The Everafter (3 page)

Then how did I get back to
Is
from the moments when I didn’t find the objects? I reflect on the sweatshirt incident, then try to compare it to the first purse one. But I can’t.

In fact, I can’t recall
anything
that happened the first time I went into that bathroom. The second experience with that moment has wiped out the first. It has become the new reality of my life.

Is
seems to work on a different plane of reality, though, because I can remember the decision that I made to go back and change that scene. So while I know there was a time when I didn’t find the handbag, that time has disappeared forever.

In a way, this is pretty cool. It means I can make some conscious choices about how to change my life.

But—changing my life so I find an object just seems to make it impossible for me to go back to that moment. Why would I want to do
that?

Will it work the other way around? Can I
keep
myself from finding something?

Probably…not.

Wouldn’t I have to know—when I was looking for it—that I didn’t actually want to find the object? Since I can’t remember where the object will take me (or why and how I lost it) until I’ve used it to go back to life, that would mean I’d have to find the object, get sent back to
Is,
and realize I
wish I’d never found the object.

By then, the object would already be gone from
Is.

The Universe isn’t nearly as generous as I thought it was.

Or maybe I’m not supposed to be messing around with my original life that way.

I can’t quite explain what’s happened now that I have changed the outcome in finding my purse, but something’s different. About me. About my life.

About who I am.

And I’m not sure I like it.

When I went back and made myself find that purse, I somehow became a new person. Someone who—first of all—could sense that I was there. That must have been what the creepy feeling was. My intention to change what happened in that moment somehow changed everything. I knew I was there. Well, kind of, anyway. Enough to make the moment feel…spooky.

But that’s not all. Other things changed, too. I just don’t know what they are. If I never found my purse in the first version of my life, did I go without lunch that day? Did I borrow money from someone else so I could eat? I have no way of knowing, but whatever happened in that first version created a different life than did the results of my second visit to that moment.

Even being back here in
Is
feels different than it did before. I’m a whole different
dead
person than I was.

It’s hard to describe what all this has done to me, but it’s as if I were listening to a song and when I got back it was playing in a different key. Everything jumped up a half note…or something like that.

Who knows what I could be messing with going around and changing the way things happened in life?

Suppose I could keep myself from dying?

But I can’t possibly know which of these moments can lead to that outcome. At least at this point.

And what if I end up making myself die sooner?

Making decisions in death doesn’t seem to be any easier than making them in life: You never know what the outcome is going to be one way or the other.

I
MISS EVERYTHING
about being real. Using these objects to return to life…it’s like an addiction. I have to have another fix. I just can’t decide which object to use next. The keys, buttons, beads, pen, Barbie doll, key chain…

In the end, I don’t actually get a choice. I come across some orchids, eerie, almost skeletal in their luminescent form, and before I know it, I’m remembering that I wore them in my hair for my sister’s wedding. The memory is enough to carry me home, to the moment when…

age 16

I am on my knees in the grass, dark night surrounding me. Gabriel is standing next to me, bent over at the waist, his hand firmly gripping my upper arm.

“Try breathing deeply,” Gabriel urges me.

It sounds like a good idea, but I’m gulping more than I’m breathing, and the extra air I’m taking in is making me feel sicker, not better.

It has been an incredibly long day. I’m now convinced I’ll never consider having a wedding. If I ever want to get married, I’ll elope. What could Kristen have been thinking?

Her wedding dress was beautiful, but how could she have dressed me in this horrible, full-length strapless dress? If she was going to make me be a bridesmaid (let’s not kid ourselves; I had no choice in this; Mom would have killed me if I hadn’t agreed to do it—or, worse yet, she might have yammered on for days at a time about the importance and meaning of family, about my lifetime relationship with my older sister, etc.), why did she have to put me in such a long dress? I’ve lived in fear all day of tripping over the hem of the gown. That walk down the aisle? Nightmare. I almost stumbled. And how humiliating, having to walk down the aisle on the arm of Gabriel—one of the most gorgeous
guys at school, and cousin to the groom! His firm grip on my arm kept me from making a complete fool of myself in front of everyone in the church, but he obviously noticed my clumsiness. He winked at me and everything. Winked! Ohmygod. So unfair. Why couldn’t I have walked down the aisle with the groom’s brother instead? I mean, he is, like, thirty, so no attraction there, right? And he’d probably have pretended not to notice that I was a complete klutz.

