Touch (6 page)

Chapter Nine

It was nearly five o’clock when I got home. Dusk had fallen and the stillness of night had begun to creep in. I stepped inside my house, feeling strange with a relatively invisible person in tow behind me, and noticed a four-foot-tall Fraser fir standing in the center of our living room. Dad sat on the couch, staring blankly at it.

I froze mid-step as the date suddenly came to me. In all the commotion, somehow Christmas had slipped my mind; tomorrow was actually the final day of school before Christmas break began. I gazed at the tree, dumbfounded.

“
Chad from work brought it by this afternoon,” Dad said.

“
That was nice,” I replied.

He shook his head. “It’s just not Christmas without her.”

I blinked and shifted my gaze to him, understanding exactly how he felt. I hadn’t thought about how it would feel to spend the holidays without her, until now.

“
I know,” I whispered, walking past him, headed to my room.

The absence of my mother seemed to echo loudly through the house. I could sense it swallowing my father whole and threatening to grab hold of me at any moment. I wished for the first time Jet were able to wrap me in his arms, or hold my hand even. Disappointment prickled through me because I knew it wasn’t possible, that there was no physical way for him to console me.

“
Are you okay?” Jet asked, once we’d crossed the threshold to my room and I’d closed the door behind us.

I leaned against my dresser and set my notebook down. “No,” I answered truthfully. “He’s right; it won’t feel like Christmas without her.”

I thought of the blue and white icicle lights that wouldn’t hang from our gutters this year, and the three-foot-tall candy canes that wouldn’t line our driveway. I doubted we’d even decorate the tree in the living room, much less have anything waiting under it on Christmas morning.

Tears pricked my eyes. I turned away from Jet and busied myself with lining my nail polishes in neat little rows, forgetting he could still see my face in the mirror.

“
Should I go?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

I met his gaze in the mirror as a tear escaped, sliding down my cheek. “No… stay. Please.”

Sympathy swallowed the brightness of his eyes and creased his brow. Jet stepped soundlessly across the distance between us, until only mere inches remained. I struggled to feel something from his closeness that I could take comfort in, but felt nothing. There was no warmth emanating from his skin to mine, no breath gently caressing my forehead; there was just a void.

A sudden urge to kiss him sparked deep inside me, spurred from the emptiness of his closeness. I allowed my eyes to graze his lips and the urge grew like a wildfire with only my thoughts to flame it.

With my eyes open, I stood on my tiptoes and gave in, kissing Jet.

My eyes closed as the same energy from our last touch spiraled through me. I’d expected to feel warmth, but didn’t. If it hadn’t been for the electrifying energy, kissing Jet would have felt like kissing the air. Just as the same images from before began to flash behind my eyelids, he broke our contact.

“
What are you thinking?” he demanded. My cheeks reddened and I felt the heat spread to my neck. “We don’t know what will happen to you if you keep on...
touching
me.”

I could hear the unease and embarrassment playing in his voice as he took a few silent steps backward. “Does it matter?” I countered, feeling slightly dizzy. “If it kills me, so what? I’m going to die soon, anyway.”

The look on his face reinforced my words and the term
kiss of death
floated to the surface of my mind. If that was all it would take, kissing death, mainly
this
death—Reaper number 142—then it would be the sweetest form of suicide imaginable. Poetic, even.

“
It’s not that I don’t feel anything for you… because I do.” He paused, obviously shaken at having admitted that out loud, and I searched his face for any tinge of pink to stain his cheeks, but saw none. “We just—we can’t keep tempting Fate.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Why not?”

Worry soaked up all the sparkles of his eyes. “Because you can only tempt Fate for so long before it takes you, and if things don’t happen the way they’ve intended for it to then you might not come out of it as a Reaper, they may force you to just Crossover.”

That thought had never occurred to me, and I made a mental note to behave myself if it meant I’d get to see him again when everything was said and done.

