Just like I hoped she would, Heidi launched herself off the carpet and came at me with both fists flying. Girl packed a wallop. I leaned back and let her do her thing. I deserved it. In a way, it was a relief, so much so that I even laughed during it. What’s more, I’d always be able to say I got busy with a girl in bed. I don’t remember exactly what she said when she was done with me. But she took the handbook and left me there, and she didn’t look back.
Chapter 1, Subsection ii:
The Ten Commandments for the Dead
I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.
II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.
III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.
IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE HEAVENLY ADVISORS.
V. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THE FOOD OR THE DRINK OF THE LIVING.
VI. THOU SHALT NOT LIE.
VII. THOU SHALT NOT UNDERMINE THE DIGNITY OF THE LIVING.
VIII. THOU SHALT NOT UTTER OATHS.
IX. THOU SHALT NOT INHABIT THE BODIES OF THE LIVING.
Thirteen hours and fifty-six minutes left.
SOMETHING HAD BROKEN inside of her. For her whole life, she’d carried this terrible secret, knowing it made her different from everyone else. For the past couple of years, she’d even thought it meant she was crazy. But no. The voice was real, and he was using her to keep himself entertained instead of doing his job and keeping her safe. He’d watched her when she thought she was alone. He’d even made a game out of her friendship with Megan. He was the thing that made her hide herself away from the world, the voice she listened to when she should have been listening to her own.
It was as if she’d collected all this shame and sorrow in her heart, layered it with sand, and filtered it with tears until all that was left were the stony remains of things she’d hoped to do and be. Then the whole mess of it had shattered inside her, cutting her most tender parts on its jagged edges.
Jerome had broken the rules. He’d let her think she was nuts. And then he’d let her die and set her soul to wander and, through his own stupidity, condemned her to disappear in just a few hours. His presence had already erased her life. Soon, it would obliterate her soul.
She wasn’t the sort to go around hitting people, but she poured her rage into her fists and pounded them at Jerome’s belly and chest, as though doing so would be her salvation. Her hands thumped against him, one after the other, filling her ears like the heartbeat she no longer had. It felt good. Necessary. She didn’t even feel like she was still dissolving, although she knew her fate had been sealed. But maybe anger was the thing that could hold off the inevitable. In any case, the rhythm of it, thump-bam, thump-bam, made her feel alive again, almost.
She wanted to provoke a reaction from him. An apology. Tears. Anything. But instead, he laughed through part of it, a jittery giggle that inflamed her further. How could he be enjoying this? What was wrong with him? Where was the part of him that was supposed to care about her?
Her hands throbbed, but she kept on hitting and would’ve continued indefinitely but for another sound, a short, sharp bark that pierced the darkness in her like a star.
Jiminy.
He was outside again. Either the casserole brigade had been careless with the front door, or Rory had left his window open. Jiminy loved climbing on Rory’s bed and using it as a launching pad to freedom. He could never get back in, though, and he’d stand in the juniper bushes below, barking himself hoarse.
He needed someone to let him back inside. He needed Heidi. The thought of this lifted her out of her haze. She stopped hitting Jerome. Her hands felt hot and strangely empty, and Jerome lay on the bed, putting ragged breaths between each word.
“You … done … yet?”
She didn’t bother answering. It wasn’t as though he cared about her, or had ever cared. It had only felt that way, and maybe that was the thing that hurt most of all.
She slid off the bed and rubbed her knuckles on her thighs, hoping to soothe the ache in her fingers. Vincent Lionheart was under the bed, gathering dust. It pained her to see her gift to Megan there, but she couldn’t do anything about it, and Jiminy needed her to lead him back to where he belonged.
Before she passed through the wall to the garden, she gave Jerome a warning.
“You’d better not be here when I get back, or I am going to tell everything you’ve done.”
