Death, and the Girl He Loves

by Darynda Jones

  My muscles were seizing, and I realized I was sobbing outright. This wasn’t real. Things like this didn’t happen. Not really. I crumpled the picture, closed my eyes, and crumbled to the dirt.

  “Lorelei.”

  I heard my name, but it was soft, melodic, unhurried.

  “You’re going to be late.”

  Late? What on earth could be so important that I had to worry about being late during the apocalypse? Shouldn’t all appointments be canceled in times of earth’s total devastation? During the annihilation of humanity?

  I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes again. Ever. I couldn’t see the lifeless bodies of my best friends. The image was already branded in my mind, cauterized in my brain. Just let me die, I thought over and over. Just take me now.

  “I’d hate to be you if you’re late for Ms. Mullins’s class one more time. She threatened to hang you by your toes the last time.”

  I felt a softness, a warmth, being dragged off me. As though I were covered in a blanket. Then my feet were being tickled. My legs jerked in response.

  “I knew that’d work,” a male voice said. One I didn’t recognize.

  “We have a big day ahead of us. It’s your day, remember? You’ve been harping about this day since you were six.” The world around me shook as though I were on a trampoline and someone was bouncing beside me. “You can have anything you want for breakfast, so you’d best be deciding. This is a limited-time offer.”

  I pried my eyes open, squinting against the barrage of rain and debris that would soon assault them until I realized the wind had died down. Completely. I didn’t even hear a soft breeze. My hair didn’t fly about my face nor did my skin sting with droplets of ice. I relaxed my lids and let them slide open farther. But I saw nothing. Just white. White all around me. White and bright and airy.

  Someone brushed a lock of hair off my face. A man. A man was sitting beside me. Adrenaline shot through me as I screeched and scrambled off the bed.

  The bed.

  I’d been on a bed.

  My brows snapped together as I tried to gain my bearings. Where was the tree? Where were Glitch and Brooklyn and Cameron and Jared?

  The man stood, startled by my reaction, then kneeled on the other side of the large bed, his expression soft, knowing. “You were having a bad dream,” he said, offering me a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. None of it was real.”

  I tried to focus on his words, but I couldn’t quite get past the part that he looked alarmingly like my dad. I stared at him in awe as he placed his chin on the mattress and gave me a moment to recover.

  “You okay, Pix?” he asked.

  Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I shrank back, cowering in the corner.

  “Heavens, sweetheart,” a woman said. “That must have been a bad one. But today’s the big day. Maybe—” She looked across the mattress at the man, her expression full of sorrow. “—maybe it’ll be better after today, just like you said.”

  This woman, with her gentle smile and her large blue eyes, looked so much like my mother, my chest tightened around my heart.

  And then it hit me. I’d died. Thank God, I’d died and gone to heaven to be with my parents. And I hadn’t even felt any pain. This was wonderful.

  But just to make sure, I said hesitantly, “Mom?”

  She fixed a patient smile on me.

  “Are you my mom?”

  Once again, she glanced across the bed before returning her attention to me. “No,” she said, her face turning sorrowful. “I’m your aunt Edna.” Then she laughed softly. “Of course I’m your mom, silly. Do you want to talk about your dream?”

  “And, and you’re my dad?” I asked the man.

  “Sorry, Pix,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m your great-uncle Ferdinand. We haven’t met yet, but I’m from Spain. I don’t really know any English, so we’ll have to learn sign language or something to communicate.” When I frowned at him, he continued. “That was a really bad one, right?”

  Everything hit me at once. My friends were gone. My grandparents were gone. Jared was gone. Had they gone to heaven like me? Would I see them all again? Jared once told me he didn’t get to heaven much. Would he come visit?

  Their loss crashed into me. Seized my lungs. I was here with my parents, something I’d wanted for so long, I could hardly remember a time when I didn’t, and yet everyone I’d ever known, everything I’d ever known was gone.

