by Penni Jones
Daisy nods. Eben sits on the couch transfixed. He has tears in his eyes.
“You have to make Alex cry. Tell her you miss her, too. Be specific. She’s obviously the tough one in the group.”
I would have made a good boss. Too bad I didn’t stick around long enough to make upper management. I need to translate these skills when I get my new body. Maybe life coaching or something.
“But if I single her out, Eben and Daisy will feel left out,” he says.
“Spell all of their names then. Just fucking get it done before we run out of time.”
“I know what to do!” he says.
“Great. Fucking do it.”
“T-H-A-N-K,” Alex reads aloud again. “Y-O-U A-L-E-X. Thank you, Alex.”
And it finally happens. Her chin starts to tremble. It’s as beautiful as a double rainbow with a halo of blue birds. A single tear falls from each eye. She pulls Daisy into her arms and Eben joins them on the floor. They become a blubbering mess of a family right there on the shitty shag carpet.
Chapter 12
Luke
This is my family, and they are gutted because of me. I can’t tell which one of them is crying the hardest. They’re a mess of trembling flesh and sobbing. It’s almost too much. I’m intruding on an emotional family moment. But the moment is also my fault.
I don’t have to watch for long. The pull is finally happening.
Naomi and I grab hands and submit to the irresistible force.
I had zero expectation of where we would end up, but this place still seems weird. It’s not the food court. But it’s also not another house or mobile home.
“A waiting room,” Naomi says. “I think we’re about to see Doris.”
“Who?”
“She’s the caseworker.”
I want to know more but I’m too tired to ask. It’s weird to be tired when you’re only a soul with no body to influence your feelings.
We both take a seat in the retro orange plastic chairs that line the walls. Canned elevator music plays from somewhere. It sounds like the soft version of a Go-Go’s song.
Even though I’m exhausted, I feel good. I’m finally out of the lurking phase of my death. The spying, manipulating, and grief-inducing phase.
We are the only two souls in this room.
“I miss Edgar,” Naomi says.
“Yeah. It’s kind of weird to be in a spot like this without him.”
“What do you think happens next?” She inches closer to me. Our shoulders are touching. It feels more real here than it did on grief watch, but not by much.
“I don’t know.” I wish I could give her an answer. She looks like she really needs one.
“This should be it, right? Our chance to try again.” Her eyes meet mine and she says, “You do want another chance now, right?”
“Yeah. The Edgar thing scared me straight. No Oblivion for this guy.”
It’s hard to tell how much time has passed before a door that we didn’t notice before opens. A woman walks out. She’s tall in the way I perceived my teachers to be when I was a child. Imposing. In charge. She carries two manila files.
Even in death, people are reduced to manila files.
“Naomi, Luke, come with me.” She motions toward the door and we stand to follow.
It feels like we’re in trouble. Like we’re being led to the principal’s office. I can’t imagine a scenario during my life that I would have co-conspired with a girl like Naomi. I would have liked to, though.
“Please, have a seat.” The woman motions to two plush leather office chairs in front of a large wooden desk. Oak, maybe. If it was actually a solid thing. “Good to see you, Naomi. Luke, I am Doris, your caseworker. As you know, your mentor is no longer with us.” She doesn’t look up from the files.
“Yes, we know,” Naomi says quietly, any trace of her sarcastic smart-ass bravado is in hiding.
“Why didn’t he help us more? I could have finished earlier. If he had been allowed to tell us things, he would still be around.” The injustice of Edgar’s horrific demise gives me the nerve to stand up to this woman.
Doris puts our files down and sits in the wingback chair behind the desk. She steeples her fingers together at her mouth, and her lips spread into a wide grin.
At least she’s looking at us now.
“Edgar sealed his own fate.”
“How? It was awful. You didn’t see it. Or hear it.” Naomi jumps up to punctuate her words. I tug at her arm. She must feel it because she sits back down.
“I understand why you are upset. But I assure you, he could have avoided it.” She pulls another manila folder from nowhere. This one must be Edgar’s. She opens it and starts to talk again without reading anything in it. “Edgar was a particularly restless mentor. And he wasn’t the only one.” She pauses and looks down to the file before she continues, “Some of the mentors like to conduct contests between their charges. They compete to see who can have the fastest complete grief watch, which our Naomi here won by a mile. But they also liked to compete to see who could have the slowest without actually losing to the Shadow.”
Doris pauses, either for dramatic effect or to let us take in the new information.
“He was winning with you, Luke. But he played it too close to the Death Shadow. And he paid the ultimate price.”
We sit in silence for a moment before Naomi asks, “But why? What was the point?”
“Transition. If a mentor could hold both records at once, he or she could transition without completing the remainder of his or her prerequisites, or waiting in line behind anyone else. It was a way to pass the time and cheat the system.”
“He was playing with our fate,” I say.
“You can choose to see it that way. It doesn’t really matter.”
“Are we done now? Can we find new bodies?” Naomi asks.
“Not quite,” Doris says, and smiles at us like we’re silly little children.
* * *
Naomi
I get what she’s going for with her 1970s power suit, and I can respect it. However, I can do without her condescending bullshit attitude. But I’m not exactly in the position to tell her that.
