by Amy Huntley
but murder was never one of them."
"Then what are you sorry for?"
"Thinking you ratted me out. I found out later who did
it, but before that I thought it was you. And I should have
realized you'd never do that to me."
"You're right. You had enough trouble :n your life without
me adding to it. Not that I ever knew what exactly that
trouble was."
"And you never will."
I can deal with that. I mean, not that I have much
choice . . . not having all these mind-reading skills yet that
Tammy has. Still, I have to admit that being dead has given
me something of an appreciation for mystery. I kind of like
that there are things I don't understand.
W e l l . . . except for the whole how-I-died thing.
"Wait, you mean you don't know how you died?" Tammy
asks me. She glows again. Surprise this time.
"ou mean you do know how you died?*
M
"Of course. I remember it well. Had i car accident."
"How old were you?"
"Thirty-five.''
Whoa . . . she lived to be thirty-five? Something here
doesn't seem fair. The drug dealer lives to thirty-five, and
the good girl dies at seventeen? "Hold on. . .. That means
you . . . you know things that I don't, things that happened
after I died."
"Well, yeah. Of course. What do you want to know?"
Starting with something safe seems like a good idea.
"Did Amber and Lacey actually go to prom with Doug
Preston and Scott Turner?"
"Why would I know that? I'm not omniscient. I only
know what I noticed when I was alive. I couldn't have cared
less who thev went to prom with senior year. Didn't pay any
attention."
"But you said . . . I mean, the Ouija board said that they
went to prom with those two."
Bright white laughter. "Yeah. I was jjst playing a trick
on them."
"A trick?!"
"You have to admit their reactions were kind of funny.
Gotta entertain myself somehow. But senior prom isn't
really what you want to know about, is it!"
"No," I admit. Here goes . . ."Do you know how /
died?"
,i.<
Inside the mist, some kind of strange whirling takes
place. Indecision.
"This isn't a tough question. I mean, you either know
or you don't."
"I know."
This is the moment when she's supposed to tell me the
answer I've been searching for . . . isn't it? I wait patiently,
but she doesn't reveal anything.
"Well? Tell me!"
"I don't think so. Seems like if you were ready to know,
you'd know."
"Oh, I'm ready. Trust me."
"There are some things you have to find out for yourself.
Other people can't tell them to you."
Wonderful. Now she sounds like one of our parents or
something. How did that happen?
"I became one."
"Became what?" I ask.
"A parent."
Okay, this whole mind-reading business is irritating.
"Get out of here. You? A parent?"
"Four kids. Three boys and a girl. The youngest was
less than a year when I died."
In life, this is one of those moments where you have to
fall into the nearest chair because you're so shocked. As a
spirit, you just do this weird kind of separating thing. This
. :
is truly the first time I've understood what it meant that life
went on without me. Even though I knew it would, a part
of me didn't accept that. I was the center of all the stories
I knew. It was even kind of hard to believe, in a way, that
anyone existed when they weren't with me .. . even though
I knew they did. But this . . . this whole life I don't even
know about? How much of the world changed without me
knowing it?
I realize that Tammy hasn't interrupted any of my
thoughts. This is the longest she's let me have a conversation
with myself since I arrived here. Very parentlike, very
let-the-kid-make-her-own-discovery and all that. She isn't
the girl I knew in my life.
"Not true," she argues. "I might be radically different,
but I'm still me."
I rememberTammy's first comment... that she thought
I was avoiding her and would never get here. "Have you
been waiting here for me all this time?"
"Kind of."
"I don't get it. How can you 'kind of wait for me?"
"It's like this: if you don't attach yourself when you come
back to visit your life, if you stand back here and watch without
interfering in any way, then you exist in a separate time
frame from the life events. It's the same time frame that
exists in the space where your lost objects are."
Right. Makes perfect sense. Almost. "Then how are you
H1'
onlv 'kind of here? Don't you either wait or not wait?"
" N o . . . not really. Eventually you'll learn you can be in
more than one place when you're a spirit. Part of me can
hangout here waiting for vou, but other parts of me can go
somewhere else for a while. I've just been keeping part of
me here while also wandering off to do other things, too."
"Are you .. .all here now?"
"Yep." A blanket of longing for the Tammy I knew in
life encompasses me. I can't help being touched that our
friendship meant so much to her that she's been trying this
hard to reach me. "Why did you...why have you been waiting
so long for me?"
