“Don’t expect to win,” my dad says. “All these games are rigged.”
“There’s always a few winners,” my mother says, patting me gently on the shoulder.
I can’t make myself do anything other than what I actually did eight years ago. But I can feel everything. The air is laced with the smell of buttered popcorn and cotton candy. And my hands feel sticky from a cherry snow cone that I just finished.
“I feel lucky,” I say. “This plastic ring will land perfectly on top of that bottle.”
I lean forward over the counter.
“Gotta stay behind the line,” the carnival worker says.
I shuffle back a step and stand up a little straighter. I glance down at my pink sandals decorated with yellow sunflowers. They were my favorite shoes that summer. The night I got them, I even slept in them.
“She’s eight years old,” my father argues. “We don’t need to nail her to the wall with rules.”
“If I let everybody lean, I wouldn’t have any stuffed animals left. The challenge is what makes this a real game,” the worker says. He claps his hands and cheers me on. But I suspect he wants me to lose.
“Aim short,” Sadie coaches. “The last one went past it.”
“Right,” I say. “I saw that.” I extend my arm and practice throwing the plastic ring several times. I know what happens. I know I win my next toss. But my eight-year-old self is overwhelmed by the anticipation and has tons of adrenaline coursing through her system.
“Winning is overrated,” my grandma says. “You should be having fun.”
“I am going to win,” I say. I let the ring fly from my fingertips. It sails less than three feet and catches the edge of a bottle. It circles and circles and finally falls. Clink!
“You won!” Sadie cheers, grabbing me from behind. “You get anything you want!”
“Nice job,” my grandma says. “With that kind of tactile judgment, you could grow up to be a surgeon.”
“No way,” I say. “I want to make chocolate art for a living.”
My mother laughs. “We watched a show on cable last week, a documentary about a famous chocolate artist. He replicates Renaissance paintings in three-inch-by-three-inch chocolate squares.”
“Sounds delicious,” my grandma says.
“I want to be your assistant,” Sadie says.
“Okay,” I say. “But be careful. Tempered chocolate is extremely hot. There’s a serious risk of burns.”
“I will be so careful,” Sadie says.
“All right, Molly,” my dad says. “Pick your toy.”
“The peacock!” I cry.
Of course I pick the peacock. It’s the biggest stuffed animal at the stand.
“Here you go!” the worker says. “And may you stay this lucky forever.”
“I will!” I say, galloping off with my prize. The sun pounds down on me, and I skip over the asphalt. The dark surface makes the air above it steam. All my life, heat used to bother me, but feeling it again now, I can’t get enough of it. I enjoy the sensation of sunlight warming my exposed shoulders while heat wafts up from below. Sadie catches up to me and grabs my hand.
“You’re a winner!” she hollers.
We run ahead of my parents. Ahead of my grandma. I focus on how it feels to run. I focus on the temperature of the air around me. Sadie and I skip and gallop and rush forward toward more adventure. Where do we go next? I don’t remember. A small rock slips into my sandal, and the weight of my body lands on it. A piercing pain shoots through my heel, and it’s thrilling to feel something so specific. Then the pain starts to dull. My moment is ending. I know I don’t get to stay in my body much longer.
There are so many things I wish I’d done. There was grass nearby. Why didn’t I slip off my sandals and run through it? And there was a slide just a few feet away. Moreover, I completely bypassed the petting zoo. Why was I in such a hurry? The sound of the carnival hums through me. Roller coasters. Popcorn machines. People laughing. I run alongside Sadie, clutching her sticky hand. My stuffed peacock smells like sawdust. Poorly sewn and overstuffed, my toy will burst within the year, and my mother will throw it away.
I’m still running, but there is no Sadie. No carnival. I’m a soul again. Standing on a street corner where people around me are dressed for fall. Jackets. Scarves. A few of them are already wearing gloves. Is it that cold out already? I can’t feel anything. An overly bundled-up woman pushes her baby stroller through me. The morning is ticking away. I shouldn’t stand on this corner much longer. If I don’t visit somebody soon, my body will try to find me. I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready for that at all.