She didn’t know whom she’d tell. She also didn’t know how she’d do it. So far, she had zip when it came to finding her voice, or any way into Heaven. But Jerome was going to pay for what he’d done, maybe with the people who gave him headaches. Or that guy … Howard. If Jerome didn’t want her to talk with him, then that was probably exactly what she should do. She took the handbook and shoved it into her back pocket, intending to study it as soon as she’d taken care of Jiminy.
She slipped through the wall of the house and felt the brief tickle of plaster, the shrill whistle of insulation, and the crackling vibration of the cold siding throughout her soul. Outside, the air smelled lightly of pizza rolls. Had someone actually brought that for dinner? That was worse than a casserole.
She looked around for Jiminy, acutely aware of the dwindling time her soul had left. In the distance, a car rumbled. She recognized it as the diesel engine of Mrs. Thorpe’s ancient Mercedes. The car was a monster with huge, round headlights and a chrome grille that grimaced as it prowled the streets.
Jiminy burst from the shadows and stood on the sidewalk under a streetlamp, his tiny paws studded with clumps of snow. He barked at her, wagging his tail.
“Jiminy!”
He heard her call, bless him. He was the only one besides Jerome who knew what had happened to her, who knew she was still here. He bounded toward her, diving up and over the freezing slush piles that glowed lavender under the light of a shrinking moon. With Jiminy, at least, nothing had changed. He stopped and cocked his head.
That’s when she noticed the squirrel. Out much later than normal, probably starving, frantically looking for home. In so many ways she could relate, even as she hoped Jiminy wouldn’t see it as it dashed for a tree, its eyes mirrors in the evening light.
But of course Jiminy saw. He gave chase, sliding once in a deep patch of snow. He bounced right back up and kept running. Mrs. Thorpe came closer, her car’s engine rumbling ever louder. The squirrel blurred into the middle of the street. Jiminy followed, barking.
The car rounded the bend. Heidi ran after them, shouting, “Stop, Jiminy, stop!”
He didn’t.
Neither did the car, which carved a loose S in the icy street as Mrs. Thorpe braked. The squirrel made it across in time and dashed up the tree to scold Jiminy, who stood in the road with his back to the car. The headlights framed his silhouette in the snow. For a terrible moment, that image held still in her mind, a sketch from a book of nightmares.
Jiminy was wagging his tail when the car struck him. His body flew through the air, over the sidewalk, and past a snow-covered rhododendron.
Heidi ran to him.
“Jiminy! Jiminy!” She slid and stumbled, her vision crooked with tears.
Behind her a car door popped open and a voice said, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” The car’s engine grumbled and its headlights blasted two slashes of light into the darkness.
When Heidi finally found Jiminy, he lay on his side beneath a bush, taking quick breaths. His collar was gone, torn off somehow by the impact. He looked up at her, his eyes dimming with each passing second, as though he’d been waiting to see her one last time before he let go. Was that the look she’d had in her eyes when she was dying?
The light disappeared and her soul grew heavy, as if someone had filled it with sand. Jiminy exhaled. She reached out to stroke his fur, and as she said his name, he stepped out of his body, as if to come to her call one last time.
He shook himself the way he did when he was just out of the bath and touched his damp nose to her face. It felt the way it always had, warm and sweet, and
she smiled until she understood what it meant.
Then he barked and galloped off after the squirrel, completely unaware that he had died. Either that, or it made no difference to him.
She couldn’t let this happen to him. He couldn’t die. Not like this.
“Jiminy!” She called for his soul to come back, but he kept running after the squirrel.
If she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late. His body was so still in the snow. An idea seized her and she hoped it would work, commandments be damned. If she could keep his body alive and lure him back inside, she might be able to undo this horrible accident.
She pressed her hand to his heart and willed herself inside his still-warm corpse. A soul-tearing sucking sound filled her ears. Something tugged brutally on her essence — far more powerful than whatever had pulled her inside Vincent Lionheart. She braced herself, fearing that she’d made a terrible mistake. That instead of keeping his body safe, she’d hastened the destruction of her own soul.
