18 Truths

by Jamie Ayres

  “Why did she do it?” My voice came out barely a whisper.

  Ash advanced through the next few slides of Grace’s downfall. The last one landed on what must’ve been her bedroom, looking like a hurricane went through it, photographs scattered on the floor like tree debris. My eyes focused on a picture of Dr. Judy.

  “I think you’ve just seen the answer to your question,” Ash said, fanning a hand toward the very photo I studied.

  “Because she never healed from losing her mother, and…” My voice squealed, my thoughts too horrible to finish.

  “Yes,” Riel concluded for me. “As you can imagine, there was a multi-dimensional frenzy to retrieve her soul. But we got it.”

  Ash handed Nate and me a backpack.

  “School supplies?” Nate asked, shaking the bag, his eyes wide.

  “Good thing we didn’t pack it with explosives. You might’ve just been blown to bits. What a pity that would’ve been.” Riel smiled at me, a playful grin. “And, not exactly. You don’t need to worry about graduating. You need to worry about warfare. You’ll find binoculars, a Bible, a crucifix necklace to wear that’s been anointed with oil, Grace’s case file, the roles you’re playing in this after-death purification process, a copy of your Spirit Guide Insurance Policy, your daily meditation guide, cell phones, a tranq gun, an Angel Phonebook with who to call for specific problems, your Limbo passports in case someone needs to see your ID, Spirit Guide For Dummies 101, etc.—”

  “Hey!” Nate snapped.

  Since he looked furious, I had to cover my amusement with a question. “They make a Spirit Guide for Dummies book?”

  “He’s just joking on that part,” Ash said.

  “Not really.”

  I detected a teasing note to Riel’s voice, but I wasn’t positive, and frankly, I didn’t have the presence of mind to try and figure him out right now. Even though all the stuff the angels were showing us was cool and all, it was hard to wrap my brain around. Plus, a big part of me had felt lost since learning the truth, like I’d never recover my childlike sense of wonder and my ability to find joy in the things I experienced each day. I knew I should be thanking God for giving me a healing light for my darkened spirit, but the last twenty-four hours had been rough, and I kinda dreaded the work ahead of me. Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering how I was going to figure out when to use all these new tools. Back on Earth, it took me forever to learn how to use my Smartphone. The only reason I figured out anything was because Conner showed me.

  Ash unzipped the front pocket of my backpack, revealing a pencil pouch. He opened the nylon bag, pulled out a glue stick, and popped the cap, exposing a toggle switch. “Now that you’re spirit guides, we won’t be following you like we did during your Limbo tests. We’ll be working on other cases. You can still report to headquarters each night to sleep if you wish, and we’re around then as well, should any problems arise. However, if during the day there’s an emergency and you need immediate help, hit this switch.”

  “I thought the Angel directory tells us who we should call if we need help.”

  Ash nodded. “It does, but think of the directory as like calling the police station for a non-emergency. This switch is like Angel 9-1-1.”

  “Okay, so that’s pretty cool,” I said to Nate.

  Riel blushed.

  I didn’t know angels blushed, but the pink stood out beautifully on his pale, polished skin.

  “Thanks. I invented it,” he explained.

  “Yeah, it’s all cool and everything, but it’s summer. We won’t be in school.” Nate tilted his head back slightly and lifted one eyebrow. “How do we approach our assignment?”

  “Actually, you will be in school.” Riel turned sharply away from Nate and focused on me only. “Grace was a senior, but failing her classes. If still alive, she’d attend summer school in order to graduate, so that’s what she’ll do in her alternative timeline.”

  Nate sighed. “Aw, man. I thought I was done with school. I hoped we could at least enjoy the summer in someone’s Limbo.”

  Riel glowered at Nate before flashing a lascivious smile. “Would you like me to arrange another place for you to go?” He snapped his fingers and the room dissolved.

  Falling, falling, falling, like I rode in an express elevator.

  The light faded into nothingness until it was just a pinpoint above me, and then there were stars winking in the sky.

  Rain pelted my skin, leaving me nowhere to hide. I was on a sailboat.

