Elsewhere

by Gabrielle Zevin

  "How do you know my mother?" Liz demands.

  "I'm her mother, your Grandma Betty, but you never met me. I died before you were born."

  Grandma Betty embraces Liz again. "You were named for me; my full name's Elizabeth, too, but I've always been Betty."

  "But how is that possible? How can you be my grandmother when you look the same age as my mother?" Liz asks.

  "Welcome to Elsewhere." Grandma Betty laughs, pointing matter-of-factly to the large banner that hangs over the pier.

  "I don't understand."

  "Here, no one gets older, everyone gets younger. But don't worry, they'll explain all of that at your acclimation appointment."

  "I'm getting younger? But it took me so long to get to fifteen!"

  "Don't worry, darling, it all works out in the end. You're going to love it here."

  Understandably, Liz isn't so sure.

  A Long Drive Home

  In Grandma Betty's red convertible, Liz just stares out the window and lets her grandmother do all the talking.

  "Do you like architecture?" Grandma Betty asks.

  Liz shrugs. In all honesty, she has never put much thought into the subject.

  "Out my window, you'll see a library built by Frank Lloyd Wright. People who know these things say it's better than any of the buildings he built on Earth. And Elizabeth, it's not just buildings.

  You'll find new works here by many of your favorite artists. Books, paintings, music, whatever you're into! I just went to an exhibit of new paintings by Picasso, if you can believe it!" Liz thinks Grandma Betty's enthusiasm seems forced, as if she's trying to convince a reluctant child to eat broccoli.

  "I met Curtis Jest on the boat," Liz says quietly.

  "Who's he?"

  "He's the lead singer of Machine."

  "I don't think I've ever heard of them. But then, I died a while ago, so that's no surprise. Maybe he'll record something new here?"

  Liz shrugs again.

  "Of course, some artists don't continue here," Grandma Betty goes on. "I suppose just one life of art can be quite enough. Artists are never the happiest folks, are they? Do you know the film star Marilyn Monroe? Well, she's a psychiatrist. Or rather she was, until she got too young to practice.

  My neighbor Phyllis used to go to her. Oh, Elizabeth, and straight ahead? The funny, tall building? That's the Registry. That's where you'll have your acclimation appointment tomorrow."

  Liz looks out the car window. So this is Elsewhere, she thinks. Liz sees a place that looks like almost any other place on Earth. She thinks it is cruel how ordinary it is, how much it resembles real life. There are buildings, houses, stores, roads, cars, bridges, people, trees, flowers, grass, lakes, rivers, beaches, air, stars, and skies. How entirely unremarkable, she thinks. Elsewhere could have been a walk to the next town or an hour's ride in the car or an overnight plane trip. As they continue to drive, Liz notices that all the roads are curved and that even when it seems like they're driving straight, they're actually going in a sort of circle.

  After a while, Grandma Betty realizes that Liz isn't keeping up her end of the conversation. "Am I talking too much? I know I have a tendency to "

  Liz interrupts. "What did you mean when you said I was getting younger?"

  Grandma Betty looks at Liz. "Are you sure you want to know now?"

  Liz nods.

  "Everyone here ages backward from the day they died. When I got here, I was fifty. I've been here for just over sixteen years, so now I'm thirty-four. For most older people, Lizzie, this is a good thing. I imagine it isn't quite as appealing when one is your age."

  Liz takes a moment to absorb Grandma Betty's words. I will never turn sixteen, she thinks. "What happens when I get to zero?" Liz asks.

  "Well, you become a baby again. And when you're seven days old, you and all the other babies are sent down the River, back to Earth to be born anew. It's called the Release."

  "So I'll only be here fifteen years, and then I go back to Earth to start all over again?"

  "You'll be here almost sixteen years," Grandma Betty corrects her, "but basically, yes."

  Liz can't believe how unfair this is. If it isn't bad enough that she died before getting to do anything fun, now she will have to repeat her whole life in reverse until she becomes a stupid, sniveling baby again.

  "So I'll never be an adult?" Liz asks.

