Revived (23 page)

As if it’s mimicking my emotions, the afternoon sky clouds over. It smells like rain is on the way. I break from my trance and look to the clouds.

Are you up there?
I think to Audrey. Nothing happens.

Because she’s dead.

Dead.

I think of what that really means.

It is not like being gone—like my real parents or the
nuns or people in the cities we had to leave—because gone implies that you can come back if you really want to. Contrary to what I may have been taught, there’s no coming back from death. Not really. Someday, I’ll die for good. And then I’ll be like Audrey.

Not gone.

Dead.

I shudder at the thought, and Matt squeezes my hand tighter.

I look back to earth and the gravesite. Only then do I realize that Matt and I are alone. I look at him.

His eyes are on me.

“Hi,” he says, as if he’s seeing me for the first time. He looks down at our clasped hands and smiles, and then moves his gaze back to my eyes.

“Hi,” I say back to the boy I never want to leave.

“I’m really sorry,” Matt says.

“Me, too.”

Eventually, we leave the cemetery. We drive in heavy silence to Matt’s house. Cars are parked everywhere: in the driveway and out front, across the street and around the corner. Matt eases into a small space down the street and as we approach on foot, I try not to look at Audrey’s happy car.

Inside, there are piles of food on every available surface, and every room is crowded with people wearing black and navy blue, talking in hushed, respectful tones as if they’re afraid they’re going to wake the dead. I feel like
I have cotton in my ears: When people talk to me, I have to ask them to repeat themselves.

“What?” I ask Mason after he mumbles something to me.

“I asked if you’d like some food,” he says, looking at me with concern.

“Oh.”

My thoughts snag on something I don’t remember five seconds after I think it, and when I look back at Mason, he’s not there. I’m not sure whether or not I answered his question. Maybe he’s gone to get food; maybe he’s just gone.

I stand in one spot until I start to feel paralyzed, then I move to make sure I still can. That’s when I realize that Matt and I are never more than a few steps away from each other. After we arrived, we split up, but we never really split apart. Bound by an invisible chain, I move into the kitchen, thirsty, and he’s already there, his nose in the refrigerator. He sits on the sofa and I check out the photos on the living room walls. I lean against the piano, desperate for this day to be done, and he lightly brushes my shoulder as he passes. I realize that we’re giving each other strength using all we’ve got left: our presence.

Matt is sitting on the hearth across the room when Mason walks up and tells me that it’s time to go. I’m beyond exhausted, and it could be eight or midnight: Either would make sense in my new, strange world.

Fifteen feet between us, Matt and I stare at each other, neither of us moving but both of us knowing it’s going to get more difficult before it gets better.

“Okay,” I say, still watching Matt. I’ll see him at school when he comes back. But it will be different. Leaving now feels like saying goodbye to our old selves, to anything light and carefree.

Goodbye, halcyon.

My eyes well up with tears, and they stay locked on Matt’s until I reach the doorway of the room and am forced to turn a corner. Even when I look away, I can feel his stare. I’m not sure how my feet are capable of walking away, but they do, and when I reach the back of the SUV, I collapse on the seat and fall asleep in an instant. Mason zombie-walks me into the house when we arrive, and I sleep in my funeral clothes, even my shoes.

Four days later, I shoot upright in bed at four in the morning. Heart thundering in my chest, I listen for signs of what startled me awake. There is movement downstairs: I hear two pairs of footsteps rushing around the house.

I jump out of bed and run down to the lab to see what’s going on.

“Go back to bed,” Mason says when he sees me. “Everything’s okay.”

“What are you doing?” I ask. My heart sinks when I see him standing beside the black case.

“God wants us to try something,” he says. He looks
incredibly uneasy. Cassie shakes her head as she leafs through a file.

“Where are those forms?” she asks.

“I’m not sure we’ll need them,” Mason says quietly. “How many vials do you think we should bring?”

“The most we’ll use is three, but bring five to be safe.”

“What are you going to try?” I ask.

“There’s been a car crash,” he says. “A man coming home from a night shift,” he explains in broken sentences like he’s preoccupied. “A janitor. Car’s totaled. God wants us to try to Revive him.”

“But it hasn’t worked on adults,” I say, shocked.

“I know,” he says. “Not yet, but they’ve made improvements.”

Not enough
, I think.

“And it’s the middle of the night,” I continue.

“I know.”

“And the test group is only the bus kids, and—”

“I know!” Mason shouts. He flips around and stares at me. He looks angry, but somehow I know it’s not really directed at me. “Don’t you think I know all of this? The program is supposed to be
controlled
. It’s not supposed to be like this. Now he expects us to…” He stops talking midsentence and takes a deep breath. “It’s going to be fine, Daisy,” he says. “We heard on the scanner that the locals are on the way. If we don’t make it before they do, we won’t be able to try it.”

I watch as Mason goes through the process that opens the Revive case, as his hand moves to choose five vials from the fifty. Wildly, my eyes flit over the vials. Forty-nine of them might save this man; the one filled with water most definitely will not. My temperature rises. I don’t remember which one it was. I think it was somewhere in the—

“Don’t take that one,” I blurt out without thinking. Mason’s hand freezes in midair. Cassie and Mason both turn to face me, their expressions shifting from confusion to shock to anger.

“Why not?” Mason asks.

I don’t speak.

“Why shouldn’t we take that one?” he asks again.

I’m frozen solid.

“What did you do?” Mason snaps. I recoil. He’s never talked to me like this before.

Strangely, Cassie is the one who rushes to my side. “Daisy, as you know, time is of the essence here,” she says calmly. “We can talk about this later,” she continues, shooting Mason a look. “But if we need three vials right now, which part of the storage box should we take them from?”

