The girl in the mirror is making noise again. She does that sometimes. Bella ignores her and turns the page of her book, but she's really laying it on thick this time, the whole frame is shaking. It's one of those floor length ones that Charlie never got around to mounting it on the wall. She doesn't really mind that much (except for the sound). It was a welcome home gift. The last time Charlie saw her she was stumbling through middle school and shared a toothbrush with her own reflection. Now she just wears the same oversized green sweater three days a week and braids her hair over one shoulder without looking. The mirror collects dust. And girls, apparently.
The girl pounds on the heavy silver glass. "Please! Please! I'm begging you!"
"Nice try, demon," Bella mutters. Once, she looked and ten seconds later she had her hand wrapped in a sweatshirt ready to punch the mirror with no recollection of how she got there. Now, she buries her face in Madame Bovary's escapism. It seems fitting.
"Please! I'll do anything!" She's sobbing now. She's good. Really good. She's slamming her fists. The whole mirror is rocking on the floor.
"I'm trying to read here."
She slides her hands down the glass. They squeak all the way down. "Fine."
"That's what I thought."
The one time she looked, she only caught a glance of her and it was enough to loosen all the teeth in her mouth. She could get rid of the mirror, tell Charlie it's not her thing, but she can't force the words out. Every time she tries it's like her throat fills with sand.
.
At school, she researches, sort of. The antique store in Port Angeles where Charlie picked up the mirror has since completely vanished after twenty-five years of business. Isn't that always the way? But unwilling to accept defeat, she types girl in mirror into the search bar. She gets pages and pages of eating disorder recovery websites that are all blocked by the school's content filter. Someone should really look into that.
She wouldn't dare bring it up with her friends. Not because they'd think she's crazy but because they'd probably believe her and want to see for themselves. Sand starts to cram in her throat at the thought. She doesn't want them to see for the same reason she could never get rid of it. This is her thing, her problem. She's the only one she can trust not to shatter the glass.
.
"Aren't you curious?" the girl asks, tapping one finger against the glass.
Bella slides all her hangers to one side of the closet and moves over one at a time. She's going with Charlie out to the reservation to see Jake and Billy, and the rain already soaked two sweaters today even with her raincoat on. "Curious as to?"
"How I got in here?"
"Not even a little bit. Go haunt someone else." Bella digs a red sweater out of her closet and holds it in front of her.
"Not that one. Pick the blue one. It's… nicer on you."
Bella looks over her shoulder but thinks better of it at the last second. She pulls the blue sweater over her head. "Thanks," she says quietly as she leaves the room.
.
She disappears. Three months pass. Then four. Bella swaps her usual green sweater for a brown cardigan scrunched up to the elbows. She goes through a book every three days.
Over spring break, she sits in Jake's garage and reads while he works on her truck. There's an old grimy mirror sticking out from behind some old furniture in the corner. Bella hardly notices it, but something balances at the tip of her tongue.
When she gets home, Charlie's cruiser is in the drive and the sun has punctured through the clouds. It shines like a spotlight on the house.
She runs upstairs to grab a better book- an outside book. Up the stairs, around the corner, past the smashed spiral-
Bella stops, hand midair reaching for Picnic at Hanging Rock (a library copy, the closest thing Forks has to summer heat). She turns slowly. Glass crunches under her shoes. The mirror is broken and lying at her feet, the pieces arranged in concentric circles like this is geometry or something.
Gold flashes in her periphery, something bites her heart in two. She spins around, faster this time like the earth on its axis, and there she is, smashed into the corner of her room, shaking the glass out of her blond hair.
"You're...you-"
"No thanks to you," she says. Her voice is quiet and missing too many sounds like it's full of holes.
"But how did you-"
Something clatters in the bathroom. "Damn it," Charlie mutters. He steps into the hall with a towel wrapped around his hand. It's soaked red with blood. Bella's vision darkens. She sways on her feet. She doesn't notice the girl picking a shard of glass out of her hair and slipping it into the pocket of Bella's sweatshirt. She grips her dresser for support, and when she turns around, the girl is gone.
That night she sweeps up the glass and dreams of gold thread stitching her fingers together.
