This is Your Afterlife (3 page)

“What are you thinking?” I whisper. Even then, my voice echoes in the thin mountain air. Most houses, the ones that aren't set back from the road, are dark. It is after midnight, after all.

“Is that...the Light? The one you see in TV shows when the dead guy moves on to heaven?” He sounds equal parts fascinated and hopeful.

I love those shows. Never thought I'd experience anything like them in real life. Ever. “Um, no. That's your average, everyday streetlight.”

His jaw tightens. “Good.”

“Eventually, you will have to go.” That much I know. Grandie had mentioned about how important it is for spirits to move on, continue their otherworld adventure. Obviously advice she hadn't seen fit to follow when it came to her own passing. A deep and troubling thought brings shivers: What if Grandie isn't at peace?

Jimmy contemplates my words for a few moments, then realization crosses his features. He breaks into a huge smile.

“What?” I ask, uncertain about what's suddenly made him so happy.

“If I don't see the Light, then maybe I'm not totally dead.” He pumps his fist triumphantly. “Maybe I was in a car accident and...and I'm in a coma, hangin' by a thread, but there's a chance I'm gonna make it!”

I try to erase any signs of doubt from my expression. Poor Jimmy is deluded. But then, what do I know? He might be onto something. It's possible I'm an eyewitness to his out-of-body experience. “Did you see your...body before you came to my house?”

“No. I don't know where I left it.” His eyes flicker slightly. “Let's go to the hospital first. Find out if I'm there. That's logical, right?”

He pulls my arm, startling me because I can actually feel the tug. My skin turns icy. Almost involuntarily, I catch another glimpse of his skull. A four-inch gash exposes a pearlescent skull and something soft and bumpy-looking. The pea soup makes a return journey up my throat before settling back down again. I'm no brain surgeon, but there's no way he could survive an injury like that.

What if he finds himself not hooked up to life support but on a cold slab in the morgue? That could totally devastate him. Then again, seeing his lifeless self might give him closure.

“All right. We'll need to go back to my house and get my car. It's too far to walk.”

Bending forward, he puts his hands on his knees as if he's in a huddle on the field. His jaw twitches, contemplating his next play. He looks to the left, then to the right. Nothing but empty highway in both directions. “Nah, fuck that. I hate hospitals. We're going home. Let's get this whole mess straightened out.”

He slaps my back. It feels so real I trip forward.

“Hey, I'm not one of your team buddies!”

“You are now.” Jimmy clenches his meaty fists. “Can't stand around here wasting any more time. We're going to
my
house and we are going to look after my brother.”

My body shudders with a fresh burst of grief. Dan must be imagining the worst, and unfortunately, the worst
has
happened. And no one but me knows it. The question is whether Dan would want
me
to comfort him. He's not exactly my number one fan.

I'm the wrong person for this job.

“I can't do this. Your brother hates me.”

Jimmy gapes. “Is that really a good reason to bail on me? This isn't just about you, and my problems are way worse than yours. Now go up to the front door and ring the doorbell. Better yet, take my key... Shit, I don't have keys anymore. What the hell did I do with them?”

“How would I know?” I move into the shadows afforded by a giant pine rooted into the Hawkins' front yard, while Jimmy pats his pockets frantically. Ahead of us, his redwood-and-glass mansion looms in the moonlight.

“Aren't you psychic?” he taunts.

“Being psychic would mean I could see into the future.”

“Then what do you call this...this thing we have?” He gestures at the space between us.

I frown at that space. “
You
have what is called the afterlife.
I
have what appears to be clairvoyance.” Grandie was pretty clear on the distinction. “Psychics see the future. Clairvoyants and mediums see dead people. And argue with them, too, it seems.”

How did this even happen to me? Last time I checked, I didn't have the Gift. I haven't been struck by lightning, haven't taken any hallucinogenic pills or eaten magic mushrooms. My sixteenth birthday would have been a prime time for spirits to make an all-singing, all-dancing debut in my world, but that day passed quietly three months ago.

