Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

I blinked into the empty quad and sat at the picnic table Em and I had shared with Nash and Sabine until the week I’d died, and since no one was watching, I concentrated on pulling myself onto the physical plane right there in the open. Then I munched on fries from my bag until the bell rang.

Unfortunately, I’d failed to factor my new infamy into my lunch plans.

The first few people who entered the quad with lunch trays glanced at me, then sat at their own tables and stared while they ate. The gawking wasn’t polite, but it wasn’t truly invasive, either, so I could deal. Then the quad started to fill up and more people stared, upping the ante with a little obvious gossip. But before long, people I actually had classes with—the ones who’d known who I was before Beck stabbed me—started asking if they could join me.

Most of them sat without waiting for an answer.

To their credit, they were outwardly polite. Most asked how I was feeling and several offered to help with my makeup work. One idiot even asked me to the prom. I could only stutter in response.

When my table filled up before Em and Jayson arrived, I started to panic again. I was sick of questions, and stares, and friends who hadn’t been my friends before. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I just wanted to disappear.

And as soon as I had that thought, it started to happen. I could feel it—I could feel myself slipping out of the physical plane—and it took all of my concentration to remain visible. I propped my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands, chanting to myself silently.

I want to be here. I want to be here. Iwanttobehere. But that wasn’t true, and it didn’t help.

Unfortunately, the rest of the table mistook my concentration for pain and everyone started asking me if I was okay. If there was something they could get me. Someone even tried to pull my hands away from my face to make sure I was still conscious. Evidently I’d stopped breathing.

“All right, back the hell off!” a familiar voice shouted as I jerked my arm free from whoever’d pulled it. I looked up to see Sabine staring down the boldest of my new “friends.” I knew by the almost liquid depths of her black, black eyes that she was unleashing their own fears on them, literally scaring them away.

Sabine was a Nightmare. For real. Though the politically correct term was mara, the old-fashioned one fit better, in my opinion. She could read people’s fears and weave nightmares from them, then feed from her victims in their sleep.

Creepy? Yeah. Especially when she’d tried to use her mara abilities and appetite to scare me away from Nash. But in that moment, in the quad, I was more than grateful for the rescue from someone I’d considered my nemesis a few short months earlier.

“Thanks,” I said when the last of the vultures was gone, and when I looked up again, Nash stood behind Sabine. Watching me. It killed me that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, though I completely understood why he would control the telltale swirling in his irises around me now.

“Bastards have no self-respect,” Sabine muttered as the last of the crowd dissipated. “Even I don’t feed off the weak or the injured.”

I decided not to waste my breath telling her I was neither weak nor injured—physically, anyway. “Will you stay and eat with me?” I asked, glancing from Sabine to Nash, who closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then met my gaze again. “I brought burgers.”

Free food was usually enough to tempt Sabine, but Nash was another story.

“Is he here?” Nash asked, and I realized that was the first time I’d heard his voice since the day I died.

“He” was Tod, of course.

“Not yet, but you could stay till he gets here. Or you could just stay. You have every right to hate us both, but this doesn’t have to be…” Words failed me when the thought behind them trailed into nothing.

“Doesn’t have to be what, Kaylee?” Nash demanded softly. “Awkward and painful? Because if you know of some other way for me to view the fact that my brother stole my girlfriend, who then framed me for her murder, I’m willing to listen.”

But I didn’t. That was all true, and trying to defend either of us would only have made Nash angrier.

He started to turn away, and I stood, hyperaware of all the eyes watching us. “Please, stay,” I said, and he stopped. “Please, just… Maybe we could start again?” I said, so that only he and Sabine could hear. “I know we can’t erase everything that went wrong between us, but maybe we could kind of turn the page and start on a fresh one. Tabula rasa. ”

Nash glanced at Sabine, who shrugged, then they both sat. And I realized I had no idea what to say. My plan ended with begging them both to sit with me, because I hadn’t really expected that to work.

“Um, Em and her boyfriend will be here any minute, which will probably put an end to genuine conversation, but… How are you?” I asked, pulling burgers from the grease-stained bag. His recovery from frost addiction had suffered a recent relapse and Harmony had said that kicking the habit a second time was even harder, because withdrawal was more severe.

“Do you even eat anymore?” Nash asked, ignoring my question entirely.

“I don’t have to, but, yeah, I can.” I handed him a burger and a carton of fries, and Sabine helped herself to the bag, impatient as always. “Nash, I’m so sorry.”

“You already said that,” Sabine said, folding the wrapper back from her burger. “You said it a lot, actually. Which supports my theory that apologies are basically pointless. They don’t fix anything, right? That’s why I rarely bother.”

“An apology isn’t a Band-Aid,” I insisted. “It’s an expression of regret.”

“Not that that matters.” Nash’s voice was deep and angry. He hadn’t touched his food. “Half these assholes still think I stabbed you, Kaylee. How is it that I stayed away from you, just like you told me to, yet I still wound up arrested and charged with killing you?”

“I didn’t have any choice.” That was the truth, and I needed him to believe that worse than I’d ever needed anything from him. “Beck said he’d rape and kill Em and Sophie if I didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t let that happen. He’d already hurt so many.” The memory chilled me, which made it hard to keep my heart beating, in a body that was already reluctant to cooperate. “But I fixed it. I told the police you weren’t even there.”

“You got the charges dropped, but you can’t take back what you did,” Nash insisted, and he was right. “I was convicted in the court of public opinion the minute they handcuffed me and threw me in the back of the police car. In front of my mother. How are you going to undo that?”

“I don’t know.” Tears burned at the back of my eyes and I fought to keep them from falling. I hadn’t even known I could still cry, but there they were, and suddenly I felt just as powerless in death as I’d been in life. “I’ll tell people. I’ll say whatever you want. I’ll…I’ll do an interview for the school paper, if that’ll help. Chelsea’s been bugging me to—”

“Forget about it.” Nash picked up his burger and tore half the wrapper from it, but he looked like the thought of eating made him sick. “Just don’t talk about it, and maybe this’ll all go away. Eventually.”

“Kaylee?”

I jumped, then turned toward the new voice to see the guy I’d collided with in the hall earlier, staring down at me like he was determined to have his say. “Look, I’ve had a rough day, and I can’t handle any more gawkers or gossipmongers, so if that’s what—”

“I’m Luca Tedesco. Madeline told me to introduce myself.” He smiled and stuck his hand out, and for a moment, I could only stare at it, as what he’d said sank in.