Jet’s icy blue eyes glared back at me, his expression inscrutable. “I think I should go,” he muttered, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.

In the time it took my heart to beat its next rhythm, Jet vanished.

Chapter Ten

Days passed and Christmas came and went. The tree in our living room, which had never been decorated, was moved to the edge of the woods in our backyard where the ever-present crows claimed it for themselves.

The only thing about my Christmas break I enjoyed was the ample amount of uninterrupted time I was allotted to spend with Jet. Today though, he’d kept me waiting for his sudden appearance and the silence of my house seemed deafening. I bundled up in my blue marshmallow jacket and fled the emptiness of my house, attempting to save my sanity and kill some time.

The noisy cawing of crows assaulted my ears the moment I closed the front door behind myself and nervousness twisted in the pit of my stomach. I crammed my hands into the fleece-lined pockets of my jacket and walked down the driveway, cutting a right this time to avoid the red-headed woman on the corner. I made it to the wooden gate of Dover Farm before the cold became too much and I decided to turn back, but someone’s muffled cries stopped me.

I inhaled so sharply the cold air burned my lungs and my eyes darted around, searching for the source and praying I couldn’t see through whoever it was. I exhaled only once I noticed little Isabel Dover kneeling near the edge of Dover Pond, crying.

“
Isabel—what’s wrong?” I asked, already weaving my body through the wooden slats that made up the gate. Isabel’s little tear-stained face jerked in my direction.

“
Rowan!” she shouted, her baby-blue eyes gleaming. “You gotta help Fern; she’s stuck out there and I’m too scared to get her!”

I glanced out onto the frozen pond and spotted Fern, Isabel’s dachshund, near the center of the ice. The dog was wearing a bubble-gum pink sweater with an equally pink leash trailing behind her. I began smacking the palm of my hand against my thigh.

“
Come here, Fern,” I called. “Come here, girl.”

“
She won’t come,” Isabel said, shaking her head. “I think she’s frozen.”

“
I doubt that.” I chuckled.

“
I’m serious; she hasn’t moved in a while,” Isabel insisted as sincerely as any eight-year-old could.

I suppressed another chuckle and began smacking my thigh even harder. “Fern—come here, Fern!” I yelled a little louder and sweeter than before. Fern took two small steps and then stopped. “See, she’s definitely not frozen.”

“
Good girl, Fern! Come on, you can do it, come here!” Isabel coaxed her, but Fern didn’t respond by moving, only by whimpering.

I crouched down, resting my knees against the frozen ground beneath me for support. “Come on, Fern!” I called, losing my sugary-sweet tone and trading it in for a more annoyed one.

Fern took a few sliding steps toward us before stopping about four feet away and hunkering down to whimper again. Her sad brown eyes met mine and they instantly melted my heart, making me switch back to my most sugary tone yet.

“
Here, girl! Come on!” Isabel and I called out in unison while we both slapped our knees as hard as we could.

“
Isabel… where are you?” Mr. Dover called from the back deck to their house.

“
Down here, Daddy!” Isabel shouted. “Fern’s stuck on the pond!”

“
Who’s that with you down there?” Mr. Dover asked.

“
Rowan; she’s been helping me get Fern,” Isabel answered.

“
Hey, Rowan! How ya been?”

“
Fine, Mr. Dover,” I replied. “We’ve almost got Fern, now.”

At the sound of her name, Fern took a few more slipping steps forward. I extended my arm out, reaching for her.

“
Almost,” I muttered, wiggling my fingers. “If she’d only take a few more steps I’d be able to reach her.”

I inched closer, until I could feel the cold wetness of the frozen water soaking into my jeans, but I still couldn’t reach her. I dropped my arm and let out a loud sigh. I hung my head as annoyance at Fern buzzed through me.

“
Fine,” I mumbled. I stood and put one foot out onto the frozen water, tapping it to test its thickness.