  So cold, so alone.

  Conner’s dead body was draped across the hull, the number thirteen on the sail flapped in the violent winds.

  “Conner!” I screamed, my echo the only sound answering my cry for help.

  The full moon loomed like a ghost in the darkness, illuminating the fact there was nothing else around for miles. Just the open sea and me.

  My head fell upon Conner’s chest. A rapid erratic heartbeat. I didn’t know if it was his or mine, all I knew was the sound of fear. I cried for him, like I’d done a million times before. I could cry another Lake Michigan with my tears.

  “Conner,” I screamed again, louder, sharper.

  A yoke of guilt bowed my shoulders and sent my gaze to his pale face. I touched his cheek, fearing he wasn’t real and was real at the same time. A familiar feeling swelled in my chest: frustration. The air filled with the ravings of the unfairness of our wasted lives, cut too short. The sky darkened with each breath I took. As the arms of despair wrapped around me, my eyes grew used to the dim light of my own personal hell. There was no escape hatch, no rewind button. Once again, I was stuck.

  Then up, up, up, almost like Peter Pan leaving the Jolly Roger.

  My hands flew to my chest, and I blinked the water from my eyes rapidly. I gasped for air, trying to recover. Headquarters felt like such a warm, wonderful place, sunlight pouring through the rectangular windows high on the walls. This didn’t comfort me though. I felt nervous for reasons I didn’t understand.

  “What the heck?” Nate sputtered.

  “More like Hell.” Riel didn’t bother to mask his irritation, and I ventured to guess that was normal for him.

  I swallowed hard as I glanced from Nate to Riel to Ash.

  Ash looked back at me with a smile that wavered.

  “I thought flames licking your skin until you’re nothing was Hell.” I turned my gaze back to Nate. “Were there flames in your Hell?”

  Nate opened and closed his mouth and shook his head. “No. Much worse.”

  “Let’s review lesson number one.” Riel glared at us.

  I didn’t think I liked the thought of Riel teaching us any lessons, but I doubted I had a say in the matter.

  “I open the perceptions to reality in Hell, just as I do in Limbo.”

  “Sounds like a lot of responsibility for one person,” Nate said, grabbing hold of my hand.

  Riel gave a slight nod of his head. “For a person, it would be impossible. But yes, for me, it’s still a lot of responsibility. You two would do well to remember who you are dealing with.” A smirk slid up one side of his perfect face.

  “So where you just took us, that’s our own brand of Hell, if we were sent there?” Unable to look Riel in the eye, I studied my shoes. I only asked out of curious habit because honestly, I already knew the answer, even if I didn’t want to.

  “Ding, ding, ding. And it’s all yours should you fail to accept this mission, so your boyfriend better think about that next time he wants to so eloquently state his objections to an assignment I give you.”

  Nate dropped my hand and put his arm around my shoulder. “Are you gonna ramble all day, or tell us about the roles we’re playing?”

  I looked at Nate for a long beat, admiring his bravery, albeit stupid bravery. I just loved him so much; how could anyone not?

  “All the details are in the backpack, Mr. Barca,” Ash told him. “As always, this mission is not to be taken lightly. Your souls and the souls you’re trying
to save are all at risk. But this one is even more serious. Dr. Judy handpicked the pair of you for her daughter. Be careful out there. The enemy wants Grace’s soul even more than most since she’s the daughter of our head spirit guide.”

  My mind flashed to my own Limbo, and my heart sunk. How could I reconcile keeping such a big secret from Grace? Nate and I were both so upset over the ruse. Taking a deep cleansing breath, I told myself there’d be time for panic attacks later. Losing my cool in front of our bosses, especially Riel, wouldn’t be the best idea, and I had a major shortage of those already.

  Riel popped his wings out, ready to leave, and I found looking at him difficult again. “Your assignment begins next Monday when the summer session starts. Grace will be recovering in the faux hospital for the next few days anyway. Take the time to study all the information I’ve given you and formulate a plan of action. You’ll also have training sessions Monday through Friday of this week from eight to five. Ruth, the girl who let you into headquarters today, will lead you through those classes as sort of an initiation process. Good luck.”

