The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) Read online

  Day and night cycles didn't happen on the grassy plain. White light from the strange sun bathed it constantly. For variety's sake, Kyle and I ventured to Earth just to keep track of time. We tried to figure out where exactly the plain was located in relation to Earth but didn't have any luck. When we wanted to go there, it was like stepping through a portal in thin air and being back. Kyle figured it might be another dimension in the same place as Earth. I'd never been into science fiction but it seemed as good an explanation as any.

  On the third day of life after death I saw my first animal on the grassy plain, a brown field mouse. One of the kids chased it down and scooped it off the ground. It bit him, but he shook his hand and laughed. A few hours after arriving in the afterlife, the mouse vanished. More animals flitted in and out of our strange purgatory. Some stayed longer than others, dogs especially. Wild animals didn't stay for longer than a few hours.

  A chocolate Labrador that had belonged to the McElroys from down the street appeared one day. Poor pooch probably starved to death, locked up in the house with nobody to feed him. I never saw a dog grin so much as he did, romping up and down the plain, tongue lolling, as he chased flying kids. Robby later told me that a few days after arriving, the dog sat down, barked a couple of times at the kids, and vanished. Maybe he was saying goodbye. Maybe he wanted to fly too. Our grassy plain might have just been a way station to doggie heaven.

  It made me wonder if we all had an expiration date when we'd vanish.

  Ms. Tate organized religious gatherings. The number of people that showed up to hear her ramble on about a book she could never again pick up in her ghostly hands creeped me out. More than anything, though, people wanted to ask questions and figure out how everything related to the big picture, the biblical end of days. I wanted them to go find something productive to do, like stamp the words "Epic Fail" on their foreheads and crawl back into their holes.

  Kyle noticed some familiar faces at the edge of the knot of worshippers one day and whooped. My parents and his stood outside the group, scanning faces. Mom heard Kyle's exclamation and turned toward us. She tugged Dad's shirtsleeve and they rushed over to us. Mom looked younger, more vibrant than I remembered. Her copper skin glowed, her black hair gleamed in the white light, and her brown eyes were large and liquid. She wore her favorite red sari with gold embroidering.

  My mom was looking pretty hot for someone her age.

  Dad looked like a kid again, blue eyes sparkling and his dirty blonde hair now clean and golden. My parents looked radiantly happy. Kyle's parents, on the other hand, looked wary and frazzled. George's usual scowl had deepened, and Margaret's stern gaze locked onto Kyle in an instant. I was surprised to see my parents in their company. Despite the fact Kyle was like the older brother I never had, my parents had never gotten along with his folks very well. They'd tried, but Dad was a book worm, a professor, and loved to talk literature. Mom did upscale interior design and ate mostly vegetarian Indian food. Nasty stuff, by the way.

  George worshipped NASCAR, worked as a mechanic, and redefined the word "redneck". He usually chugged down a case of cheap beer before lunch on the weekends. Margaret was a southern belle who thought she was a hot little Georgia peach. I thought she looked like a withered pear with the sun-damaged skin tone of a rhinoceros. Needless to say I never let Kyle know those wicked opinions of mine. I wondered if either of his parents had learned to fly yet. The thought of George and Margaret flying almost short-circuited my brain from the improbability factor.

  I flew into Dad's arms. He picked me up and swung me around.

  "How's my baby girl?"

  "Mostly dead, Dad."

  He laughed, but I noticed a twinge of sadness in his eyes. I hugged Mom after he put me down. She still smelled of flowers and her hair felt like fine silk on my cheeks.

  George shook Kyle's hand. "Hey, boy. Good to see you alive and kickin'."

  Margaret somehow still had makeup caked on her face highlighted by her signature powder-blue eye shadow and glossy red lipstick. She smooched Kyle on the cheeks. "We've been worried sick about you two," Margaret said. "Just sick."

  "Nothing can hurt us now," Kyle said, wiping his cheeks and smearing the lipstick his mom had left.