“What else do we have to do?” Luke asks in the most meek church boy voice I’ve heard since middle school.
“The two of you have found yourselves in a unique position.”
I keep expecting her to sigh between sentences, but she doesn’t have to do that. She’s just as dead as we are.
“You have both technically completed your grief watch. But your mentor behaving the way he did has thrown everything out of balance.”
“So now what?” I ask.
Fucking Edgar and his fucking bullshit mentoring. Maybe he deserved to get sucked away by an evil shadow. A chill runs down my non-existent spine and I feel guilty.
Maybe I’m growing as a person.
“I’m short one mentor. He had two new souls scheduled to arrive today. Since you two were his prize ponies, the new souls are your responsibility.”
“That’s bullshit!” Luke says, and I’m grateful for him doing that so I don’t have to.
Doris shrugs and smirks and the same time. Smug bitch.
“If you,” she says while looking at me, “had been more caring and taken a little more time with your loved ones,” she does air quotes for loved ones, “you would not be in this position.”
“And if you,” she says to Luke, “had taken responsibility for killing yourself and done what you needed to do in a timely manner, you would already be in a new body.”
She stands behind the desk, and she appears taller than what is probably possible. “There are consequences to your actions. Be good mentors to the incoming souls, and you’ll be on your way before you know it.” She gives a tight-lipped grin.
“How will we know what to do?” I ask. We can’t screw up.
“Edgar gave you most of the information you need. Just pass it onto your charges in a timelier manner than he did.”
&nbs
p; “You said ‘most of the information.’ Is there more we need to know?” Luke asks.
Doris reaches behind her and pulls another file folder from somewhere. She drops it on the desk and pushes it toward our side.
“A summary of the Mentor’s Handbook. If it’s not in there, you don’t need to know it.”
Luke picks it up and opens it.
“Don’t I get one, too?” I ask.
Doris rolls her eyes and grabs another folder. She tosses it to me, and I catch it clumsily mid-air, though it feels like it wouldn’t have fallen if I had missed.
She pulls two more files from nowhere, and places them on the desk. “These are your charges. Good luck.”
I pull one file toward myself and push one toward Luke.
My charge is named Louisa. She’s only fifteen. I can’t do this.
“No,” I say and look up, ready to state my case to Doris. But she’s gone. “Where did she go?”
Luke looks up and says, “I don’t know. Not a real helpful bunch around here, are they?”
“Does this mean we have to separate?” I ask.
Luke’s the most important person in my dead life. He’s the only person in my dead life. We survived the Shadow together.
“I guess so,” he says. He looks like I feel.
“Mine is a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“Mine is a sixty-two-year-old man.” Luke stares straight ahead. “I know this will sound dumb. But I clearly never learned how to communicate with my own dad. What good can I do with a grown-up man?”
It doesn’t sound dumb. It would be weirder if a suicide soul didn’t have issues with at least one parent.
“Wanna trade?” I ask. “Older men usually like me. And you might be more tuned in to the suicidal teen thing.”
“Yeah. I think that would be best.” He nods. We both place the files on the desk and try to push them toward each other. Each time we try, the original files land before us.
“I guess it’s not up to us,” he says.
“Why the fuck would it be?” I ask, then immediately feel guilty for my self-pity.
I have strong memories of fifteen being a craptastic age, but suicide wasn’t one of my options yet.
What if the girl talks to me like I’m her mom or something? Gross.
“Do you think maybe we can hang out sometimes in the foodless food court during our downtime?” he asks.
“Are you asking me out?” I’m kidding, but not really. He’s Plath-esque and his clothes are all wrong, but he is really cute. And we’ve definitely bonded.
“Is it okay if I’m asking you out?” he says to my chest.
“Eyes up here, Luke.” I crook my finger and tilt his chin up, or lead it up with energy or something. Maybe one of these files will explain all this shit. “Yes, it’s okay.”
Chapter 13
Luke
I think I would have been a good dad. Was Nolan a good dad? I don’t have that information in my charge’s file. Charge. Such a weird word. Sounds like I’m a benefactor taking care of an 1800s orphan. Too bad his name isn’t Pip.
Okay. Nolan. Nolan was sad because he had Parkinson’s and erectile dysfunction. Can’t blame the guy for being depressed.
“Louisa had a shitty life.” Naomi sits across from me in the foodless food court.
“Nolan wasn’t doing so hot, either.”
“That’s how people end up here, I guess.” Naomi shrugs and smiles a little. “Nobody kills themselves when things are tip-top.”
Maybe the idea of taking care of someone is doing her some good. She looks prettier than she did in Daisy’s trailer.
Maybe everyone is prettier outside of a trailer.
“I’m scared,” I say, even though I don’t want to. “I’m afraid we’ll lose each other.”
“Me, too,” she says and looks back to Louisa’s file. “I’m used to your weird emo shit. No telling what another sidekick’s shit would be like.”
“I’m not the sidekick. You’re the sidekick.” I reach to put my hand over hers just as the pulling starts.
It shouldn’t be so jarring by now. Apparently, I’ve been doing it for a decade.