  Riel gave me a hard look. His sharp features startled me with their beauty, even in all his fury. I returned his stare, hiding a thousand insecure feelings behind one wide smile.

  want a do-over.”

  Dr. Judy crossed her arms over her chest. “There are no do-overs in life once you’re dead. All your friends have that YOLO saying backward. It should be YODO because really, you live every day, but… You Only Die Once.”

  I looked at Nate. A grim expression twisted his mouth and I wondered if he was thinking what I thought. Where’s the candid camera? Because this had to be a joke.

  Dr. Judy wrung her hands. “So, sorry, but no do-overs. And there are no shortcuts in the after-death purification process. There are things each person must accomplish here before they can move on, and you have. Congratulations.”

  I watched Nate’s gaze travel around the room, to the couch against the wall, to the shelves filled with books and puzzles, finally to the chairs we sat in. “But why not just tell us from the start this was all fake? I mean, no one likes to feel duped, you know? Why not just tell us the situation we were in from the first time we met here?”

  Dr. Judy smiled at Nate, and Nate stared at her.

  “Those are the rules of this realm. I don’t make them, but I play by them. My guess is many wouldn’t care about their success if they knew they were dead. Just like you two at the start of this process. Many wouldn’t care about their soul at first and the risk of truly dying as a consequence of not completing their mission. Think back to the beginning—you were both very depressed spirits.”

  “Hey? You listening?” Nate’s nudging elbow penetrated my flashback.

  “I don’t buy into their philosophy,” I muttered, the memory of Dr. Judy telling us about Limbo dissolving as I found myself back in my spirit guide seminar, my purple pen still poised over my journal to take notes.

  “What do you mean?” he whispered, glancing at our instructor, Ruth, who was typing something on her computer in the far corner of the room.

  I jerked my head toward the television screen, to the training video we were supposed to be watching: “Telling Your Assignment About Limbo: How To Break The News.”

  Today was Memorial Day. I should’ve been relaxing at Grand Haven Beach with my friends. Instead, I was remembering the most pivotal day of my ‘life.’ The day when Dr. Judy finally revealed we were dead. I replayed the events over and over in my mind like a broken record, her words a sad song in my head. We were healed. We could move on to Heaven. I’d finally let Conner go. Only now, sitting here in this room, I felt like I’d gone from healed to freaking out faster than I could even say Limbo.

  At first, when Nate and I learned the truth and met Ash and Riel and got our cool new book bags, everything seemed almost fun. But not now. Not after forty-eight hours of trying to process the indescribable truth that we were dead. Indescribable—what an apt word. There truly weren’t any words in the English language that I could use to describe the wonder and awe of everything that’d happened to me. No matter how great of a writer I was, there were just no words.

  Mostly, I thought of Conner today. I thought my eighteen things taught me how to detach and let him go, but now I felt this need to find him in the Underworld. A need so strong I could barely stay in my seat. In many different ways, I felt like I was in worse shape now than I was after my ‘suicide.’ I cringed, just thinking of the stupid word. Being in that place where I could look at myself with love and forgiveness wasn’t possible anymore. How could I ever face myself in the mirror again, knowing the wreckage I left behind on Earth?

  Truthfully, the suffering I experienced from the news of my death felt so deep, I didn’t think I’d ever heal from these fresh wounds. All of the life lessons my eighteen things list taught me seemed totally pointless.

  My gaze wandered to the clock on the wall; only a half hour left and our first day of training would be over.

  Sighing, I tried to focus on the words coming from the screen, instructing me on my responsibility to tell my assignment the truth about what happened to them once they were healed. I squeezed Nate’s hand beside me, glad I didn’t have to do this alone. I doubted if I could go through with our plan. Maybe he had what it took to be a spirit guide, but not me. But I also didn’t see any way out of this.

  Nate slipped an arm around me and smiled. Smiling back, I reminded myself to maintain my composure despite dealing with my own emotions. There were a lot of people depending on me now—Nate, Dr. Judy, Grace, Riel and Ash, and maybe even Conner.

