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“I’m a hopeless romantic. A book nerd. I’m outspoken when someone does something stupid, and I’ve dragged Rocki on quite a few adventures. Some of them were fun, some were a waste of time. Telling you these things just gives you the facts. It doesn’t let you feel or truly know me. So this project, it’ll be my legacy for you both. One final adventure, from beyond the grave, and you two will live it out for me, okay?”
Sunny looks up at her and she rests a thin hand on top of his head. “I don’t know how the afterlife works, but I’ll try to be there with you guys every step of the way.”
She blinks rapidly and then looks right at me again, her eyes red with tears that I never saw in real life. “This is important to me, Elijah. I can’t change the past, but maybe I can change the future. Your future. I know I promised to help you and then I died, but don’t give up on your dreams, brother. Raquel knows all about college. She can help you finish what we started.”
Just when I think she’s finished talking, she says, “I’m not even dead yet, and I miss you so much, Rocki. You were the best friend a person could ever have, and I love you so much.” Her voice cracks on the last word. She drops her head into her hands and sobs, the racking sound matching my own here in the real world.
Elijah slides his arm tighter around my shoulder, reminding me that he’s here. Sasha sits back up, wipes her eyes and tries to smile. This raw moment of weakness feels so foreign coming from Sasha. She was always so strong, so freaking jubilant while we were all losing our minds with worry. I figured she was faking it, and now I know she was. On screen, she tries to smile. “I love you both. And remember: Don’t. Tell. Anyone.”
She blinks a few times, then reaches toward the camera. And the video ends.
Chapter Seven
It’s not a big deal that Zack ignores me all weekend. I have monumental things going on, like the fact that my best friend has a secret biological brother, and that at any moment, I might hear from her again. The mind-blowing factor of these two things is so high it’s off the Richter scale. I can barely function all weekend, much less worry about Zack and how pissed he was that I canceled our movie date.
It was worth it.
So worth it.
So why do I get a pang of something like jealousy when I see his Instagram feed filled with pictures of him and other girls at some stupid party on Saturday night?
I should close the app — hell, I should delete the app — and go on with my life. I am now a girl with a massive secret. An exciting, life-altering secret.
But because I’m also an idiot, I scroll through the stupid photos, the #partypeeps, #bonfire, #hotgirls photos. Ugh.
Most of the photos could be explained away as your typical party stupidity. It’s not like Zack is lip-locked with any of the girls from school; most of them are just arms around shoulders, red plastic cups tipped to their lips, typical party poses meant to make your social media profiles look cool.
But still.
I skim through some of the comments, cringing when Ansley Whittaker says: Damn, last night was insane. You can out-drink all of us.
Beneath it, Zack has replied: you know it babe with a wink-face emoji.
Babe is what he calls me, his on-again, off-again girlfriend. Seeing it used for another girl is the knife that severs our relationship. There’s no way Zack and I will ever get back together, not after how careless he’s been about Sasha dying. This is a breakup, there’s no doubt about it. Probably the tenth time we’ve ended this relationship. I should be hurting, crying, ripping up the photo of us from sophomore year that’s taped to my vanity mirror.
Instead I’m just … free.
It hurts, it does, but there are bigger things in the world. There is a full life ahead of me, one that Sasha wanted me to live without a guy like Zack, who would only hold me back. So instead of crying over my ruined relationship, I spend almost all of Sunday night lying awake in bed, feeling giddy and nervous and other things I can’t decipher.
By Monday morning, even Mom thinks something’s off, but I dismiss her worries by claiming that I’m still bummed over missing Sasha. It makes me feel awful, using her death as an excuse to conceal secrets and lies from my parents, but Sasha is the one who put me here in the first place.
Don’t tell anyone.
Why? I’ve played the scenario over in my head a million times. Mr. and Mrs. Cade, Sasha had a biological brother
and they reconnected right before she died. Wouldn’t they be happy about this? Surely they would. I just have to trust that Sasha knows what she’s doing.
Knew, I remind myself. She knew what she was doing. Elijah let me make a copy of the video on my computer, and I’ve played it more times than I checked Instagram this weekend. Seeing her alive and joyful in the video makes my heart sing. With the promise of more from her in the coming days and weeks, I can almost pretend she’s not dead at all. That maybe she’s holed up in some hotel room, sending Elijah and me on an adventure while she watches from the sidelines.
Seeing her face never fails to make me smile. I study the computer screen, memorizing the way her eyes sparkle when she smiles, the slight quirk of her eyebrow as she’s talking about something that makes her really excited. Why didn’t we make more home movies when she was alive? My phone is filled with photos of us: goofy, serious, trying fancy hairstyles on each other, but there are hardly any videos.
My greatest fear is that I’ll start to forget the lilt in her voice, the way she crinkled her nose every time she took a sip of coffee because she actually thought it was gross but loved the coffee buzz. The way she’d hold a throw pillow close to her chest, biting her bottom lip while we watched the good part in a romantic movie.
I couldn’t live with myself if I forgot those things. Monday after school, I rush through my pre-cal homework, then I power up my computer and watch the video again.
***
Zack doesn’t talk to me on Monday or Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning, the anxiety that he might find me in the hallways doesn’t even bother to manifest anymore. Zack seems like old news now, since I spend every waking second either missing Sasha or checking my email and the mailbox, hoping to get another message from her. I mourn, I obsess.