“
No, Rowan, don’t!” Isabel panicked.

I shifted all of my weight onto the foot resting on the ice and held my breath. “It’s okay. This water is shallow, which means it’s thicker than the rest.”

I put both feet on the frozen pond and stopped, praying I was right. It had been so long since I’d been to Dover Pond, I couldn’t remember how deep the edges were—two feet, three feet, four?

“
Rowan, I don’t think that’s a good idea! Let me come down and get that stubborn-ass dog myself!” Mr. Dover yelled.

I put a hand up and shook my head. “I think it’s okay; I’ll get her.”

I slid my feet across the slick ice like I was skating, slowly inching my way toward Fern. I was nearly two feet away from Isabel when I heard the ice beneath me begin to crack.

Chapter Eleven

“
Rowan!” Isabel gasped from behind me.

I couldn’t find my voice to answer her. With my heart hammering against my ribcage, I dropped my gaze to my shoes and stared at the thin line now etched into the ice beneath me. I held my breath and slowly slid my right foot backward an inch before doing the same with my left. I stopped when a new crack formed and then slithered away from me rapidly.

“
Daddy! Daddy, hurry! The ice is cracking!” I heard Isabel scream hysterically over her retreating footsteps.

As she darted away, Fern skittered past me after her, and the swift movement across the ice was all it took to send me plummeting through and into the dark water below.

The icy water slipped over me, soaking my clothes and forcing panic to become my worst enemy. My arms and legs thrashed about rapidly, slicing through the frigid water surrounding me. Involuntary gasps escaped from my parted lips as I struggled to find the surface.

This is it
, I thought with an eerie sense of calm.
This is how I die
.

Time seemed to tick away at an incredibly slow pace. My limbs began to tire and confusion threatened to overtake my mind. I caught sight of a hand reaching into the black, chunky water for me. A tiny shiver of warmth swam through me as I thought of who it might be—
Jet
. That small shiver of warmth died out quickly as the water began to freeze me from the inside out, burning my lungs while they struggled for air but were only given icy water instead.

My muscles tightened and burned with exhaustion. Rough hands, hands which were obviously not Jet’s, gripped me tightly, pulling me from the slushy water and sliding me across a solid patch of ice.

“
She’s blue—she’s blue, Martha! Tell ‘em to hurry!” Mr. Dover’s voice shouted.

I wanted to tell him to leave me be, that any attempt to save my life was foolish because my death had been inevitable, but I couldn’t speak through my chattering teeth.

My eyes rolled back into my head as my body continued to tremble violently. Each faint intake my frozen lungs could manage felt like fire inside my chest. Jet’s face came into my view and thin tendrils of relief floated their way through my mind. Everything would all be over with soon.

“
Rowan, it’s time,” he whispered, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

My eyes closed, either of their own accord or out of fear, I couldn’t be sure which. In the distance, beyond the panicked cries of those struggling to save my ill-fated life, the crows had gathered to sing their own haunting melody… the soundtrack of my death.

Droplets of warmth slid from the corners of my eyes as I forced my ice-clogged lungs to take in their final breath. Pain radiated from my chest to my toes—had I been able to find my voice, I would have screamed. I met Jet’s eyes, begging him without words to end my pain. He crouched down beside me and extended a hand, his eyes glimmering with sadness. Darkness dotted the edges of my vision while I watched his fingertip grow closer and closer. Just before touching me, Jet closed his eyes and I did the same.

At the moment of contact, a completely different energy coursed through my body than what I had felt before when we touched. This one was not electrifying or intimate. It was relaxing and peaceful… warming even. Images flashed behind my eyelids, but this time they were my own. Snuggling up with Mom for a bedtime story, getting piggyback rides from Dad, being tickled until I laughed so hard I cried, my very first sleepover at Kami’s house, my first kiss. All the seemingly small things from my life that had made it worth living danced through my mind. In the end, they had been all that had mattered.