  "I wouldn't look at it that way, Liz. Your mind still acquires experience and memories even while your body "

  Liz explodes, "I'LL NEVER GO TO COLLEGE OR GET MARRIED OR GET BIG BOOBS OR

  LIVE ON MY OWN OR FALL IN LOVE OR GET MY DRIVER'S LICENSE OR ANYTHING? I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!"

  Grandma Betty pulls the car to the side of the road. "You'll see," she says, patting Liz on the hand. "It isn't all that bad."

  "Not all that bad? How the hell could it get any worse? I'm fifteen, and I'm dead. Dead!" For a minute, no one speaks.

  Suddenly, Grandma Betty claps her hands together: "I've just had the most marvelous idea, Elizabeth. You have your learner's permit, right?"

  Liz nods.

  "Why don't you drive us back to the house?"

  Liz nods again. Although she is justifiably upset by the turn of events, she doesn't want to pass up an opportunity to drive. After all, she'll probably never get her driver's license in this stupid place, and who knows how many months until they'll take away her learner's permit, too. Liz opens the passenger door and gets out as Grandma Betty slides across the bench seat to the passenger side.

  "Do you know how to maneuver this kind of transmission? My car's a bit of a dinosaur, I'm afraid,"

  says Grandma Betty.

  "I can do everything except parallel parking and threepoint turns," Liz answers calmly. "We were supposed to cover those next in driver's ed, but unfortunately for me, I croaked."

  The route to Grandma Betty's house is simple enough, and aside from the occasional direction, the ride is silent. Although she has plenty to say, Grandma Betty doesn't want to distract Liz from her driving. Liz isn't in the mood for conversation anyway and she lets her mind wander. Of course, a wandering mind is not always advisable for the recently deceased and is nearly never advisable for the beginning driver.

  Liz thinks about why it took her so long to figure out she was dead. Other people, like Curtis and Thandi, seemed to realize immediately, or soon thereafter. She feels like a real dunce. At school, Liz always prided herself on being a person who caught on quickly, a fast learner. But here was concrete evidence that she is not as fast as she thinks.

  "Elizabeth, darling," says Grandma Betty, "you may want to slow down a bit."

  "Fine," says Liz, glancing at the speedometer, which reads seventy-five miles per hour. She didn't realize she was driving so fast and eases up a bit on the gas pedal.

  How can I be dead? Liz wonders to herself. Aren't I too young to be dead? When dead people are her age, they're usually little kids with cancer or some equally horrible and abstract disease. Dead little kids get free trips and meet world-famous pop stars. She wonders if a cruise and Curtis Jest counted.

  When Liz was a freshman, two seniors had been killed drinking and driving just before the prom.

  The school had given them full-page, full-color tributes in the yearbook. Liz wonders if she will receive such a tribute. Unless her parents pay for it, she doubts it. Both boys had been on the football team, which had won the Massachusetts state championship that year. Liz did not play football, was only a sophomore, and had died by herself. (People always find dying in groups more tragic.) She steps on the gas pedal a little harder.

  "Elizabeth," says Grandma Betty, "the house is the next exit. I suggest slowing down and easing the car into the right lane."

  Without a glance in the rearview mirror, Liz moves into the right lane. She cuts off a black sports car and has to speed up to keep the car from crashing into her back end.

  "Elizabeth, did you see that car?" asks Grandma Betty.

  "It's under
control," says Liz tightly. So what if I'm a bad driver? Liz thinks to herself. What difference does it make anyway? It's not like I'm going to get myself killed. You can't get deader than dead, can you?

  "This is the exit. Are you sure you're all right to drive?"

  "I'm fine," says Liz. Without slowing down, she maneuvers the car awkwardly toward the exit.

  "You might want to slow down; the exit can be somewhat tricky to "

  "I'm fine!" Liz yells.

  "WATCH OUT!"

  At that moment, Liz drives the car into the exit's concrete retaining wall. The car is a heavy old beast and makes an impressive noise upon contact.

  "Are you hurt?" asks Grandma Betty.