  I looked up at my mother with her beautiful smile and flung myself into her arms. I didn’t know if it was okay to cry in heaven, but I was doing it. Sobs racked my body so hard, I couldn’t catch my breath. I cried out loud as my mother rocked me in her arms. Dad had come around and pulled us both into his warm embrace, and still I cried. I cried for the loss of the most wonderful grandparents in existence. The most amazing friends, who stuck by me through everything, even a supernatural war. The most beautiful boy I’d ever met, who’d liked me—me!—and told me I was pretty and smart and talented.

  I cried so hard, my throat hurt and my eyes burned. Dad went to get a washcloth. Mom held it to my head as he lifted me up and placed me back on the bed. A white bed with a white comforter that looked like clouds. This was definitely heaven.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to them between sobs. “I’ll miss everyone so much.”

  “Who, Pix?” Dad asked me.

  I focused on him. On his red hair and scruffy jaw. His dark gray eyes. He was so handsome and he looked exactly as I remembered him. As did my mother.

  “Do you want to stay home from school today?” Mom asked.

  “School?” I asked, rather horrified. “I still have to go to school?”

  “According to the law,” Dad said. “And if you don’t, I honestly think Mr. Davis would enjoy nothing more than hunting you down and throwing you in detention. You remember the last time you and Tabitha skipped.”

  Tabitha? Tabitha Sind? Why on earth would I skip school in heaven with Tabitha Sind? And how the heck did she get through the pearly gates? Didn’t they have some kind of checklist? A set of standards? Morals one had to meet before you could pass?

  “I just didn’t think … I’m just surprised there’s school in heaven.”

  It was odd that Ms. Mullins would still be my teacher even here and Mr. Davis would still be the principal. Surely there were others more qualified for an authoritative position in a celestial institution of higher learning. Literally.

  “I figured I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore.”

  Dad laughed. “Nice try, Pixie Stick, but you’re not getting off that easily. If you hurry, you can still make the first bell.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t push her,” Mom said to him. “Her dreams have never been this bad.”

  Dad shrugged. “It’s up to you, Pix. Do you feel up to going to school?”

  With a reluctant shrug, I said, “I guess.” May as well jump in with both feet.

  After showering in a bathroom made of Tuscan tile and marble and dressing in a closet bigger than my old room, I went down a gorgeous set of wood stairs until I landed on a stunning terra-cotta floor with a huge skylight above it. It was the stuff of my dreams, this living in heaven. I figured it would have streets of gold and clouds of ionized silver, but this would definitely do.

  Even with the fact that I was with my parents once more, I felt dizzy, unstable. I didn’t quite trust this version of heaven. What if I really were only dreaming?

  “Okay,” my dad said to me, a beautiful smile lighting his face. “Since you never gave a preference, I made your favorite, chocolate pancakes.”

  I looked over at the chocolate pancakes and almost seized, my pleasure was so strong. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never had chocolate pancakes. Clearly I’d been missing out. I’d have to confront my grandmother about this.

  “And,” Mom said, “two percent milk.” She poured me a glass of ice-cold 2 percent.

  “Because God forbid we have whole milk,” Dad said.

 
; I didn’t like whole milk? Okay, good to know.

  “A girl’s gotta watch her figure,” he continued, teasing me.

  I looked down. Same straight skinny figure I’d always had. No idea why I was watching it now, but I’d go along with it. I’d go along with anything as long as my parents were with me.

  I couldn’t stop staring at them. Could hardly take my eyes off Dad when he placed a brown pancake on my plate followed by a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on one’s perspective—helping of syrup.

  “Just so you know,” Mom said, giving Dad a warning shake of her finger, “when she ends up in the nurse’s office, passed out from a sugar crash, you are going to pick her up and explain to the nurse what happened.”

  I dug in, taking a huge bite and moaning aloud when the sweet flavors danced across my taste buds. This really was heaven, and it had chocolate. But I still didn’t take my eyes off them. Was this what they would have been like had they lived? Or maybe these were simply my memories, ones I’d suppressed, rising to the surface before I died completely.