To make it all worse, a few days ago Gabriel broke up with his girlfriend, Dana (who’d been his girlfriend for, like,
two years
). I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that all day long. It’s the kind of thing that, you know, gives a girl a glimmer of hope—as if I had a chance with a guy as hot as Gabe Archer.

Sandra’s always telling me that I’m prettier than I think I am—that my freckles are cute and that my brown hair has just the right red highlights, but she’s my best friend, so she has to say stuff like that. It’s not as if a few halfway decent features will attract a guy who has absolutely everything going for him. He’s friendly, smart, and has these wide, wide shoulders that fill out his tux perfectly….

I’ve been tormenting myself with thoughts like this all day. My mom hasn’t made getting Gabe off my mind any easier, either. She’s reminded me—like, seven times—about the crush I had on Gabe back when I was in sixth grade.

Back then,
every
girl crushed on Gabe. He had this
butter-blond hair that curled into perfect ringlets. He was shorter than I was, but I had dreams of him shooting past me in height. My mother laughed the first time she saw him and figured out how I felt about him.

But she’s not laughing anymore. In the years since then, Gabe has obliged me by growing a lot. He’s a couple inches past six feet now. His hair has darkened some over the years, but it’s still a shade of blond. The curls are gorgeous, too. I’d kill to have hair that beautiful. And his shoulders have filled out.

So, last night, at the wedding rehearsal when Mom saw him for the first time since sixth grade, she was surprised by how much he’d changed. She’s been telling me ever since how lucky I am to get to walk up the aisle with such an “attractive” (totally her word,
not
mine) young man. The job included the responsibility of being his partner during the second dance of the evening, too. And I admit the idea had a lot of appeal.

Until right between the wedding and the reception—which is when I started to feel not so hot. I didn’t want to say anything about it to my mom. I mean, what could she do? She was busy being the mother of the bride. And I wouldn’t want to ruin Kristen’s wedding, either.

I thought at first that I was just tired. It’d been a long morning and afternoon. So I just kept trying to muddle through. By the time dinner arrived at the table, my eyeballs
felt like they were on fire. I started wondering if I had a fever.

Gabe was sitting next to me. “You don’t look so great, Maddy,” he told me.

Gee…just what every girl wants some hot guy to say to her. He realized his mistake right away, and he started stuttering, “I mean—not that way, just, you know…like you don’t feel so good. You look great in that dress and all…y’know. I just meant you…are you sick?”

The sound of concern in his voice cheered me up a little but not much. “I don’t know,” I told him. “Let’s hope not.”

We were sitting on a dais at the head table—facing all the other wedding guests. He glanced out at the crowd of faces. “Yeah, let’s hope not,” he said. He dove into his food with an enthusiasm that made me feel even sicker. The sounds all around me were ringing in my head, too. All that cheering, and the frequent clinking of knives on champagne glasses…
way
too much for me.

“Ummm, I think I’d better get out of here,” I said to Gabe. “Will you tell Her Highness that I think I’m going to be sick? Otherwise, she’s sure to raise hell about my leaving right now.” Her Highness was Brenda Jackson, my sister’s college roommate, maid of honor, and Manager Extraordinaire. I’d been bossed around by her so much in the past few weeks that I was ready to kill her.

Gabe hadn’t had as many opportunities to run afoul of
her, but last night she’d been so bossy that even he’d commented on it. That’s when I shared with him my nickname for her.

Gabe’s mouth was full, but he nodded his head vigorously and then started to stand up as if he were planning to come with me. Right. Gabe in the ladies’ restroom. Not such a good idea. I held my hand up, and he stopped mid-move. Then I turned and fled from the dais and toward the bathrooms.

Just my luck, there were, like, twenty women in there, going to the bathroom or refreshing their makeup.

I turned and ran outside, looking for an inconspicuous spot where I could have some privacy. I could barely stand up.