.
When she wakes up the next morning, the mirror is fixed. Maybe it was never broken. Maybe there was never a girl at all and she's just reading too many books or losing her mind in all this rain. She rubs her eyes and looks again. Still perfect. She gets up and touches it, runs her hand over it so hard her fingers squeak. Her index finger falls into a groove, and pain shoots up it into her hand. She yanks her arm back.
The mirror is perfect, save for a tiny shard missing right in the middle.
.
She presses her hand to the black surface of the table in her biology classroom, staring hard at the places in between her fingers. Beside her, Mike is pricking his finger to test his blood type. She already knows hers. Why is everybody bleeding lately? She lowers her head to the table, shields it with her arms.
"Are you alright?" Mike asks, a hand on her shoulder. It better not be the bloody one. "Maybe you should go to the office."
Maybe. She forces herself to her feet and glances at Mr. Molina. He catches her eyes and nods toward the door. How green is she? Anything to get out of this metallic air, this blood clogged room.
She walks out into the hallway. Her book bag weighs a ton on her shoulder, and the bathroom is closer than the office. Her fingertips feel numb as she pushes the door open.
The bathroom's empty. Yellow lights buzz above the mirrors. Her reflection is pale- more than usual if that's possible- her braid is coming undone, and her lips are chapped. She reaches into her pocket for her chapstick and her fingers close around something sharp.
"Just leave it," someone says. "Please."
"What?" Bella looks around behind her. There's no one here. She pulls the shard out of her pocket. It's tiny and sharp and feels heavy in her palm.
"I would beg you, but that doesn't seem to work. Considering."
"Who are you? Where are-"
The door swings open and Bella shoves the glass back into her pocket. She puts her hands under the faucet. Two girls walk in talking about the sculptures they're making in ceramics class. Bella dries her hands on her jeans and walks quickly out into the hall.
"Are you there?" she whispers under her breath. There are a handful of kids at their lockers and lingering by the doorways of the classrooms waiting for the bell.
"I'm here," she says, not from thin air but right in front of her, just blinked into existence, tall and golden. Bella trips over her feet and slams her shoulder into a locker. The hall falls silent and everyone glances in her direction.
Mike rushes over to her. "Bella?" He reaches out to touch her, arm clipping right through the girl's shoulder.
Bella gasps and recoils, smashing into the locker again. Mike takes another step forward and completely passes through the girl like she's not even there.
"I'll walk you to the office," Mike says. He looks worried. She wants to tell him to take one step to the right because the weird shimmering leg sticking out of his knee is only a little bit better than a drop of blood on an index card.
"Oh, enough of this," the girl says. She reaches out- passing through Mike's chest- and grabs Bella's wrist. Her hand feels just as real as Mike's on her shoulder.
She pulls Bella forward. The only problem is that Bella is solid, she exists. She can't walk through walls or Mike, for example. The back of Bella's hand smacks into Mike's chest. The girl pulls harder and Bella hits him again, awkwardly. Everyone is staring and Mike's looking at her like she has three heads.
"Uh, Bella?"
"Around!" she whispers harshly.
"Right," the girl says. She steps out from behind Mike and tries again. Her fingers are cold around Bella's wrist. To everyone else it probably just looks like Bella swinging her arm to the side and then stumbling toward the exit, knocking into just about everything in her path.
"I need you to do something for me," the girl says when they get to the parking lot.
Bella shakes her hand free and shoves it into her pocket with the glass. "What? Forget it. You need to go back… to wherever you came from. Where did you come from?"
The girl lowers her gaze. "The mirror," she says very slowly like she's talking to a three-year-old.
"I meant before that."
"Nowhere I'd like to return. That's for sure."
It's drizzling a decent amount. Bella pulls up her hood as she walks to her truck. She can't really go back there, not after that. The girl walks next to her. She's wearing a strange gray dress that blends in with the clouds, the fog, the air. She's not getting wet in the rain and she passed right through Mike, yet Bella can feel the press of her shoulder against her own.
"I need you to do something for me," she repeats once they climb into Bella's truck. Well, Bella climbs. She just sort of floats into it, fusing through the door. She touches Bella's hand as she turns the key in the ignition. "Please."