  Margaret started crying. Her tears washed enough eyeliner down her face to form an environmental hazard. "We thought you didn't make it here."

  "Oh." Kyle gave his mom another hug. "Well here I am."

  "I'd give my left eye for a damned beer," George said.

  What he really needed was a damned clue. We weren't in Kansas anymore even if the afterlife looked just like it. "Where have you guys been?" I asked.

  "We went home," Mom said. "We mourned our babies and ourselves until we realized that what was done was done."

  "I went home right after everyone died. I didn't see you there."

  Dad rested his arm around Mom's shoulders, his fair skin a stark contrast to her brown tone. "We didn't go right away. We looked everywhere here for you and Robby. We found him a little while ago eating dirt with some other kids, if you can believe it."

  "Them kids is happy as pigs in shit," George said as a swarm of tykes whooshed by overhead in a cyclone of squeals.

  Eating dirt, eh? Kids could fly and yet they still took pleasure in such little things. I envied that. "He's enjoying himself for sure."

  Dad watched the kids for a minute then looked back at me. "After a while, we started looking everywhere on Earth you might have gone. The school, the mall, Kyle's house."

  "They ran into us there," Margaret said. "You'd think Kyle might have the sense to go home and wait for us."

  "I did go, Mom," Kyle said. "But I didn't want to sit around watching our corpses putrefy."

  "We've been exploring, learning what we can," I said.

  Kyle studied his parents expectantly. "What now? We've been in the afterlife long enough for whoever's in charge to tell us what's going on."

  "I don't think that's going to happen," Dad said. "Just like Earth, I think we have to figure this out on our own." He reached out and touched my cheek. "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

  I laughed. "Mark Twain, huh? Are you telling me to be bold, Daddy?"

  "I'm telling you to go for it, sweetie. Enjoy yourself. We'll be around if you need us."

  Dad showed me how to keep in contact. Once you found someone in the afterlife and touched them, you could talk to them just about any time by thinking of them. I heard a faint whisper in my head and smelled fresh ink when Dad contacted me. With Mom, I smelled the herbal teas she always drank. I wondered what it would be like if someone who'd shoveled horse poop for a living contacted me.

  I could call them too but couldn't tell if it was working until they answered me. I thought of my iPhone, Facebook status updates, and the countless tweets I'd sent over Twitter. Forget all that stuff. This was like having your own social network built into your head.

  The only time this form of communication didn't work well was if one person was in the afterlife and the other was on Earth. At least we didn't have to pay long-distance charges. If someone called and you didn't want to answer, you didn't have to. Kyle kept bugging me with it like a kid with new walkie-talkies. He'd make me walk a distance then talk to him. We found it easier to talk out loud even though conversation came into my head as if Kyle's voice originated in there. He tried thinking the words instead of talking but random thoughts, some of which I did not want to hear, kept muddling things.

  "If we can do this, what stops us from flitting to whoever we want to talk to?" he asked.

  "Flitting" was the new term going around for how fast we ghosts could blur from one spot to another. If you knew exactly where you wanted to go, you could flit there in a matter of seconds.

  "Guess I'll be your guinea pig again," I said.

  He flitted to me after I answered his call. He tried it without me answering but couldn't.

  "Thank God," he said, "or whatever
imaginary deity created this place. At least I don't have to worry about my parents flitting in on me while I'm taking a dump."

  I laughed at the absurd notion that a ghost would ever need or want to use the bathroom. I was keeping a mental list of all the things we'd never have to do again. I hadn't had to pee once and didn't even think about it. No bathrooms, no embarrassing periods or cramping. No hot flashes for older women or menopause. No pimples, no unwanted pregnancies. My list was getting pretty large for my memory to handle since I didn't have anything to write with.

  But the last thing on my list made me a little sad. No more babies. I hadn't seen a single baby in the afterlife. The Robertsons down the street had given birth to their third child just before the end. I'd seen the Robertsons in the afterlife with their two daughters but not the infant boy. They were frantic. Then I saw them gathering with Ms. Tate's religious group and praying for answers. It wasn't just ghost babies I was worried about though. There would be no more human babies. Ever.