And then Gabe was there, holding on to my arm. By that point, I was glad he’d followed me, because I didn’t think I could stand on my own anymore. I sank onto my knees.

Now he’s holding me tightly against him so I don’t do a complete nose-dive into the grass. I wobble a bit and my hair brushes against his chest. Some of it is pulled out of its updo. The orchids from my hair tumble to the ground between us.

He has just gotten down on his knees beside me and is telling me to try breathing deeply. We hear Her Highness’s voice coming at us across the lawn. “What’s wrong with her, Gabe?”

I groan. “Does she have to yell loud enough for the whole world to hear?” I ask, just as my body begins to shudder. I want to throw up, but with Gabe here, I want even more desperately not to humiliate myself in front of him.

Unfortunately, millions of years of evolution, designed to help humans combat viruses and food poisoning, causes my stomach to callously disregard the needs of my self-esteem.

My stomach erupts.

The disgusting taste of bile fills my mouth, and Brenda’s voice reaches me from the background: “Hold her up, Gabriel! Hold her up! She’s going to soil her dress.”

Even as I lose the contents of my stomach, a part of my brain is capable of wondering who ever talks about
soiling
a dress. Soiling? I mean, come on.

But that thought is quickly replaced by the realization that something horrendous—even more horrendous than barfing in front of a hot guy—is happening. Gabriel is trying to hold me up enough to keep me from “soiling” my dress, but he has forgotten a key law of physics:

Her Highness has arrived and seems to realize this situation requires the Maneuvering of an Expert (this is the first time I have ever been thankful for Brenda’s bossiness). She pushes Gabe away from me (So what if I fall face-forward into my own barf? Way less embarrassing than leaving my chest exposed) and starts stuffing me back into my dress while yelling at Gabe, “Get out of here! Go! Go get her mother!”

Gabe disappears, my stomach stops ejecting its contents, and Brenda is ripping up pieces of grass. She uses them to try to wipe my face and mouth. I’d prefer to “soil” the hem of my dress, but Brenda sees what I’m trying to do and manhandles me into submission. Then she pulls me away from the barf and gently rests me on my side.

“Madison, have you been drinking?”

The very thought makes my stomach revolt all over again. I groan. “Nooo…I think I’ve got the flu. I haven’t been feeling so great all day.”

She kneels down beside me. “Poor kid,” she says, and—as we wait for my mother—pets my hair like I’m a dog.

Mom runs up to us, her violet mother-of-the-bride dress (
Why
do they make those out of such awful material?) fanning out behind her in the breeze.

“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong?” she asks. She takes over petting my hair, but she’s had lots of practice at it, so it feels like a mother comforting a daughter. None of that pet-the-dog stuff.

“She thinks she has the flu,” Brenda tells her. “She said she hasn’t felt well all day.”

“You should have said something. I would have figured out how to get you out of this situation,” Mom tells me, but not like she’s angry or frustrated with me. Just like she wants me to know it would have been okay for me to ask for help.

She guides me to my feet and then encourages me to lean against her as we start to move. “I’m taking you home right now. Brenda, tell Kristen and John where I’ve gone, and that I’ll be back as soon as possible. They’ll just have to hold up the bridal dance until I manage to get back.”

Mom leads me carefully toward the car….

Now I know…. It’s getting too far from a lost object, leaving it behind, that launches me back to
Is.
I can’t remain indefinitely in my life. The Universe only lets me stay there until I’ve found the object or moved a certain distance from it.

But, thankfully, it lets me return as many times as I want to a moment if I never find the object.

This makes me glad the flowers have been left behind. I’m able to return and return and return to this moment. The nausea, the vomiting, the humiliation, all of it’s worth it to reexperience the feel of Gabriel’s grip on my arm when I’m falling, and of Mom’s hand gently brushing my hair
away from my face when I most need her.

And by the time I’ve gone through this experience several times, I discover that as long as I’m not trying to change anything while I’m there, the living me doesn’t feel that creepy sense of being watched.

Strange, huh?

But here’s something even stranger: After about my fourth time visiting this moment, I actually begin to
like
Brenda.