She was caught in a hot vortex of light that lifted her, spinning and twisting what was left, filling her eyes with blinding streaks of brightness. Then came that strange almost-sound that remains after musicians have stopped playing, the vibrating memory of melody, and it coated her with a swirling, liquid peace.
For one long moment, she felt better than she ever had, and she wondered whether that was how it felt to have your soul melt into the universe, to disappear. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible end.
Then her arm blazed. She looked at it and tried to move it, but couldn’t. Agony. More shocking, her arm was no longer an arm but a bloody paw covered in black and tan fur, growing more swollen by the second. It felt fat and foreign and on fire, and wherever Jerome’s handbook had gone, she could no longer reach it and was therefore cut off from anything that might help her figure out what to do next.
The world around her had turned into a strange place, hot and painful and alive with smells: diesel fuel, wood smoke, the anxious breath of small animals, the needles of a Douglas fir tree, low clouds full of pending snow. She inhaled them and felt their shapes touch her mind and was instantly dizzy with the oddness of it all.
Footsteps crunched in the snow. A shadow blocked the light. Her tail — her tail! — wagged feebly when she looked up and saw Mrs. Thorpe, as though the love Jiminy always felt for everyone had stayed in his body and was responding, even without the presence of his soul.
“Oh, you poor thing!” Mrs. Thorpe said. “I couldn’t stop in time! But you shouldn’t have been playing in the street. No, sir.”
She took off her coat, spread it flat on the ground, and placed Heidi on top of it. The pain, so deep she could drown in it, took her breath away. Her breath. She was breathing again. She’d never realized air was such a heavy thing or that a still-beating heart could feel so broken. Mrs. Thorpe wrapped the coat around Heidi and lifted her against her chest.
“I can’t take you home,” she said. “Not on a day like this. Oh, what a day it’s been. Oh, my. I suppose I should take you to the vet so he can look you over.”
She set Heidi on the backseat of her car, and Heidi wondered whether she should try to fasten her seat belt. She’d have to ask for help with it. That’s when she remembered. She’d made Vincent Lionheart speak. She could probably do the same with Jiminy — use his body to say what she wanted to her family, to Megan. A little part of her thought about just staying inside Jiminy’s body as long as she could, and maybe even living the rest of her life as a dog. She whimpered.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Mrs. Thorpe said. “We’ll be at the vet soon.”
It couldn’t be soon enough for Heidi. The army of pain marched through her paw, up her arm, toward the cage of her ribs, and into the soft nest of internal organs that quivered there.
A strange voice, distant and cold, whispered in her ear. It wasn’t Jerome playing around, though the voice was male and vaguely familiar. She couldn’t see who was speaking.
Let go, he said. Come to me. You want to join me.
For the time being, she ignored him. He might be a hallucination. A real one, for a change. In any case, she couldn’t leave Jiminy’s body, not just yet. She focused instead on the pain, which grew more insistent every second. She’d always loved riding in cars, looking out the window, watching the world blur by. It made her feel detached from everything. Floating, padded, protected. But her injuries stripped away this buffer, and for the first time she could remember, she noticed every angle, every bump, every burst of the streetlamps they passed. It hurt, but she wanted it to. She wanted to feel every minute of what it was like to be alive again for as long as it lasted. Feeling it was better than fading away.
The car slowed and turned into a parking lot. Mrs. Thorpe caught the edge of a curb with her tire and Heidi felt its shape slide through her, a solid block of suffering. She whimpered again. The car stopped.
Mrs. Thorpe sucked in her breath. “Such a bad night to be driving.”
She killed the engine and looked back at Heidi.
“We’re here,” she said. “And you’re still alive — that’s good news.”
Mrs. Thorpe pulled her keys from the ignition. She opened her door, grunting as she eased her bulk out of the car and plodded through the crusted heaps of snow, looking cold without a coat. Her shoulders rode up to her ears as she wrapped her arms around her body. Heidi absorbed every movement and sound, and most especially the small gestures Mrs. Thorpe made. Each one was a poem dense with meaning. No wonder Jiminy had always seemed to know how she felt.
