Imprint Read online

  Sean came round to the sound of Drew’s voice, pulling him out of the memory, and his mind was suddenly blank. He couldn’t speak, or move, and the only thought that went through his head was “It was me.” He somehow felt it necessary to voice that, as right now it seemed like the most important thing in the world.

  Drew just smiled sadly. “I saw it too, but I’ve always known. I didn’t lose my memory like you. The doctors said the amnesia was from post-traumatic stress. I was there, listening to them when they said it.”

  The words didn’t register. “It was me,” Sean said again, mostly to himself. “It was me. I killed you.”

  “Yeah, you did.” Drew’s admission somehow made it final, and there was something in the back of his mind telling Sean that he should be having a mental breakdown right about now, but he couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t the same as the numbness he felt when he had first become an Imprint. It was the feeling of being truly and utterly empty.

  “You tried to save me,” Sean clarified in a robotic voice that threatened to break. “You saved my life and in the process I strangled you and put you through this hell.”

  “You didn’t mean to do it. You were drowning-”

  “Why don’t you hate me? Why did you only take my body, why didn’t you take my soul as well? Why didn’t you rip it to shreds like Hayden thought you had?”

  Drew reached one hand out, as if he wanted to lay it on Sean’s shoulder, but decided against it. “I told you once, didn’t I?” he murmured. “I never hated you, it wasn’t your fault. I was the one who told you to go swimming in the first place. You were my responsibility, and I chose to try and save you.”

  “I wish you hadn’t,” Sean choked on what may have been a sob, he didn’t really know. It felt like the world was spinning, or more likely it was just his head. “You idiot. If you weren’t such a bloody martyr you would still be alive, properly alive with your own body. You’d probably be in medical school by now.”

  Drew shook his head. “People die, Sean, it’s what they do. The most anyone can wish for is to die knowing that they’ve saved someone else.”

  “Saving my pathetic life wasn’t worth it.”

  “I did think that a few times,” Drew admitted, and he looked a little sheepish. “That was mainly why I swapped places with you. I wanted to show you that life isn’t something to take for granted so that you wouldn’t waste it. I think you’ve learnt that now though.”

  “I always wondered why I couldn’t hate you, no matter how much I wanted to,” Sean said in realisation. “No wonder, it should be the other way around.”

  Drew chuckled. “I’m no saint, though. I also took your body because, yes, I’m selfish and I really did want to be alive again for a little while. My original body was definitely better looking though.”

  Sean didn’t laugh. He felt like he would never be able to again, and somehow he was glad for the numbness because he knew otherwise he would be in a sobbing heap on the ground (provided Imprints could actually cry). And he needed this time; he needed to understand everything before he faded out. “Why did no one ever tell me the truth?” he asked. “Hayden, mother…you, why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Your mind repressed those memories for a reason, you know. Think about what it would have done to you, if you’d carried those memories around for the last four years. Your family wanted you to have a normal life, so they chose not to tell you,” Drew explained solemnly. “And as for me…well, I was scared that you would completely lose your will to live if you knew earlier. When you’re an Imprint that can be pretty dangerous. This is the only reason that I could swap with you, though. I remember you asked me why once. It’s because we’re connected; I gave my life for you, so I’m able to take back that life.”

  “So why are you telling me all of this now?”

  “Because it’s only fair to tell you the truth,” Drew shrugged. “And I hate the thought of you never knowing who I really am.”

  Sean was quiet for a long time, digesting the information slowly. “Sorry,” he finally whispered, and the guilt saturating his voice was painful to hear.

  “Don’t be,” Drew’s eyes softened and there was empathy in them. “I don’t regret it.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I did the right thing.” Sean wanted to say more, to somehow put the emptiness inside him into words, but his voice cracked and failed to work. Drew just smiled sadly. “We don’t have long left. You’re fading,” he said. “Just hold on, wait.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, the object Sean had seen him take before they left.

  “What is that?”

  Drew didn’t answer, but it was obvious what they were. Pills. He popped one out, swallowed it dry, and then continued until fifteen of them were gone. Sean’s sluggish mind tried to process what was happening, but by the time he understood it was already too late.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Sean yelled out, panic settling in, but Drew still did not answer. Instead he waited silently, an oddly calm look on his face, until he suddenly dropped the empty packet in his hand and swayed precariously on the spot. In the next moment he had collapsed to the ground from the overdose, his eyes rolling back and his hair splayed out all over the grass like a dark ink stain.

  Sean waited, maybe for two minutes or maybe for twenty. He couldn’t tell because the seconds lagged and the minutes blurred into each other. He expected the motionless body on the ground to move, to miraculously get back up and for Drew to still be there. Was he already dead? Had his heart stopped beating? He wished he could tell, but his common sense was failing him and he knew that slowly, he was giving in to the hysteria that was trying to steal his mind.

  “I told you to wait, didn’t I? I’m still here you know.”

