“Are you for real?” I could still make out the shape of the stairs through his gauzy form, but the tissue in my hand was solid. I wiped at my nose with it and handed it back to him. “I mean, are you really here, or am I imaging you?”
His half-grin stretched into a full-wattage smile, and he walked back down the steps until there was only an inch of space between us. The sky matched his eyes, bright and blue. I was afraid to touch him—afraid that if I did the weird shit would happen again. I’d had enough weird shit happen in the last few hours to last a lifetime, but he was so close. So, so close. I could see the slight hint of fuzz around the edge of his jaw and the tiny dusting of freckles on the bridge of his nose.
“I want you to be real,” I said to him.
He nodded and placed his hands on my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of his hands against my skin. It made my stomach erupt into a full-blown gymnastics routine.
Nothing strange happened when he touched me. The stairs didn’t swallow me up and spit me out someplace else. There was only the feeling of his hands on my shoulders, solid and wonderful.
He leaned into me, his eyes softly closing. I closed my eyes, too, and waited for our lips to meet while my heart skittered nervously inside my chest. When there was no kiss, I opened my eyes. Then I let out a strangled yelp.
Justin was gone. In his place was my boyfriend, Logan.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NOT SO GRATEFUL DEAD
Logan’s hands were on my shoulders, their heat curdling my blood into sour milk. He shook his shaggy hair from his eyes and looked down at me. His mouth twitched impatiently.
“What?” I asked after a few beats of silence. “What do you want?”
There was no sound, but his chest rose and fell in a silent harrumph. He lifted one hand from my shoulder and ran his thumb slowly along the length of my jaw.
It made my skin crawl.
He turned his back to me and looked out at the expanse of steps before us. I watched with him, not because I wanted to see what he was seeing, but because I had no choice but to stare straight ahead.
He pointed to something off in the distance, reaching a long finger toward the top of the staircase. Then he quickly swiped it down in a straight line, as though his finger were the edge of a blade.
For a moment, the blue and gray of the stairs and the sky stood still. Then all at once the image split into two halves, opening like a curtain to reveal a perfect square of gaping, horrible blackness.
It was a window into nothing, so dark I doubted stars could survive. Beside it, the image of the staircase flapped fabric-like in a breeze I could not feel, and a horrible sucking sound cracked the air as the canvas of my previous setting slapped against the side of the opening. It sounded like a wet towel clapping against a tile wall.
“What is that?” I asked, a shiver running up the back of my spine.
Logan didn’t answer.
Beneath me nothing had changed—my feet were firm on the stone steps—but in front of me was a window of night, curtained by the image of everything that had once stretched out before me.
“What is it?” I asked again, but I didn’t really want to know the answer. It couldn’t be good. Nothing that dark and empty could be good.
Logan turned to face me, a proud smile warming his face. Then his hands were on my shoulders again, and he pushed me forward toward the blackness.
“Please, no,” I cried, shoving my arms in front of me to block out whatever was on the other side of the blackened window.
I tipped forward until all I could see was an inky sky. My ears clanged with the horrible sucking sound as the black square tried to pull me into it. No, tried to breathe me into it.
Logan’s palms pressed harder on my back, and just before he gave me a final shove he whispered.
“Remember … ”
And then I tumbled forward into the dark hole he’d cut into the stairway. The air was wet and thick, tangling my ponytail behind me. I felt like I was falling into the sticky dampness of someone’s breath. There was no color. No light. Only blackness, and everywhere there was the slap, slap, slap sound of a wet towel hitting a wall.
My feet hit something hard, the impact rattling my spine.
Then silence.
I could feel the solid comfort of the ground beneath me, and my heels registered the soft tickle of grass.
Where am I?
It was the last thing I thought before my memory blackened and I lost hold of everything that had happened moments before.
*
“I don’t understand why we have to go watch some lame-ass cover band so you can shake your boobs in front of some guy,” Sunny said, an unlit cigarette perched between her freshly glossed lips.
“He’s not just some guy.” I frowned as I cupped a hand around Sunny’s lighter, helping her to fend off the wind that kept blowing out the flame. “And it’s the perfect chance for me to finally catch him outside of school.”
We were several blocks away from my house, hiding in an alley in case my mom drove by. I stepped back from the cloud of smoke Sunny exhaled in my direction, hoping to minimize the contact with my clothes. If my mom noticed the smell that usually followed me home from school she didn’t comment, but that didn’t mean I wanted to intentionally rub her nose in it.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Taylor, but did you ever consider the fact that maybe he’s not interested in you? I mean, you see the guy every day, and if he hasn’t bitten by now, well … ”
She opened her mouth and let out several quick circles of smoke, the rings floating upward like tiny life preservers until they melted into the rest of the afternoon air.