Serena looked back at me with a suddenly determined stare. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Her expression could only mean one thing: she’d decided to call for help. The police, an ambulance, maybe even my parents. Whoever came, I didn’t care so long as someone pulled me out of this water.

But when Serena finally spoke, she did so calmly, warmly. With no sense of urgency at all.

“This one’s for you, Amelia, baby,” she said, and then turned toward the crowd. “Ready, everyone? Okay!”

A unison of voices surged from the bridge, like a choir.

“Happy birthday, dear Amelia . . .”

“No!” I screamed, trying to struggle once more against the waves.

But of course, my scream never rose above a hoarse whisper, and my struggles were nothing compared to the control the current now had over my body. I was fast losing my ability to stay afloat, much less escape the drag of the current.

With horrifying clarity, I realized what was happening. The people above me were too crazed, too lost, to help me. I wouldn’t regain my strength. And I would continue to weaken in my fight against the river.

There was only one way this scene could end.

No! I screamed in my head. This doesn’t have to happen again. I can change this. I don’t have to die this time, I don’t!

“Help!” I screamed aloud, but my energy was almost completely gone and the scream echoed only in my mind. My head bobbed underwater and stayed there for a few seconds. When the current bobbed me back up to the surface, I gasped in fear.

The gasp didn’t have much of a lifespan, because the current almost immediately yanked me back down. Once under, I continued to gulp for air, swallowing more water in the process. The current spun me around and finally pulled me to the other side of the bridge before it lifted me out of the water again.

Coughing and sputtering, I looked up at the bridge, now from the opposite side from which I’d fallen. I could just make out the rain-blurred figures of Doug and Serena running to this side of the bridge. I tried to reach out to them, but I couldn’t even bring my arm above the surface of the river.

Only then did I notice Serena hold something out to me. It was her hand, once again extended over the railing toward me. She gave me another cheerful wave, flailing her arm joyously in the thick rain.

Her bright smile was the last thing I saw before my head bobbed back down for the third, and final, time. I didn’t see anything after that.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter

Twenty-Four

I woke up, still wheezing and gasping. My fingers twitched frantically, grasping around me.

At first I couldn’t feel anything, which only terrified me more. Then I felt the dull pressure of something beneath me—something solid. I turned my head as far to the right as it would go and saw dusty yellow, just inches from my face. As I squinted, the scene came into greater focus. I could see dark brown threads woven through the yellow. It took me a moment to realize the brown was my hair, fanned out upon the dried grass beneath my head.

Above me, all I could see were stars. I pushed myself up and scanned my surroundings. Far off to the west, the sky had turned a faint violet, wherein the sun had just set behind the mountains. Elsewhere, the night had already begun to darken into deep purples and blues.

And yet, even in the darkness, I recognized the curves and twists of the familiar headstones around me. I was in my graveyard again.

I reached around and tenderly touched the back of my head, at the place where it had connected with my gravestone. Nothing. No dried blood or wound, although, inexplicably, my head still throbbed slightly. I pressed my hand to my chest, just above my heart. No thumping there. No pulse.

I was dead again. For the first time that fact made me happy.

Still seated, I turned to my gravestone. Even in the dim light I could see the enormous crack now running down its center. If the gravestone hadn’t really hurt me, then I had certainly hurt it.

Well, Dad had always said that I had a hard head.

At the thought of my father, I glanced quickly at his headstone. It was still intact; and, for some reason, I sighed in relief.

Then my head shot back up and I searched for the next most important menace in my afterlife. A cursory scan of the graveyard, however, let me know that Eli Rowland had disappeared.

I looked down at my arm, where a slight bruise seemed to have formed around the place Eli had gripped me. Gingerly, I touch my bottom lip and found a thick cut there. Neither injury hurt. Yet, despite their impossibility, they were very real.

I sighed again and sat backward, pulling my legs to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I needed to leave this place, and soon. But right now I needed to think.

First things first, I remembered my death, obviously. Every horrible moment of it. I could see now where my nightmares always began. They started at the moment I first fell into the river; at the moment the river sapped me of my energy, before I surfaced just long enough to watch my friends, controlled by some dark—and definitely evil—power, watch me die.

In some ways, then, my nightmares had been merciful. The universe or fate or even my own mind had forced me to reexperience my death many times but hadn’t, until now, put me through the worst of it.

These new, disturbing memories brought something else to light, as well.

Eli had been there, watching, waiting with malicious glee. Mr. Rock Star, with his knowing smirk and cold glare. Serena hadn’t pushed me, nor had Eli, obviously. But Eli certainly had something to do with my fall. He controlled the black shapes (so much like the ones in the netherworld, I couldn’t doubt their origin), which had surrounded the partygoers and possessed them, prevented them from helping me.

As I rubbed my wrist absently, I couldn’t help but wonder what Eli had done: angered me so much, worked me into such a frenzy, that I would transport myself back to the very memory he’d referenced?

If so, then the strength of this forced materialization gave me another idea. Clearly, I was able to move through time and space, if not yet entirely by will. But I also felt sure I had additional, undiscovered powers. I now believed Eli’s claim that ghosts could do the extraordinary, particularly when we entered into a state of heightened emotion. My injuries provided one item of proof.

I thought then of the chair that had screeched backward when I’d stood up too quickly in the Wilburton High School library. That chair had moved just after I saw my in memoriam senior photo, just after I’d experienced a great surge of emotion.

And what about my years of nightmarish materializations, or the new crack on my gravestone?

Apparently, Eli wasn’t the only one with poltergeist-like powers. I too could materialize and affect stationary objects. But could I do more? How much of the ghostly and living worlds could I influence?

Asking such questions made me recall the best part of the living world I’d experienced so far.

Joshua.

If I could affect things in both worlds, maybe I could protect Joshua from Eli. If I could keep Eli from touching me—from hurting me, or angering me into an unwanted materialization—then I might have some power against him. Could I possibly hurt Eli? Make him bruise or bleed, like he’d done to me? Just enough to stop him from harming Joshua.

Maybe, if I focused hard enough, I could do . . . something. Whatever that something might be.