  Morbid but worth consideration.

  I watched them as they teased each other, Mom dancing around Dad’s threat to pinch an inch when she said she weighed no more than she had ten years earlier. “I like weight on a girl,” he said, chasing her around the kitchen, “now eat these pancakes or I’ll tie you down and force-feed you.”

  Mom giggled. Giggled like a schoolgirl, and my heart soared.

  I looked down, not wanting to worry them when tears came to my eyes again. I’d cried for a solid twenty minutes earlier. I couldn’t start again now. They’d send me to the loony bin. The one with padded walls and crazy nurses who make you swallow pills, then check under your tongue to make sure you didn’t stash it. I’d never stashed anything under my tongue, and I had no intentions of starting now.

  “Pix?” Dad asked. He frowned at me. “You can’t be sad for your party tonight. Everyone will wonder about you. You know, more than they already do.”

  “Lucas!” Mom said, scolding him with a look. “No one wonders about our daughter.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, nodding as he cleaned up his cooking area. “They don’t have to wonder. They already know she’s a bit off kilter.”

  Mom took his spatula and beat him with it as he blocked her blows with a dish towel.

  This was not from my memories. This was new. This was heaven.

  HEAVEN AND OTHER ODDITIES

  Our house sat about half a mile back from my grandparents’ health food store, the Wild ’n Wonderful. It was a beautiful white two-story with lots of wood and glass and plants. I wanted to explore it, to search out every nook and cranny, but according to the parental units, I had to get to school.

  I smiled. I’d always wanted to say parental units. By the time I’d learned that phrase, mine were gone and it didn’t seem right to call them such after the fact. It wouldn’t have the same impact. The same implication.

  Dad drove me to school. He played the radio too loud and sang along to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.” Despite his joy, it had an ominous feel to it. I shook it off and just tried to accept. To enjoy. This was what I’d dreamed of for ten years. Why question it? Why stir the pot?

  “I would’ve made a great hippie,” Dad said, a forlorn kind of longing in his voice. “If I’d been born just a few years earlier, but noooooo. My parents wanted to wait until they could afford a child. What kind of nonsense is that? I totally missed the flower power generation.”

  He rambled on and on like that all the way to school, which sadly was only a few blocks. I could listen to him forever. I was certain he wasn’t always that cheerful—everybody had a bad day here and there—but this was heaven after all.

  “So, we still on for tonight?”

  “Tonight?” I asked.

  “The party. The one you’ve talked about—”

  “Oh, right, I forgot,” I said. The party, whatever that meant. I’d checked the calendar. It wasn’t my birthday, so I wasn’t quite sure why we were having a party that I’d apparently been insisting upon since I was six. But again, if my parents were involved, I’d so be there.

  * * *

  Riley High looked exactly as it always had. It was a relatively new school, only a couple of years old, but it was exactly as I remembered it. I liked school about as much as I liked working in my grandparents’ store. I was always ready and willing to put the work in, but at the same time, I could think of a thousand things I’d rather be doing.

  Dad dropped me off up front, then waited as I walked through the front doors. The gesture was endearing. Was he worried I’d be abducted in so short a span? And in heaven? Did people get abducted in heaven?

  I strode through the front doors and sampled the air. It smelled the same. It looked the same. Everything was the same. I just really thought heaven would look a lot different from Riley’s Switch, New Mexico. If anything, I thought it would resemble Hawaii a little more.

  But maybe this was my heaven. Did each of us have our own version of heaven? Admittedly, in my perfect world, heaven consisted of what I already had with a couple of parents thrown in for good measure. I’d wanted only them. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  Brooklyn was walking toward me, a wide smile on her face, and my heart soared. She was here. We’d be in heaven together. I started to wave until I realized she wasn’t smiling at me, but just past me.