"What is it?" Bella asks, but she doesn't have to look over to know that she's gone again.
.
When Charlie comes home that night, he has butterfly stitches on his right hand. He says he must have cut it last night somehow, but he doesn't remember. The glass weighs her down like a meteorite.
She climbs the stairs and stands in front of the mirror for nearly a half hour before she takes the piece out of her pocket. She lines it up carefully and-
"No, don't!"
Suddenly, there are hands on hers. The shard falls from her fingertips and skitters underneath her bed.
"No, no, no, no," the girl says. She drops to the floor and sticks her arm under the bed, blindly sweeping for it. Bella notices her dress exactly matches the green of her walls.
Bella sits down at the end of her bed and puts her head in her hands. She waits for the girl to find it and smiles slightly when she feels her slip it into her pocket. She puts her hand over it.
"Please don't lose it."
"Okay," Bella says.
"I'm Rose," she says.
"Bella." She opens her eyes and looks down at her on the floor. She's sitting against the bed with her knees bent in front of her, gold hair spilling all over the place. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
"Not really."
"Okay."
.
Most people aren't haunted. At least, not like this.
She's not scary. Maybe she's not so nice, but she's not slamming the doors of the cabinets or TV static or sacrificing children for eternal youth, she's just a girl who follows her around sometimes.
After about a week of Rose fading in and out of existence, Jessica comes up to Bella at lunch and asks why she's been a little out of range lately. She doesn't really have a good reason except that she can't seem to stop replying to Rose every time she says something (which is always), and it's hard to focus on prom plans or going to the movies on top of her constant stream of invisible conversation.
In her room, Bella sews across the pocket of her cardigan. With all the falling she does, it seems like a necessary measure to keep the sliver of reflective glass around. She doesn't stop to wonder why she's doing this. Why she hasn't thrown the glass away or pressed it back into the mirror. The explanation wouldn't fall into words anyway. Maybe she likes the way Rose sinks through the floor into the kitchen to watch her cook dinner for her and Charlie or the way she rolls her eyes when Bella cancels plans with her friends just the spend the evening making moody playlists on her computer or reading.
"It's Friday night," Rose says, looking out the window. She moves over to Bella's closet. "Can you at least show me the town? Or do something? Anything?"
"It's raining."
"It's just a little water." She sighs when Bella doesn't budge. "Fine."
Bella pats her pocket. "Why don't I just give this to Lauren or Jessica or someone who actually does things?"
Rose spins around and faster than Bella can register, she's right at her side, pinching the fabric to make sure it's still there. By the time she realizes it was a joke, it's far too late to play along. Not that that or anything else could stop her. "Well, why don't you?"
Bella laughs and yanks on one of her rubber boots. "Why don't you start haunting me like a normal ghost?"
.
Eraser pink dress, she sits on the edge of Bella's desk during a math test. She says that's wrong about forty-two times. All that time trapped in a mirror and suddenly she knows everything about trigonometry.
Bella hands in her test at the end of class and Rose follows her in the hall. She usually disappears at school, doesn't like the noise, the crowds. Bella thinks it's because she can't get used to the feeling of people walking through her, not even seeing her. Especially since she looks the way she does.
"How come I don't pass through you?"
"She who holds the shard," Rose says as a line of freshmen walk through her on their way to Drivers Ed.
"It can't be that simple, can it? And how do you even know that? Did someone tell you?"
Rose tilts her head, considering for a moment. "No, but I can feel it. Besides, I'm glad it's you. I can trust you."
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't let me out. I had to trick your father into it. Not my brightest hour."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It doesn't just yet. But it will."
.
Charlie has no idea what's going on. Rose likes to mess with that. She talks to Bella when they're in the middle of their silent but comfortable dinners. Imagine Charlie's surprise when his daughter suddenly starts talking about how Jessica Stanley isn't that bad and is actually kind of nice when she wants to be when neither of them has said anything for the past ten minutes straight.
Rose laughs when Bella stops mid-sentence and mumbles some excuse that doesn't make any sense. Something about vocalizing her thoughts or the like.
