The Vision (4 page)

Ryan looked skeptical. “What do you mean? Learn what?”

I bit my lip, trying to phrase the truth carefully. “People believe such different things about death, you know? Where do we go? How does it affect the people left behind? What if …” I paused, making sure it sounded okay. “What if someone didn't die when they did? Like that guy out there, Dr. Killiam. How would things have been different for his family or, I don't know, the world even, if he were still alive?”

I held my breath, waiting for Ryan's reaction. He just stared, making my ears and face warm. Maybe they
are
bedroom eyes, I thought.

“That's pretty deep,” he said finally.

I shrugged. “I'm not perverse or anything. Really. And I promise I won't do it again if you …”

Ryan held up his hand. “I'm not going to tell my dad. But seriously, Cassie, you can't do that … spy on the wake. You would have scared the crap out of my dad or Mr. Ludwig if they came through there. What if they yelled? How do you think the family would have felt?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ryan walked closer, stopping by the counter perpendicular to mine. He wasn't tall but he looked strong, his body lean, like a mountain biker or rock climber, with solid, tanned arms, even in winter. “So what have you learned so far?”

“Excuse me?” I was still thinking about his arms.

“In your studies here,” Ryan said, his gaze direct and amused. “What have you learned?”

“Well …” I thought for a few seconds. “I've learned that the body is just a body.” I met his eyes, feeling like I needed to prove something. “A vessel. People look different when they're dead. No matter how well Mr. Ludwig sets the features or Victoria does the makeup, it's never quite right because the thing that animates them is missing,” I said. “The soul or essence or whatever.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows, looking at me speculatively. “Maybe … but you know Mr. Ludwig and Victoria work from the outside, not in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about the stuff we do: using cotton to make the earlobes hang right and the cheeks look round, molding the lips to the right fullness and width,” Ryan said. “We can use pictures and the body's clues—like where the lips change texture and color—to set the features, but we can't replicate the body's quirks. When people are alive, their brain directs muscles to work a certain way and produce a certain look.”

“Huh.” That had never occurred to me. I spoke slowly, considering it. “So you think the difference in how they look is totally anatomical and not about the soul leaving the body?”

“It's possible. They might look different for very basic, scientific reasons,” Ryan answered, deftly hoisting himself up to sit on the counter. “Have you learned anything else?”

I was still leaning and probably too short to do what Ryan had done with any grace, so I stayed put. “I've learned that very few people are ready for death. Except maybe the very old or sick,” I added, thinking of the man on the bench in Chicago.

Ryan nodded.

“What I've been thinking about a lot lately is the people left behind,” I told him. “I mean, what we do here is really about them, right?”

“Of course. Undertaking is for the living,” Ryan answered. “We help them say good-bye.”

Something about the way he said it made me look at him more carefully, feeling like we'd moved beyond intellectual sparring to a place more personal. “Have you ever lost anyone close to you?” I asked softly. The question was both too forward and anticipated. I could read the answer on his face even before I asked it.

Ryan nodded. “My mom.” He said it without averting his eyes or trying to hide the shadow that passed over them. “She died when I was eleven. Cancer. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with.”

I nodded.

“I know you've been through it, too,” he said. “I'm sure you understand.”

“I do.” We were silent for a moment and I thought, this isn't how I'd pegged Ryan at all. Maybe I should have. I don't think you can be in this business without a great deal of sensitivity. “I wonder about them,” I said finally. “My parents, my grandmother.” Mr. McKenzie who got hit by a car, the girl who jumped in New York, Walter Ness. All the people whose deaths I'd had a hand in. “What do you think happens to people when they die?”

Ryan hesitated and I waited for another complex answer, but a voice in the hall surprised us both. Mr. Ludwig. I held my breath, sure he'd come in, but he passed by, probably for supplies that Ryan or I should have been refilling. When I looked back at Ryan I saw him exhale, then look at his watch. “Jury's still out,” he said, pushing off the counter. He landed gracefully on the floor, and I imagined that whatever sport Ryan was into, he was probably very good at it. “We should go,” he said. “This”—he gestured toward the chapel, then back to where we stood—“is between us. Not to worry. But be careful.”

Then he left, the door shushing closed behind him.

I stayed in the prep room a few more minutes, collecting myself and wondering why I'd never really noticed Ryan before. Of course, I knew he was around, spoke to him almost every shift, but I'd never really
noticed
him.

I wondered what he thought of me.

One thing was certain: Ryan was right, it wasn't smart to snoop around at the wakes. I'd have to find another, less risky way, though I felt like for once I was close to hearing something useful. I was frustrated that I missed the end of what that woman Betty or Carmen had been talking about. Robert Killiam's research. I'd never know what it was; I'd already searched high and low on the Internet. There was nothing there.

I went back to the break room, trying to study for real this time, but I was preoccupied with things that chemistry and calc couldn't begin to eclipse. Ryan. The stuff we'd talked about. The way he'd felt so close to me.

I couldn't put my finger on exactly why, but it had pierced the layers of busyness I'd tried to wrap myself in, bringing back memories of Jack and all the things I was trying to forget. Or at least ignore, for now. Like the day he found me by my locker soon after I'd come home from Kansas.

“Walk you home?”

He'd startled me and I jumped a little, my heart racing as it registered that it was him. Jack. I turned, holding tightly to the books I'd pulled from my locker, and found him watching me, his head tipped slightly to the side, smiling.

“Sure.” I leaned back into my locker. “Let me just get my stuff together.”

We left school, walking side by side down the wide cement steps. It was my third day back in Ashville and I was still feeling like my old life had broken in half and been haphazardly glued back together. Even things that shouldn't have changed
had
—my walk to school, my friendship with Tasha, the places I liked to go. They were all colored by what had happened and what I'd learned that summer.

