Death of a Kleptomaniac (10 page)

“Somebody took a photo of breakfast?” I say. The picture shows the three of us last weekend eating pancakes; my mother and I are in our pajamas, and my father is dressed in his work clothes. It looks like I'm talking. I must be telling a joke, because both of my parents appear to be on the edge of laughter. And then there's a picture of me speaking angrily to Henry in the lunchroom over the garbage can. Energy whirls through me. That was this week. And now I'm dead. No way. The final picture is of me sitting on top of a stupid horse. Leaning in to kiss me, Tate appears happy and completely unaware of what's about to happen. Of course he looks this way. We're both completely unaware. Until my fall, we were both naive enough to think the date was going pretty good.

“This can't be the last picture of me,” I say.

Louise smiles weakly. “For memory lane, we don't include anybody's death or the direct circumstances that led to it. This is your last photo.”

I am dreaming. That's what's happening. And once I wake up I will be alive again and I may not even remember this dream. While I stare at my last “photo,” I don't really feel any powerful emotions. So much about it seems arbitrary. My clothes. My hair. My expression. There is no way I would be smiling if this was really my last photo.
Dream.
Dream. Dream.

“You've got some momentum going. Let's keep moving forward,” Louise says.

I do not feel any momentum. This is the saddest dream I've ever dreamt. And what if it's somehow true? What if I did die in the ambulance? That's unimaginable. There is no way I am a dead person. Right?

“When do I get to see my family again?” I ask. “What about my friends?”

“These are all perfectly normal questions and feelings. But what's important right now is to go to the viewing room. Every soul needs to see how they die. Frame by frame. Yours is ready.”

“Will I ever see these pictures again?” I ask. It feels wrong to leave them.

“You have completed your walk down memory lane.”

But that's not really an answer to my question. “How much longer do they get to stay here?” I ask. “Can I look at them again later?”

Louise shakes her head. “It's completed. It doesn't stay. You don't get another turn.”

I look back at the photos and shake my head. I can see that the ones farthest away are beginning to fade and disappear. “You're taking everything from me at once. It's not fair.”

She doesn't say anything immediately. And when she finally does speak, her voice is a mixture of calm and sympathy, as if she's applied her most soothing tone. “I'm not doing anything. This is the process.”

I find this totally unacceptable. “I hate the process.” I want to wake up.

Louise opens a door and lifts her arm like she wants me to enter. “The tough thing about death is that everything that happens now is nonnegotiable. You have to accept what's dealt to you.”

“That's utterly heartbreaking,” I say as I stare back at my photos and see that nearly half of them are gone.

“Let's keep moving. You need to prepare for your funeral.”

“My funeral?” I can't even wrap my brain around that idea.

“It's time,” Louise says. The soothing voice now adjusted to communicate a much more forceful tone.

And so it's really going to happen. I am going to watch myself die. I don't resist entering the viewing room with Louise. This moment feels inevitable. This is going to happen whether I like it or not.

According to Louise, the five stages of grief and the five stages of crossing over are somewhat similar. The first stage is denial. That's where I am.

It's one thing for me to say,
I am Molly Weller and I am
dead.
But it's quite another thing for me actually to feel that way.

“I just can't believe that my head injury was fatal,” I tell Louise.

What I'm witnessing doesn't feel like a dream anymore. We're watching the final moments of my life on a large white screen. The picture is perfect. And as surprising as it sounds, I'm actually a little eager to watch my own death now. To see how something so bad could have happened to me.

“Oh, that's not what killed you.”

“What killed me?” I turn to look at her.

“It's coming up. Watch the bottom left corner.”

I turn back to view the last moments of my life. Peppa meanders through the brush. Tate and Salt aren't in the picture. It's just me and my lovely, flatulent, sidetracked horse.

“Look,” Louise says, pointing to a large rock.

“That's where I hit my head,” I say.

I watch the stupid rock and notice something curled up in a patch of sunlight next to it. It's a snake.

“It's a prairie rattler,” Louise says. “Very common for that area, and very aggressive.”

Peppa notices the snake and tries to backtrack. Then, terrified, he bucks, tossing me overboard. As I drop to the ground, the butt-first trajectory of my body is aimed right at the snake. That's when I see the snake strike. It happens so fast. The snake flies at me and sinks its fangs into my right buttock. I shouldn't have worn such thin cotton pants. Then I hit my head and am knocked unconscious. I watch as Tate races to me. He leaps off his horse and doesn't see the snake. He takes off his jacket and shirt. Then, using his shirt, he tries to stop the loss of blood from my head. He almost forgets to put his jacket back on.

