Free With All My Soul by Rachel Vincent Page B

she was feeding
from Sophie’s relevant fears as part of the process.
    Em chuckled, staring into her cup. “I can’t believe you put
real sugar in her coffee. She’d kill you if she knew it wasn’t calorie-free
sweetener.”
    “Here.” Nash slid the notepad back to me. “That’s all I can
remember.”
    I glanced at the list. “That’s only three names.”
    He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “If I had more, I’d give
them to you.”
    “Thanks.” I turned to Em. “What about you? Did you see Doug
hang out with anyone in particular?”
    “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Half the school. But I never even saw
him with a balloon.” Which is what they’d used to store frost in. Which was kind
of...my idea. Though I’d never intended to contribute to the ease of drug
trafficking when I’d thought of it.
    “Hey, Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute?” I twisted in my
chair to see Chelsea Simms holding a green paper folder.
    “Sure.” I shoved the notepad into my bag, picked up my coffee,
and stood. “I’ll see you guys at lunch.” Sabine, Nash, and Emma nodded, and I
followed Chelsea into the hall.
    She opened the folder as we walked in the general direction of
our first-period math class, then pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to
me. “I just wanted to show you this.” It was a screen print from some kind of
layout program. “It’s for her memorial page in the yearbook.”
    In the center was a candid shot of Emma at a football game,
from the fall semester. Her cheeks were red from the cold and she wore a green
scarf; her thick, golden hair was flying over her shoulder in the wind. She
looked happy.
    She looked alive.
    In that moment, I understood what Emma had lost, beyond her
family, her clothes, her car, and the future she’d always assumed she’d have.
She’d lost herself.
    I’d met Emma in the third grade, and in all the time I’d known
her, I couldn’t remember her ever lacking confidence or self-esteem before I’d
exposed her to truths about the world no human should have to deal with. She’d
always known who she was and where she fit into the world. She’d known what she
wanted to do with her life—even if that changed on a monthly basis—and exactly
what she was capable of.
    She had none of that now, and even if I spent my entire
afterlife trying to make that up to her, I could never give her back what she’d
lost. Ever. The best I could do was help her adjust to the life she had now.
Show her that she still had her friends, and that this new life could still be a
good one.
    But I couldn’t do that with Avari always two steps behind us. I
couldn’t honestly tell her that life was still worth living if we were always
looking over our shoulders to evade death and eternal torture. I had to get rid
of Avari and the rest of the hellions not just to avenge Em’s death, and those
who’d gone before her, but to make sure that the life she had left was more than
just the constant struggle to hold on to it.
    “Do you think she’d like it?” Chelsea asked, and I realized
we’d stopped walking several doors away from our classroom. And that my hand was
clenched around the printout, my knuckles white from the strain.
    “Yeah. It’s beautiful. I think she’ll love it.”
    Chelsea gave me a confused look, and it took me a second to
realize I’d referred to Em in present tense. Again.
    “I mean, if she were still here. Which she’s not, obviously.
Because she died. But if she hadn’t, I have no doubt that Emma would love this yearbook memorial page.”

Chapter Six
    “I hate it.” Em set the memorial page printout on the
picnic table and pinned it with her soda can.
    “Hate what?” Nash put his tray down, Sabine set hers next to
it, and they sank onto the bench across from me and Em.
    “My yearbook memorial page.”
    “That’s what Chelsea wanted to show me this morning.” I leaned
across the table and took an apple wedge from Nash’s tray. I wasn’t hungry, but
if I