  Humans as a species were extinct.

  Chapter 3

  Everything occurred in phases. The "Holy Crap, We're Dead!" phase was marked by mass hysteria. Mass euphoria resulted from the "Holy Crap, We're Free of Life's Burdens!" phase. Now things had shifted into the "Holy Crap, We Can Do Whatever We Want!" phase in which mass indulgence made the ancient Romans look like teetotalers.

  Aside from those reserved groups of religious people who were still waiting on their god or the Flying Spaghetti Monster to save them, people began to experiment with insane possibilities. And yeah, I was one of those people. The apparent lack of anything that could kill us—not to mention insane boredom—certainly made us braver.

  Kyle ran across Bella Duck when we were planning his craziest idea for an adventure yet. He did something I'd never seen him do. He walked up to her, explained how he'd fantasized about her ever since our freshman year in high school and told her she was hot.

  I'd never thought Bella Duck was hot. Even disregarding her oddball last name she was strange and nerdy. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. She didn't wear thick glasses or have a nose stud anymore, thank goodness, because nose studs make me think of boogers, and boogers make me gag. But she wore a drab brown skirt which was odd considering people in the afterlife could change clothes any time by willing them to change. The moment I'd figured that out was better than stumbling across a hidden gallon of Choco-Choco Pecan Crunch ice cream in the freezer that my brother hadn't dipped his snotty little nose into. Who needs a bedroom-sized walk-in closet when your wardrobe is only limited by your imagination and willpower?

  Maybe Bella didn't care how she looked in brown or that it washed out her skin tone. Then again, a lot of people had chained themselves to a specific self-image over the years until it stuck to their ghosts like glue. Kids had a really easy time changing clothes. For us teenagers it wasn't too hard. Adults like Ms. Tate seemed to never change appearance. I'd bet Ms. Tate hadn't changed hairstyles since circa 1960.

  Admittedly, Bella looked a lot better without bottle-bottom glasses and her hair was long and darker now. She gave Kyle a funny look, like she'd never considered him a candidate for anything, much less a boyfriend. Kyle was tall, a little gangly, with a thick patch of unruly brown hair. He was cute, but most of my friends thought he was nerdy and self-absorbed. It was just his way. He liked to think up crazy stuff and experiment on it inside his head until he figured out a way to do it in the real world. He was the kind of guy I could imagine revolutionizing computers or something really techie one day. At least when all that stuff mattered.

  "Hey Lucy," Bella said after Kyle's candid outburst. She eyed Kyle again and smiled. "I don't know you that well, but it looks like we've got a lot of time to correct that."

  Kyle smiled and his face flushed. "Luce and I are planning a cool trip. You should come with us."

  "I was thinking of visiting Africa," she said.

  "You're thinking small."

  "She's thinking normal," I said. "Don't frighten the poor girl off."

  "I saw Chris Rogers yesterday," Bella said. She smiled at me in a knowing way and I wondered if Michelle, our mutual friend, had told her about my crush. "He looked really sad. Said he hasn't found his family yet."

  "No way," Kyle said. "It's been weeks now." He vanished for a moment, then reappeared. "Yeah, weeks, according to the digital watch on my rotting corpse."

  "How'd you do that so fast?" Bella asked.

  I brushed Bella on the shoulder so I could add her to my ghostly contact list. "Did you touch Chris?"

  "So I could keep in touch?" She laughed at her own pun. "Yep."

  "Would you have him meet us?"

  Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Copy cat."

  I shrugged. "We're all dead, right? Might as well go for the gold."

  "Yeah, then you can live with rejection tearing you apart for eternity."

  I punched him on the shoulder. "Thanks, jackass."

  Bella contacted Chris and flitted to him. We followed. Chris sat on a boulder that rested in a clearing. A thick forest surrounded us; pine needles and leaves carpeted the ground. I took in the gorgeous scenery and put my hand under a shaft of white sunlight that penetrated the dense canopy.