My grandma? Sadie? Tate?
Things went so disastrously wrong when I tried to visit my grandma that it seems like it might be a mistake to try her next. Maybe she isn’t ready for me yet. Maybe that’s why I went off course and landed in the pool. She may need more time. I try to relax and figure out where I should go. One name keeps surfacing. Sadie. Of course I should visit Sadie. In a way, I was just with her.
I’m traveling faster than ever, speeding through the world with a ferocity that would break a body apart. Then I’m in the sky. Blue everywhere. And I fall into a car. Sadie is driving. The radio is blasting, and she’s got on dark sunglasses. Dressed in jeans and a cute green jacket I’ve never seen before, she looks unlike her normal self. Fashionable.
“Do you even know I’m dead?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer me and keeps driving. She flips through her CDs until a song featuring a ukulele pulses out of the speakers. If I were alive and riding in this car with her, I would tease her for listening to this sort of music. Possibly I would turn it off. She cranks it.
“You idiot!” Sadie yells.
A tense anger fills the car. It pushes me away from Sadie. This is a new energy, unlike anything I’ve felt before.
“Never in a million years would I have thought this could happen to you!” Sadie shouts.
I guess she knows.
“Calm down. Where are you going?” I know we can’t have a real conversation, but for some reason I like to pretend that maybe we will.
“Shit!” Sadie yells.
I watch as she swerves to miss a squirrel.
“Don’t be afraid to hit a squirrel,” I say. “And please stop driving like a crazy person.”
Sadie continues to drive at a high rate of speed. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks. “You left a total mess. And who’s going to clean it up? Joy Lowe? I doubt it. Ruthann Culpepper? No, Molly. She won’t. Because you befriended a ridiculous narcissist.” She rips off her sunglasses and tosses them onto the seat. Her eyes are red. She wipes tears away.
“You’re being really hard on me,” I say. I stare at the sunglasses that have fallen through my lap.
“Did you think I was stupid?” Sadie asks, hitting the steering wheel.
Her energy is so intense and angry that I find myself forced outside the car, sitting on top of the roof. I have to fight against her anger to get back inside and remain next to her.
“Ease up or I can’t stay,” I explain. “I’m trying to give you comfort. You can’t aim all this anger at me.”
Sadie inhales three deep breaths. “I know what’s in your room.”
This is bad. Because I think she means the stuff I’ve stolen. I had no idea that Sadie knew I took things and kept them in my room.
“You think I don’t know that you had a serious impulse-control disorder? You think I didn’t notice when things went missing?”
Her energy again tries to drive me away. I focus on the sadness I can feel underneath her anger, and I cling to it and remain beside her.
“I feel terrible about that stuff,” I say. “I tried to stop. But sometimes one person can’t control everything.”
“And what are your parents going to think when they find it? Stealing stuff was so stupid. And so was dying.”
Tears run down her cheeks and land on her jeans. She shouldn’t be drivin
g. She should be at home. Why are all these grieving people driving?
“I’m right here,” I say. “I’m trying to comfort you.”
“Jesus,” Sadie says. “If we ever meet in the afterworld, the first thing I’m going to do is punch you in the face.”
“Okay,” I say. It takes every last shred of focus to keep me in the car with her. “It’s hard for me too. You think I want to be dead? You think I want my parents to find what I’ve taken?”
“I feel like I should try to fix things,” Sadie says. “And how can I do that? Break into your house? Hire a professional cat burglar?”
She makes everything sound impossible. But I see the reality of what she’s saying. “It’s not your problem. You don’t have to undo what I did.”
“This isn’t my job! It’s who you were. Shouldn’t your parents know?”
It’s hard for me to imagine my parents finding out that I stole from my friends and family and also perfect strangers. I even stole from the store. They won’t understand. My dad will freak out, and my mother will be crushed. I hope they don’t overreact and start thinking terrible thoughts like, We didn’t even know our own daughter. What if finding out damages our connection? If anything happened to their clocks, I don’t know what I’d do.