I felt especially awkward with Jack because I'd been thinking about him too much. For months. I'd replayed the day I ran into him in Kansas so often—the way he called to me in the park, looked at me, told me he'd broken up with his girlfriend—holding on to it like some kind of desperate touchstone so that now, back in Pennsylvania, I worried that I'd blown it all out of proportion, read things into it that weren't there.

“Tell me about your summer in Kansas,” he said, smiling down at me as we started toward my apartment. “Did you like it out there?”

“Not at first,” I said, still unsteady, unnatural, though I'd walked beside him, seen his smile and those brown eyes a hundred times. “My aunt just kind of dumped me off at her apartment. I didn't know anyone …” I paused, thinking about how bored I'd been. “I moped around for a while, kind of hating it. Then I decided to get a job.”

“Oh yeah? Where'd you work?”

I told him about the coffee shop and the people there, feeling more and more like myself, talking to the Jack I'd always known as we walked. He asked me about the town and we swapped stories about how the Midwest was different, pausing only when we reached my apartment.

I hesitated, thinking about asking him in, but knowing that even I didn't want to be there, in that half-packed apartment.

“Do you have to go?” he asked.

“No.” I smiled, relieved. “Definitely not.”

He smiled back and we continued down the block in a comfortable silence, leaving my building behind.

“Soooo,” he finally drawled, teasing. “Is that where you met your boyfriend? At work?”

Immediately any ease I'd felt evaporated. I sensed Jack looking at me but couldn't meet his eyes.

“No,” I said, watching my feet scuff along the sidewalk. “We met in a class I took at Lennox U.”

I flushed at the idea that Jack knew about Lucas. He couldn't know what had happened between us, but
I
did and somehow, being here with Jack now made all of that seem so wrong.

“Ooh, a
college
guy.” Jack was still teasing, but it sounded a little forced. “I thought he looked older.”

I didn't answer, wishing I could say it was nothing, but that would be a lie. And I didn't want to lie to Jack. “We broke up,” I said finally. “Before I left.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks,” I told him, finally looking up. “But I'm not.”

He held my gaze for an extra beat and I could feel something pass between us. Jack smiled a little but didn't answer.

We were in the preserve by then; leafy trees, still fully green, shading the path. I thought he might ask more about Lucas or the class, but he didn't and I was glad. Instead, Jack told me about his visits to the Midwest, the schools that he'd seen, until he stopped near a clearing, watching me with an expectant smile.

“Do you know where you are?”

The leaves of the Japanese maple towering over us were just starting to turn purple at their edges. In another month they'd be bright orange, and when you were up in the tree, the sun filtering through them as it sank low in the sky made it feel like you were inside the sunset. “Of course,” I told him, shielding my eyes to search the branches.

“It's gone,” he said.

I looked at him, eyes wide, surprised how sharp my disappointment was.

Jack smiled gently. “I felt the same way. Even climbed up to be sure.”

I squinted back up into the tree like he might be wrong and the old wooden platform that we'd used as a fort would be there, waiting for us. It had been ancient when we'd found it, leftover from when the preserve had been private land. We were nine that summer.

I looked back at him and shrugged as if it didn't matter. “Bummer.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, circling to the other side of the tree.

“I wonder how long it's been gone,” I said. “I don't think I've been back here since I was ten or eleven.” The summer after Jack had moved across town.

“You came without me?” Jack raised his eyebrows in mock disapproval.

“Not much,” I said honestly, thinking how dull it had been sitting up there without Jack to play chess or pirates or I Spy with. “It wasn't the same.”

He nodded, swinging our bookbags to the ground and sitting on the big flat rock a few feet away. I walked over to join him.

We were quiet for a minute, then he said, “That's how I felt this summer, you know.”

I looked at him and he flashed me a small smile before looking back at our tree.

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn't the same with you gone,” Jack said.

My breath caught. I wanted so much to believe it, but Jack and I hadn't been close since the summer we found the fort. Eight years ago. I told him that.

“I know. But …” He looked over at me, serious and a little uncertain. “I've always felt … I don't know, still … connected?” He gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “That probably doesn't make any sense.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It does.”

He scratched at the rock as he spoke, his voice soft but steady. “At first I didn't even realize you'd left. It sounds terrible. I mean, what kind of friend am I or how much connection can there be if I don't even know you're gone, right?” He glanced up and I shrugged, thinking that's exactly what I'd expected. That he wouldn't even notice. “But one day I realized that I kept looking for you,” Jack continued. “In the stands at games, at parties, at the pool. I don't think I knew it before, but it was something I'd always done. Just kind of … keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were around.” He glanced down at his hands, absently rubbing at a finger, then back up at me. “I always felt better when you were.”

It was my turn to look down, a little overwhelmed by Jack's description of things I'd always felt and done myself, never imagining he might be doing them too.

“When it hit me that you just … weren't here, I couldn't believe it. Even after Tasha told me what happened. I went by your apartment, eventually found myself here.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “I'm not even sure how to describe how I felt … sad is the closest, I guess. Like things weren't quite right. Like …” He hesitated, searching my face, holding my eyes as he said, “Like I missed out on something important.”

I couldn't speak, feeling such a rush of hope and happiness and fear all together.

“And then I saw you in Kansas. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? And you were with a guy. Your boyfriend. And I …” Jack took a deep breath. “I tried to be cool and everything, but I realized that all this time I've kept track of you not just because we were friends, but because deep down, I thought someday we'd be more. I realized I
wanted
us to be more. And it hit me that you might go away. Like you did.” He was watching me. “Or find someone else. Like you did. It hit me that I might have already missed my chance.”