You're Not in This Alone

As Lance tied me up, he whispered to me, "Forgive us." No one seemed to hear - not even Sarah. But I spat on the ground to show my disgust. I would never forgive him or anyone else for killing Ebony.

I tried to turn around and look at Ebony to give her one last look of sorrow and love, but Tristan was holding me too tightly. I elbowed him and tried to get free, but then he pushed me into the ground.

My head was pounding from the two punches Lance and Tristan had thrown at me. Lance was surprisingly strong at fifteen, but I wasn't surprised at Tristan's strength. Although he was only a year younger than me, he was bigger.

I knew Ebony would die in a fire. I'd seen it many times in my nightmares. I just didn't know it would be here and so soon. I couldn't believe they were accusing Ebony of being the murderer. I would've defended her no matter what, but I knew it wasn't her.

I wondered if whoever it really was had set this up. If they had, they were very intelligent. But when the next person died, they would know Ebony was innocent.

I thought I'd prepared myself for this day. I thought I'd numbed my emotions enough to deal with it. I was wrong. I wished I'd tried harder to save her. Now I worried that she thought I didn't try hard enough, even though we both knew it was impossible to change the future.

"Ebony, run! I pleaded, knowing she was too shocked and hurt to listen. "Do something! Don't just let them kill you. Plea-" But Tristan shoved my face in the ground. I continued to yell, but my words were lost.

Before they took Ebony away, she said, "I love you, Gerard, don't blame them when it's over. Don't blame them." I heard her voice break off, and I knew she was crying.

I wanted to tell her that I loved her too, but I would certainly blame them. How could I not?

A long time passed, but eventually I heard the hiss and cackle of the fire and Ebony's far off whimpers.

Tristan released my head, but he still pinned me to the ground. "You're all monsters," I spat at all of them. Tristan grabbed my hair, but Sarah stopped him.

"Let him speak," she said firmly. So Tristan allowed my head free rein.

"You'll know you made a mistake when the next person dies," I continued. "You'll know! and then what will you do? Apologize? Like that will do anything! Or will you blame someone else until you kill each other? Whoever the murderer is won't need to kill anyone else! You'll do it for them!"

I stopped to take a breath. The huge fire behind me warmed my back. Before I could say anything else, I heard Ebony scream my name from the house.

“Ebony!” I cried, trying harder than before to get away so I could save her. And if I couldn’t save her, I wanted to see her beautiful face one more time. I kicked Tristan so hard that he pulled away. I rolled out from under him and got up, but before I could turn around Lance tackled me to the ground. He and Tristan both held me down.

Ebony screamed unintelligible words, and I answered her. I told her I loved her, I’d see her when I died, I was sorry I kept this from her. Eventually, though, she went silent, and so did I.

I squeezed my eyes closed. I wouldn’t let them see me cry for her. I wouldn’t give them that. All I could do was sit and wait for her to die and be relieved of her pain.

Minutes of silence passed, and I knew she was gone. Then I heard Tristan grunt. His body lurched a few times, and then he rolled off of me. Lance still held on, but he let me get up and turn around.

The scene I saw before my eyes made me so shocked that I didn’t even try to break free from Lance’s grip. Skyler had joined Lance in holding me back. Shelby was standing to the side, just as stunned as I was. Sarah and Nadia each held one of Faith’s arms. Faith was crying silently, trying to get to Tristan.

Tristan was laying lifelessly on the ground, but he hadn’t died in the same way the others had. Blood oozed from two stab wounds in his chest.

But the thing that made me exclaim, “What the hell!” was who held the bloody knife, his eyes full of hatred directed at Tristan’s dead body. It was Jason.

Jason turned to me, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smirk. “It’s not what it looks like, Gerard,” he said.

“What the hell is it? I see you, Jason, who was dead. I know you were dead. I felt for myself; you had no pulse. And now you just killed Tristan,” I spill out hurriedly.

Jason sighed and dropped the knife. “This is going to take a lot of explaining,” he admitted.

“You’re damn right!” I roared, trying to shake Lance and Skyler off of me. “And why are you still holding me?” I asked in annoyance.

Jason shrugged. “It’s better for now, in case you do something rash. Do you promise to hear me out?”

I nodded, but only because I didn’t know what else to do.

Jason turned around. “And you? Shelby? Faith?”

They nodded too.

Jason said, “I didn’t ask anyone else because they already know what’s going on. I’ll start by admitting that, yes, I was dead. But by the night after my funeral, I was still hanging around. I was so angry that I couldn’t leave without getting revenge. When I got curious and touched my own body… it sucked me back in.”

“Can anyone do that?” Shelby interrupted. “Can anyone just come back to life?”

”Of course not,” Jason answered. “Grace would’ve known. So I realized I had a power after all. I’d only never discovered it because I’d never died.”

“You can resurrect,” I stated. It made sense now. He did have a power that matched Grace’s after all.

Jason nodded. “But I was trapped in the mausoleum in the middle of the night, so I screamed for Sarah to come save me.”

“I heard him,” Sarah said, continuing the story. “I woke up Skyler and told him, but we still had no way to get Jason out. So we told Nadia, and we got Jason out in the middle of the night.” She looked at me. “That’s the night I fell and scraped my elbow,” she explained.

“We talked a lot that night, “Jason said. “We made a list of who it could be. We ruled out ourselves, obviously, but we didn’t get much farther from there. I’ve been living in Oregon, in the home Grace and I used to live in. Sometimes Nadia would teleport me to talk to her, Sarah, and Skyler at night, but with no one else dying, we didn’t have anything to act one.”

“Then one day, it occurred to me: If I had a power, the only two people without one were Faith and Tristan. We thought that whoever was killing people was using a gift to do it. So… we concluded that it had to be either Faith or Tristan.”