  Sean’s first instinct was to turn to the body, eyes wide and choking on air, only to see that there was no change and it had definitely not spoken. And then he realised that the voice had come from behind him, and so turned around. A short distance away stood a boy who looked the same age as himself, translucent, with light bronze hair slightly longer than his own and piercing eyes. The boy was familiar, and Sean had a distinct memory of drawing him once. How long ago that now felt like. He knew who he was immediately though, the eyes gave him away.

  “So this is what you really looked like,” Sean breathed, and he tried to match up the face with the boy in his broken memories. “I can see you a lot clearer, now that we’re both the same.”

  “I know,” Drew said, a hint of a smile lingering. “I can see you too.” And Sean suddenly knew exactly what he meant. Now that there was no body in the way anymore, he felt like he could see straight through the other boy. He understood him, and he knew that this understanding was mutual.

  “It’s going to die,” Sean stated after an extended silence, and his use of ‘it’ when referring to his own body sounded too strange, as if it was just a container and nothing more. “Why’d you go and overdose anyway?”

  “So I could give it back to you, of course. And it’s not going to die. Ali should be coming soon; I called her on the bus and told her to come here. She’ll get it to the hospital. I didn’t overdose that much.”

  “So that’s what you meant, when you asked her to help you.”

  “You know she’d do anything for you, so don’t take it for granted.”

  Sean shook his head in denial. “I don’t want to go back,” he said, and he had never so genuinely meant something more than that in his life. “I don’t want to live again. I want you to live instead.”

  “And spend my whole life stuck inside your weedy body? I think I’d rather just take my chances with the afterlife thanks.”

  “You’re unbelievable, joking about your own death like this,” Sean muttered.

  “Well, this wasn’t exactly how I planned this conversation to go.”

  “Really? Because it seems like you planned everything else.”

  “Yeah, I did,”
Drew admitted. “And this is how the ending is supposed to happen. With you going back to your normal boring life, and me fading out like I was originally supposed to.”

  “That’s not the ending I want,” Sean said.

  “Since when did you become so noble?”

  “Take back my body,” he continued, ignoring the comment. “Live, go to university, become a doctor, marry, have kids or something.”

  “Like I’d ever want to have one of those little demons.”

  “You weren’t supposed to die,” Sean whispered. “I was supposed to die, not you.”

  With those words the amusement finally faded from the other boy’s face, to be replaced by the despair tainted with anger that had been there all along. “I don’t want your body,” he said, and there was a menacing edge to his voice. “Sure, a temporary loan was fine, but it’s your body and your life. I hate how you’re willing to throw it away so easily, as if you don’t even care.”

  “I do care,” Sean countered.

  “Then because you can’t live with me, live for me. Live so that I didn’t give up my life for nothing.”

  “You make it sound so easy, but I don’t think I’ll live up to your expectations.”

  “Sure you will, they’re not very high. Trust me.” Sean couldn’t help but choke on a small chuckle, at how familiar and reassuring an insulting comment now was to him. A smile cracked on Drew’s face as well. “Looks like times up,” he said. “If I don’t do this now, it’ll be too late.” He gently grabbed Sean’s sleeve and tugged him closer to the body that still lay on the ground, cold and still, as if it were simply a part of the shrubbery that surrounded the lake.

  “How do you know what to do?” Sean asked.

  “It’s not hard,” was the reply. “Just touch the forehead, and then everything should go black. It’s only possible now because you’re body is in such a weakened state. When you next wake up you should be back.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  “Well, then you’ll be wherever I’m going to end up.”

  Sean hesitantly reached out, towards the body that suddenly seemed so foreign to him, but paused just before he touched it. “I don’t want to go back,” he said again.

  “You have to; you still have things to do.”

  “What about you, though?”

  Drew just shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Will you really?”

  “These past months have been worth it,” he said softly, and there was a smile on his face that may have been genuine. Sean couldn’t tell anymore. He wanted to argue more, force Drew to accept this stupid container instead of him because he deserved it more dammit, but he was getting tired. He had been trying to fight it for a while now, but he couldn’t anymore. He was so tired, although it was not physical exhaustion. It was a mental exhaustion that was much worse and he knew that this was what it felt like to fade out.

  He brushed his fingers lightly across skin he could not feel, and then there was a both terrifying and comforting sensation of falling. Nothing was sinking in anymore, and all he knew was the tiredness that was eating away at him as the black grew from the corners of his vision like a blanket being pulled over his head. But, just before it consumed him completely, he was almost sure he heard something which sounded akin to ‘goodbye’.

  Chapter 16: A death for a death makes the whole world Imprints

  “Just calm down and pull your arm out of my bed, would you?”

  “People are selfish. They do what they want and don’t think about how it affects others until later. Your brother’s no different, and you’d be a fool to think he is.”

  “If that’s what you want, then sure. I’ll do my best to mourn for you too, the whole death package.”

  “And this is how the ending is supposed to happen. With you going back to your normal boring life, and me fading out like I was originally supposed to.”

  “Live so that I didn’t give up my life for nothing.”