  Liz doesn't answer. Staring at the old car's front end, Liz can't help but laugh. The car has sustained almost no damage. A single dent, that's all. A miracle, thinks Liz bitterly. If only people were as sturdy as cars.

  "Elizabeth, are you all right?" asks Grandma Betty.

  "No," Liz answers. "I'm dead, or haven't you heard?"

  "I meant, are you hurt?"

  Liz strokes the remains of the stitches over her ear. She wonders who she should see about removing the stitches. She had stitches once before (a rollerskating accident at age nine, her most serious injury until recently) and she knows that wounds don't fully heal until stitches are removed. All at once, Liz doesn't want to have the stitches removed. She finds this tiny piece of string strangely comforting. It is her last piece of Earth and the only evidence that she was ever there at all.

  "Are you hurt?" Grandma Betty repeats the question, looking at Liz with concern.

  "What difference would it make?"

  "Well," says Grandma Betty, "if you were hurt, I would take you to a healing center."

  "People get hurt here?"

  "Yes, although everything eventually heals when one ages backward."

  "So nothing matters here, does it? I mean, nothing counts. Everything is just erased. We're all getting younger and stupider, and that's it." Liz wants to cry, but not in front of Betty, whom she doesn't even know.

  "You could look at things that way, I suppose. But in my opinion, that would be a very boring and limited point of view. I would hope you haven't embraced such a bleak outlook before you've even been here a day." Cupping Liz's chin in her hand, Grandma Betty turns Liz's head so that she can see directly into her eyes. "Were you trying to kill us back there?"

  "Could I?"

  Grandma Betty shakes her head. "No, darling, but you certainly wouldn't have been the first person to try."

  "I don't want to live here," she yells. "I don't want to be here!" Despite herself, the tears start up again.

  "I know, doll, I know," Grandma Betty says. She pulls Liz into an embrace and begins to stroke Liz's hair.

  "My mother strokes my hair that way," Liz says as she pulls away. She knows Grandma Betty meant to be comforting, but it only felt creepy like her mother was touching her from beyond the grave.

  Grandma Betty sighs and opens the passenger-side door. "I'll drive the rest of the way home,"

  she says. Her voice sounds tired and strained.

  "Fine," says Liz stiffly. A moment later, she adds in a softer voice, "Just so you know, I don't usually drive this badly, and I'm not usually this, like, emotional."

  "Perfectly understandable," Grandma Betty says. "I had already assumed that might be the case."

  As she slides back over to the passenger seat, Liz suspects that it will be some time before Grandma Betty lets her drive again. But Liz doesn't know Grandma Betty and she is wrong. At that moment, Grandma Betty turns to her and says, "If you want, I'll teach you threepoint turns and parallel parking. I'm not sure, but I think you can still get your driver's license here."

  "Here?" Liz asks.

  "Here in Elsewhere." Grandma Betty pats Liz on the hand before starting the car. "Just let me know."

  Liz appreciates what it must have taken Grandma Betty to even make this offer, but this isn't what she wants. For her, it's not about the threepoint turns and the parallel parking. She wants to finish driver's ed. She wants a Massachusetts state driver's license. She wants to drive aimlessly with her friends on the weekends and discover mysterious new roads in Nashua and Watertown.

  She wants the ability to go anywhere without a grandmother or anyone else. But she knows this will never happen. For she is here, Elsewhere, and what good is a driver's license if the only place she can use it is here?

  Waking

  A taxicab speeds out of nowhere. Liz flies through the air. She thinks, I will surely die.

  She wakes in a hospital room, her vision bleary, her head wrapped in bandages. Her mother and father stand at her bedside, dark circles under their eyes. "Oh, Lizzie," her mother says, "we thought we'd lost you."

  Two weeks later, the doctor removes her bandages. Aside from a Cshaped arc of stitches over her left ear, she is as good as new. The doctor calls it the most remarkable recovery he has ever seen.

  Liz returns to school. Everyone wants to hear about Liz's near-death experience. "It's hard for me to talk about it," she says. People think Liz has become deep since her accident, but the truth is, she just doesn't remember.