  Turning, I saw Ashlee and Sydnee Southern walk in. Brooke hurried to them, and they instantly formed a huddle, clearly sharing some juicy tidbit of information. I heard whispers of a new guy, a hot new guy that Brooke would not believe.

  “Brooklyn?” I said.

  She turned to me. “Oh, hi. What’s up?”

  She acted like she barely knew me. Like we hadn’t been best friends since the third grade.

  “Nothing, I just—I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  Ashlee and Sydnee offered me a congenial smile, waiting patiently for me to give them back their friend. Their friend.

  “Oh.” Brooklyn frowned, confused. “I’m okay, Lorelei. It is Lorelei, right?”

  I blinked and fought the sting in the back of my eyes. “Yes. It’s Lorelei.”

  “Hey, we have to get to Mr. Burke’s class early to turn in our late papers,” Ashlee said. Or possibly Sydnee. I had no idea, actually. I never could tell them apart. “Find us after third.”

  “Will do,” Brooke said before turning back to me. She giggled. “They’re always turning in homework late.”

  “Right.” I pressed my mouth together, becoming confused and discombobulated. “I’ll just get to class, then.”

  Just as I stepped past her, she touched my arm. “Are you okay, Lorelei?”

  Lorelei. Not Lor. Not Squeegee like she’d called me in grade school, but Lorelei. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  I was trying to get away from her again when she said, “I’m sorry about that.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About your name. I knew it was Lorelei. Or, well, I was pretty sure it was Lorelei. I didn’t mean to … I mean, it’s just that being the newish girl in school, I had to learn so many names at once, I kind of get confused.” She laughed. “Who am I kidding, I get confused anyway. Being semi-new is just a good excuse, you know what I mean?”

  “New?” I asked. Weren’t we both new? Wasn’t pretty much everyone in school new? “What do you mean?”

  “Now who’s confused?” she said. “Let’s walk to science together.”

  Okay, we still had first hour together, so that hadn’t changed.

  “You’d think after being here for two months, I’d at least know the names of all the kids in my classes.”

  I bowed my head. Maybe time was different here. Brooke had died before me. Maybe in heaven time, that few minutes was more like two months.

  “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I think there’s a couple I still don’t know. Is that awful?”

  She laughed and wrap
ped an arm in mine. I wanted to throw mine around her, but she might find that odd.

  “I like you,” she said. “I have to be honest, I kind of felt this instant connection to you when I started school, but that could be because we’re the same height. Five-foot-short.”

  I wanted to laugh at her joke, but I spotted my archnemesis headed toward us, a frown on her face.

  “Lorelei,” Tabitha said, her brows drawn sharply, “I’ve been trying to call you all morning. What am I going to wear?”

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Brooklyn said. She stepped away before I could clutch on to her arm and beg her to save me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said to Tabitha, more than a little shocked that she was talking to me as opposed to, say, humiliating me mercilessly in front of the entire school.

  “Tonight,” she replied, her tone one of utter frustration. “The big party. Holy cow, you’ve been harping about it since … forever. But I don’t know what to wear.”

  She started back down the hall, winding around a group of skaters like I was supposed to follow. So I did.

  “I mean, how formal are we talking? I know they’re cooking outside on the grill, but will we be eating outside? I’m not really fond of bugs in my food.”

  Her voice faded away when I spotted Hector Salazar. Back when I was alive, Hector brought a gun to school and shot Cameron three times before Cameron could get to him and break his neck. He’d died badly, but they let him into heaven anyway? Clearly their review board was dropping the ball. I ogled him so long, Tabitha had to take my arm and steer me past a kid drinking from the water fountain.

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked. “You’re so weird today. I know it’s your day and all, but really. You should have sympathy for the rest of us who have to muddle through life without—” She lifted her hands and added air quotes to her next statement. “—‘superpowers.’”

  I stopped. “What superpowers?” Tabitha had never known about my visions, and I liked it that way. How could she know now? Did everybody know? And why the heck was she talking to me?