ARIANNE HAD TO BLINK SEVERAL TIMES before she believed she’d been returned to her room. What convinced her were the contents of her desk that had been left untouched for nearly a month—her notes from school scattered about on its surface and pens half in and half out of their tipped over holder. Those picture frames holding painful memories rested face down.
Her window remained shut tight, keeping in the musty smell the space had developed. The drapes sported a coat of light dust. Her sheets: old and wrinkled. Discarded clothes littered the carpeted floor. Her closet doors were left open showcasing clean clothes that were undecided if they wanted to stay on their hangers or not. The periwinkle-painted walls enclosed a time capsule of sorts—neglected and forgotten. It looked more abandoned than lived in.
The last place she wanted to be was in her room.
She could pull out her hair for what Niko did. His selfishness knew no bounds. But instead of losing herself to panic for his safety, she hopped off her bed and kicked a corner of it. He’d tricked her, only planning to have her there with him until the very end. She saw it in his eyes as he shielded them with heavy lids: death.
“Idiot!” she said through her teeth. She opened and closed her hands, her palms moist. Worry and fear and frustration had her heading for the door and down the stairs. She’d barely made it to the front door when her father spoke.
“Ari? You’re back?” His voice still sounded heartsick.
Arianne took a slow breath in and out and turned to face her father. He sat at the kitchen table, nursing a glass of milk. “Where’s Mom?”
“Asleep.”
The way he said it made Arianne’s heart ache. She knew her mother had been spending more time in bed than out of it since the funeral. An orange bottle containing tiny pills stood vigil on her bedside table, next to a glass of water always half empty. Arianne had brought her mother soup some days, but the disheveled mess hidden beneath a mound of sheets and pillows looked less and less like the woman she once was proud to call “Mother.”
“And you?” Arianne’s voice broke.
He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Where are you off to? It’s the middle of the night.”
Unzipping and zipping the hoodie she wore, Arianne focused her gaze on her scuffed sneakers. “I need to go see Ben.”
“Ari.”
“Sorry, Dad.” She quivered. “I just need to go.”
Without waiting for her father to respond, Arianne opened the door behind her and backed out of the house. She hated feeling uncertainty, especially where her parents were concerned. She had a sinking suspicion this would be the last time she’d see her father.
He personified the image of a tired and hunched over man with bags under his eyes and hair slowly surrendering to gray. It wasn’t what Arianne wanted, but she was running out of time.
Arianne swung her leg over Ben’s windowsill and slid into his room. “Ben! You have to wake…” Her words faltered as she stared. His room, similar to hers, now bore a resemblance to a museum, untouched, albeit more organized and less dusty. The bits and pieces of baseball history he’d accumulated through the years remained immaculate.
Ben sat at his desk, head down and scribbling on a piece of paper.
“You’re not writing a suicide letter, are you?” she asked, truly frightened. Since the funeral, Ben had become a shell of his true self. No more smiles that tried to hide what he really felt. He displayed it for all to see: depression, like his soul had been taken from him. And like Arianne, he’d lost a significant amount of weight. The mourning diet. There was nothing like total and utter devastation to remove any form of appetite. His father had watched him carefully, even threatening to send him to a facility in Atlanta.
His shoulders rose slightly with an exasperated breath. “Homework,” he said.
“You’re doing homework at this time of the night? When did you decide to go back to school?”
“What else should I be doing?” Ben twisted around in his seat and faced her. “Killing myself won’t bring her back, Ari. I thought you knew me better than that. And I’m trying home school for a while. I can’t bring myself to walk into Blackwood and see all those faces, knowing they’d want to comfort me.” He shuddered.
Arianne understood all too well what he meant. She’d refused to take calls from Tammy after the funeral. No one could fill the hole Carrie had left behind. She came forward and hugged him. She did know him, and Ben would never bring added grief to those he loved.
Ben returned her hug briefly. “What are you doing here?”
The question brought back Arianne’s sense of urgency. “I need your help.” She launched into the story of what happened that night. She glossed over why she’d been walking around aimlessly and focused on Darla trying to run her over.