Unless there were signs I missed. But what counts as a sign? Randomly sensing Grandie's lavender perfume in the
Bugle
office? Could it be that she was trying to communicate then?

What bugs me is that I've been invisible to Jimmy for years. Now that he's dead, he finally sees me. There is no justice in the world. I should be accustomed to disappointments. This is right up there with learning I have a dire allergy to chocolate—or rather, a component of chocolate. The tiniest indulgence could send me into anaphylactic shock. Death by chocolate.

“Well, now's the time to use your clairvoyance to talk to my brother.”

My heartbeat stutters. To talk to Dan, I need courage, not clairvoyance.

Dan and I are two living, breathing people, more than capable of a face-to-face conversation. Yet we have a barrier between us anyway, one neither of us has tried to break down in a long time.

“Tell him what happened to me,” Jimmy begs. His jaw wobbles, then firms, like he's trying so hard to keep his emotions in check. “I don't want some stranger knocking on his door and telling him I'm dead.”

“But...
I'm
a stranger,” I whisper.

“You're in his class.”

I nod. We're juniors. We share four classes, a lunch period, and
Bugle
duties—I subedit, he takes care of layout. You would think, with all this daily contact, we'd have so much more to say to each other than “Hi,” “Bye,” and “Where's that piece on cafeteria bacteria? I need it now!”

Our relationship fractured way back in eighth grade. Becky Halloran threw a birthday party and forced everyone to play seven minutes in heaven. Dan and I got stuck with each other. There were worse frogs I could have kissed that night. As it turns out, I didn't get kissed at all.

My voice bristles. “He doesn't want to see me.”

Jimmy throws me a curious look. “I bet you're wrong.”

“Then clearly you don't know the whole sordid story.” Long ago, I stuffed my feelings about Dan in a virtual box marked
Danger: Do not open.
Put a hefty lock on it, too. Despite that, the memory of how I killed our friendship bursts out easily.

Dan and I stood half a foot apart amid Becky's T-shirts adorned with Bedazzled unicorns, and damp-smelling sneakers. If I had to describe him in one word, it would be
intense.
There's always something going on beneath the surface. We'd drawn each other's names out of a bowl. I entered because I was convinced I'd get Jimmy. Convinced.

Until that night, Dan and I'd had an easy friendship. We talked about life, about art. Everything. One time, walking home after school, we were in such deep conversation that we overshot my house and ended up in the next town. He drew funny cartoons and slipped them in my locker every day. One of my most treasured possessions was a flipbook he'd made for me. When you flick the pages rapidly, it gives the illusion of a giraffe galloping across a savanna.

But something about that closet made us both mute. Strangers. A bare bulb swung behind Dan's head. I didn't know where to look, and he seemed terrified.

A rumor had gotten around that Keely Wilson and Justin Pierce had actual sex in the closet earlier that night. Whether or not the story was true, no way was I ready for
that
. I was freaked out enough about kissing.

Standing that close to Dan made my heart pound so hard I thought it would explode. Conflicting thoughts crowded my head. Jimmy was the hero in my daydreams, not his quieter younger brother. But being within kissing range of Dan made my skin warm and tingly. The heat was starting to short-circuit my brain cells. Why was I feeling this way about Dan when it was Jimmy I'd been crushing on for so long?

“D-do you want me to...start?” Dan stammered without looking at me.

“Start?” It was kind of a question, but he took it as an invitation. He leaned closer and closer, and I felt hotter and hotter, barely able to take a breath. With his long artistic fingers, he touched my face, poised to kiss me for seven whole minutes.

I thought about the half-dozen people standing on the other side of the door. I thought about Keely and Justin. Most of all I thought about how kissing Dan would somehow change my whole world. And Jimmy would no longer fit into it.

In my haste to slow things down, I blurted out the stupidest thing in history: “Isn't it funny how we ended up together? I was hoping it'd be Jimmy.”

I must have been possessed to say something so hurtful. My words had put a match to a powder keg. No matter how hard I try to suppress the memories of that night, I'll never forget the devastation, the defeat written on Dan's face.