She elbows Rose on her way to the sink with the dishes, smiling anyway, sparkling with it.
.
The gym teacher lets her sit out when they play volleyball. Not so much for her benefit but for everyone else's, especailly after that last ill-aimed spike. Instead, she keeps score and times the girls that are making up their mile with laps around the gym.
Rose appears beside her. Today she's basketball orange and she doesn't look too happy about it. "This cannot possibly be a class for credit." She pulls at the orangish-brown fabric of her dress.
"Mandatory class," Bella murmurs, clocking a girl's time and printing it neatly next to her name.
"Medieval torture," Rose says, matching her tone.
"What, you never took gym?"
"I'll have you know I died at least twenty years before all this coed athletic craze started."
She tallies a few points for Mike's team even though she hasn't really been paying attention to the game. "So you don't think women should play sports?"
"Sure, I do. Just not you, clearly."
"Thanks," Bella says. She puts her pencil down and looks at Rose. She's looking out at the game, smiling absently. "I don't get how you can just say it so easily."
"I'm not so worried about ruining your dreams of athleticism, Bella, that's how."
"No, not that… I mean, that you died."
"Oh, that." Rose shrugs and twists the strap of her dress at her shoulder. "I guess that would be a big deal to you."
"You guess?"
"It was a long time ago. And really, it's almost like I didn't. I'm still here, aren't I?"
"But you're not." The way Rose looks at her then makes her think she might be right.
.
Angela texts her on a Thursday night. She wants to know if she's free to study for their history test. Bella sets her book aside and tries to think of a kind but convincing way to say no.
Rose scoffs behind her. "Don't you dare. She's the nice one."
"But it was just getting good," she says, pointing at her book. It wasn't really. She doesn't know why she can't stop.
"You know, just because you have a million books and a ghost girl following you around doesn't mean you can blow off your friends every single week. The alive ones anyway."
"I- You're right."
Rose passes through her dresser and pushes her hair over her shoulder. "I know."
.
"I'm going to need you to do something for me," Rose says one afternoon when Bella's charting the Krebs Cycle for biology.
"Sure," Bella says. She glances at her textbook.
"It's not time yet, but it's coming."
"Okay."
.
She makes the grass grow. Of course, she does.
It takes a whole month for the sun to come all the way out again, but when it does, Bella flies outside, slips in a puddle, and finds a tree to read beneath. Despite the brightness, there's no heat behind it. Nothing to banish the cold in her bones from the length of the winter.
Rose (sun-yellow dress) walks around the grass barefoot, waving her arms like she's composing a symphony. The grass grows up to meet her. Tiny yellow and white flowers bloom out of nowhere.
She says she died almost a century ago. Pierced through the heart, bled out against the mirror. She thinks her soul got trapped. She spent an eternity in the back of that antique shop until one day, Charlie pulled the sheet off.
"I shouldn't have ignored you," Bella blurts. She fumbles with her book, nearly drops it.
"That's alright. I waited for forever. But I don't know that I could do it again." She touches the trunk of the tree. Leaves flower out above.
"You… make plants grow."
"So the extent of my benevolence." She taps the trunk again and all the leaves curl up and drift from the branches. She winks and Bella rolls her eyes.
"You're evil, then?"
"I haven't decided yet."
.
"Would you tell me who killed you?" Bella asks, mouth full of cereal.
"Just a man who needed money, I guess. Like all the other girls snuffed out too soon. It's not my big secret."
"Then what is?"
Her eyes flick up. They always take Bella by surprise. She claims in life they were violet, but now they're dark gold. A sound like unsheathing a sword zings around them every time their eyes catch. Rose removes herself from the room. She's been doing that a lot lately.
.
The ceiling in her room starts leaking during the second coming of the flood. Taking one step outside is like getting a bathtub dumped on your head. The little house can't take it. Mold festers and flourishes. Such is the price you pay for the quiet beauty of the pacific northwest.
She sets a bucket underneath the leak. It fills up every few hours, but at least it's rhythmic.
"It's Friday night," Bella says after she sloshes the fifth bucket of the day out the window.
"Oh, shut up."
.
