MARS WAS GRIM.
The hardest part was now. He and Jana stood outside her door. Mars had asked her to wait before going in. He had to tell her. It was going to be bad.
“I can’t do much out there, can I?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Mars said. “You sort of have to naturalize yourself to the Planet. Concentrate on it. Focus. Practice. It will come.”
“You’ll show me, won’t you?”
“Knowing you, you’ll be fully interacting in no time.”
Jana smiled. The thrill of falling, even the horrific bolt of the total slam, kept running through her memory and her body. Jana shuddered involuntarily from time to time as her bones remembered it on their own. Her skin danced with ghostly touches of physical memory. The fine hairs on her arms lifted at the thought of the long, empty night opening under her.
It was everything Wyatt had said it would be. And more. Because of Mars, it had been more. More purely physical than she could have imagined. Still, it wasn’t Michael. It was Webster and Dreamcote, not Webster and Haynes.
“I have something I have to tell you,” Mars was saying. “It’s something you’ve been overlooking. It’s important.”
She looked at his blue eyes. His face was tired, but his eyes remained intense. Mars turned his gaze away from her.
“I didn’t understand how serious you were about killing Michael, about wanting him here. I thought you would change your mind.”
“Oh, he’s dead,” Jana said almost cheerfully. “Count on it.”
“That’s the thing, Webster. You can’t kill him.”
“Yes, I can. And I will.”
“No.” He held up his hand to stop her from talking. Mars looked into her eyes. “If you kill anybody, here or on the Planet, you’re an instant vacancy. If you kill Michael, he’ll be here, but you won’t. If you kill him, it will just be murder, nothing more than that.”
The inside of Jana’s chest felt like wasps were stinging her. She breathed fishhooks and thorns. There was nothing to say.
Jana was tired of it all.
She was tired of trying. She sat on her bed, back against the wall. When she lay down, the night would be over. Jana didn’t want the night to end. She wanted it all to end.
Arva hadn’t waited up. Both halves of Pauline were dead asleep. Darcee had the best of it, Jana thought. She wasn’t waking up.
Jana had forgotten Michael’s birthday. What else had she forgotten?
Had they made love? No, she didn’t think so. Had they come close? She couldn’t remember. She should be able to look at the inside of her hand and see his face there.
She was a Slider now. Jana had always been one, she supposed. Deep down, she’d always wanted Earth, the coarser touch of life. Deep down, she’d always wanted real life. Just as Christie had when she’d climbed on the back of the four-wheeler. Just as Beatrice had when she gave her bare breast to Brad. Jana had always wanted life and now that was exactly what she didn’t have. Or if she did, she had only the small portion of it that hurt.
Michael hadn’t saved her. He hadn’t tried. He’d stood and watched her die.
That was the part that hurt. Not that he had sprayed her shoe with lubricant. That didn’t matter. It was that some ghost had been there with her, doing what Michael should have done. Michael should have tried. Jana hated him for not being Romeo. She loved him with all her heart and hated him just the same. He should have killed himself over her.
“Dammit, Michael, love me!” Jana said out loud. The words flew from her heart. They were the color of blood. “Love me, love me, love me!”
Yes, he should have killed himself over her. That wouldn’t have worked either. He would be a Gray. But he should have anyway. And now, if Jana killed him, she wouldn’t be here at all. It was a maze with no exit. The last box that Mr. Skinner ever drew would be like that. Dead end. No way out. You just stood still inside the box and let it hurt.
It hit her like a hammer. Michael and Jana were no longer Romeo and Juliet. Jana was both. She was Romeo because Michael wouldn’t be. She was Juliet . . . because she just was. She was both parts since she had died. It wasn’t written that way. It would never work.
They were on the bus again.
“I can tell,” Arva croaked in her usual feather-and-beak whisper. “You’re one of them.”
The emotion in her voice was either grave disapproval or ardent disgust. Jana looked at her hands in the lap of her school uniform, stared at Michael’s class ring, and simply nodded in reply.
“You smell funny,” Arva continued. “You smell like a pine tree. When we come back, your room will be on the third floor. And so will all your stuff.”
The bus began to move. Jana swallowed the taste of strawberries and watched the houses out the window, wondering who lived there. And why. She wondered what people lived for. She hoped they lived for love. Love could be a good thing. Even if it hadn’t been for her.
“You’re like a heater now,” Arva complained. “I don’t know why you’re sitting here.”
“Because I still need a friend,” Jana said quietly.
Arva started to say something in reply, then stopped herself. She and Jana finished the bus ride in silence.
When they arrived, Jana let the bus empty without looking up. She didn’t budge. At one point the driver was gone. She could talk to Michael now, but what good was that? She couldn’t have him. It would only hurt more.