“You were supposed to die?” Sadness entered Ben’s eyes when he asked in a whisper.
“But Niko defied Death to save me. God knows what’s happening to him now, especially with that psycho bitch Janika.” She continued her narration by detailing the fight between Niko and Janika and how Niko had teleported her to her room right at the end.
“Smart guy. I respect him more now for saving you.” Ben rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe Darla tried to run you over.”
“That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have outed her.”
“When did this happen?” Ben’s eyes were wider than the moon. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
Arianne waved her hands frantically. “That’s not what’s important right now. I need to go to Niko’s house and ask his Caretaker to take me to the In Between, where I think he’ll be. If we make it out alive, then I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Darla.”
“I’m coming with you,” he said sternly.
“Why do you think I’m here?” She grabbed his arm and pulled him to the window. “Come on, we can’t waste any more time.”
Ben and Arianne stood on Niko’s lawn, staring at the front porch. Arianne knew she had to climb the four steps, move to the door, and ring the bell. But a heavy aura of foreboding kept her from following her brain’s orders. The house looked empty and more than a little creepy, almost as if it had been abandoned for years. Add some weeds choking the grass, faded and peeling paint, missing shingles, rotting wood here and there, and the look would be complete. The structure itself still looked sound, and very clean, but Arianne couldn’t shake the feeling that it was empty.
Ben, fed up with waiting, strode to the door, each step purposeful and sure.
“Ben, what are you doing?” Arianne followed him, arms stretched out as if she wanted to yank him to her.
“What you seem to be hesitating about,” he said over his shoulder. He rang the doorbell, which produced a grandfather-clock-type chime.
Arianne reached his side and dropped her arms. “You feel that? The house, there’s something so wrong about it.”
“Ari, do you love him or not?” Ben pinned her with a hard gaze.
“I do.”
“Are you willing to do whatever it takes to save him?”
Ben asked all the right questions. She couldn’t understand why she hesitated in the first place. “Thanks.” She gave him a quick smile. “I needed that.”
Arianne pounded at the door with an open palm. “Sickleton, I know you’re in there!”
The door opened suddenly, causing Arianne to stumble inside. Ben steadied her as he crossed the threshold. The darkness that surrounded the outside apparently leaked from the inside. Not pitch black but a heaviness similar to a cemetery after a service.
“Oh, I forgot!” Arianne looked up at Ben. “Niko has to invite you in.”
“What?”
“If you start feeling woozy, tell me right away, okay?”
Ben raised an eyebrow skeptically.
“I don’t have time to explain.” She poked him on the center of his chest. “Just promise me.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a deep yet genteel voice said.
Arianne whirled around so fast, she felt sick for a second. “Who are you?”
A man with the bearing of a king, all confidence and self-assurance, appeared before them. He stood by the elaborate, yet wilting, floral centerpiece in the foyer, his salt and pepper hair combed away from his ageless face. He had his hands tucked into the pockets of his impeccably pressed trousers. His suit screamed luxury, down to the expensive silk tie. “I am Tomas. You are Arianne Wilson and Benjamin Freeman.”
Arianne’s eyes felt like they would leap out of their sockets. “I think asking you why you know who we are would be stupid right now. You’re Niko’s mentor.”
“Clever girl.” Tomas smiled. “I see he’s told you about me. He must really love you.”
The admission had Arianne’s chest all warm and toasty inside, but she pushed away the feeling for now. She kept getting sidetracked. “Do you know where he is?”
Ben must have heard the desperation in her voice because he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, grateful for the support. She’d brought him for a reason. Not that she couldn’t have done it alone. Oh, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t be standing up right now without him helping me up.
“I take it you’ve come to save him?” Tomas asked in return.
“Yes,” Arianne answered.
“What if I told you he couldn’t be saved?”
“I don’t care. I’m going to try anyway.”
An emotion Arianne couldn’t decipher sparked in Tomas’s eyes. “Then are you willing to enter the Crossroads?”
Without faltering, Arianne said, “Yes.”
“What if you had to die to get there?”