Backwards by Todd Mitchell

Author:Todd Mitchell [Mitchell, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6707-8
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2013-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

“This is hell,” said TR.

He was standing in the middle of the street a little ways from the Coffee Spot, letting cars rush through him, only he wasn’t whooping or jumping like he normally did.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

A black sedan blurred through him, but TR kept talking. “I’m not even scared anymore. I don’t flinch. Don’t get excited. There’s nothing left. I think this might be hell.”

I sat on the curb, wondering what had changed. The other night, TR had been giddy with the prospect of influencing Waster. “Did something happen today?”

“Nothing happened.” TR sat cross-legged in the road as a pickup barreled toward him. “That’s the problem. Nothing ever changes. All day I made Waster do things, but it didn’t matter.”

I chuckled at how wrong he had it.

“What’s so funny?” asked TR.

“Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you about it.”

“Tell me what?”

“A secret.”

He moved reluctantly, letting the truck plow through half of him. For some reason, that bothered me more than seeing it pass through all of him.

On the way to the diner, I explained the figurines and how I’d given them to Cat. I thought the story might cheer him up, but it only made him more depressed.

“All I did was make Waster call Miss Ashet ‘Miss Asshat,’” he said.

“Really? That’s great!”

TR frowned.

“I’m serious,” I said. “If you can make Waster do that, just think of all the other things you can do.”

“What’s the point?” He swiped his hand through a lamppost. “We think we’re making a difference, but we’re not. The same things are still going to happen no matter what we do. We just get to watch. Well, I’m through watching,” he said. “I don’t want to see it.”

“See what?” I asked.

“Any of it. I just want to punch someone, you know? Throw a rock through a window. Do something that makes an impact. I’m sick of living this . . . ghost life.”

“What if I told you that I know we have an impact,” I said. “I know we can make a difference.”

TR gave me a skeptical look. “You can’t know that.”

“But I do,” I replied. Then I told him about the messages on the wall and how they’d changed after I’d done things.

His eyes widened.

“That’s why you have to take over,” I added.

“Take over? Like kick Waster out?” he asked. “Make the corpse my own?”

I nodded.

“You can do that?”

I nodded again.

“Holy crap! How?”

I told him about pushing Dan back and walling him off. “It’s a battle of wills,” I said. “You just need to make your will stronger than his.”

“But it’s his life.”

“Is it?” I asked.

TR cocked his head.

“Waster doesn’t have a purpose, right?” I continued. “He just wanders around all day, going wherever the wind takes him.”

“More or less.”

“So, if you have a purpose — something bigger than yourself that’s important — then you’ll be stronger than he is. You’ll be able to take over.”

“That’s it?”

“That, and you need to believe that his life is yours now. You need to make it completely your own.

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