A bar. This is the first time I’ve landed at a bar. It’s dingy and looks like it smells terrible, but it’s pretty cool. There’s a jukebox playing Al Green. My charge leans against it and smokes an imaginary cigarette.
“Hey, Nolan,” I say.
“You can see me?” He flicks his imaginary cigarette. He’s really committed to this pretend smoking thing.
“Not only can I see you, I’m here to help you.” I smile and hold out my hand. “The name’s Luke.” I’m doing my damnedest to sound masculine.
We shake hands the way souls do.
He looks like a man’s man. Tall and burly with a trimmed beard. He probably loved beer. Or maybe Nolan was a whiskey man.
“Why am I at Wanda’s Tavern?” he asks.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Running my pickup off a cliff. I took my seatbelt off first, but I probably didn’t need to.” Nolan gestures to a small table and we sit like we’re two regular fellas, getting ready to drink and shoot the shit.
“You are now a suicide soul. In order to move on from this phase, you have to witness your friends and family grieving for you.”
It’s like I’m a teacher, and my student is an old dude. The only teaching I ever did when I was alive was teaching Daisy how to roll joints. This instruction is probably more important.
“How old are you? Sixteen?” he asks like he already hates me.
“I was twenty when I died.”
Nolan stares at nothing and says, “Twenty. That was a helluva year. I was in college smoking grass and bagging babes left and right. There’s no way I would have killed myself at twenty.”
“Well, I reckon I didn’t know how good I had it.”
How has Nolan’s suicide become about my failure to enjoy my youth? Nolan’s kind of a dick.
“Let’s get this started. Who’s important to you in this place?”
Nolan looks around and shrugs. “Hell if I know. Maybe the bartender? I probably tipped her enough to pay her rent the past couple of years.”
“You’ll have to watch her grieve. You can emit a scent that will remind her of you. You can manipulate the energy around the jukebox and make it play a song that will make her think of you.”
“So, I just have to make her cry?” he asks.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” The bartender is cute like a young Sally Field. She’s chatting with a customer and smiling like she’s interested in what he’s saying. “And you have to watch her for a bit and then you’ll be moved somewhere else.”
I hope my next body is already twenty-one. I’d really like to hang out in some bars. Meet some cute bartenders. Pick songs from a jukebox. Maybe I’ll get everyone in the bar to call me by a nickname like “Tex” or “Ace.”
“Moved?” he asks.
“Yeah. Moved. Like transported or beamed up or something. It’s painless. Just weird.”
“Parkinson’s.” Nolan points at me for punctuation.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t you wonder why I did it?”
“Oh,” I say for lack of something more eloquent. I don’t feel right telling him that I already know about his Parkinson’s. And about his erectile dysfunction. Or that his wife who had the same name as his mother left him one year ago for an aikido instructor. The two most important women in his life were named Janet. Both of them pretty and selfish.
No wonder Nolan’s kind of a dick.
“I did woodwork. I made headboards, chairs, coffee tables. Lots of details.” Nolan spread out his hands and held them out in front of me. “These big old hands made dainty delicate details. Until the shaking took that away from me.” He draws his hands closer to his face and says, “But they’re not shaking no more.”
“The good news is that after you finish your grief watch, you get to try again. You h
ave to find a vapid body…”
“How the hell do I do that?”
“I have no idea. But we’ll figure that out later.” I smile like I’m confident about that and continue, “You will have another chance. You can make art again. You just have to watch your loved ones cry first.”
Nolan nods and says, “All right. Let’s do this shit.”
“You have to do this shit, Nolan. You just have to…”
The pull starts to happen before I finish my sentence. I’m back in the food court. But I’m not alone.
* * *
Naomi
Louisa appears in Luke’s seat as soon as he’s sucked away. I wonder if he’ll miss me. I’m not sure if he likes me or hates me. Maybe both.
The poor girl is wearing an oversized tie-dyed T-shirt and boy short underwear.
There should be some kind of PSA to let people know that what they die in is what they will wear for a potentially long time.
Her hair is dyed black and her light brown roots are showing. I’m not sure if she’s a Goth or a hippie. Is Goth hippie a thing now?
“Where the fuck am I?” she asks.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m Naomi.”
“Where the fuck am I, Naomi?”
“Louisa, you’re a suicide soul. So am I. We’re in a sort of limbo or purgatory or something.” I hold my hands out for her, but she doesn’t touch them. A tough girl even in death. “You were a cutter, weren’t you?”
Louisa pulls her arms together and shoves them down like her scars are showing. But that’s not how I know. I’m just really intuitive.
Just kidding.
It was in her file.
“I’m not judging you.”
Ruthie Mae was a cutter. She never told anyone but me, at least as far as I know. And she stopped doing it during our senior year after a cut got infected and her mom took her to a therapist.
When she came to visit me at college, her latest boyfriend had seen the scars. She did her best to keep them hidden. To only undress in the dark. But she let her guard down.
She changed the subject, and he let it go. He was probably pleased with himself for trying, just in case it was a for-real problem. That was enough for him to feel good about himself, but it shouldn’t have been enough for Ruthie Mae.