Sadie pulls her car into a driveway, but it’s not hers and it’s not mine. I feel the urge to stay with her, but I also feel a tug toward the house. I try to figure out which friend Sadie is visiting. Then I realize where I am. I’m at Tate’s house! Why did Sadie drive here? Is she even friends with him? I’m confused.
Sadie gets out of her car. And when she does, I tell myself not to follow her. I talk to my soul like it’s a dog. “Stay put! Stay put!” Arriving at the doorstep of every grieving person is exhausting.
I am still following Sadie. No. I don’t want to be here. “Stay put!” I yell again. And finally my soul slows down. I don’t want to see Tate. I don’t want to be around angry Sadie. My soul is on the verge of stopping, but then I hear Tate’s voice.
“Are you okay?” Sadie asks him.
Why is Sadie even at Tate’s?
“No,” Tate says. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Me too,” Sadie says.
I pass through several walls until I reach Tate’s room. It’s a mess. There are clothes and sports equipment and books and DVDs scattered all over his floor and desk and bed. Unlike Henry, he doesn’t have band plaques on his walls—he’s got the standard dude posters: swimsuit centerfolds. Mostly blondes. Where are all the pictures of his trips? Belize, Peru, New Zealand, Costa Rica?
Sadie sits on the messy floor with him. They both look exhausted and, oddly enough, a little panicked.
“I didn’t understand your message,” Tate says. “You need things from Molly’s room?”
“I didn’t do a good job explaining it,” Sadie says.
“You said Molly was a thief,” Tate says. “You called her a maniac.”
Oh my god. Sadie is trying to ruin my life. Except I’m dead, so she’s trying to ruin people’s memories of me.
“You suck, Sadie Dobyns,” I say. “I withdraw all comfort from you.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” a voice says. I turn and see Louise, standing next to Tate’s combination clothes hamper and basketball hoop.
“Please, not now,” I tell Louise. “I can’t miss any of what Sadie is saying. It’s cripplingly devious in ways I can’t quite wrap my head around.”
“Molly wasn’t a maniac thief,” Sadie says. “She had a disorder. She was a kleptomaniac. She stole things.”
“From you?” Tate asks. He doesn’t seem to be judging me. Neither does Sadie. They both seem genuinely concerned.
“Yeah. From me. From stores. From other friends,” Sadie explains.
“Was she ever caught?” Tate asks. “Arrested?”
Sadie shakes her head. “She was careful. Nobody knew. Not her parents. Not her friends. Nobody. Except me.”
Tate nods. “Weird.”
“Even dead, I don’t want Tate to think that I’m weird,” I tell Louise.
“What does it matter? It’s not like he was your soul mate,” Louise says.
This startles me a little. “Something could have happened between us. He’s a very attractive and well-traveled person.”
“I see that you relived one of your life moments,” Louise says.
“Shh,” I say. “They’re talking about me. I need to listen.”
“But you’ve still got—”
“Louise, I’m missing important stuff.”
“I think you should—”
“Go away! I know I have things to finish. But this is important too.”
“Your grandmo—”
“I know!” I say. “Please go!”
I can feel Louise exit, and I turn all my attention to Sadie and Tate.
“I don’t want her parents to find what’s in her room,” Sadie says. “We need to get it.”
“You mean, break into Molly’s house?” Tate asks.
“Don’t be overly dramatic. All we need to do is get me inside her room for ten minutes. I need a couple of people to help me.”
“I can’t do this with Ruthann Culpepper.” Tate’s expression registers total abhorrence.
“We won’t do this with Ruthann Culpepper. I’ve asked Henry Shaw to help.”
Tate looks like he’s reconsidering.
“What do you need me to do?” he asks.
Sadie smiles for the first time since I found her. “I’ll go to her house and get into her room. Henry will wait outside her window. I’ll gather everything and give it to him. I need you to come to the door after five minutes. And talk to her mom and keep her occupied so I can be alone in Molly’s room.”