The back door opened.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Thorpe said. “I don’t think that blood will ever come out.”
Heidi examined her paw. There was blood on it, to be sure, but nothing that wouldn’t wash out in a warm bath. It took her a second to realize Mrs. Thorpe was talking about her coat.
“Sorry,” she said, before she thought better of it.
Mrs. Thorpe stepped back. She looked over each shoulder.
“Who’s there?”
Heidi’s voice had sounded grotesque, like peanut butter smeared over gravel. She itched to cover her mouth with her paw, but didn’t, knowing how much it would hurt to move it.
“Hmm,” Mrs. Thorpe said. She slid her arms beneath the coat and lifted Heidi. “Was probably just in my head.”
Heidi pressed her jaws together to prevent any more slips. It felt strange, having a mouth full of small, pointed teeth. It made her miss her old teeth, her old mouth, her old body, something she’d not thought possible. She’d spent the better part of her life wishing she’d been someone else, anyone but the awkward, oversize girl who heard a voice in her head and couldn’t stop drawing cities. Now she’d give anything to be back inside that body, able to move fingers, able to pick up a pen and hold it in her hand.
Mrs. Thorpe stepped up to the sidewalk outside the emergency vet. Underneath its neon sign, her face flashed red and blue.
“There, there,” she said. “We’re almost inside.” She shouldered the door open and announced, “I’ve found a dog! It was hit by a car! Please, oh my goodness — can anyone help me?”
Who knew Mrs. Thorpe was so good at deceiving people. What level of Hell would you be sent to for hitting a dog with your car and pretending you didn’t?
Come with me. The voice again.
Out of the corner of her eye, a light flashed in the distance. Probably just the reflection of headlights on the windows. If this voice was another guardian angel, like Jerome, she’d be able to see him. The thought made her wish she had someone there with her, someone who loved her, someone who’d make her feel better, or at least say something funny. Jerome. She was missing him. Or maybe missing what she’d thought he’d been for her. She closed her eyes and let herself think about him, even though part of her still burned with anger about what he’d done.
He’d no doubt have a crack about Mrs. Thorpe’s huge ass. He’d definitely think it was weird and cool that Heidi was inside Jimin
y’s body. She wondered whether she’d see him again, and if she did, whether she’d forgive him. Something had begun to nag her about what had happened at the pond, something she didn’t let herself think about until now because it was too tender a notion: She didn’t struggle. She didn’t try to get out of the water. What might have happened if she’d tried?
Something shifted in her and she knew she would forgive Jerome if she ever saw him again. This wasn’t entirely his fault. He wasn’t perfect, but neither was she. And while he’d damaged her life, he’d also enriched it in more ways than she could count.
The pain worsened. Without thinking, she said his name, and it came out sounding like the saddest howl she’d ever heard. And then she was floating in someone else’s arms through a hall so brightly illuminated she had to squint. Shoes squeaked on a linoleum floor. People mentioned X-rays and anesthesia and operating rooms, but their voices felt remote — quieter even than the whisper. Her limbs came to rest on a cold steel table and she opened her eyes reflexively, noting the sensation of having three eyelids, an upper, a lower, and one she’d never noticed on Jiminy that slid over her eye when the others had sealed.
The light overhead was the brightest one yet. She screwed her eyes shut; even the afterglow felt blinding. Drawers opened and closed. Fingers flicked against a hard plastic syringe. A hand parted the fur on her back. Then came the jab from the needle, a sickening warmth, the swift flight of pain, and darkness.
Chapter 1, Subsection ii:
The Ten Commandments for the Dead
I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.
II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.
III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.
IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE HEAVENLY ADVISORS.
V. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THE FOOD OR THE DRINK OF THE LIVING.
VI. THOU SHALT NOT LIE.
VII. THOU SHALT NOT UNDERMINE THE DIGNITY OF THE LIVING.
VIII. THOU SHALT NOT UTTER OATHS.
IX. THOU SHALT NOT INHABIT THE BODIES OF THE LIVING.
Devine Intervention Page 11