The plant in her windowsill is long past dead and completely beyond revival. Rose pokes at it for hours. Gradually, it turns a bright, healthy shade of green, but it refuses to grow. As bright as she is, she's not the sun.
"Maybe you're losing your touch."
Rose smiles in a way Bella doesn't recognize. "Maybe you're right." She brushes her hands over her skirt. "You know, I was as old as you are when I died."
"Yeah?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
Bella shrugs and turns the terracotta pot in her windowsill. It sounds like a river is running across the roof. "I haven't really figured it out yet."
"That's alright," Rose says. She pulls on the end of Bella's braid. Water drips onto her shoulder, and they both look up. "Maybe you should be more worried about drowning in your own bedroom."
.
The downpour drowns them all through the weekend. The school floods, the gym floor warps into another dimension, and the county decides the give them a couple of days off so they can focus on the bucket brigade slowly emptying the science classrooms.
Bella plucks The Waves off her shelf. She doesn't feel anywhere near as underwater as the rest of the town and she should really try to catch up on that.
Rose appears in the chair by the window, legs tucked beneath her. Her dress matches Bella's pajama bottoms. It makes them both smile a little bit.
"Where do you go when you disappear?"
"Nowhere. Sometimes it's nice not to be seen."
"By me?"
"No, I don't mind you."
"I don't get it then," Bella says. She climbs up onto her bed and turns on the lamp on the bedside table.
"Me either," Rose says. She looks out the window.
Bella opens her book, it's become one of her favorites since the move to Washington. Back in Arizona, she didn't really get it, but now she does. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. She looks over at Rose, the cloud wrapped around her. The slate grey light fights the gold of her hair.
Water drips into the bucket. Bella reads the same paragraph twelve times. The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable fr-
"I heard Mike ask you to the dance the other day. You said no. Why?" Rose asks suddenly. Maybe not so suddenly.
"I don't really dance."
"Well, forget the dance. I'm sure he's asked you before."
"Yeah," Bella shrugs. "Mike's a friend. Jessica likes him, I don't."
She nods, smiling a little. She probably saw the pinched-up look on Jess' face when Mike asked. She was standing right there. Bella doesn't exactly see a way out of that for him.
"What about Eric?"
"Angela."
"What abou-"
"What about you, Miss Belle Epoque."
"That's how old you think I am?"
"Yes, answer the question."
She lets out a breath even though she doesn't need to breathe. Some parts of being alive are harder to shake than others. "No," she says. "I mean, I was supposed to marry this son and heir to a kerosene company but… well, I'll let you figure that one out."
"Did you love him?"
"About as much as you love Mike Newton."
"Spinsterhood is looking pretty nice if you ask me."
"That word," Rose says. She squints her eyes. "Spinster. My mother used to practically throw it at me. As if that's worse than marrying without love… Or dying before you ever love at all."
.
A car slides off the road into a telephone pole and knocks out nearly the whole town. Charlie's out most of the day, making rounds, making sure nobody got swept away in the night.
Bella glares up at the mold on the ceiling in the bathroom, clinging to the corners in patches. It makes her eyes itchy just looking at it.
She steps out into the hall and stops just outside her bedroom where Rose is standing in front of the mirror, staring hard like it has tiny words written on it. For a second, Bella thinks she sneers, but before the thought even forms, Rose swings her leg back and kicks the glass. "Take that!"
It doesn't go as planned. Probably. Unless her goal was to get her foot stuck in the freaky soul trap mirror.
"What are you doing?" Bella asks, leaning against the doorframe.
Rose startles. "I-" She smiles, slightly red. She's balancing on one foot. "Well, clearly I thought I had the better of it."
"Clearly."
"Would you just help me?" Rose hops on the foot she has left and holds her hands out. "Just pull. It might work."
Bella takes her hands and throws her weight back, but apparently, she wasn't as stuck as she appeared. She comes free so suddenly, they stumble backward into the side of Bella's bed and hit the ground with a thud.
She rubs the back of her head and blows Rose's hair out of her face. "You alright?" She shouldn't be, considering how Bella's knee is jammed into her ribcage. But because she's Rose (and also dead) she just lifts her head, barely three inches from Bella's face, and smiles.
.
