Under Zenith by Shannen Crane Camp Read Free Book Online Page A

but I was definitely terrified of my own weaknesses, and emotion was one of those weaknesses.
    “What about the fact that you won’t ever see your parents again? Does that bug you?”
    “Are you trying to get a rise out of me or something? Because I don’t really get what’s going on here. Why do you care if I’m okay with being dead? Is that really part of your job description as my afterlife liaison?”
    He shrugged his broad shoulders at me and laid down on the bed, placing his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. “I don’t care. I just think it’s weird,” he said.
    It looked like he w as done with the talking thing.
    “You want to talk about weird things? Why can’t you tell me what you did before you became a Guide?” I asked, fully aware that my voice was squeakier than normal because of my heightened emotional state. “You must know how you got here. So why can’t you tell me any personal information?”
    “What if I told you it was against the rules to give you any information about my own personal life?”
    “Would you be lying?”
    “Yes, but would it shut you up?” he asked, mimicking my voice once more.
    “You’re rude ,” I told him. “Needlessly rude; which is the worst kind of rude to be.”
    “There’s a good kind of rude?”
    “Why are you still here? Now that I’ve finished the first task can’t you leave me alone for a while?” I asked, wanting nothing more than to be alone right at that moment.
    In all honest y, having company would have been nice to keep me from thinking too much about the questions Hayden had asked me. I didn’t want to think about how much I’d miss my family or how unfair it was that my entire life was now gone. But Hayden wasn’t good company and so I thought having to deal with those unpleasant demons would be a better alternative than sitting in a room with him for another second.
    “I have to stay until the end of the cycle,” he responded, as if that response should have made perfect sense to me when all it did was confuse me more.
    “Cycle?”
    “Each day is a cycle. You get one task per cycle and I have to stay with you through the entire thing.”
    “So when is the cycle over so you can leave?” I asked, being sarcastically sweet to him.
    “Trust me, love, I want to leave just as badly as you want me out of here. Don’t you think I have better things to do than sit around all day listening to you drone on with that awful, slow accent?”
    “Do you?” I asked.
    “Obviously.”
    “When is it over?” I asked again, since he had opted for a snarky comment the first time I’d asked him that same question. Maybe if I kept asking, one day he’d finally answer me.
    “Once the snow starts to fall, I can leave,” he said cryptically.
    I glanced out the window at the foggy woods. It had been chilly once the sun had disappeared , but I wouldn’t say it was snow weather. It just wasn’t cold enough.
    “Please don’t state the obvious and tell me it’s not cold enough for snow,” he said, stopping me before I could voice that exact thought.
    “Well it’s not,” I mumbled in response.
    “It’s also impossible for zombies to be real,” he pointed out, reminding me (not so subtly) that I was dead and the rules of life had changed.
    “What was with the zombie thing anyway? I didn’t really picture the path to heaven littered with zombies.”
    “Zombies scare you, so that’s what came to motivate you,” he responded.
    “Zombies don’t scare me,” I protested with a nervous laugh.
    “Listen. I don’t make this stuff up. I didn’t come up with the creepy running corpse thing. That came out of your own imagination. You have way more control over this world than you think you do,” he said dryly. “Besides, you snuck out of bed when you were nine and watched a zombie movie your parents had rented and you’ve been terrified of them ever since.”
    My mouth hung open in sh ock that someone I had just met could know a