Remember Me (22 page)

"You've asked a question that has many answers. Even though the Shadow is you, it is not all of you. It is not what you would call the soul. The true soul is never tainted by what you think or do. When you enter the light, you leave the Shadow behind. Imagine—how could you possibly enjoy the joy of heaven carrying such a burden with you?"

"I just leave it behind? Where does it go?"

"Nowhere," he said.

"What does it do?"

"It waits for you to return for it."

"You mean, I pick it up again when I'm reborn?" I asked.

"Like reincarnation?"

"We need not bring religion into this. Reincarnation is a model mortals use to explain the unexplainable. Heaven is another model. Who is to say which is more accurate? As I told you before, reality is so simple there is nothing that can be said about it. But if you wish, you can imagine that the Shadow does wait for your return and that it does remember everything that has gone before and that it doesn't let you accept yourself as perfect until you let it. There is truth in that. This is why a child usually cries as soon as it's born.

With its first breath, the Shadow returns."

"But knowing all this, why does it still terrify you?"

He lowered his eyes from the sky toward the ground. "You saw for yourself, Shari, in the cemetery. The fear it brings is not something you can reason away. It is just there, and you have to run from it."

"Has it ever caught you?"

He looked at me. "No."

"Then how can you know what would happen if it did?"

"I don't."

"So it might not imprison me? It might do nothing to me?"

He shook his head. "It would do something."

"Why do you stay here, on earth, where it can keep chasing you?"

"I can't—it's my job."

"What job is that?" I asked. "I haven't seen you rush off to smooth anybody's crossing since you've been with me.

Tell me the truth, Peter, are you here because of me?"

He stared at me oddly for a moment. Then he rested his head in his hands.

"No."

"Why, then?"

"I can't tell you why."

He sounded so sad; I didn't have the heart to press him. I switched to a more cheerful subject. "What about suicide?"

His head shot up. "What?"

"Suicide, you know, when you kill yourself. I've been in a few of my friends'

heads since I saw you last." My voice began to crack. "1 don't think any of them killed me. Maybe everybody's right. Maybe I jumped, Peter."

"Shari, that's ridiculous."

I had been holding back the tears since I had run from Daniel's bedroom. Now they burst from my eyes like cold rain. "It's not. You said yourself you weren't there when I died. You don't know what I did. I don't know what I did! I was upset. I ran to the balcony. All I remember is thinking how good it would be if I could fly over the ocean and disappear forever." I nodded to myself. "I must have jumped."

"That's not possible."

I hung my head low. A spider was walking toward my foot. I moved my shoe to kill him.

Then I decided to let him live. For all it mattered. I couldn't have hurt it had I jumped up and down on it a hundred times. I had no say in anything anymore. "It is more than possible," I muttered. "It is likely."

"Garrett doesn't think so."

I got up. "Garrett's just doing his job. I was wrong about him. He's a good detective. And if he hasn't been able to find my murderer by now, then it's because there isn't one."

"You didn't jump, Shari."

"You keep saying that. How do you know?"

He looked at me again in that odd way he had a few seconds ago. But this time a faint smile played across his lips. I couldn't understand the reason for it, or for his next remark. "I was glad when I got you for my lab partner in biology."

"You wouldn't have been so glad had you known your partner was a loony." I turned away. "I've got to go."

He stood quickly. "Where are you going?"

"To see what it can tell me about myself."

"Your Shadow?" He grabbed my shoulders from behind.

"No, Shari. You don't know what will happen."

I didn't fight him. I just let myself fall back against his chest. I took him by surprise, but then he wrapped his arms around me, and I was able to hold his hands in mine close to my heart.

I could feel it beating still, and I was happy for that. For a few moments we stood together in the middle of the silent street, and I remembered back to the week before the prom my sophomore year, when I had purposely bumped into Peter in the hallways at every opportunity. I had been trying to suggest to him that if he needed a date for the dance, I was available. But he hadn't asked me. He hadn't asked anybody. I had stayed home that night and read a book. He had probably gone for a ride on his motorcycle.

