Eternity

All of a sudden, without having made a sound, Ali was next to them, putting a plate of pink-frosted Pop- Tarts on the coffee table and sitting down on the love seat across from them.

“Thanks, Ali,” Melissa said, scooping one up and biting into it greedily. “Delish.”

JD grinned. “I think you may have a new president of your fan club,” he said in a stage-whisper to Ali, who laughed. She had kind of a low voice but her laugh was high and tinkling, like falling glass. Melissa reached around to punch him and JD fake-winced, pretending it hurt. “So, Mel tells me you’re studying to be a nurse—do you live around here?”

Ali shifted in her seat, rolling her shoulders back. JD caught himself staring at her chest and immediately looked away. Christ. He was sweating. She was straight out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

“I’m taking classes up at UNE,” she said. “I was just visiting some relatives today.”

JD nodded. The University of New England was known for its nursing program—Em’s parents were always talking about it. “Well, thanks. You know, for doing your job—even in the field.”

Ali smiled. “I love it. Some people are freaked out by blood, you know? But I never was.” Her smooth voice provided a sharp contrast to the words coming from her mouth. “It’s almost like I get a rush from it.”

JD felt his stomach clench up. He didn’t like blood. There’d been too much spilled this winter in Ascension. “Plus you’re good at being in the right place at the right time,” he said to change the subject. “I’m not sure Melissa and Jenny would have really known what to do on their own.”

“Um, I’m not an idiot,” Melissa said. “We would have just called you. And if you weren’t too busy moping somewhere, you would have come to get me.”

“Moping?” Ali asked. Her eyes, icy blue, seemed to bore into him.

“JD is, like, mope-city these days. Not that you don’t have a reason to be,” his sister added quickly as JD shot her his look of death. “But admit it: ?You’ve been basically a zombie.”

He looked over at Ali with an expression of both apology and embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat. “It’s nothing. I just . . . I lost a friend recently, and I’ve been dealing with that.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Ali said, bringing a hand briefly to her mouth. Her nails were red. Blood colored. Suddenly he wasn’t finding her so pretty anymore. There was a pause. Then she looked at him with eyes full of sorrow. “I know about tragedy,” she said quietly. Her voice seemed to drop octaves as she spoke her next sentences: “I know how you feel. Sometimes it seems like the wrong people get hurt, doesn’t it?”

JD felt a ripple of discomfort shimmy along his spine; something about this girl was . . . different. He was about to ask her what she meant when Ali leaped up from her perch.

“Well, I’ve intruded long enough,” she said, and JD noticed that all of a sudden she was back to cheerleader mode. “I better get going. I’m so glad you’re okay, Melissa. I hope I see you again—oh!” She cut herself off, pointing at a picture on the mantel. “You know my cousin Ty?”

JD squinted at the photo, confused. “That’s our neighbor Emily,” he said. “Emily Winters. She lives next door.”

Ali frowned for a second. But then she smiled, and her face was once again transformed: radiant, gorgeous. “So weird . . . they could be twins!” In a quieter voice she said, “Very pretty.”

“JD has a total crush on Em,” Melissa blurted out.

JD stared at her. “I give up with you, Melissa. You’re worse than Gossip Girl.”

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding very sorry at all. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

Fortunately, Ali only laughed. “Well, if you like Em, you’ll have to meet my cousin Ty,” Ali said as she walked toward the Founts’ front door.

“Ali, wait,” Melissa called out. “When are you going to show Jenny and me those drills, the ones for high kicks?”

JD rolled his eyes. “You wanna talk about crushes? I think you have one on Ali.” He ducked to dodge the pillow that Melissa lobbed in his direction.

“Oh, don’t worry, you can’t get rid of me that easy,” Ali said musically as she sailed out the door. “You’ll see me really soon—that’s a promise. And I never break my promises.”

The house felt eerily quiet with Ali gone. JD stood there for a moment, thinking of what to do next. It was weird—Ali was clearly very sweet, but she’d left him somehow feeling sour.

“Is that Ali’s glove?” Melissa asked, pointing at a bright red leather glove on the floor.

JD picked it up and ran outside, strangely grateful for the excuse to get some fresh air. To thank Ali again, too, and try to shake off the bad feeling he had. But outside, he found that Ali had already disappeared.

Had Ali brought a car here? He didn’t remember seeing one when he pulled up, but then he’d been stressed out and worried about Mel, so maybe he just hadn’t noticed.

He looked at the glove still in his hand—it was kind of old-fashioned. Who wore driving gloves anymore? He stood on the porch another moment, inhaling the wet smell of new growth. The sky was navy, and spring peepers were chirping somewhere in the woods. New life. That was what Ascension needed.

He turned to go back inside, and as he did, he instinctively looked up to Em’s window to see if she was home. Her lights were out. Her windows were dark. No one was home.

CHAPTER FOUR

Crow’s obsession with music extended to an active online presence—where he shared his favorite music and tirelessly promoted his band, The Slump. Plastered all over his Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr was news about everything band related, from the latest numbers hitting iTunes to tour info and recordings of gigs. He even had his own YouTube channel with an extensive following, where he posted videos of covers and his own songs.

What was supposed to take two minutes took half an hour. Em’s one goal was to find out where Crow would be on Monday night; she needed to talk to him about what had happened in the gym earlier. Yet she felt compelled to watch video after video of him. His voice was fantastic and he played just about every instrument there was: piano, ukulele, mandolin. The list went on.

Em had watched a series of posts made over the last month, but she’d noticed a trend that disturbed her. Crow’s earlier videos had been engaging, funny, and even a little bit flirtatious—but in recent posts he seemed careless and sometimes incoherent. His voice seemed to have gotten grittier and lower. More tortured. But it was still beautiful. It still got her every time she heard it.

“I’m trying something new,” he said into the camera in this latest video, smiling breezily as he held up a harmonica. “Because I’m drunk and tired and pissed off . . . and when you play a harmonica in a minor key? It can sound like all those things. . . . ”

He took a swig out of a pint glass. “And don’t worry, moms and dads—this is apple juice.” He smiled, big and plastic, then went on to hum a melody and stomp out a beat. Despite the grainy recording, it moved her. When Crow blew into the metal harmonica, the notes seemed to bend and expand. It was bluesy and haunting— but just thirty seconds into the video, the music stopped abruptly.

“This is shit!” Crow yelled suddenly—then threw his harmonica at the camera, which fell to the floor and ended the video. The whole thing was bizarre. Others could write it off as the outburst of a moody rock star, but Em felt it was something else entirely. Knew it, in fact, because she felt the same way—the hopeless frustration, the feeling of being deeply misunderstood . . .

She signed off, realizing that she was borderline stalking him. Plus she’d found out what she needed already: His next gig was tonight at the Armory, a newish, all-ages club in Biddeford, about twenty minutes up the highway from Ascension.

Which is how Em decided where she’d be that night. Who knows if she’d get ahold of him otherwise? He had this irritating pattern of never having his phone on when she called. She remembered he always used to answer for Drea, and wondered if he did this on purpose to torture Em. Maybe