Death, and the Girl He Loves

“How do I know,” Brooke continued, “that you’re an angel?”

Cameron’s gaze snapped to hers, his eyes red, his lashes glittering and spiked with wetness.

She nodded. “You are. I remember. And so do they.” She pointed to the newest members to arrive. They also walked past us with curiosity burning in their gazes.

Cameron didn’t say anything. Obviously, not everyone in the Order had known about him before this. But they’d learned what he was in the other reality. They’d had to.

Having been watching us, Glitch stepped out of the shadows, his stance guarded, his shoulders at an angle as though ready to run.

“We were best friends,” he said to me accusingly. “We’d been best friends since we could walk, and you just tossed me aside. But before, in the place of our memories, we were still best friends. We did everything together.”

He was hurt and not willing to forget what I’d done. Unfortunately, I still didn’t remember myself. But it was coming to me. Why I’d pushed my best friend away. Why I withdrew into a shell, a wizard’s curtain of indifference and arrogance. And I remember yelling at him in first grade. We were on the playground and he’d accidently spilled his drink on my shirt. I railed at him. It was the excuse I’d been waiting for. I railed at him and pushed him away from me. When he tried to apologize, I did the unthinkable. I slapped him, and I did it in front of the whole school. Everyone laughed, but my heart was breaking. I just wanted him away from me. I didn’t want to love him. If I’d failed, if the world was going to end, I didn’t even want to know his name.

I was beginning to remember my dreams. Why, even as a child, I knew what was going to happen—the opening of the gates, the war, the end of the world—in the first place. I had been dreaming my whole life of the life I’d altered. The life I’d changed. I knew in my heart it was real. Everything I’d been dreaming was real.

I stood and faced him. If anyone deserved an answer, he did.

“I love you so much,” I said, shame and sympathy burning my face. “I was so afraid. I remember now. I was afraid that whatever I’d done, or tried to do, had failed.” I stepped to him and placed my hand on his beautiful face. He glared at me in distaste, but allowed me to stay close. “I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you.”

“We were in diapers.”

“I remember. And I loved you even then.”

“You’re really good at hiding it.”

“It would seem so,” I said, nodding, ashamed.

He shook off my hand and stuffed his own into his pockets. “I can remember doing things with you. Things that never happened, and yet I can remember doing them. It’s like a dream swirling in my head.”

“Me, too,” Brooke said. “I remember so much. Little snippets of life keep revealing themselves like memories I’d forgotten. Like a past life that I could only recall under hypnosis.”

Cameron wiped at his face and stared into the fire. He looked like he used to. Restless. Angry. Guarded. “My mother died,” he said, his voice echoing with resentment. “I remember her dying. I remember him—” He glared at the flames. “—I remember the reaper coming for her.” He shook his head, unable to completely accept what we were saying. “Azrael. How is that even possible?”

All of us at once realized someone else was close by. We looked over at Cameron’s mother. She’d brought him a plate of food. It hung limp in her hands, its contents on the verge of spilling over the side. And like us, she was staring off into space as though being bombarded with memories of things that had never happened.

In fact, everyone at the party seemed to be remembering a different reality than what they’d enjoyed the last few years. I wondered how many in the world would remember a different past. Was it only us? Did we somehow rate the memories of a life we supposedly never lived? Or would everyone remember?

Most people spoke softly to one another, reminiscing about things that never quite happened. They looked at me in awe. In utter amazement. I was the prophet. That much they knew. But now they knew something had changed, and they believed I’d caused it. But I hadn’t. We had. All of us.

Brooke stood and took my hand into hers. “I remember something else, too. I remember I loved you with all my heart and soul.”

I lowered my head, embarrassed by the sudden onset of tears. They quaked on my lower lashes, big and fat, threatening to spill over.

“I remember you were like the sun to me. You were like air. I’ve never loved a friend more than you. And I’m pretty sure I never will again.”

She pulled me into a hug that wrenched a sob from my throat. I needed that hug so bad. I wanted her in my life. In this life as well as any others that might crop up here or there. Admittedly, I didn’t want to live any more lives. Two was enough. But anything without Brooke in it was not a life for me.

Cameron stood and went to his mother, led her back inside the dining hall. He deposited her, consoled her with a kiss on the cheek, then came back out, and I quickly realized why. Someone was standing behind me. Close behind me. I felt a finger run down my arm and across my palm. I didn’t turn. I knew exactly who it was. The only person who made the bones in my legs dissolve.

I leaned back into him, and he stepped closer. Molded his body to mine. I melted against him, my h*ps tucked into the bend at his as he wrapped an arm around my waist and locked me to him. He bent and nuzzled an ear while whispering in it. It caused a rush of excitement over my skin.