Slowly, it gets dark. Rose migrates to the window again and again as Bella goes around lighting candles and replacing the batteries in Charlie's old camping lanterns.
"Do you think he's okay?"
"Who? Charlie? Yeah, it's just a storm." Bella picks up a flashlight and shines it on her. No shadow. Out on a limb, she ventures, "I didn't know you cared."
"Of course, I care. He… he… doesn't care that his teenage daughter either talks to herself all day or has an imaginary friend. That's a man we can't afford to lose."
"One of the few."
Rose smiles and then frowns, like a coin flipping. "This storm. It's been going on for too long, hasn't it?"
"I don't know. Charlie said it happens here every few years. The town just recovered from the last one."
Her frown deepens, and Bella can't begin to grasp why. The glass hums in her pocket. She'd nearly forgotten about it. It's been just them in here for so long, it was easy to forget. Easy to forget all of it.
"It's okay," she says. She touches her hand on the windowsill. "I mean, it's not like you have anything to worry about. You're… you know."
"Dead and gone," Rose says sharply, darkly. She disappears away somewhere, nowhere. Bella sighs and looks down at her hands, the webs of golden thread between her fingers. Rose, so fully sewn into her life.
"You know I didn't mean it like that," she whispers.
.
The sun comes up the next morning for a total of three minutes. If it could be called the eye of the storm, it blinked. Bella misses a step on her way downstairs, and Rose materializes beside her just in time to grab her elbow.
"I got into a fight with my father," she says, unprompted.
Bella grabs the railing. "What?"
"The night I died, I argued with my father, left in a rage. I got lost."
"What did you fight about?"
Rose sits on the step, Bella beside her, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. The thread fastens them together. Bella can practically feel the memory flare and rumble through her head.
"It's stupid now," she says, looking down. "My parents were separating, strange in those times but not unheard of. I was to go with my mother into the city, and my brothers were going to stay with my father. I thought that meant he didn't love me, but now I see he just wanted me to be better. To have more choices than he or my mother."
"I was wearing this awful dress. I hated it so much. My mother made it for me to wear to meet the man I was supposed to marry. I could never tell what color it was. Neither can this purgatory, I suppose."
"Purgatory," Bella repeats. It stings a little, but there's no other word for it.
"Hey," Rose says. She takes her hand, links their fingers. The gold thread hums up her arm, just beneath the skin, winding tightly around her blood vessels and bones. Her fingers go numb with it, her hand, her wrist.
"Every time you disappear, it feels like the last time." She doesn't mean to say it out loud. Rose touches her face. She's cold everywhere except where the knife went in. Bella feels her own heart in her chest, erratic, nervous.
"Then I won't."
Most things are easier said than done. This is one of them.
.
When Charlie gets home from work, he builds a fire that rivals hell. At least, Bella thinks so. He's trying the banish the cave-like moisture in the air, but it doesn't work. Instead, it creates the strangest atmosphere in her room. A superheated, damp, stuffy box on the second floor. She tries opening a window, but rain shoots in at her like it's looking for any excuse to enter the house.
She changes into a tank top that she didn't even wear during the summer back in Arizona and sits in the middle of the bed, daring her blankets and stuffed animals to touch her.
"Misery is unbecoming," Rose says.
"Why don't you say something that makes sense?"
Rose rolls her eyes. "You're sweating."
"It's great," Bella says. She holds her hands out in front of her, palms facing outward. "If I stay perfectly still, I almost don't notice it."
Rainwater leaks into the bucket. The water stain on the ceiling is shaped like Florida. Bella squints up at mini-Jacksonville. She can almost see Phil hitting a home run, her mother searching for her phone charger.
Cold spreads over her collarbone. She takes in a sharp breath and flinches away from Rose's hand.
"This is my villain origin story," Rose says. "Shot down in her final moment of tenderness…"
She pulls Rose down beside her and rests her cheek against her glacial shoulder. "You'd destroy the world anyway."
.
The next morning marks the start of the end.
Rose walks through the wall to see if Charlie's left yet. She doesn't come back, gets cut off mid-sentence. Bella goes looking for her, but she doesn't know where to begin.
