He stood in the hospital, numb as if his entire body had been submerged in ice, surrounded by friends and Zach’s family when the doctor came out and broke their entire world apart. Bleeding in the brain, the doctor said. A rupture. A fissure. Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Brain damage.
Brain damage.
Brain damage.
Cameron said, “But you can help him, right? You can fix him, right? You can make him better, right?” He screamed and screamed, hands on his shoulders, hands on his arms, holding him, keeping him from lunging at the doctor, who backed away slowly.
They took Zach into surgery immediately.
He died on the operating table.
Cameron wore his finest suit to the funeral.
He made sure Zach had the same.
A choir sang a hymn of light and wonder, of God and His divine plan, and Wallace screamed in his head, but not as himself. As Cameron, shrieking silently for this all to be a dream, that it couldn’t be real. Wake up! Cameron bellowed in his head. Please, wake up!
The priest spoke of pain and grief, that we can never understand why someone so full of life could be taken so soon, but that God never gave us more than what he thought we could handle.
Everyone cried.
Cameron didn’t.
Oh, he tried. He tried to force the tears, tried to force himself to feel anything but the numbing, encroaching cold.
The casket was open.
He couldn’t look at the body that lay inside.
“Are you sure?” a friend asked him. “Don’t you want to go say goodbye before…” Her words cut off in a wet choke.
Cameron stood next to a hole in the ground as the same priest droned on and on about God and His plans and the mysterious, unknowing world. He watched as Zach was lowered into that hole, and still he felt nothing but cold. It was all he knew, and no matter what Wallace did, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t chase the cold away.
People stayed the night with him. For weeks on end, he wasn’t alone.
They said, “Cameron, you need to eat.”
They said, “Cameron, you need to shower.”
They said, “Cameron, let’s go outside, huh? Get you some fresh air.”
And finally, they said, “You sure you’re going to be all right by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine,” he told them. “I’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t.
He lasted four months.
Four months of haunting their home, moving from room to room, calling out for Zach, saying, “We were going to do so many things. You promised me!”
And still the tears didn’t come.
He was cold all the time.
There were days when he didn’t get out of bed, days when he didn’t have the strength to do anything but roll over, pulling the comforter over his head, chasing the scents of Zach, who smelled like woodsmoke and earth and trees, so many trees.
Toward the end, his friends came back. “We’re worried about you,” they said. “We need to make sure you’re going to be okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” he told them. “I’ll be fine.”
On the last day, he woke up.
On the last day, he ate a bowl of cereal. He washed the bowl and spoon in the sink before putting them away.
On the last day, he wandered around the house, but he didn’t speak.
On the last day, he gave up.
It didn’t hurt, really.
The end.
He was only numb.
And then he was gone.
Except he wasn’t, was he?
No.
Because he stood above himself, watching his lifeblood spill from him, and he said, “Oh. This is Hell.”
And he was still alone.
Until a man came. He called himself a Reaper. He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. There was a curl to his lips that wasn’t kind.
“I’ll take you away,” the Reaper said. “It’ll all make sense, I promise. Even though you gave your life away like it was nothing, I’ll take care of you.”
He stood in front of a tea shop at dusk, looking at a sign in the window.
CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE EVENT
Hugo waited for him inside. He offered Cameron tea.
Cameron refused.
“I’m sorry,” Hugo told him. “For all that you’ve lost.”
The Reaper snorted. “He did it on his own.”
And it was like poison in Cameron’s ears.
There was a door, he knew, but he didn’t trust it. The Reaper had told him that it could lead to just about anywhere. He didn’t know. Hugo didn’t know. No one did. “It could be just endless darkness,” the Reaper mused late at night while Hugo slept. “It could be just nothing at all.”
Cameron fled the tea shop.
His skin flaked away.
The cable snapped and disappeared.
The hook in his chest dissolved.
He made it to the town before he fell to his knees in the middle of the road.
His last lucid thought was of Zach, and how he smiled like the sun, and Wallace knew his desire to feel the same hadn’t only come from himself. It was the last, forceful gasp of the man whose mind he now shared, the sun the last thing he’d held onto before the end of his humanity.
And here, now, Wallace said, “It isn’t fair. None of it is.”
“Help me,” Cameron said.
Wallace looked down as his chest burned as if on fire.
A curve of metal stuck out from his sternum. The end was attached to the thick, glowing cable that stretched toward Hugo. A connection, a tether, a lifeline between the living and the dead, keeping them from floating away into nothing.
Wallace reached for the hook, hesitating briefly. “I see it now. It’s not always about the things you’ve done, or the mistakes you’ve made. It’s about the people, and what we’re willing to do for one another. The sacrifices we make. They taught me that. Here, in this place.”
“Please,” Cameron whispered. “I don’t want to be lost anymore.”
“Unexpect it,” Wallace said.
He gripped the hook, the metal hot against his palms and fingers, but it didn’t burn. He pulled as hard as he could, the pain immense, causing him to grit his teeth together. Tears flooded his eyes, and he cried out as the hook came free. The heaviness loosened its grip, a wave of relief washing over him that felt like the sun and the stars.
He raised the hook above his head.
And slammed it into Cameron’s chest.
* * *
His eyes flashed open when his head rocked to the side from a vicious slap. “Ow! What the hell?”
He blinked as Mei glared down at him. They were in the tea shop, Wallace looking up from the floor. “You bastard,” Mei snapped at him. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
He rubbed the side of his face, cheek still stinging as he sat up. “What are you…” His eyes bulged. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah, you dick. Oh shit is right. Do you have any idea what you’ve—”
“Did it work?” he asked desperately. “Did it work?”
She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Look for yourself.” She reached down, grabbing his arm and pulling him up from the floor. He yelped in surprise when he shot up, feet leaving the ground as if he weighed nothing. With wide eyes, he looked down. He gasped when he saw himself floating a few inches above the floor. He waved his arms up, trying to push himself down. It didn’t work. Mei glared at him as he tried again. “Yeah, that’s your own fault. You’re lucky we still had Apollo’s leash or you’d be gone by now.” She pointed at his ankle. Wrapped around him was a dog leash. He followed the leash until he saw Nelson holding the other end.