The Hereafter

By Jessica Bucher

The end is only a painful beginning.

Seventeen-year-old Nin was too young to die. Just when she was ready to break out of her shell and head to college on the west coast with her best friend—her life met its violent and unexpected end.

Dylan Dawson's short existence was laughably unfair, from start to finish. He doesn't need to remember his death to know that he deserved it, so waking up between two dumpsters in the city was no major surprise.

Meeting a bright-eyed girl like Nin was.

Together in the hereafter, the two of them spend one endless summer exploring their new world. And just when the undeniable sparks ignite between them, Nin and Dylan discover that their second chance at life isn't so impossible after all.

Given the chance to change their fates, Nin and Dylan must decide—life or love.
Weaving through past and present and alternating perspectives, The Hereafter is a heart-wrenching and emotional journey about young love and second chances.

Warning: These teens' lives have been shattered by some very real, but tragic elements, such as: drug abuse, domestic violence, and suicide. This story is recommended for mature readers.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Bucher
• Release date: Mar 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781393002833

Book preview

Part I

Chapter 1

Nin

---

Her lungs burned with each breath, but she kept moving forward. The next tree , she told herself. Just keep running until the next tree.

Her legs pumped her forward while her toes dug into the sand of the endless beach. She let her mind quiet and only focused on the burn, the beat, the sweat.

God, she hated running.

Her knees buckled, and she collapsed into the sand. She had long passed the tree she marked as her finish line. She fell back, face-up to the sun, and waited for her heart to catch up to her.

This. This is why she ran. For the reassuring thump-thump recital beating in her chest. I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, it chanted.

But she knew better. Her heart’s song was wrong. She was not alive. And she never would be again.

Running had become her daily sacrament of torture since she first opened her eyes in that unfamiliar white room.

The day she woke up dead.

She knew from that very first moment that she was dead. She knew it with certainty; a sort of eerie realization that came without fear or panic. It was quite unexplainable. She just knew.

Twenty-one sunrises and twenty-one sunsets since that first day. Twenty-one days. Alone.

She knew she was dead, but not because she remembered dying. That was the most bizarre part. She knew her life was over but had absolutely no recollection of it ending.

She wasn’t sick. There wasn’t a struggle or a car accident. Or at least none that she could remember.

She just woke up in a very white room. It was mostly comfortable and safe, but not the same room she slept in when she was alive living in her mom’s apartment. That much she could remember. And it wasn’t her boyfriend, Matthew’s room, where she occasionally slipped away to when her mom worked late or wasn’t paying her much attention.

It was, in fact, a very beautiful space. It was decorated with a gentle femininity—mostly white with lace curtains and a heavy soft blanket on the bed. A white orchid bloomed on the table in the corner. The room breathed with life.

But that was it. Just the room and the door that led her to this beach. No one greeted her.

How long could this go on? How long could she wait?

At first, she was patient. She was at peace, optimistic, and strangely, a bit excited. Anyone would be to finally see what waited on the other side. On that first day, she didn’t shed a tear. But every day after…

The worst torture was that it felt as if she was the one waiting. Waiting for what, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not all there was meant to be.

She wasn’t a religious girl, and to be honest, the only thing she had ever expected from death was pure nothingness. She figured it was a darkness you never woke from.

But this. This was something out of poetic literature. An ethereal beach, ethereal room. Eternal peace. A real ‘sleep-perchance to dream’ situation. It grated her nerves.

This was supposed to be a reunion. It was that one person she waited for, whether she wanted to admit it or not. He left long before her—so, where was he? As if he’d ever want to see her again, she reminded herself.

Day after day, she sat on the perimeter of that dazzling blue ocean, framed by sea air and sunshine, and she hated it. She let the sun burn her eyes turning the inside of her eyelids a blazing red. It was the only flashback she could find. It was the last moment of life she could connect to.

The ocean crept up to greet her, growing gently closer with every wave. It was almost ready to soak her, but playfully kept its distance. She dipped her fingers into the foam.

Sadness was like water. It could soak her to the bone if she let it. It could pull her down to the sea floor, and it could sweep her away. Like it swept her father away.

Cold water shocked her out of her daze. A fearless wave sailed through the cotton of her white dress.

Seriously? She jolted to stand and avoid the tide.

