his hand for him to continue. He stares at his feet.

“And yet the further I got away from what I considered
normal
or reality, the closer I felt to finding my answer.”

“When did all this figuring out happen?” I ask.

Tucking his hair behind his ears, he looks at the ceiling. “I’m not sure exactly. I guess sometime last year. It wasn’t fast. Mostly lots of reading. Tons.”

“Okay, so you’ve had a year to soak this all in.” I try and smile. “So go slow, I’ve had about thirty six seconds to digest it. Start at the beginning.”

“Sure, yeah. Of course. Like I said. I started reading a lot. Websites, books, you know, whatever. I called some people, went on some message boards. There are experts, or people who claim to be experts, anyway. But no one knows exactly how any of it works. It’s all faith and belief and there are so many different opinions. So I took it all in and then just let it simmer, I guess. It festered in me, though. It wouldn’t leave me alone and the idea felt so comfortable, like an old coat, you know? That’s why I really believed I had finally found the truth. That I was back here from another life. That for some reason, I’d tapped into that reality when others don’t. And it set me apart from other people. And it felt kind of cool, kind of great, actually, to figure that out. But what could I do about it? Nothing.”

Another life.

It sounds weird. But it feels so right.

But still, I’m freaked out. Even if I reached the same conclusion last night, hearing it confirmed by someone else feels crazy.

“So then what?”

He swivels on the bench. He’s got both my hands in his, his big fingers laced with mine like a braid.

“You came to Shady Springs,” he says, kicking the toe of his sneaker back and forth on the linoleum. “When you moved here and we first met, it was crazy. It was like, I don’t know, like an arrow had pierced me, finally pinning me to the spot I belonged.”

My breath catches in the cage of my chest. “But we barely knew each other and I thought you were with Stace and, well, I didn’t know—”

He shakes his head. “It didn’t make sense to me at first. Right from the beginning, there was something about you. The more I got to know you, the cooler you were, the more I wanted to be around you. I was attracted to you. Hell, how could I not be?” He gives me a sheepish grin.

“Vaughn, I—”

“My feelings for you grew like crazy. And then, the night of the séance, it was weird and it was creepy and it scared the shit out of me. But it did something else too. When I held your hand and whatever happened in that barn happened, I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “It was a moment I’ll never forget. Like a missing key slid into a dusty old lock. Click. My world opened.”

I blink, stunned into silence.

“So that’s it, then? That’s what drew you to me? This connection to our previous lives?”

“No! Of course not.” There’s fire behind the deep brown of his eyes. “Come on, Lange. Haven’t you been paying attention? You know I’m crazy about you. About
you
. You now. Here, in this life. Lange Crawford.”

I drop my head in my hands. “This is crazy.”

He slides off the bench and squats in front of me, so he’s looking up into my face. “Crazy why? Because I care about you?”

“No, not that, I just—”

“You have no feelings for me?”

I sigh. “Come on. Of course I do. You know that. I haven’t felt this way, well, ever.”

His grin is like a thousand light bulbs.

“
That’s
not the problem. I’m not freaked out about liking you, Vaughn. But everything else is just crazy right now.” I pause, running the strange words through my mind before I say them. “I swear I’m her. Ginny. How is this happening?”

He takes a deep breath and slides back onto the bench. “It’s a lot. I know. This rebirth stuff can be really overwhelming.”

“Rebirth?”

“Well, that’s what Sharon calls it. I’ll take you to meet her. She’ll explain more than I can and—”

“Whoa. Who’s Sharon?” My mind swims.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Let me back up. There’s this woman in the city. Sharon. She kind of specializes in this sort of thing. I’ve seen her a few times.”

“Wait, like a fortuneteller?”

“No. Not at all. She actually doesn’t know anything about anyone like that, not like in a see your future or past sort of way. She just knows a lot about the way this works.” He motions between us. “Coming back. Past lives.”

Coming back. Past lives.

I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

“The thing is,” he pauses, biting his lip. “From what I’ve learned, this is not the way this usually works. People finding each other again.”

“Then how do you know we have?”

“How do I know, just know, or how do I know, like with proof?”

“Could you manage to be any more cryptic? I think I may have a brain cell or two left that you haven’t melted yet.”

He’s quiet while he searches for an explanation. “Okay, well, why do you think you were her? Ginny? You don’t
know
for sure, right? You just feel it?”

When he puts it that way it sounds ridiculous. But still …

He reads my silence as agreement and rushes on. “Well when you read me those letters between her and Beau, I just felt something. It’s probably the exact way you felt when you read those words in the diary. Beau said the same thing to Ginny that I said to you. I know it’s just a birthmark, but still. You have to admit it’s too perfect to be a coincidence.”

He has a good point.

“When you read me their letters, I just knew. It was us in those words.”

This isn’t happening.

His eyes blaze. “Ever hear a song you swear you’ve heard before and just connect to it, bam!” He snaps his fingers. “Like that?”

“Like your song?”

His eyes soften. “Well, that doesn’t count. That one’s half yours, too.”

I squeeze his hand.

“Here’s the thing.” He lowers his voice as if in conspiracy. “On a totally non-scientific level, I can only go with what I feel. What I’ve felt. If I was gambling, I’d bet it all that I’m right. And for the record, I’ve been waiting. I wanted to say something, but was sure you’d think I was nuts.”

Another light bulb goes off and I raise my eyes to his. “Ah. So those times you were being shadester and holding back. That was it?”

“Well some of them. Other times were just me wanting to do this.”

He leans in, closing the space between us. His nose nudges mine, his lips pressing to mine with the faintest pressure. Even with a lingering, barely-there kiss, my pulse races.