“He really tried,” Louise says.

Tate grabs Peppa's reins and tethers them to a bush.

“Why take the time to do that?” I ask.

“He was afraid that Peppa would wander over and bite you.”

“A horse?” I ask.

Louise nods. “Sometimes they do that. Peppa would have tried to rouse you.”

I look back to the screen, and I crumble in sadness.

“I don't want to watch any more of this,” I say.

“You should. It will help you form your last words.”

“I'm already dead.”

“Well, that's true, but I have good news. According to some requests you made in the preexistence, you are allowed to speak last words.” Louise's tone of voice sounds cheerful, and she continues to explain things to me in a matter-of-fact way. “We'll reinsert you into your body at the moment before you die. Technically, you haven't officially expired on earth, because you haven't released your last breath or said your last words. We collected your soul right before you died, and time is suspended while you're here.”

As I absorb the news, it occurs to me that my current situation isn't as bad as I thought. “Well, in that case, stick me back in my body and let me live.”

“Molly, it doesn't work that way. It was your time.”

No. Did we both just watch the same home movie? “That was a fluke,” I say, gesturing with both hands at the screen. “A snake bit me on the butt and everybody was distracted by my bleeding head. What are the odds of that happening? One in three billion? It wasn't my time.”

“You had other exit dates.”

“I don't believe you,” I say. I know she's wrong. This was the only time in my life I'd ever gone horseback riding. “I am never in the wilderness. I bet I could live sixty more years and never see another snake.”

“You're misunderstanding. On October twelfth, you would have drowned in Rigby Lake.”

I cannot accept my death. I won't. “That's impossible. I don't even swim.”

“I think that was the point. You went with Ruthann and Joy and you hit your head and fell into a shallow part and drowned.”

“Another head injury?” I ask.

“Not really. It knocks you off balance, and then you drown.”

“With Ruthann and Joy?”

“They've already left by the time you're drowning.”

“We're not even friends anymore. I was considering quitting the squad,” I say. “Just this morning, my cat attacked Ruthann. It was a huge blowup! No way I'd go to a lake with her. I think you've been misinformed.”

She sighs heavily at this challenge. “You reconciled with them. October twelfth was a celebration of your renewed friendship.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

I can't believe that I would have let myself be talked into enduring another round with Ruthann. And after she threatened to euthanize Hopkins? I had more love for my cat and more self-respect than that. Didn't I?

“Yes. I'm sure.”

“So, we became friends again, and then my friends didn't save me?” Even though this alternate death scene didn't happen, it's still hard to swallow.

“They'd already left. You'd had a fight and you'd all driven there separately. Next. On October twentieth, while trying to avoid a cow in the road, you drove your car into a telephone pole.”

“I died in a car crash? For a teenager, that's so cliché.”

“Actually, the crash didn't kill you. You were electrocuted by dangling wires while attempting to exit your vehicle. And on October twenty-fourth, you were struck by lightning while seated in the school bleachers during a bomb threat.”

“Wow. Would the school have been liable for that?”

“Yes, in this instance, your father brought a lawsuit against the school. Oh, this is terrible.”

“What?”

“Basically he surrenders his entire life to avenge your death and never lives another happy day on earth.”

“But that doesn't happen, right? Because of the snake death?”

“Yes, you're absolutely right.”

I'm too sad to ask what the future of my parents will be without me. And when I think about Hopkins, it just makes me feel worse.

“So, it was my time?” I ask. “From the day I was born, I wasn't meant to turn seventeen?”

“That's correct. I'm so sorry. You died on Saturday, October fifth, at two thirteen p.m.”

I know this counselor says that she's sorry, and she sounds sorry, but I don't think she really understands how truly devastated I am. Even though I'm stuck in both denial and shock, I understand that it's October fifth and I am dead. And it's terrible to know this. Because my life was bursting with unaccomplished goals and plans. All I can focus on are the things on my calendar that I was planning to do. My first performance with the Tigerettes. Asking Tate to the Sweetheart Ball. Going to the Sweetheart Ball. Making up with Sadie. Squaring things away with Henry.

“I was in the middle of everything,” I try to explain. “I was just starting to figure things out.”

“Everybody feels that way,” Louise says. “Even the ninety-year-olds. Okay. Now, you're going to be placed back into your body for the sake of saying last words.”

I have no desire to say my last words. What do they matter? “It's just the paramedic. He's not going to care about my last words.”