The haunting tight throat feeling of an oncoming cry overwhelmed her, like it did every day. It was because she let herself think of him.

She didn’t stop the tears. She never did.

As the warm drops rolled down her face and she gasped for breath, she began to feel renewed. It was as if she were crying out everything she left behind.

She cried out Matthew and Serena. She cried out her mother and Gran. She cried out the city and her home.

And when the tears were gone, it was just Nin. Her beach. Her sky and clouds and sun.

She opened her eyes and gasped.

A dark figure stood to her right far down the beach. He was just staring at her. How long had he been watching her cry?

She squinted to see closer, and for a moment her heart almost leapt. For one second, she dared to hope it was her father, finally. But, of course, it wasn’t.

In fact, she didn’t recognize this boy at all.

From her sideways glance, she could see that he was a boy around her age. He was dressed in dark jeans and a crisp shirt and his hair was buzzed close to his scalp. Without directly looking, she could see his scowl.

She was frozen in place. Three weeks alone without another soul in sight and finally, someone was standing right there on her beach.

Should she say something? Or wave? He didn’t move toward her or away from her. Could he even really see her?

She finally turned her head toward him and watched him walk away, out of her periphery. But just before he left her beach, he turned his sight back to her and for one second, their eyes met.

The intensity of his stare was an explosion. He looked right through her. Right into the depths of her soul. The contact between them ignited the blood in her veins. As if everything all at once existed in that infinitesimal moment of time.

Her skin puckered in goose bumps. The hint and glimpse and subtle reaction grew into something overwhelming and unavoidable. The universe seemed to collapse in on them in that one small encounter.

He released her from his stare and continued walking into the wooded expanse that surrounded the sandy perimeter of the beach. He was gone.

Nin released the breath she held tight in her chest. She didn’t know who that boy was, or if he had felt the same thing she had, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, she knew her life, or death, had suddenly changed.

Her skin tingled with promise.

Finally, she thought.

Somehow, she knew it was him she had been waiting for.

Dylan

---

The memory burned. Apparently, the last memory can stretch, like a piece of time is pulled until it thins and morphs and becomes so transparent it ceases to exist. The memory that Dylan was stuck in burned. And the torture was never-ending.

He stood alone, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window of his high-rise apartment in the city. It felt as if he stood at that window for ages, until he no longer remembered why it burned, why he stood there or whether or not it was even his home.

Then, there was nothing. Until there was the cold space between a pair of dumpsters in an alley of the city, which is where he woke up. Alone.

Waking up alone between dumpsters, knowing pretty early on that it's because you are dead, might be pretty traumatic to anyone, but Dylan was used to life, or rather death, being laughably unfair. He didn't even bother to care why it was dumpsters in a disgusting, unfamiliar alleyway. He shrugged it off, as if the universe misjudged his delinquency and assumed he must be homeless or used to doing business in trashy nooks and crannies of the city.

It wouldn't be the first time he was misjudged.

He didn't sulk in the space between the dumpsters for long. Something indefinable began to soak through his slacks, and that only angered him more. He jumped up from the spot and barely hesitated before storming away from the alleyway.

Tall buildings surrounded him, and people moved through them like ants. It was the same loud city streets he was used to; the only thing different about the scene was him. He stepped into the crowd, wet pants and all, and waited for the passersby to weave around him or crash into him, but they didn't. They floated through him, like his significance in the city had not changed at all.

He ached to be out of the crowd. He walked through the swarm like a fish swimming upstream with a scowl plastered on his face. Dylan chastised himself with every step. He did something stupid in those first few moments of waking, before he knew it was a dumpster that cradled him. He hoped.

He hoped that whatever awaited him would be better, and if not, then at least nothing at all.

But the dumpster was a dumpster. And the only thing he had going for him at that moment was that his memory had obviously been wiped somewhere in the transition. He was indignant, bitter, and detached. He just didn't know why.

The high-rises were closing in on him and made his skin crawl. Something here haunted him. Coming to the edge of the metropolis, he picked up speed, and the scenery began to blur around him.

He walked for hours, hoping that if he moved fast enough, he could just fade away, expelling every ounce of his spirit like throwing pennies down a well, and then he would cease to exist.

He walked down long empty interstates and through fields that reminded him of the one behind his grandparents’ house in the country where he often spent his summers as a boy. Was that a memory?

