Fate's Exchange (Twisted Fate, Book 1)

Chapter Seven

There was no way to determine what to expect the next time I opened my eyes, or even if I would open them again. All kinds of scenarios flashed through my mind before I became fully conscious. I pictured myself still tied to the tree in the woods and realizing the cloud had been a part of my imagination—how could that be real? Maybe it was a dream, or some loser had roofied me at a party and I was taking the scenic route on a really long-ass trip. For all I knew, it had all been real and this was the illusion. I could still be on the cloud or in a fiery hell dimension somewhere, sentenced to eternal damnation for a wickedness that wasn't really a sin.

The last thing I thought to expect was waking up with my head plastered to an open page of my journal with drool while I sat at the L-shaped mahogany desk in the left-hand-corner of my bedroom. How did I get home?

I jerked up and stood so fast, my chair flew back to hit the drawers at the bottom of my bed's white frame. I patted down every inch of my body while watching in the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door to make sure nothing had changed—it hadn't. Oh, thank God (I think). I wouldn't have minded if I'd somehow grown out of the A-cup I'd been cursed with, but everything else was as it had been when I died. All in all, I still looked twelve instead of sixteen—seventeen in a month.

For once, I was just fine with that.

"Aly, Honey?" my mom called, poking her head through the crack in my bedroom door. "Tina's on the phone.  She said you weren't answering your cell."

I twisted at the hip without moving my legs and smiled. It was so good to see her, comforting in a way nobody my age would ever admit, and I almost ran to her side.

"Five minutes, okay? You're still grounded."

The urge to be held evaporated like steam rising in the air, and I paused.

"Wait. What?  Why?" Was I in the poop end of the pool because I had died? That was so not my fault!

"Nice try, Honey, but you are still grounded."

She smiled, and I noticed, looking for what was probably the first time in my teenaged life, that she was pretty, for a mom. She was short, like me, and like her, I had blonde hair that appeared near-white it was so pale. I just hoped that my hair didn't wind up devoid of color at nineteen like hers had. My mom had to dye her hair blonde now because nothing else would stick. Otherwise, she would totally look like a well-preserved grandmother at the young age of thirty-eight.

"Mom—"

"I don't care how good your grades are, Aly. We don't skip class."

"That's not what I was going to say." I rolled my eyes and breathed a deep sigh as I realized what was going on.

It must be Friday again.

That's when I had been grounded, one week before I died.

How the hell had that happened? I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared blankly at the maroon walls, blinded by confusion. Why is this happening to me? I liked things that made sense: math, history, things with definite, unchangeable outcomes that I could predict or memorize. This? Not even close.

"Alyssa, you are wasting your five minutes arguing with me."

I looked at my phone without moving and then at my desk, noticing the dates on the flip calendar on the wall beside it were only circled up to the Friday before I died. How did I get sent back a whole week? Why? 

"Alyssa." My mom sighed and shifted her weight. "Do you just want me to tell Tina you are grounded?"

I jerked my gaze back to her. The last thing I wanted to do was chat. After dying, it was pretty low on my list of things to do, like playing little league after starring in the majors. You don't just pick up the phone for the latest gossip after something like this.