Half an hour later, she climbs up through the floor with her hair tangled across her face.
"What happened?"
"I… don't know."
.
Bella tries to work ahead in her math textbook, but the wavering candlelight turns it into a test of her patience. She slides the book away, stretches her arms to her sides. Her knuckles graze the thick frame of the mirror. It gets her thinking. It always does.
"What was it like in there?"
Rose comes up behind her. She leans over Bella's shoulder, her long hair sweeping against her cheek. "Look there," she says, pointing out the window. It's so dark, the glass has just turned into yet another mirror. "I could always see myself and nothing. And then myself and you. Something like looking out a window, always with nothing to do but watch."
"What was behind you?"
Rose laughs but the sound is lost. She covers Bella's eyes with her hands. Something like electricity careens through her. Her fingers tighten around the arms of the chair beneath her.
"Darkness?" she tries.
"I don't know," Rose whispers. "I never looked."
.
Maybe this isn't something with rules. Maybe carrying the piece of glass around isn't really doing anything, but it makes her feel better. It makes them both feel better. Especially when Rose freezes in place in the middle of the kitchen.
Bella waves her hands in front of her face because at first, it's a little funny. Then it's not. She reaches out to shake her shoulders and gasps as her hands drop right through her.
"No!" It's not supposed to happen like this. Everyone else walks through her like she's nothing, like she's air. She's looking straight ahead, half-smiling about some stupid joke Bella made about the rain. She just wants her back. "Rose!"
She tries again, but her hands wave right through her and come out cold like she'd stuck them into a snowdrift. The rain pounds on the roof, leaks into the dozens of buckets, splashes onto the floor. It's never going to stop.
She leans against the wall, looks at Rose stuck there. "Please, come back."
Eventually, she can't bear to look. She goes upstairs with her candles and her books and the overflowing blue bucket. Not knowing what else to do, she sits on her bed, stares at the glow of the flames in the mirror. She drops her face into her hands.
"What's wrong? Bella?" Rose says, lost. Bella's head snaps up so fast it almost hurts, and she's on her feet twice as fast. They collide and spin out into the hall.
"I thought you were gone," Bella says into her shoulder. "You weren't moving. I- My hands… I went right through you."
"I don't know what's happening," Rose says. Bella looks up and fear settles in the strange gold of Rose's eyes. She's terrified. "I don't want to die again."
.
A thread snaps, pulls through the healed holes in her skin. She bolts upright in bed and clutches her pocket, her chest, wraps her arms around herself and curls inward. The inside of her head echoes endlessly.
I can't stay here forever. I can't stay here forever. I can't stay here forever.
Outside, the rain batters the roof, drowns out the whole world. A chill runs through her as she reaches for the box of matchsticks beside her bed. A tremble moves in her fingertips as she clumsily strikes the match on the side of the box. Orange light floods the room for just a moment before it dims down.
Across the room, Rose's dress ignites, flickering blue and orange. She's sitting in the rocking chair, her eyes in her lap. The match dies in Bella's hand. Rose glides across the floor, a torch of light, of life. Bella's certain she didn't let go of hers without leaving claw marks down the length of her soul as it left her body.
Rose's hands are cool on the sides of her face. If she only lived ten seconds more, her autopsy would reveal thousands of gold strands, a nervous system all its own.
.
They sit across from each other, hands pressed together. Rose's thin fingers are just a little bit longer than Bella's.
"What do you know about love?" Rose asks, alight.
"Nothing."
"Me either."
.
Bella forces herself to eat the perishables from the fridge. She hasn't been hungry since the storm started. Just anxious and itchy and drawn like a magnet to the girl standing in the middle of the kitchen table. Her own island.
"You have to leave, don't you?" Bella says. She hates the quiver in her voice, hates the implication even more. "Eventually?"
Rose frowns, solemn, gray. She pulls at a strand of her hair. "I guess I can't stay here forever. Can I?"
Bella shudders. Rose puts a hand on her shoulder. She's still in the middle of the table. It's so absurd, Bella feels like crying.
"I'd like to stay." She holds her other hand over her chest. "But I feel this tug away from here. From you. The harder I try to stay, the harder it is, like I'm fading away." She closes her eyes.