  On her sixteenth birthday, Liz passes her driver's license test with flying colors. Her parents buy her a brand-new car. (They don't like her riding her bicycle anymore.) Liz applies to college. She writes her admissions essay on the time she was hit by a cab and how it changed her life. She is accepted early decision to her top choice, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Liz graduates MIT with a degree in biology, and then she attends veterinary school in Florida. One day, she meets a boy, the type of boy with whom she can imagine spending the rest of her life and maybe even

  "Rise and shine, Elizabeth!" Grandma Betty interrupts Liz's dream at seven the next morning.

  Liz buries her head under the blankets. "Go away," she mutters, too low for Grandma Betty to hear.

  Grandma Betty opens the curtains. "It's going to be a beautiful day," she says.

  Liz yawns, her head still under the covers. "I'm dead. What in the world do I have to get up for?"

  "That's certainly a negative way of looking at things. There's loads to do in Elsewhere," says Grandma Betty as she opens the next set of curtains. The room Liz is staying in (she can't think of it as her room; her room is back on Earth) has five windows. It reminds her of a greenhouse.

  What she really wants is a small dark room with few (preferably no) windows and black walls something more appropriate to her current situation. Liz yawns as she watches Grandma Betty move onto the third window. "You don't have to open all the curtains," Liz says.

  "Oh, I like a lot of light, don't you?" Grandma Betty replies.

  Liz rolls her eyes. She can't believe she'll have to spend the rest of her life living with her grandmother, who is, make no mistake, an old person. Even though Grandma Betty looks like a young woman on the outside, Liz can tell she probably harbors all sorts of secret old-people tendencies.

  Liz wonders what specifically Grandma Betty meant when she said there was "loads to do in Elsewhere." On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz's point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and poindess: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.

  "You have your acclimation appointment at eight thirty," says Grandma Betty.

  Liz removes her head from under the covers. "What's that?"

  "It's a sort of orientation for the newly dead," says Grandma Betty.

  "Can I wear this?" Liz indicates her white pajamas. She has been wearing them so long they are more precisely called gray pajamas. "I didn't exactly have time to pack, you know."

  "You can borrow something of mine. I think we're abou
t the same size, although you're probably a little smaller," Grandma Betty says.

  Liz considers Betty for a moment. Betty has larger breasts than Liz but is slim and about Liz's height. It is somehow strange to be the same size as her grandmother.

  "Just pick something from my closet, and if you need anything shortened or taken in, let me know.

  I don't know if I mentioned that I'm a seamstress here," Grandma Betty says.

  Liz shakes her head.

  "Yeah, keeps me pretty busy. People tend to get smaller as they get younger, so they always need their clothes taken in."

  "Can't they just buy new ones?" Liz asks, her brow furrowed.

  "Of course, doll, I didn't mean to imply they couldn't. However, I have observed that there's less waste here, all around. And I do make new garments, too, you know. I prefer it, actually. It's more creative for me."

  Liz nods and feels relieved. The idea of everyone wearing the same clothes for the rest of time was one of the more depressing things she'd thought lately.

  After a shower (which Liz finds gloriously equivalent to showers on Earth), she wraps a towel around herself and goes into Grandma Betty's closet.

  The closet is large and well organized. Her grandmother's clothes look expensive and well made, but a bit theatrical for Liz's taste: felt cloches and old-fashioned dresses and velvet capes and brooches and ballet slippers and ostrich feathers and patent-leather high heels and fishnet stockings and fur. Liz wonders where her grandmother goes in these garments. She further wonders if Grandma Betty owns jeans, for the only thing Liz wants to wear is jeans and a T-shirt.

  She searches the closet for jeans. Aside from navy blue sailor pants, she finds nothing even close.

  Completely frustrated, Liz sits down under a rack of sweaters. She imagines her messy closet back home with its twelve pairs of blue jeans. It had taken a long time to find all those jeans. She had had to try on many pairs. The thought of them makes Liz want to cry. She wonders what will happen to her jeans now. She puts her head in her hands and touches the stitches over her ear.

  Even getting dressed is difficult here, Liz thinks.