Touching the Surface (24 page)

He hopped to his feet and gave Oliver a look that very nicely asked him to scram. Oliver leaned in my direction. “Just remember, you picked him.” His voice was playful and he ruffled my hair as he stood up and moved over to Mel. I leaned back, ready to settle back against the tire well when—
whoosh
—Trevor grabbed me up onto his lap, tucking my head beneath his chin, arms wrapped around me tight.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean it that way, I swear. I tried to picture saying good-bye to you for good. I couldn’t believe that it might be possible for me to die when I was already dead.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. It would have been excruciating.

Trevor continued when he felt me relax in his arms. “So I had my truck and I had my destination, and I just needed a way to get from point A to point B. I figured if leaping off a cliff worked to go back in time, maybe it would push me forward into hell.”

“So I got in the car and started driving. There was only about a driveway’s length of road in front of me at any given time and when I checked the rearview mirror, the trees fell back into place, erasing where I’d just been. It was kind of weird, because I couldn’t
see
where I was going. All I could do was picture where I wanted to be. I definitely didn’t want it to be on our cliff—that place had become special. So I created the waterfall.”

I sucked in my breath. “Did it hurt to hit the rocks?” I tried to block out the hideous images, but my imagination ratcheted everything up another couple degrees. “You’re reckless!” I spat, jumping out of his arms so I could see him better.

“Shhhhhhh—it didn’t really hurt. It was kind of like taking a metal crowbar to a light post. It was a very intense vibration. I also made sure to start thinking about healing myself on the way down. I anticipated,” he said sheepishly.

“I went over the cliff fourteen times, but I only would have had to do it once if I was paying attention. I hadn’t realized that I’d landed straight in the middle of hell on my first launch.”

“Please explain,” Mel asked quietly.

“Well, the first time I sped off the cliff, I reflexively closed my eyes. I didn’t open them again until the vibrations had settled down. I realized I wasn’t knocked into a Delve, so I just
floated there for a while. Down in the depths below Sally, there were bubbles and a deep iridescent blue glow. It reminded me of what it felt like to die and come to the Obmil through the lake. My mind was made up. I was going to see it through. I was determined to find my way to hell. So I kicked my feet and headed downward.”

“I can’t stand this, Trevor, spit it out! Was it hell? If it was, why didn’t you know it was hell the first thirteen times you were down there?” I asked.

“Every single time I came close to reaching the light in the depths of the lake, I couldn’t quite make it. I didn’t need to worry about running out of breath, so I strained against this force, a gravitational pull toward the surface that wouldn’t let me get too close. I swam down with everything I had and that’s when I saw it.”

I held my breath, imagining a zillion different things. “What did you see?” I asked in a whisper.

“It was you.”

My head began to spin. Me? It couldn’t have been me. I’d been with Mel the whole time.

“As I moved closer to the blue light and the bubbles, I could see you floating in the water. I don’t remember what you looked like when you fell from the cliff and died. Everything happened so fast. Yet somehow, I knew without a doubt, that
you must have looked like this. Your hair was seaweed dancing in the river current.

“I went after you. I struggled and came close enough to almost reach you, and then you reached for me, as if you had something so important to say. I yelled out in frustration, unable to understand, and then—
BAM!
—I was transported out of the lake. I found myself standing back up on the cliff, right in my truck, as if it had never happened. I was insane the first time. Nothing was going to make me leave you, so I jumped back in my truck, revved the engine and did it all over again.”

“Fourteen times}je before,” I said.

“Yeah, fourteen times, but it probably would have been more if Oliver hadn’t shown up.” He stared across the truck bed, his face lit with adoration for his younger brother.

My arms got goose bumps.

“I materialized back on the ledge after try number seven and there was Oliver standing next to my truck. If you thought that I was an ass to him earlier, you should have seen me then. I was hell-bent, literally, and he wouldn’t get out of the way until I told him what I was doing. I wasn’t very polite about my irritation.

“When being mean didn’t get him to budge—I lied. I told him I wasn’t going to drive off again,” Trevor saicould burn. I

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rubber
band

“What the hell?” Trevor barked at me. He was finally his brother’s keeper.

I held my ground. This I needed to know. I needed to understand why Oliver had compounded my wrong, making everything so unbearable. What purpose had it served?

Oliver grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me so that I had to see his face. I fought the ugly urge to push him away.

“It wasn’t fun.” Oliver’s hands trembled where they gripped my shoulders. “It hurt bad, not the being killed, but the leaving people I loved.”

Trevor punched Sally with enough force to make me cringe, but I stayed focused on Oliver. “Then why did you do it?”

“I did it because you needed me to, Elliot. Your soul didn’t
believe in itself after its first two visits at the Obmil. That”—he glanced back at Trevor—“what did you call it earlier? God-damn-stupid-big-superhero heart of mine? It’s who I had to be. You picked me to be your Passenger and we made promises.” Tears ran down his face. “I promised to help you grow.”

We were both sobbing now.

“You were so young. You had everything going for you.” My moan was guttural. “How could I make such an amazing person die?”

“Perhaps I was only amazing because you gave me the opportunity to be. Maybe I was only a superstar because of you. Perhaps I died so young because you loved me, Elliot.” He grabbed my face between his palms. “You told me, right before we jumped streams at the Basin, that you didn’t want me wasting a whole life on you. You knew that when I finished being your Passenger, I could start a new growth plan for my own soul. You made me promise not to drag it out because you loved me too.”

I pulled him fiercely to me. In an unromantic way, he was a perfect match for me.