  Sean drifted in and out of consciousness, but could only use the word ‘consciousness’ loosely. At one point he had a distinct impression of something big being forced down his throat, a stinging sort of pain and a clenching ache in his stomach. He vaguely remembered waking up momentarily to a world of white and strange beeps before the pain worsened and stars dominated his vision instead. But whether he was awake or not he heard the same things, felt the same pain. It was always that voice, so familiar yet at the moment he couldn’t place it. It kept saying things that he couldn’t decipher, but a part of him knew those things were real. That voice had been real.

  When he woke up properly, meaning with adequate sanity and for longer than half an hour, it was to the sight of the white beeping world again. Except this world and this situation were so familiar that it was just plain ironic and, if the circumstances were not what they were, laughable. He hated hospitals, he decided. He hated the whiteness of the walls and the bedding, the noisy monitors and the curtains that blocked out all the light. That was when it all came back to him, in one huge wave of recent memories and disjointed speech. Lake. Drew. Idiot. Gone. It placed that strange empty feeling, the feeling of something missing, he had felt ever since he had awoken. Drew was really gone. He wasn’t just dead-but-still-here-in-ghost-form-instead, he was gone. Properly gone and he couldn’t come back in any other forms this time.

  It felt like a gaping hole – it could have been a crater for all Sean knew- had reopened inside him and sucked every part of him into it. He was glad that it happened to be late at night and no doctors or nurses were in the room, because he didn’t want to be sedated. He wanted to feel the pain and savour it, because it wouldn’t be fair for him to be able to escape it after what he had done. Drew was gone because of him. He had now killed him twice. It didn’t matter that Drew wanted him to have his body back, it was still his fault. His fault it happened in the first place.

  And so he very calmly turned into his pillow, and used it to muffle his screams.

  He woke up again, three days later with his body in less pain than before, and he was pretty sure there was someone else in the room with him. He was proved right when he rolled onto his side and blinked into focus the sight of a huddled form curled up in the chair beside his bed like a cat. On closer inspection he recognised the bedraggled red hair and large winter coat. Ali. It took a minute for the name to come back to him, and even longer to work out why she was sleeping next to him. He realised that she must have been the one to bring him to this hospital, and that she probably thought he had tried to kill himself. Like everyone would now think.

  He let out a forlorn sigh, and waited. She looked so peaceful sleeping that he didn’t have the heart to wake her up, and nor was he looking forward to the inevitable conversation. She’d treat him like a broken doll, all fragile and capable of shattering into pieces at the slightest touch, and then ask him why he’d done it and try to understand and look at him with those big, brown eyes of hers all filled with pity. Just imagining it made him cringe, but it was better than explaining the truth to her.

  When she finally did awake however, it was not what Sean had expected. There were so many emotions suddenly whirling in her eyes – fear, sadness, relief, understanding – that he was taken aback by the intensity of them and found his mouth dry. He tried to speak, tried to somehow comfort her, but his throat burned.

  “Sean? Is it really you?” she asked quietly. He was confused by the question, but nodded anyway. Relief was now the dominant emotion on her face, and her lips cracked into a tiny smile. “Good, I’m glad. Oh Sean, I’m so glad.” She moved forward and grasped his hand and there were tears welling in her eyes, even though she refused to let them fall. The sudden contact gave him a pleasant jolt; it was the first bodily contact he’d felt in months. ‘Please don’t get all emotional on me’ he wanted to say, but he still couldn’t speak.

  “W-water,” he managed to croak out, and she leapt back nervously.

  “Of course, sorry. I-I’ll
just go get you some.” She left the room, returning a few minutes later with a cup. She helped prop him up on his pillow and he shakily drank, the water cooling his burning throat and allowing him to speak.

  “Thanks,” he whispered hoarsely. “My throat kills.”

  She looked away. “That’s because they had to pump your stomach to get rid of the pills.”

  “Yeah, about that…” He had been about to start a long explanation of why he had ‘tried to kill himself’ and assure her that he was okay now and definitely not depressed, that it had all been an accident and he wouldn’t be so reckless again. But then he realised that there was something wrong. The look on her face wasn’t confusion or worry, it was sadness. Despair. The sort of despair he was feeling as well.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly, as if she somehow knew the direction of his thoughts. “You don’t have to explain. I already know everything.”

  He only just remembered to breathe and he was pretty sure his heart monitor was speeding up. “You know?” he forced out painfully, and she seemed to predict what he would say next and spoke for him.

  “Yes, I know everything. And yes, I’ll explain.” She paused for a moment, shakily swiped at her wet eyes, and continued. “A few days ago Drew kissed me while we were out on the field. At the time I still thought it was you, Sean, but then he told me who he really was and how that presence I’d been feeling was actually your soul. Of course I didn’t believe him at first, who would? The idea of these Imprints, it was just crazy. But he showed me his eyes and…” she trailed off, falling silent for a second. “Do you know what made me believe him, though? It wasn’t the eyes, or his explanations, it was you. All along I’d been wondering about that presence I felt, because it always made me feel safe. And a part of me knew it was you, because it’s the same way you make me feel.”

  “That’s crazy,” Sean murmured.

  “Yeah, it probably is. It was you that day though, wasn’t it? You wrote ‘eat’ onto my dresser.” Sean nodded. “How did you do it?”