I realized what had been bothering me about our location.

"You died right here, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes." He tightened his hold on me and rested his chin on the back of my head.

"It was my fault."

I released his hands and let his arms fall by my side. "I've got to know if it was my fault."

"It wasn't," he said, a soft plea in his voice.

"We'll see." I turned and faced him. I was scared, but I joked for his benefit. "I hope it doesn't have my bad breath."

"You never had bad breath, Shari."

"How would you know?" I kissed him quickly on the lips. "You never got a chance to know." I stepped back.

"Goodbye, Peter. Don't try to follow me."

I walked briskly up the road toward Beth's place. He let me go. I felt as if I was hurrying to my death.

CHAPTER

XIV

A. HE GATE TO the condominium complex was closed. I didn't bother waiting for someone to come along and open it for me. A tree hung over the brick wall that circled the estates. I was becoming quite adept at climbing and was inside fast as a cat.

The stain of blood from my head had been scrubbed off the walkway that ran under Beth's balcony. At least a mortal might have thought so. But I could still detect signs of my demise. Kneeling, I touched a finger to the dried particles of blood that had fallen between the tiny imperfections in the cement. And unlike anything else in my realm, I could really touch them and feel the life that had once sparked within and which had now grown cold.

I looked up. I half expected to find the Shadow standing on the balcony four stories above. It was on that spot, after all, that it had first shown itself. But it wasn't there now, and I was more relieved than disappointed. But I vowed not to leave until it came to me. An idea popped into my mind that I believed might hasten its arrival. It was sort of a sick idea; it might have sprung from the same desire that drove criminals to return to the scenes of their worst crimes.

What if I got up on the balcony?

I stood and ran my hand through my hair.

I felt drawn.

The entrance was locked tight, and I didn't have the proper identification card to buzz my way inside. But Beth's place, I reminded myself, had the best view in the complex; the top floor and the roof were not that far apart, and there was a flight of emergency stairs on the south side of the building.

Jogging around the side of the condos, I ran up those steps as far as I could and then went a little farther, a rain drain helped me onto the roof. Except for the part about the nine lives, Catgirl was doing well.

Adobe tile covered the roof, sun-baked Spanish clay. As I walked above the sleeping city, I noted the hint of color in the eastern sky off to my right. Just then something about the flaking orange dust that coated the tiles troubled me.

But I could not pinpoint the source of my disquiet.

The slant of the roof was mild; I was in no danger of falling as I knelt at the edge of the tiles above the accursed balcony. The Shadow had yet to put in an appearance, and this time I sent a prayer of thanks heavenward. It struck me as insane that I was going to such lengths to embrace something that I was hoping with all my heart to avoid.

It surprised me how easily I was able to lower myself over the side and swing onto the wooden rail that guarded the edge of the balcony. The upraised ends of the tiles made excellent handholds—a child could have held on to them.

The sliding glass doors to the kitchen and Beth's bedroom were both locked. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had reached my destination, and I had nowhere to go. I paced the balcony back and forth. The eastern glow took on a yellow tint.

It was half an hour later, and I was on the verge of leaving in spite of my vow, when I suddenly saw my nemesis kneeling beside the stain on the walkway three stories below.

What was left of my dried blood looked more alive and darker with the Shadow beside it.

Now the gook was literally boiling up from the concrete. As I watched in horror, the Shadow leaned over and put its head into the cauldron. I didn't want to believe it was licking the blood up. Yet when it raised its head and looked up at me, the walkway was clear.

"Oh, God," I whispered.

Dawn was near, and the eastern light was playing havoc with the Shadow's form. It was no longer an insubstantial cloud of revolving darkness. Yet, if anything, it had moved farther away from a human semblance.