He stopped in the field and considered lying down, thinking it might help his soul release, if that's what he was waiting for. Instead, he threw his head back and yelled into the sky. He grew impatient with the nothing.

So, he kept walking. He spent those hours thinking about his life—or trying to. He remembered flashes, nothing concrete, and very little toward the end. There were feelings and mundane moments like brushing his teeth or driving his car. He had the very conflicted feeling of being full of knowledge but also completely void of it. He had names, Derek, his brother, and Ariana, his girlfriend. Memories with those two were hazy and felt bitter in his mouth.

When every memory in his sparse collection had been spent, ending on his very last day, Dylan came to the conclusion of his walk. Quite surprisingly, he found himself standing at the edge of a sandy expanse fading into rolling waves. He cursed. He hated the beach.

Feeling exhausted, defeated, and lost, he sunk to his knees and let his head fall into his hands. He considered that perhaps this was his punishment. To be lost and alone forever would be a long eternity. So, he did something he had never done before. He closed his eyes, and he said a short, silent prayer to himself. Please, he said. Just please.

He didn't know what he was praying for or even if he was doing it right, but he sent his wishes into the air as desperately as he could. He wanted something and nothing all at once. Answers or an end. He strangely did not once wish or pray to be alive or back in his life again, and that realization was not lost on him. An endless abyss of light sounded perfectly fine to him at that moment. A realistic, lonely afterlife was not at all what he was hoping for.

When Dylan sat up, he saw her. A girl, maybe a little younger than him, with wispy blond hair in a white dress. She was farther down the beach than he was, and she sat on her knees inches from the water's edge. The setting sun glowed on her face, and he could see her subtle smile. She must have been deep in thought because she didn't see him sitting there, watching her. He could not take his eyes off her.

There was something about her, the look in her eye, that told him that she was like him: dead. Unlike Dylan however, she seemed at peace. She closed her eyes against the brightness and let her head fall back. Dylan was confused and intrigued by the girl. Then, he saw something fall from her face. From his distance, he could see the tears.

Before

---

Nin stood outside her apartment waiting for Serena to pick her up for yoga class. She had her ear buds in her ears and rocked back and forth in her snow boots anxiously. She had good news to share with her friend, but mostly it was the conversation with her father that morning that left her skin buzzing.

Just hours before, she broke the news to him and Gran. Sitting at the small kitchen table, her Gran clapped her hands in excitement when Nin told them. It made Nin smile, which was difficult because she could see the hesitant, forced smile on her father's face. He wouldn't take the news as well as Gran did.

California? he said in his thick French accent.

They have the best marine science program, Dad.

She could see his forced smile fading, leaving just one side of his mouth perked up. Gran slapped him on the arm and took his face in her hands.

Your daughter will be a scientist. She will make you proud.

Nin always makes me proud. He smiled at his daughter and said, You know that.

She smiled back, trying to reassure him that she was happy, hoping the optimism would rub off, but she could see the gloom lurking beneath his fake smile. He brushed his salt and pepper hair out of his face and sighed deeply.

Nin's father was an artist, a potter to be exact, and since the time Nin could crawl, she would wander through his studio behind their row house. She knew the feeling of cold, gritty clay between her fingers, dried on her face and in her hair. She knew the smell, cold and earthy. She knew the coarseness of spinning wet clay against her skin. She knew how to mold it to her will. But she was no artist.

Her father had a way with the clay. He knew not only how to control it, but he could predict its next move. Late into the night, Nin would watch the dance-like transformation from a lump of dry earth to a beautiful, tall vase with its delicate curves and her father’s handprints forever ingrained in its form.

Nin also knew the days that did not move so smoothly. She knew her father in torment. She knew her father, the artist. She knew his struggles and inner battles, and she was the only person on earth who was able to bring him down from his cliffs of despair. Sometimes it was speaking to him, holding his hand, or just being there. She was the child he never wanted, and who surprised him by being the person he couldn't live without. And she had just dropped a life-shattering bomb on his very existence.

Gran gave Nin one more tight hug, then took her coffee to the patio like she did every Saturday morning. Nin was left standing in the kitchen with her father. He let his smile fade. His shoulders dropped, and she feared that he was crumbling.

I don't have to go, Papa. I can find something closer. It was a whisper. A statement so frightening she was terrified to even speak it.

