Death and the Girl Next Door

“Stop,” Jared said, gasping for air.

Cameron blinked back to the present. He shoved Jared away from him, tears streaming down his face.

Jared released me, stumbled, and fell to his knees. I stood in shock, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. It felt so real, like I was there, like I loved her and knew her and died when she died.

“Lorelei.” I realized Brooklyn was in my face, screaming at me. I could barely hear her. “Lorelei, what’s going on? What happened?”

My attention floated to Jared as he kneeled on a patch of grass, drawing in huge gulps of air. Then I felt the bile at the back of my throat and fought it with a hard swallow. With each heartbeat, Cameron’s pain reverberated through my body.

A crowd had gathered. I saw faces around us, yelling like bloodthirsty spectators, encouraging Cameron and Jared to fight.

“Lorelei,” Brooklyn said, quieter.

I reached up and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly; then she helped me to Jared, where I knelt beside him.

“You could have saved her,” Cameron said, panting in turmoil and anger at what Jared had shown him. He slid down the side of his truck to sit on the pavement. “You just took her. If it had been anyone but you.”

Cameron’s sadness deepened to a mournful despair, but his hold on Jared seemed to ease. He could breathe almost normally again.

Jared turned to sit on the grass and surveyed Cameron from underneath his long lashes. “She called me by name,” he said.

After a moment, Cameron’s words sank in. I thought back to his memory. I looked through his eyes and glanced up at the entity enshrouded in darkness as it released the strap from the bike, as it sent Cameron’s mother to her death. Then it looked right at me, eyes boring in to mine, but only for a microsecond before it vanished.

It was Jared.

I covered my mouth with both hands and sank to the ground, my heart breaking.

“So, that’s your job?” Cameron said, wiping at the tears streaming down his face. “You give whatever people pray for?”

“No,” Jared said between coughs. “There are rules.”

Cameron laughed humorlessly. “Aren’t there always.”

“She did it for you.”

“Ah, yes. Well, that makes it all better.”

“You’re still alive.”

“And you’re still a bitch.”

The crowd wooed, waited to see what Jared would do.

I peeled my hands from my mouth and forced myself to focus on the more immediate risk, namely another Battlefield Earth. “Jared, please don’t fight again,” I said.

He turned to me, his dark eyes bright with emotion. I reached over and wiped a wetness from his cheek. His eyes had watered. He bent his head and buried it in a sleeve.

“I’m okay,” he said after he wiped his face. “Is this over?”

Cameron sniffed, wiped his face again, his eyes slitted at Jared. “It will be when you’re dead.”

“But, Cameron,” he said with a sigh, “I just got here.”

“And I’m going to send you back.”

“That’s it.” He stood and shrugged out of the jacket. Cameron followed suit. “Your mother sacrificed her life for you, and this is how you repay her? You sulk and pout and throw tantrums like a two-year-old?”

“You’re pushing it, Reaper.”

I scrambled to my feet as they faced off in the parking lot.

“Do you know what she’d say if she were here right now?” Jared asked.

Cameron stepped closer. “You’re a bitch?”

“Exactly.” He closed the distance, meeting him head-on, challenging him with the heavy set of his shoulders. “Only she’d be looking at you.”

“What’d I miss?” Glitch ran up to the melee with an excited grin on his face until he saw who the crowd was watching. He looked over at me. “Again?”

“Again?” A strong masculine voice echoed around us as the crowd parted and scattered immediately. “So there was a fight before,” Principal Davis said as he approached us.

Brooklyn spoke up immediately. “They weren’t fighting, Mr. Davis.”

“They were never fighting,” I said, jumping to their defense. “It’s just an argument.”

Mr. Davis said nothing, so I turned to him. He was staring wide-eyed at Jared’s arms. At the tattoos. He paled and took a minuscule step backwards.

The instant Jared realized what Mr. Davis was looking at, he turned and searched the ground for the jacket. But it was much too late for that. Mr. Davis saw the one thing that would spark his memory of Jared from before. The same age. The same face.

Jared started to reach for the jacket, then realized how futile the effort would be. He inhaled deeply and turned to him, waiting for the principal’s reaction.

“Mr. Davis,” I said, trying to come up with some explanation. But what could I say? Oh, yeah, Mr. Davis, we forgot to mention that this is the same guy who showed up the day your brother died and he’s actually this messenger-slash-reaper guy for some otherworldly answering service and he came back here to spirit me off to Heaven and instead saved my life and changed history and now he’s, like, stuck.

I didn’t think so.

But apparently it didn’t matter. Before I could say anything, he turned and strode off. We were suddenly alone again.

“Are you two, like, bipolar or something?” Brooklyn stood, her resentment leaking out at Cameron and Jared. “’Cause they have medication for that.” I realized she didn’t really know what had just happened, what Jared had revealed. She barged up to Cameron, purpose in her every move. “You accepted, you butthead.”