Strange colors sparked and cracked from its depths like electrical shorts on a logic circuit gone mad with emotion. It was deep, this thing that was supposed to be me. But not with wisdom or love. Only with life, crazy and fearful as that always was. It had drunk of my blood because it craved my life. It raised a hand and beckoned for me to come to it.

"Shari."

My name—it might have known a thousand things to call me by, although I would have remembered none of them. I understood what it wanted, however.

It was quite clear.

It wanted me to jump.

It was promising to catch me.

The night of the party, the doors had been unlocked behind me but only in a physical sense. I had closed another door forever when I had run frightened and upset from the others. My death might have been destined, but not so the reputation of failure I had left behind with my supposed suicide. At least, that was what I imagined the Shadow was trying to say with its challenge. I could hear it clearly in my mind. Now that I thought about it, it was, and always had been, a part of my thoughts.

Suddenly, I felt no fear. I climbed up onto the rail and jumped.

I didn't fall. Not right away. That was for the end, I was told. The sun was coming up.

The only place to start was at the beginning.

The world vanished, and a baby cried.

My skin cringed at the dreadful cold. My eyes winced under the harsh white light. I was being taken from my warm, wet home, and I didn't like it. Big grubby hands pulled me through the air. Rough material scraped my face clean. No wonder I was crying.

But then I was set beside a soft face. A gentle mat of hair touched me. Sweet words sounded in my ears. This was my home, I realized, talking to me. I decided maybe I could stay for a while. This was my mother.

I went to sleep happy.

Later, I awoke, and my mother was gone. But it was OK. I opened my eyes and looked around. Everything was a white blur, but it was still neat to have eyes and be able to see through them. I sniffed the air. I had a nose, too, and that was good.

I wondered when I would get to be with my mother again.

I went back to sleep.

I awoke moving through the air in the hands of a huge white person. My nose did not like this huge person. This huge person's smell made breathing difficult. Nor did my ankle like the way in which the huge person was tugging at a plastic band snapped around it. When the band slid off, I was glad.

The huge person set me down in a warm white box similar to the one I had just been in.

But I knew it was not the same box; it smelted different, and besides, there was another baby in it. I knew it was a baby because it looked like me, and I was a baby.

The baby was crying. The huge person was pulling on the poor thing's ankle band, too. I began to cry in sympathy.

And then I cried in pain as the huge person began to put the other baby's ankle tape around my leg. It didn't quite fit; I must have had fatter ankles. Even when the huge person finally got it on and carried the other crying baby away, the band continued to cut into my poor leg. I cried myself to sleep.

When I awoke, another huge white person was carrying me through the air to see my mother. The band had stopped hurting. This huge person smeiled nice.

I knew where I was going because the huge person was telling me. I understood telling and talking. I did a little of it myself as we flew down the hall, but I did not think the huge person understood me or even heard me. These huge people were going to take some getting used to.

Then something very scary happened. The huge person gave me to another huge person who was not dressed in white and told me that she was my mother. But this huge person did not smell like my mother. She didn't have her soft hair.

She didn't even look like her! What was wrong with that huge person in white?

She had made a mistake. Where was my mother?

I began to cry. I cried and cried, and the huge person who was not my mother didn't know how to stop me from crying.

I never did find my mother. Not for a long, long time.

But I grew older. I saw it all. I did more than see. I lived it all, quickly, at light speed, but also completely. Down to the last tiny detail, I went through everything Shari Cooper did. I grew to know the people she called mother and father but who I knew were not her parents. Through Shari Cooper, inside her, I met the boy named Jimmy and loved him, clung to him. And he loved me back, and even though he was not my brother, he was just as good, if not better, than any brother. He was so good I didn't want to share him with anybody. It made me uneasy when I had to. It sometimes made me angry.

Or it did that to Shari. I just watched and listened. I was the silent witness.

Occasionally, though, I tried to raise my voice and speak in silence. I tried the day Shari Cooper met her real mother and Jimmy's real sister, but by then she was too old and couldn't hear what I was saying. Too confused to listen to me, who was inside her, but also apart from her.