"Sois pas ridicul, mon petit colibri." Don't be ridiculous, my little hummingbird. Hummingbird. It was his personal nickname for her since before she could remember. Whenever he used it, it always expressed a hint of hope. It was the last word he whispered to her when the rum would take him on his bad days. Merci, mon colibri, he would mumble as he faded to sleep. It was his way to say that the worst is over. Nin warmed a bit at hearing him say it now.

It is time you fly, he said as he pulled her into a hug. It felt real. The optimism was genuine. This could work, she thought. Everything will work out fine.

---

Running slightly late as usual, Serena pulled up in her mom's Ford Focus, some acoustic indie singer blaring through the speakers.

Get in, Gandhi, she shouted.

Nin plopped into the seat, threw her yoga mat in the back and turned down the radio.

What's wrong? Serena asked immediately, sensing her best friend's subtleties.

Nothing's wrong, Nin responded as she buckled herself in, hiding her smirk. She turned toward her friend with her eyes wide. Serena understood the news before Nin had to speak a word.

Serena let out a high-pitched scream, clapping her hands. She engulfed Nin in a tight hug. Serena received her acceptance to a film school in Los Angeles a month ago. Nin had been waiting for word back from UCLA for weeks. She had applied to her dream college in hopes that she would be able to live with her best friend, and now her dreams were coming true.

When Serena pulled away from the curb, Nin had eyes full of tears and a wide smile on her face. This had been their dream since they were children. Nin was full of joy, but there was another feeling there. As they pulled away from her apartment, she looked back and saw her father's studio light on, knowing that he had retreated there shortly after she left. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to drive away from that house for the last time. A pit of guilt started to build in her chest as she thought of those rough days when he would need her most. She quickly brushed the feeling away and smiled at her best friend. It was a beautiful day, and the stars were aligning. Her future looked bright.

Chapter 2

Nin

---

After seeing the boy on the beach, Nin sat in a daze for over an hour. Her skin buzzed; even the air felt different.

As she stood and started to make her back down the long path she had run, she thought of the white room.

And just like that, the sound of waves was gone. She opened her eyes and below her feet was no longer sand but old, white wood. She stood directly in the middle of the white room. Nin collapsed on the bed with a smile on her face. Nothing had ever felt as brilliantly beautiful as something new after twenty-one days of nothing at all.

---

The next morning, Nin watched the sun rise over the city. She sat at a lonely bus stop bench, the one she used to sit on when waiting for the 7:15 before school. It was comfortable and familiar, but eerie when it was so quiet.

Something had been unlocked yesterday. Maybe it was all in her head, but it started with that stranger on the beach. She felt more powerful, braver, more alive.

The street, usually brimming with commuters and school-goers, was empty and lifeless. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and imagined what the street should sound like. She could hear the cars and the buses slowly coming into focus first. Then she could hear the people, the construction, the yelling, the footfalls and the sounds of life against the pavement.

When she opened her eyes, she smiled to herself. There were people everywhere. It looked just as it should on a busy city street on a weekday morning. She glanced around at the people, none of them noticing her. She laughed at the thought of being the bus stop ghost. She could tickle the backs of people necks while they texted their friends and steal their bus passes out of their jacket pockets. Serena would have laughed at that with her.

Serena.

She could imagine Serena sitting across from her at The Score, their favorite coffee shop on the south side of the city. She could see her chipped nail polish and collection of bracelets on her wrists and the sound they made clinking against the table as she typed on her laptop. Serena was fierce and beautiful, and even though they had been friends since they met in second grade, Nin still felt lucky to have her. She tried not to think about how Serena must have reacted to the news of her death and the pain that it must have caused.

She had to distract herself from the sadness that was absorbing her. She glanced over at the woman checking her phone for the tenth time in a minute. She caught the date, October 12th. What was the last day she remembered? Was it in October? Had she even cared when she was alive?

Something occurred to her just then. This wasn't a memory or a vision. This was real and it was happening at that very moment. She had somehow crossed over from her solitary existence to the realm of the living. October 12, 2014 was not a date she lived to see.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she had a vision of that boy on the beach. Even before she knew how to crossover, she wasn't exactly alone, because without reason, he was able to see her. The way he was looking at her was so strange; there was something powerful in that look. She was pretty sure