“I can’t have a conversation with Molly’s mom,” Tate says. “I can’t face her right now.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t feel that way. I took Molly on a date and now she’s dead. I can’t help you.”
“But I need your help.”
Tate stands up. He starts crying. “This is too much. Way too much.”
Sadie gets up to leave. She looks pissed and dejected and tired.
“I’m sorry,” Tate says as she walks to the door.
Sadie doesn’t turn to look at him or say good-bye. She quietly makes her parting remarks as she slips out the door. “Obviously, you’re not sorry enough.”
Poor Sadie. She feels completely defeated. I didn’t mean to saddle her with this obligation. I wish I could help her. I wish there were something I could do.
Sadie is going to have to live with the knowledge that I was a thief. My parents will find out and be devastated. I wonder what my grandmother will think of the fact that I was a kleptomaniac. I only stole from her one time. I took a bracelet from her jewelry box when I was visiting her four years ago. She asked me about it on my next visit. But I just acted like I didn’t know anything. I guess I look like an honest person because she believed me. Only Sadie saw through me. Maybe because we spent so much time together. Or maybe we had a real and true connection.
I’m standing in Tate’s front yard beside a rhododendron. My grandmother accidentally killed a rhododendron when I was a kid. She didn’t catch its root rot in time. The whole thing died. When she realized she couldn’t save it, she swore at it.
“You dying shit!” she’d yelled.
I’d never heard her swear before. “Maybe it will grow back,” I’d told her.
“That’s not how gardening works. After you murder a bush, it’s dead forever.”
“Sorry,” I’d said.
“I don’t think it’s really anybody’s fault. Root rot happens.”
I hadn’t thought about that rhododendron until right now. I’m surprised I can remember our conversation. Ready or not, it happens. I can see my grandmother and myself. She’s at the mortuary. And before I have time to rethink my decision, I step into th
e gray tunnel and fly to her. It’s the shortest trip yet. One moment I’m in a grassy yard, the next I’m falling through a ceiling, landing on carpet. I am in the absolute last place I want to be. My grandma and Aunt Claire are standing over my body, talking.
There is an unmistakable pull for me to be as close to my body as possible. But I resist it. I don’t want to stand next to my body. Please, let me avoid ending up like Louise. Overcome with sadness, trapped by a potent connection to my lifeless corpse.
“She looks like she’s sleeping,” my grandmother says, sniffling.
A white sheet is draped over me, covering me all the way to the neck. I refuse to focus on my face. This is too real. Too sad.
“Nobody confronts this easily,” Louise says. I can feel her presence beside me. “But it’s one of the last times you’ll see yourself. So you might consider this a final opportunity.”
“I can’t see it that way,” I say.
I glance around the funeral home and feel sickened by all the decorative details. There are flower arrangements placed on every flat surface, and I can’t smell any of them. The light is thin and dying, as if they are trying to disguise what the dead truly look like. I hear the sound of water, look out the glass doors, and notice a young boy leaning over a drinking fountain. A stream flows easily into his pink mouth. I turn away from this. Every small thing I see now is making me desperately sad. Because I used to drink water. I used to have a pink mouth.
“Don’t stay too long,” Louise says. “You don’t want to use up all your time here.”
“Don’t worry,” I say.
“This kills me,” my grandmother says. “It absolutely kills me.”
I put my arms around her and hug her from behind. “I’m okay. I’m still here.”
“She looks lovely,” Aunt Claire says. “I didn’t realize her hair had gotten so long.”
I finally look at myself. Somebody has pulled my hair forward over my shoulders and smoothed it out. Normally, on a good day, my hair had a natural wave to it. But today it’s basically straight. I’m not wearing any makeup. I look so dead. I thought I might look like I was sleeping, but my skin is a waxy color. And my hands rest stiffly at my side. I turn my back and move so I stand between my grandmother and my body.
Death of a Kleptomaniac Page 13