"How much longer?"
"Not long enough."
.
"I feel like I leave you alone too much," Charlie says. He's standing in the hall just outside her room.
"I'm alright," she says.
"You don't…" Charlie sighs. "Are you sure? You seem quiet."
"I guess the rain's getting to me."
"It's supposed to clear up in a few days. Power should be back too." He hesitates in the hall, unsure. They do not cling to each other the way her mother did when she was growing up. Both of them seem acutely aware of the distance. Charlie scratches the back of his head. "Uh, keep your head up."
She doesn't want to tell him that the reason she won't look at him doesn't have anything to do with him, but that Rose is stuck again just in front of him, unmoving but fading in and out of sight.
After he leaves, Bella goes downstairs. Rose manages to shake herself free and get control back. She can't make anything grow anymore, just wilt and die, but Bella doesn't care about any of that. It's enough to know she's still there without having to look. But even that's slipping.
She reaches for a red apple from the bowl. Rose rest her chin on her shoulder. "The dance is on Friday," she says.
Bella almost laughs. "I don't think that's salvageable."
"You never know." She takes Bella's hand. "You're making the air heavy."
"What?"
Rose pulls her from the kitchen into the living room. The light from the fire glows against the stormy fabric of her dress. She presses her hand over Bella's chest.
"You're sad. I can feel it," Rose says, looking up.
"Aren't you?"
"My heart's dead," she whispers.
Bella covers Rose's hand with her own. Through her, she can feel her own heartbeat keeping time like a clock. Rose's stopped so long ago, but she's right here, glowing and dead, but so alive. She makes the grass grow. She walks through the walls. Bella loves her, she loves her, she loves her.
"Don't worry so much."
The end is coming, she can feel it spill through her brain like dark ink. And Rose has her own gravity, pulling her and pulling her. She leans forward with it and-
Rose vanishes into thin air.
Bella doesn't have enough time to register the sting before a hand on her shoulder spins her around, and Rose is there, cold everywhere, lips pressing softly against her own.
.
After two more days, the electricity comes back in a shock of light. The high school opens its doors and soggy students press through the water rotted halls. The whole town is soaked through, it might never dry. If you kick the side of a building hard enough, chances are you'll break right through.
Jessica, Mike, Angela, Eric, and all the rest file into their second-period classes, hang their coats by the door, and shiver through class in their damp t-shirts. Bella Swan is not among them.
.
I need you to do something for me.
She stumbles through the forest on spongey trails that haven't been cleared in years. The storm left the flowered clearings swamped and devastated. With a hand to the ground, even Rose couldn't bring them back. This is all that's left.
She can hear the roar of the water long before she can see it. Rose is holding onto her hand with both her own, tethered.
I don't want to lose you.
I was supposed to leave decades ago, but I got trapped. This is right, it has to be. I've been here as long as I can.
The river is a rushing torrent of dirty brown stormwater. It spreads out into the trees, carving a new riverbed. The sound is unbearable. The sun filters through the branches. And despite the harshness of it all, it's beautiful.
"Bella?" Rose says. She looks down at their hands. She can see her own through Rose's. She's practically translucent. Like a normal ghost. "I-"
"I know," Bella shouts over the noise. She rips open the pocket she'd sewn shut and pulls out the shard.
Rose nods once and glances at the water for a second. Bella throws the small piece of glass with all her might. It glints in the light before getting whipped downstream and lost forever.
"Why me?"
"You didn't let me out. I knew I could trust you to let go." Rose squeezes Bella's hand. "When people die, sometimes they get a last wish."
Her eyes sting. She blinks and blinks but it just gets worse. Let go? How could she possibly? "Most people don't die twice, they don't get two."
"Most people can't even fulfill one." She looks up, gold eyes burning. "You were mine."
The last time she disappears, it happens so slowly. Bella can feel the threads so deeply embedded in her begin to unravel and pull free. Giant tangles of gold are ripped from her, they come out of her chest and arms. It's excruciating, but all she can do is watch as Rose fades and fades.
The sky bursts open, full of light. Bella feels her hand drop to her side. The sun is warm on her face.