“Molly, it's not just any paramedic. You've got Rustin Pinch. He's a superb soul and will transmit your last words to your parents verbatim. You are very lucky.”

Louise is so passionate when she says this, that for a moment I do feel a little lucky. Until I remember that I'm dead. From a fatal snakebite to my butt.

“Louise, can I ask you something?”

“About your parents?”

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Oh, I'm connected to you now. I can't read your exact thoughts, but anything you think in the form of a question gets sent to me. That's my job. I answer your questions.”

Whoa. I am not comfortable with that. Nobody should have access to my mind. It's
mine
. But I make a note to myself that my thoughts are hijackable in question form.

I stare at Louise. She stares back.

“Okay. I have a big question. It's about the baby,” I say.

“I'm not really permitted to dispense that kind of information.”

This afterlife stuff is a little confusing. First, she's here to answer my questions and guide me through the next phase of my existence. Then, she can't divulge the things that I really need to know. I ask my question anyway.

“Is the baby here? In this crossing-over place?”

“No, prebirth, everybody remains in the preexistence. No, Molly, there's no chance you could meet.”

Because I hadn't been enthusiastic about the pregnancy, my parents hadn't told me much about the baby. We didn't talk about possible names. I didn't help turn our exercise room into a nursery. When it came time to paint the room buttercream yellow, I attended a Tigerette training camp instead of helping my Aunt Claire. I never got invested. The day they learned the baby's sex, I told them that I didn't want to know. I wanted it to be a surprise. In retrospect, I was being a little passive-aggressive. But now I want to know. Now I wish I'd handled all that differently.

“Is it a girl?”

Louise smiles.

I look down. “I think my mom was hoping to have a boy.”

“Well, then, she'll be thrilled.”

This makes no sense to me. Louise beams like a person unable to share exceptionally good news.

“She's having twins? My mother is having twins.” It seems impossible.

“I can't dispense information.”

She winks at me, and I realize that I'm right. My mother is pregnant with twins. Why wouldn't my parents have told me that?

“This feels so weird, Louise.”

“Don't focus on that now. Think about your last words.”

I close my eyes. Nothing I could say seems profound enough. I should have studied famous quotes or something. Don't dying people usually say remarkable things?

“I think I've got something,” I say. “But—”

“Great!” Louise lifts her hands up and rushes toward me like she's going to tackle me. It freaks me out. Is she going to knock me over? Then I feel her energy hit me.

“You're going back. Now, be careful. Don't say anything confusing. You want to leave everyone with a sense of peace.”

A flood of energy washes over me, and I realize that I'm dropping back to earth. To Wyoming. To the ambulance. To my body.

As I'm going, a brilliant idea strikes me. It's like after I died I became a genius. Here's my plan. What if I tell Rustin Pinch to look at my butt so he can discover the snakebite and deliver antivenom to me? Couldn't I save my life? As I tumble down to earth, I'm so proud of myself.

“Molly, you can't save your life. They'll discover the bite soon enough. The venom has been coursing through your small body for almost two hours.”

No. No. Did I construct my salvation plan in the form of a question? And by doing so, did I just alert my intake counselor to this plan and thereby blow my last shot at life?

“It's your time.” Louise's voice echoes around me.

“No. I need a few more minutes.”

But it's too late. I can see. And smell. And taste. And hear. I'm back inside the ambulance again. My soul has been rehoused in my wounded body. I can feel the deep gash in my head and the swollen tissue around my butt. Like steady drumbeats, they throb with pain.

“Does your girlfriend have any preexisting medical conditions?” the paramedic yells.

He sounds so worried.

“I don't think so,” Tate shouts. “She might be recovering from the flu.”

Last words. I need to say my last words. What I say next has the chance to put my parents at peace.

“Molly, I need you to be a good girl and stay awake for me.”

I feel him lightly slap my cheeks. It helps bring me around.

“Molly! Be good. Stay with me.”

It's time. I have the words.

“Mom.” My voice cracks. Is this really happening? I start again. I have to get this right. “Mom, Dad, I love you. Enjoy the twins.” I can hardly breathe. But I'm not done. I try to stay focused. I don't want my parents to feel any guilt. “This wasn't anybody's fault.”

Rustin tries to argue with me. But it's too late. I let out a long breath and I go with it. Up. Up. Up. It's happened. I am dead. No more life. No more body. I suspect that I'm returning to be with Louise. To her office with the clocks. And the hallway with the photos. I am moving on to the next phase of my existence. Except I have no idea what that actually is.