"I wanted to make sure we cleared the air about things. I
feel terrible about blamingyou for my getting caught selling
drugs. After you died, I still thought for a few weeks that it
was you who ratted on me. I hated you. Wouldn't even go to
your funeral. Was clad vou were dead, in fact. Until I found
out the truth. I felt incredibly guilty after that. Especially
for hating you even after you were dead. That's what I was
trying to apologize for. Well, that and the way our friendship
ended on the night of this slumber party."
"I was always sorry about that, too. But . . . what happened
originally at the slumber party that broke up our
friendship? I mean, it probably wasn't you apologizing."
"I guess neither of us is ever going to know much about
that, are we? I remember that before I messed with things,
"What do you mean?"
I confess, "I've kind of only had one other experience
where I just watched what was happening when I went back
to my life. All the other times I've used a lost item, I've
always became me in the experience."
"Wow. You've really had a major case of separation anxiety,
haven't you? Really wanted to keep living?"
"Didn't you?"
"Not so much. What I wanted was to know how my
kids and husband were. How they changed over the years.
What became of them. And when I realized I couldn't, I just
stopped caring about living. I almost never do it anymore,
Life gets boring after a while, you know?"
Unfortunately, I do. Reliving something over an
d over
just isn't the same thing as .. . well, Irving it.
Tammy continues, "I prefer to leave life alone and spend
time in the After."
"What's that?"
The glowing flares up again. "What's attaching you so
strongly co life?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Even as I ask it, I know
it's a stupid question. I'm the only one who would know. "Can
you get back here from the After anytime you want?"
"Of course. Once you get to the After, though, you
won't care so much about being here."
"What's it like there?"
we were playing with a Ouija board. And something did happen
with it that caused us to have a fight. But now the only
reality we can remember is the one where I apologize to you
through the Ouija board. Unless, of course, we decide to go
back and change this whole experience again."
"Probably not a good idea," I say.
"Agreed."
I can't help having second thoughts. "Even though it
might save our friendship if we did . . . ?"
"It also might not, Aladdy. I think the end of our living
friendship was all part of the experience we were meant to
have."
"Meant to have?" I ask. "Is there God somewhere orchestrating
our lives? Because if there is, I haven't me him . . .
h e r . . . yet."
"God . . . well, I guess you could call it that if you want.
There's something beautiful and powerful bevond us, and
that's enough for me. But it doesn't really orchestrate our
lives. We're just meant to be us. So we are. And we're meant
to make the best choices we can. So I do. Apologizing to you
through the Ouija board was one of those choices. I sensed
your spirit was here. Figured the apology would make you
curious enough to bring you back. And you did keep coming
back here. You just wouldn't communicate with me.
What took you so long to decide to finally do it?"
"I didn't know how," I admitted.
.'.1
"You'll just be a pare of everything. All at once. You'll
finally feel as if you belong somewhere . . . at least, I did.
You'll like it. Once you get there. Just go there."
"How?"
"Find out how you died. Maybe that's what's keeping
you here."
"I'm trying. Can you at least give me a hint?"
"Find Gabe. I think he has the answers you want. I don't
know if he'll give them to you, but he might help you find
them."
Gabe.
Of course.
"How -do I get out of here?" I ask. "Do I have to wait
until my real body gets too far away from that hair clip I
lost? I mean, that's how I've always done it before . . . either
that or I've found the object."
I can tell that if she had a head. Tammy would be shaking
it at me in despair. "Stop thinking so much. Just be.
That's enough. Let yourself be what you want, when you
want, where you want. Just decide you want to do something,
and you'll end up doing it."
Sounds easy. Yeah, r i g h t . . . .
Except it is. It works the first time I try it.
M
UNCORRECTED E-PRCOF— NOT FOR SALE
telpexCoi(i.Q|P«t?fet?.R_
am
f AM... I AM... I AM... floating. This isn't //. It's Am. I'm
not located here, the way I first thought I was.
I am here. And I'm not trapped here.
For the first time, I realize how beautiful this space is,
how it brims with vital energy.
I'm relieved to discover that my conversation with
Tammy hasn't changed anything about our original
moments of life in that basement. Standing outside an event
and watching it—as long as I don't try to change anything
by knocking over silly plates and stuff like that—seems to
have no effect on my original life.
I don't have to be alone anymore. I can communicate
.•J4
with other spirits when I meet them in moments where we
both lost objects. And I don't have to sacrifice whc I am—
and what I was—in order to do it.
Tammy's right. I need to find Gabe. It's time.
I start looking for my physics homework.