•  •  •

Somehow the four of us shook off the weighty emotions to be your Passengerat, changed my mind and settled back into Trevor’s story.

“So we hit the water with no problem.” Trevor and Oliver
glanced conspiratorially at each other and then looked at me to gauge my reaction. I purposely yawned.

“Just like before, everything cleared, and the bubbling blue light glowed beneath me. I grabbed Oliver’s hand and we started to swim to the place I’d last seen you.”

“Can I interrupt you for a minute, Trevor? I have a question.” Mel waited for Trevor’s nod. “The Elliot floating in the water—was she alive or was she dead?”

“I think she was dead. That’s why it freaked me out so much when she reached for me, like she was trying to communicate.” Trevor touched my arm, as if to make sure I was still really there.

“Like I expected, you were floating where I’d left you the first thirteen times. I pulled Oliver with me to try to get to you. I thought that maybe with the two of us, we would be strong enough to get you out, to rescue you.” I heard the catch in his voice.

“So, what happened?” I felt oddly disconnected from my racing heart.

“Oliver got one glimpse of you and hightailed it out of there. He was like an Olympic swimmer.”

“Finally, a male with some sense,” I mumbled under my breath. “What did you do?”

“I was disappointed,” he said, “but I went after Oliver.”

The expression on his face told the deeper truth . . . it had been so much more than disappointment.

“The moment I made the move to follow Oliver, we both materialized back up on the ledge. Sally was no worse for wear again so . . .”

“So you would have gone right back out again.” Mel tsked and Trevor had the grace to look embarrassed. “Isn’t there a famous quote about insanity?”

“I know, I know, the one about doing the same thing over and over and believing you’ll get a different result. Oh, trust me, Mel, it’s a harder lesson to learn when it’s pointed out to you by your younger brother.”

“So, what changed?” I said.

“Oliver told me it wasn’t you. He was right, of course. When I checked, there you were, standing right in front of me. The moment I saw you alive and right there, something jiggled loose in my brain and everything made sense.”

“Wish it made sense to me,” I said grumpily.

“There is no hell or heaven.”

I heard Mel suck in her breath.

“Not in the traditional sense anyway,” Trevor said quickly. “There’s no destination hell, no location for heaven. There’s life and afterlife, which translates into—just more life.” His head bobbed as if he had made perfect sense. And in a way, he had.

It was weird, the idea seemed so logical—a complete no-brainer. I found it hard to believe that it had eluded me for so long.

“You’d created your own hell down there in the water.”

Trevor nodded.

“You could have stayed there an eternity, punishing yourself.”

“I almost did,” he said softly, glancing at Workshop this morningwhibI his brother.

“So, you’re telling me that the worst punishment that you could come up with was . . .”

“The most awful thing I could imagine was being unable to reach you.”

I breathed in the moment, memorizing it so I would know how to find it again. I hadn’t known heaven would feel like this.

What was happening between us was so much more than just touching the surface.

“Oliver, I could use an escort back to the Haven,” Mel announced. “Do you think you could come with me? I have a few people I need to talk to.” Oliver tucked her fingers into the crook of his arm. Together they headed down the path.

Trevor grabbed my hand and pulled me toward Sally’s cab.

We reached the passenger-side door.

“Julia’s gone,” I blurted out. He didn’t say anything.

I waited, everything inside me on pause.

“I’ll miss her,” he said. “We had a connection.”

“A connection?”

“You.”

I felt overexposed. I turned around to give myself a moment to think.

“Oh, I forgot,” he said.

I pulled the handle of the truck, but it wouldn’t budge. His hand was propped up against the top of the door.

“Forgot what?” I asked, turning my back to the sun-warmed metal.

Trevor leaned in closer and whispered in my ear. “I forgot how worked up you get about kissing.” From the look in his eye, he hadn’t forgotten any such thing. “You want me to kiss you.” He twirled a strand of my hair around his fingertip and said, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been to heaven, I just didn’t know I was there before. There were moments in my last life and in this one that would qualify. I’ve loved you in both worlds, but it doesn’t really count if you don’t know it’s heaven, does it?”

I knew exactly what he meant. All the different times in my last life, and here at the Obmil, that I would have considered myself to be in heaven—if I’d only looked at things that way. It was the moments of learning to trust and love Trevor, but not only those: hanging out with Oliver, being hugged by Mel,
having a best friend in Julia, wearing Freddie’s scented flannel. They were bits and pieces of heaven too. Even the night that I starred in the school play was a moment of heavenly bliss. How strange that it was so quickly followed by a complete immersion into hell. Maybe life was designed to be a seesaw, back and forth.

“Trevor?” I glanced up quickly, forgetting how close he was. The top of my head smashed into his nose.

“Damn it, Elliot, do you ever make kissing easy?” he said, cupping his nose.

“Maybe you should learn not to be such a tease and get to it a little quicker,” I shot back.

“So, I’ve got to get to the kissing before you start thinking too hard about something else?”

“Something like that,” I said, reaching to check his nose. He winced.

“You’ll heal in a minute,” I said with a smirk.

“You’re impossible,” he groaned. “What have you got for me?” He w to be your PassengerI couldhibI inced again, but I could tell he was faking it, searching for sympathy points. If he could recover quickly from numerous truck dives, I doubted the top of my head would do any lasting damage.

“Heaven and hell, a state of mind? Is that what we’re agreeing to?” I asked, getting serious again.

“That’s the word floating around the cosmos,” Trevor said.

“It makes sense, when you think about it,” I said, “but what happens when you’re not thinking about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“A life experience is designed to help a soul grow, to learn. It’set away.

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