Free Ascension by Bailey Bradford Page A

something, and he blinked in time to see Stefan fly backwards as if hit by an invisible hoof to the gut. Conner appeared then, looking perplexed before he burst into raucous laughter. Ro didn’t think anything was funny when he first woke up. He’d never been a morning person, and that didn’t seem likely to change now.
    Conner was still chortling, him and Stefan both now. Ro stood up then quickly let out a mortified sound when he realised he was bare-assed naked.
    “Just think on your clothes, man,” Stefan advised around giggles. He got himself together while Ro closed his eyes and pictured himself wearing his most comfortable outfit. Stefan must have taken his acquiescence as a need to hear more, because he started talking as Ro willed himself to be clothed.
    “You expected to be naked so you are. Just like you expected to have to sleep, so you did. Man, once I realised I never had to sleep again, I was bummed and happy both. Bummed because sleep is so good sometimes, but happy because there’s so much I could be doing instead of snoozing!”
    “Enthusiastic, ain’t he?” Conner asked, his lips brushing against Ro’s ear.
    Ro opened his eyes and was relieved to find Stefan had been right and his dangly bits were no longer dangling quite so freely. “He’s helpful.” Ro smoothed a wrinkle out of his shirt then asked Conner, “Where were you?”
    Conner looked away and sighed. “Went to check on everyone. That weird-ass wall is still around your dad. I tried talking to Sev but he shooed me off because he was talking with the funeral parlour guy.”
    “Well, that’s not depressing,” Ro muttered, reminded again that he’d only just died and had left people behind to hurt. “I feel so scattered, like I should be more shook up, more freaked out, I don’t know.”
    Conner turned back to him then and pulled him in for a hug. “It took me a lot longer than it’s taken you to get to where you are. Honestly, right after I died, I don’t even think I was whole, if that makes any sense.”
    “I was scared and confused,” Stefan said before Ro could ask what Conner meant. “I was still pretty stupid back then.”
    “Stefan!” Conner snapped. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, not even in the past tense. You were never stupid.”
    Stefan rolled his eyes so hard Ro was surprised they didn’t hear the tendons straining. “Riiiiiiiiight. I was”—Stefan hooked two fingers from each hand in the air—“intellectually challenged. Whatever.”
    “You can be sit-challenged,” Conner warned.
    “What the hell does that mean?” Ro asked.
    Stefan sniffed and turned his nose up at them. “It means Conner will try to paddle my behind. He’d have to catch me first, though, and he’s old !”
    “Brat.” Conner growled the word and Stefan giggled then vanished, off to tease someone else, Ro was sure.
    “What did you mean when you said you didn’t think you were whole after you first passed?” he asked Conner then.
    Conner steered them over to a shady patch of grass beneath a huge old oak tree. They sat, Ro not feeling the ground beneath him but that was okay. He was more interested in Conner’s explanation than he was in anything else. Conner didn’t keep him waiting.
    “The thing is, I don’t know how we come to be like this, what makes us stay, but I figure our brains work on electrical impulses, or have some kind of electrical current.”
    Ro nodded, following along so far.
    Conner linked their hands together and continued, “Okay, well, I don’t know how that works, but it seems like all those electric particles have to keep going on when the body doesn’t, you know? Like that energy has to go somewhere, and I could be way wrong, but I prefer to believe that’s us, the core of us, our soul or whatever you want to call it.” Conner tilted his chin towards the sky. “Like water, how it evaporates then comes back down to Earth as rain. I know it’s all more complicated than that, but