!o
UNCORRECTED E-PftOOF—NOT FOR SALE
HwEetfelfiDSfiib&JsJSs
p ir
THE FIRST THING I REALIZE about the misty Gabe is that I
miss being able to reach out and touch him. And, I know
this sounds superficial, but I miss the way he looks. I mean,
he was boi and now he's just mist. I k n o w . . . I know . . , this
is the kind of thing that keeps me attached to life and makes
me a decidedly unenlightened spirit.
But it's true. And I have to admit it.
The second thing I realize about him is that he's glowing
with happiness to see me.
The third thing I realize—with a tremendous amount
of relief—is that he isn't reading my mind in the same way
Tammy did. Either he doesn't have the ability that she does,
*J6
or . .. maybe he respects my privacy more.
"I still love you," he says right away. I'm glad that came
before anything else he might communicate to me.
"And I still love you," I tell him. "How lone have you
been waiting for me to figure out how to reach you?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter, does it?"
Maybe. I mean, a girl doesn't want her boyfriend to he
better at everything than she is, does she? "I don't know," I
tell him.
"It doesn't matter to me. I'd wait as long as I needed to
for you."
"Have you been to the After? This place that Tammy
tells me is so great?"
"No. I've heard about it, though."
"From who?"
"My father. I met him in one of the moments of my life.
Like I am with you now."
"Oh . . . I'm sorry. About your dad dying, I mean...."
There's a smile in Gabe's glow. "Maddy, there's nothing
to be sorry about. I can see him whenever I want. I lost
a Star Wars action figure, a Luke Skywalker, when I was
seven. Dad lost some change at the same time."
"You are lucky, then. I mean . . . I haven't run into my
family anywhere. I'd like to be able to talk to them in .. .this
form. But so far I haven't encountered an object that takes
me to a moment when any of them also lost something."
Ill
"Oh, I think you'll run into them somewhere."
"I hope so. You know what the weirdest feeling about
that is?"
"What?"
"Knowing somewhere in all this crazy time they're
already dead. Even when they're alive, they're dead, right?
I mean, that's the way it is with us. We're dead but visiting
this moment where we're also alive, so we're both alive and
dead in the same moment. The same thing is happening to
all the people we knew and loved. Time's all wrinkled up
on itself, like a Kleenex that's been all smushed together. It
touches itself in all these different places."
As reassuring as this is, I hope that my family isn't
stuck somewhere on the edge of the Kleenex, i
n a place that
doesn't fold back onto any of the creases I'm occupying.
"You'll see your family again, Maddy. I'm sure of it."
He's a mind reader, too? What am I, the joke of the
Universe? The only ghost in the Great Expanse who doesn't
know anything about navigating the spiritual experience?
"You can read minds, too. Just like Tammy." It's an accusation.
I can't help it. I feel a little betrayed.
"Huh?"
I explain to him what happened when I visited Tammy
at the slumber party. He seems surprised. "Well, I suppose
it makes as much sense as everything else I've discovered
since I died," he admits. "But I haven't learned to do that
, . ' H
I'm waiting for you. And you aren't ready."
"Tammy thinks it's because I don't know how I died.
She thinks that's keeping me tied here. She also thinks you
can help me figure out what happened to me. Do you know
how I died?"
"Yes."
"How come you know and I don't?" I demand. I might
be sounding a little like, well, a spoiled five-year-old.
"Your back was turned. Mine wasn't."
I'm so surprised by this statement that my mist seems
to scatter in several directions. I'm in danger of dispersing
into an Expanding Universe. Gabe's mist surrounds me and
keeps me centered enough to fold back in on myself.
"You saw it happen?"
"Yes. And I wish I hadn't."
"Why don't you tell me about it, then?" I ask. "Afterward,
we can float off together into the sunset, or the clouds,
or whatever we float off into to get to the After."
We swirl without communicating for a moment. Finally,
Gabe says, "I think you'll need to see it for yourself. Even if
I wish I hadn't seen it, I think you need to."
"Have you ever been back to that real moment?"
"Yeah. A few times. I never want to go again."
"How'd you get there?"
"The necklace. The one you're playing with over there.
The one I gave you as a present."
.JO
yet. I wasn't reading your mind. I was reading jw/."
"What do you mean?"
"Maddy, how much time did we spend together? I know
you. You're always worried about whether the people you
love will be there for you when you need them. You're always
afraid something will tear them away from you."
"Well, I was right, wasn't I? I mean, here I am, and mv
family's not here, are they?"
"I'm here."
That's so Gabe. Just two simple words, but they mean
everything to me.
"Besides, who knows exactly what we'll find in the