  "Are we on Earth?" I picked up a twig and counted to ten, but it stayed in my hand.

  "A forest," Kyle said and snatched a leaf off an oak tree. "An honest-to-God forest in the afterlife. Sweet!"

  "Found it by accident," Chris said. "Been all over the place looking for my folks."

  I walked up to him, a speech already prepared about how much I'd wanted to kiss him ever since I'd first set eyes on him. How much I wanted to feel his strong arms tighten around my waist and have those deep blue eyes stare longingly into mine. But my stupid ghost tongue wouldn't work and nervous energy made my heartbeat flutter.

  "Lucy, did you find your parents?" Chris asked.

  He remembered my name? We'd only spoken a couple of times, just in passing during class changes. But a wall of pretty girls always surrounded him: Bethany, Susan, and worst of all, Gayle, with that little sneer of hers whenever she looked at anyone outside her perfect circle. I never had a chance to break into his world. Instead, I had watched for an opening and hoped. But it had never come.

  "Luce, you there?" Kyle asked.

  I snapped out of my daydream. "Uh, yeah. I found them. Took a few days though."

  Chris sighed. "Thank God. I know they're here somewhere. So many people are wandering and flitting all over the place that it makes it impossible to find anyone. If I could just find someone who'd talked to them or touched them so they could flit me there it'd be great."

  "You were close to them?"

  "Well yeah, they're my parents."

  Congrats, Lucy, you win the prize for stupidest question ever. I was failing so hard it made that place where my heart used to be hurt.

  "Can you believe I met the President?" Chris said.

  Kyle's eyes widened. "Of the United States?"

  "Yeah." He laughed, a bitter edge to his tone. "Of all people, I found the President but not my parents."

  "What does he think of this mess?"

  "He seemed pretty relieved."

  "Did he think he was a failure?" Bella asked.

  Chris shrugged. "He thought it was ironic that we'd spent billions on security and still ended up dropping dead."

  "Nobody seems to care what happened," I said. "Just that it did."

  "Doesn't matter how we died," Chris said. "Not anymore."

  Kyle swooped to the top of a tree and whistled. "This place is huge. It goes on forever."

  "Maybe this is where trees go when they die," Bella said.

  We laughed.

  "Wanna let them in on our trip plans?" Kyle asked me.

  "You're going to freak them out."

  "Where are we going?" Bella asked. "The moon?"

  "Bingo," Kyle said. "And maybe even further."

  Bella shook her head. "And to think
I was joking."

  "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute," Chris said. "Won't we burn to a crisp in the atmosphere or freeze in space?"

  "I've already been out of the atmosphere. I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe until I remembered we aren't breathing anyway. We just think we are."

  Chris let out a resigned sigh. "Might as well. Nothing for me here."

  "Dude, you have forever to find your parents. Let's have fun."

  "Yeah, okay."

  "We have to go to Earth first," Kyle said. "This place doesn't seem to be connected to space as we know it."

  We shifted dimensions over to Earth. Most people simply called it shifting by now since figuring out that we existed on different planes of reality or something like that. Kyle had spoken to numerous scientists asking them for theories. He'd even gone looking for Einstein and other famous brainiacs. So far he'd only found a few of the not-so-famous ones and they hadn't been able to explain much of anything. True to form, though, many of them were building coalitions to study the afterlife.

  In the meantime, Kyle threw caution—if such a word could even exist anymore—to the wind and did whatever he wanted. Now he'd brought us into his mad scheme to eventually conquer the universe.

  Once on Earth I took a moment to enjoy the feel of wind against my ghostly limbs. It felt different here, better than the rare breezes in the afterlife. It was easier to return to the habit of memory left behind in my body and feel alive again. Chris rested a hand on my shoulder and smiled. His touch made me tingle in places I didn't think was possible for a ghost.

  "You feel better here too, don't you?"

  I nodded. "I feel, I dunno, pure, I guess. It's so weird. I hate that I can't affect anything though. Not even a leaf or a bug."