I point to the leftmost row, and the row on the bottom.

“You’re sure there’s nothing wrong with those?” Cassie says as Mason starts grabbing vials.

I nod, not wanting to betray myself by speaking. In
truth, I’m only
pretty
sure. Not a hundred percent sure. Not bet-my-life-on-it sure.

Bet someone else’s?

“Go upstairs,” Mason says flatly as he closes the travel container. He doesn’t meet my eyes when he moves past. I listen to him storm out to the car. Silently, Cassie goes, too.

A few hours later, I walk through the doors to Victory High a completely different person than I was just a few weeks ago. I haven’t showered, and I’m wearing the T-shirt I slept in. My untamed dishwater curls are wrapped into a knot. I don’t have on any makeup, not because I might cry and wash it away, but because it takes too much energy to put it on in the first place. I had three bites of a banana and a Coke for breakfast. I can’t remember whether I brushed my teeth.

Inside school, it’s too loud. Too bright. People are staring at me, whispering behind my back. They look like the unfocused background in a photograph: They’re there to show contrast, but for nothing more.

I walk up the flight of stairs to the second level and work my way to my locker. Some girls are chatting at the locker next to mine. They stop talking when I approach and step aside so I can get through.

“Hi, Daisy,” one of them says quietly.

“Hi,” I say. I don’t know her name.

I swap out my books and try very hard not to look at Audrey’s locker as I walk away, but it doesn’t work. I see it, and I imagine her standing there, smiling at me on the first day of school. Complimenting my shoes. Asking me to lunch.

Breathing.

Living.

As if I have emotional food poisoning, all of my tears and snot and even a shrill scream come out of me at once. Everyone in the hallway stops and stares. I run to the nurse’s office and get excused from school.

The hall pass reads, “Distressed.”

I block out the world for two days, or at least I think I do. When Mason’s had enough, he picks the lock on my bedroom door.

“You have a visitor,” he says. I have a pillow over my face so I can’t see him or anyone else.

“Tell whoever it is to go away.”

“You’ll have to do that yourself,” Mason says. I hear him leave the room. Someone else comes in. Whoever it is sits on the end of my bed but doesn’t say anything. I don’t
move the pillow: I breathe into it and wait. The moisture of my breath, trapped between me and the fabric, makes me feel like I’m in a sauna, but I don’t move. And still, silence. Eventually, I start to get perturbed. Why come into my room and just sit there? Frustrated, I toss aside the pillow. And then I see someone I never thought I’d see again.

“Sydney?”

“Hi, sweetie,” she says in the voice that always made everything better. “I hear you’re having a tough time.”

The acknowledgment of my pain brings it all out again; I begin to sob. Sydney moves closer—right next to me—and wraps her arms around me. She’s wearing a gray sweater that I’m pretty sure I ruin with snot, but she doesn’t seem to mind. We sit there like that, her smoothing my ratty hair and me crying on her shoulder, until I don’t have any tears left.

After that, we talk for hours. I tell her all about Audrey—every minute I remember. I tell her a lot, but not everything, about Matt. I share that I feel guilty for being with Megan when Audrey was dying. That I think there’s something going on with the program that’s stressing Mason out. That there’s even more that I don’t want to talk about right now.

“You’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Sydney says. “I can see why you needed some time to yourself.”

“I wish Mason was as understanding as you are,” I say.

“Oh, Daisy, you need to give him a little credit,” she says. “He may not have known what to do, but he knew enough to call someone who might. And I think he’s more in tune with what you’re going through than you might think.”

“Maybe…” I say, not really believing it. Mason’s a science guy, not a feelings guy. “I just don’t know what to do now. I don’t know how to
be
without Audrey. What should I do?”

“Daisy, I wish I could fix everything for you,” Sydney says. “I’m so sorry to see you hurting. But the hard truth is that the only thing that can mend a broken heart is time.”

I’m quiet, frowning because she sounds like a condolence card. I tell her as much.

“Well, it’s good advice,” she says. “That’s why it’s on so many cards.”

I half smile at her; she takes my hand.

“There are little things you can do,” she says.

“Like what?” I ask, craving a prescription that will cure my heartbreak.

“Well, like first thing in the morning, when you wake up and remember that Audrey’s gone, instead of dwelling on what she won’t get the chance to do, think of something really great that she
did
do. Honor her a little, and then move on.”

“Easier said than done,” I say. “What else?”

Sydney shrugs. “Take a shower. Go to school. Pay attention. Do the things you used to like to do; eventually,
they’ll get fun again. Call Megan and talk to her about your feelings. When he’s ready, try to reconnect with Matt.”

I’m quiet, so she continues.

“Unfortunately, there’s no formula for making the pain of death go away sooner. No matter what, you’re going to carry this with you for the rest of your life. But how you carry it is up to you. You can choose to dwell on the sadness of losing Audrey, or you can choose to celebrate the time you had with her.”

“You sound like her,” I say.

“She must have been a smart girl,” Sydney jokes.

For the first time in days, a small laugh comes out of me.

“Are you going to get in trouble for coming here?” I ask.

“What God doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Sydney says. “And besides, my best girl needed me. You may not know it, but I’m always here for you, Daisy.”

Sydney leaves after dinner, and it’s like she takes some of my angst with her. By talking openly about Audrey, I feel like I’ve released a lead balloon. I’m a little bit lighter. A little bit better.

I go to bed at nine and sleep like a baby. When I wake up in the morning, the memory of Audrey’s funeral slams into my brain. I push it aside, choosing to think instead about the time she thought she saw Jake Gyllenhaal outside Starbucks downtown. Sad and happy tears stream
down my face as I laugh out loud about her reaction: She
really
thought it was him.