He backed away from me as if I'd stabbed him. In a way, I had. “You wanted my brother?”

“Well...” I didn't have a better answer than that. What could I say? That I'd fantasized about this moment, but with a different Hawkins brother in his place? That
this
reality with him was scary and exciting at the same time? Face burning, I stared at my shoes wishing I could erase the whole night. Better yet, erase myself from existence.

“I thought we were, you know, heading in this direction, hanging out at lunch and after school,” Dan said. Then his eyes widened. “You thought you could get to him through me, didn't you?”

“Dan, I would never use you. Believe me. I'm so sorr—”

He cut me off. “You're not the first girl to try, Keira. Thanks. It's been real.”

Then he banged on that door so hard I thought he'd knock it off its hinges. When we were finally released, he charged out like a horse from a starting gate at the Kentucky Derby and never looked back.

After a few weeks went by, I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter. That we'd work it out some day. I'm
still
telling myself that. Fact is, we went into that closet as friends and came out enemies, and there was nothing I or even the United Nations could do to end our cold-shoulder war. I wanted to go back to the way we were BC—Before Closet—but he made it clear I was dead to him.

Ironically, my crush on Jimmy also died that night.

Because I realized it was Dan that I wanted.

Jimmy taps his foot now, impatient as hell, snapping me back into the present.

“Can't I talk to your mom and dad instead?” I ask. As if it's going to be any easier to break the news to his parents.

“They're in Hawaii. Celebrating.” He shakes his head. Glancing at me, he adds, “Twenty-five years since they got married. They've been talking about nothing else for months.”

Oh, God. Those poor people. Doomed to associate their anniversary with the death of their first-born.

Apprehensively, I glance at the front door. “We'll wake Dan up, though.”

“That's the idea. This is a life-and-death situation. Literally.” Jimmy strides to the house with his usual swagger.

On the porch, he turns and curls his index finger. My body moves toward him with a will of its own. He's reeling me in like a tuna fish destined for a sushi bar.

“Knock. Loud as you can,” he orders. With my right hand raised only halfway to the massive redwood doors, I glance around the darkened, sleepy neighborhood. Jimmy groans. “It's easy. Just make a fist and go... Whoa!”

I jump backward and yelp. “Your arm just went through the wood!”

“So it did.” Jimmy pulls his arm back. He flexes his fingers. “No damage. Still good for holding a football.”

Touching the solid door, I say, “You never told me how you got into my house.”

“The old lady...your grandma, she pushed me through the wall.”

“
Grandie
did that?”

Looking troubled, confused, Jimmy nods. “Pushed. There was something else that happened, but I can't... Shit, everything's just so jammed up in my head.”

I try to touch his shoulder. “It's okay. Don't force anything. Maybe there's a good reason why you can't remember much.”

Jimmy grunts. He presses both palms on the door, letting them sink in millimeter by millimeter. “I'm going in. See if he's here. Then you're coming in to talk to him.”

“Wait! I'm not mentally prepared for that yet.”

“Boo-hoo! I wasn't mentally prepared to die.”

Jimmy steps through the door, leaving me jumping on the spot to keep warm. A car rolls down the winding street, its headlights illuminating the conifers and precision-cut hedges. I dive behind a potted plant until it passes.

Minutes later, he bursts out of the door and runs onto the thick lawn. He's sweating. Somehow, a ghost is perspiring and looking unnerved.

“What happened?” I whisper, drawing him into the shadows.

He looks at me blindly, mumbling, “Just stars. That's all there is. Stars.”

I screw up my face. “Stars? What do you mean?”

“In his room.” Jimmy groans. “Just stars.”

“Well, that makes a whole lot of sense,” I say dryly.

“He's not in there. Only stars on the wall.”

Clearly he's not going to elaborate on the star thing. My phone watch tells me it's twelve forty-four. “You weren't in there very long. Did you check every room?”

Jimmy's spine straightens with pride. “I can run real fast, you know.”