Jana could swallow a bird, if she could find one, and it wouldn’t be as painful as seeing Michael again. Being sliced in half in a tornado didn’t hurt at all compared to being torn to little ragged pieces by love. Jana couldn’t put the pieces back together again. Her fingers, like her thoughts, were useless, awkward things.
She was an empty house with the windows broken out. Jana stayed on the bus.
“Look, we told him,” Nathan said.
“We?” Michael said into his cell.
“Me and Sherry,” Nathan told Michael. “My mom went with us, and her dad. We told the detective how it happened. It was no big deal to him. He just wants to talk to you. He knows it was an accident and all, just a prank. You know, like hazing.”
“Hazing? Did he say that? Did he say hazing?”
“Yeah, I think so. You know, like no one intended anything bad to happen. It wasn’t murder or anything.”
Michael cursed. Nathan was such an idiot. Hadn’t he seen what happened to those other college fraternity guys when one of them died during a hazing? No, it wasn’t murder. It was manslaughter by reckless disregard or something like that. They went to prison.
“Oh, and Sherry told her dad about the photos on your cell phone. Well, you know, kind of what they are. They asked the detective about them. He told them you couldn’t show the pictures to anyone without her permission, that it would be a violation of her civil rights or right to privacy or something like that. Anyway, he told Sherry she could sue you in civil court and win if you showed the pictures to even one other person.”
“Listen to me,” Michael said slowly. “It’s your word against mine. I’m telling them you did it. They got nothing on me. You better think this through, Nathan. Tell them you were lying because Sherry’s dad was there. We’ll both say that Sherry did it. Either that or I will tell them you did.”
“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “I already signed the paper that had my statement on it.”
“Think it over and call me back. I mean it. I’ll tell them you did it and that you and Sherry have this thing and she’ll say anything you tell her to say. She’s just a sophomore. They’ll think she’s lying. And it will all go away. They don’t have anything on you or me.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m getting a lawyer, you little prick.” Michael seethed. “And I’m telling him you did it. We’ll see what happens, Nathan. I’m Ivy League, you got that? You’re nothing. We’ll see what happens.”
As she stared at her empty hands, pieces of Jana’s broken hope slowly gathered into a plan. There was one thing left to do.
She got off the bus and walked into Dead School. She walked by the Grays who monitored the halls. She walked by the closed classroom doors. She walked by the library windows.
No one was at the swimming pool this hour. She found the switches. She listened to the pumps come on. She turned on the underwater lights. Jana wanted to see where she was going. She left the overhead lights turned off. The water looked prettier that way. It looked pretty and deep.
There was nothing to think about. There was nothing left to consider.
She took off her clothes. Her body felt different than when she’d been a Riser. She was warm now, for one thing. Her body also felt a little heavier. Jana could feel the weight of her skin, her muscles, her blood. Gravity wanted a piece of her.
Considering carefully what she was about to do, Jana left Michael’s class ring on her left hand instead of nesting it safely inside one of her shoes. She was taking what she had left of Michael with her. As she walked to the edge of the pool, the Virgins appeared. One after another, they showed up out of nowhere and formed a line above the pool. In front of her. Facing her.
Others appeared behind the first line of Virgins until they were four or five deep. There were dozens of them in their white translucent gowns and their white translucent skin. The Virgins reflected the light from under the water. Flashes of iridescent lavender and silver danced across their gowns and faces.
Jana pushed her toes over the edge of the pool and the Virgins came closer, as if they could stand on water. Jana could see the looks in their eyes, the pale colors of their eyes and hair. The Virgins held out one arm each and waved their hands, left to right, in front of them. They sang a harmony of one word. It was dull and flat and low.
The word was No.
Jana closed her eyes and jumped in.
Just under the surface of the water, she leaned back and let out all her air. Her eyes open, she could see the Virgins hovering above her.
She let herself sink. She turned her body over and pulled herself through the water with her arms, following the current at the bottom of the pool until she found the drain. As she reached for it, the suction grabbed her hand and jerked it down until Michael’s ring was against the grate covering the drain. Jana could not lift a single finger from the drain. It held her hand like a jealous lover and would not let go.
A Slider came into class from across the hall and walked to Wyatt’s desk at the back of the room.
“She’s not there,” he said. “She got off the bus.”
“When?” Mars asked. He stood up from his seat behind Wyatt.
“Another guy saw her. He said she walked into the school a few minutes ago, but she’s not in class.”
Mars pushed the Slider aside as he rushed toward the classroom door. Wyatt knocked over his desk getting out of it to follow as quickly as he could. He’d nearly caught up to Mars when Mars jerked open the library doors and shouted at Jameson to ask if Jana was there.
She wasn’t.