  The video instructed us to deliver the news to our assignment as straightforwardly and succinctly as possible when the time came—no technical mumbo jumbo. We had to be prepared for their reaction. There could be screaming, yelling, and crying. They might throw themselves on the floor. They might try to flee the area in denial. They might physically grab us and demand to know how this was all happening.

  Wondering why I hadn’t thought to do all those things when Dr. Judy delivered the news, I realized none of it mattered. Very quickly, I was realizing there were no words of comfort that could make them feel better, that nothing I would say could really help. Sure, I could apologize and answer all their questions. But even with the experience of being in their shoes at one time, I felt a sense of helplessness, knowing no matter how much training I received, it’d never be enough to deal with these things, over and over again for all of eternity.

  In life, you learned from experiences. What did we learn from death? I thought back to the life list Dr. Judy had me write this past year. Turning the page in my journal, I made a T-chart. On one side I wrote “List” and the other I labeled “Lesson.” I tried to narrow down what each ‘thing’ taught me. Fire walking/Becoming fearless. Trying out for the cheerleading squad/Taking chances. Getting a record deal for the Cantankerous Monkey Squad/Following dreams. Doing whatever the Magic 8 Ball said for a day/Having adventures. Start telling people what I really think/Being true to myself. Starting a blog/Finding my passion. Letting go of guilt/forgiving myself.

  Tearing out the page, I balled it up and shot the paper into the trash. Unfortunately, the past year was a lie, total crap. The truth was we don’t control anything, so why even try?

  The video droned on, listing bullet points from today’s session. Reminding us that every ‘assignment’ was different, that things may happen very quickly and we may need to make decisions very fast, or they could move at a snail’s pace, but the important thing was to establish a rapport with the assignment right away. They don’t know us from a hole in the wall; they don’t know their soul is at stake. Yeah, and to make matters worse, we have to tell them everything will be okay, only to tell them a year later that they’re dead and their loved ones are grieving! But hey, all of that is okay, because you get to move on.

  I felt like puking. I needed time and space to process my feelings. I wanted to go back to that moment tw
o days ago so I could run up and down the hallways, just to let out all my frustrations. But now I had to respect Nate’s needs and be a model student, because those were the only two things left that I knew how to do. Even doing that would be hard, but if I shut off my heart; if I went back to autopilot and stuck to the script in this video when working with Grace, then maybe I would be all right, given a little time. Fake it till I make it.

  But how could I ignore that feeling of guilt that was back in the pit of my stomach, weighing me down? How could I forget about Conner, knowing I could possibly get to him now, knowing there was a chance I could locate him in the Underworld? How could I help Grace when I didn’t even know what my next step should be? The training video hadn’t covered these things. I was just supposed to be strong, stoic, and move on.

  And I was so sick of hearing those words: move on. I remembered the encouragement whispered by my friends: It’s not your fault you waited too long to administer CPR to Conner. You did everything you could to save him.

  Yeah, I went through the stages of grief and moved on.

  But how could I have been healed from something I never knew happened? After all this time to find out I’d killed myself, discovering what I’d put my parents through, my friends. How could I ever help Grace or any assignment ‘move on’ toward the light of a happy tomorrow and reconcile the truth of my past at the same time?

  The lights came on, the video now over. Sitting straighter, I rubbed my eyes, trying to shake off the anger stirred up by my feelings. Yep, it was Memorial Day, all right, but I didn’t want these memories. I wanted the ones where I could practically smell the suntan oil and feel the soft sand beneath my feet, as if remembering hard enough might magically transport me to the beach with my friends.

  “Well, that concludes day one of training. Any questions?” Ruth asked, her voice sounding wearier than this morning.

  She already knows I’m going to suck at this.

  Ruth’s standard-issue training guide uniform made her look like a yoga instructor, and her calm demeanor matched the style. Since the pants and long sleeved shirt were both white, her in-your-face beauty stood out even more. Listening to someone that perfect-looking made my mind wander to my fake friendship with Tammy. At the thought, I teared up.