Hitchers

but who knew what the rules were in this place? I ducked my head under.

There was no resistance, no sense of getting wet. I looked around.

I was nearly standing on what was left of Kayleigh.

She was on her belly, her wrists cradling her chin like a sunbather. So much of her was worn away that she was almost two-dimensional, a wafer-thin slice of Kayleigh. Her eyes, nose, and ears were gone, but her mouth was there, so close to the sandy floor she was almost kissing it.

“It’s Finn.” I had no trouble speaking.

Kayleigh gave no sign she heard me. After a moment she sighed, said, What are you writing?

Mom used to call her a question machine.

The nubs of her feet were clinging to legs worn to points, the tips of her white Reeboks visible. The feet would drop off soon.

No fatigue or stiffness grew in my joints as I stayed bent over, my head underwater, and listened to Kayleigh, soaking up each utterance, trying to set it in a place and time and context. A lot was from her last days, and each of those was painfully familiar. I’d gone back over those last days so often after she died, combing my memory for important things we might have shared, regretting even the slightest of slights I had made.

Too high Grandpa. Don’t want to.

Too high, Grandpa? When would she have said that? Climbing a high slide at a playground or something.

I craned my neck to look up through the cloudy water at the pier, pictured Kayleigh up there, legs dangling over the railing, over the black water. It was hard to picture her out there, all alone in the growing dark, leaping into that booming surf. There would be no witnesses, no one to attest to her fearless leap. If she was going to jump, why not wait until I was there? I imagined coming back from having fried clams with my parents, Kayleigh pushing open the screen door as soon as we pulled up, shouting that she’d done it, she’d done the jump. My twelve-year-old self’s first reaction would be, No way; no way you jumped in the dark. Acts of daring demanded a witness.

It’s too high, Kayleigh repeated.

I looked up at the pier again.

Too high, Grandpa?

I imagined Grandpa holding the screen door open for Kayleigh, following right behind her, his jaw set but a satisfied smirk just under the surface. The lass did it, I saw her. I’m her witness.

You’re not so great—your sister did it too. You’re still afraid of the dark, afraid of the spooky road. Nothing but a God damned sissy.

Leave me alone or I’ll tell them a thing or two, Grandma had said. And hadn’t Grandpa mostly left her alone after that? He knew where she was, but he steered clear.

If my heart had still been in my chest, if I’d still had a chest, it would have been hammering my ribs. All the guilt I’d felt, thinking she’d gone out there and died alone because of me. Had he been there? Had he egged her on? He was always looking for opportunities to teach us to be tough, to suck it up and take our lumps.

Grandpa, Lorena, all the rest of the dead who couldn’t stay dead had some gnawing reason to hang on, to hold themselves together in the teeth of this hungry wind. Suddenly I did as well. I wanted to know the truth.

Inching my way right up against the post, I felt the vacuum pull of my body. I reached for it with outstretched arms, imploring my body to take me in one last time. The pull was weak, more like a bathtub drain than a vacuum. I repositioned myself, inched side to side, forward and back.

“Come on. Come on.” I splayed my fingers, managed to rise half an inch before dropping back. “Shit.” I sensed that the pull was going to weaken as time went by—my best chance was now. I reached again, stretching my phantom arms until they seemed to dislocate from their sockets. I rose and dropped, bump, bump, bump.

I tried for half an hour, but it was no use. The suction wasn’t powerful enough. I lowered my arms and listened to the muttering of the dead, trying to think of another way to get back in my body.

Krishnapuma had written that this was not a physical realm but a supernatural one. The dead didn’t protect themselves from the wind by hiding behind a wall, they held themselves together because they didn’t want to come apart. Maybe I had to want it more.

Why did I want to live?

I wanted to know if Grandpa had been there. If he had, I wanted others to know. I wanted my mother to know.

Partly I wanted this out of spite. If Grandpa had been there when Kayleigh died I wanted him to look my mother in the eye and admit it. If he was going to steal my body I wanted him to stand in front of my mother in it and mumble an apology, nineteen years too late.

My fingers tingled as the pull strengthened.

If I wasn’t completely to blame for Kayleigh’s death, I wanted to be released from some of the guilt that gnawed at me. If I was due a little peace in death, I wanted it.

My arms stretched like salt water taffy; the rest of me lifted, swung like a bell.

If Kayleigh was not a reckless idiot who’d snuck off in the dark on her own and leapt off a pier, if an adult she trusted had been there, maybe even encouraged her, I sure as hell wanted people to know that.

I flew up suddenly, pulled through an invisible hole.

“—don’t have a choice in this?” Grandpa was shouting as I snapped back behind my eyes. “I didn’t come here of my own free will. I didn’t squeeze my way inside you with a switchblade and a can of WD-40. There are bigger forces at work. Can’t you see that?”

“Help!” he called, his voice ragged. His whole body was trembling uncontrollably with the cold.

The water was up to his chest. A wave rushed in; Grandpa turned his face as foamy water slapped his cheek, leaving him gasping.

I would have given anything to have my mouth long enough to ask him: Were you there? Did you goad her into it?

Grandpa threw his weight against the chains, shouted for help again. My shirt was nothing but rags; bloody scrapes crisscrossed my chest and belly. “You have no idea, what I had to go through. Working fourteen-hour days when I was twelve. Crossing over in the bottom of a boat sharing a potato sack for a blanket with the rats. You’ve no idea what it’s like to be down so low the dogs won’t have nothing to do with you.”

What could I do if I got back into my body that Grandpa wasn’t already doing? Could I slide the chains up the post, try to rise above the water? I doubted it—the chains were wound tight.

Someone called my name. I thought it was Kayleigh, beckoning me back. But it had come from the beach.

Grandpa twisted to look toward the beach.

Summer was wading toward us, her arms raised out of the water.

“Help me,” Grandpa called. “For God’s sake, help me.”

Summer paused, lifted a phone to her ear. She was calling 911. When she finished she rushed out the last twenty yards.

“You stupid ass. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Grandpa shouted over the crashing waves. “It was that idiot Finn.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Summer said. She examined the chains pressed to the post, then grasped the lock and tugged at it. “Where’s the key?” A wave broke over her shoulders; she clung to the chains to keep from being knocked backward.

Grandpa motioned toward the water with his chin. “He tossed it. ^»

“Oh, that’s just great.” She swiped wet hair out of her eyes.

The howl of a siren rose in the distance. Summer looked toward the sound. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

The siren grew louder.

“Thank goodness your friend there isn’t as stupid as you,” Grandpa said. He laughed. “You’re not so bright. Next time don’t tell your girlfriend where you’re going to bury the body before you’ve even bought the shovel.”

Soon Summer was back, leading three fire fighters in big rubber boots. One of them had an ax. Shouting to each other, they waded out.

“You okay?” one of them asked. She was a big woman with acne-scarred cheeks.