The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) Page 4

  From a distance, the planet looked plain, brown, and muddy. I'd imagined Saturn to be more colorful. I could have sworn the planet had some purple or yellow in it. Up close, the rings glittered with bits of rock and ice. Chris removed his backpack and pulled a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth from it. He made a show of spreading it over a chunk of dark blue ice and then unpacked some wine, cheese, and of course, blueberry muffins. I took a bite of the cheese.

  "Not bad. A little more practice and you'll be on par with the Swedish Chef."

  "Smorgy borg borg," he said, waving his arms wildly.

  I laughed and snuck in a kiss on his freckled cheek.

  After we ate, he stared at the field of debris, watching the ice rotate and drift. His eyes grew sad.

  "What's wrong?" I asked, taking his arm into mine and pressing my side against his.

  "What happens when we get tired of all this?" He waved his arm at the planet and then the universe in general.

  "I hope we don't. Otherwise eternity will be really boring."

  He turned to me and lifted my chin with a finger. I melted into him when I looked into the depths of his eyes. He kissed me. His hands wandered down the small of my back and my skin tingled with his touch. His kisses traced down my neck and toward my breasts. A sudden uneasiness overcame me and I stiffened.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know if I'm ready for…you know."

  "Sex?"

  I nodded, unable to speak and feeling like an idiot for my concern.

  "We have all the time we need."

  "It's so stupid. We're dead and I'm afraid of sex."

  "It might not even feel good," he said. "If you've never felt it, how can your imagination translate it into this life?"

  Great. That was exactly what I wanted to hear. "I guess we'll just have to hope everything works, won't we?" I hoped my smile covered the jolt of panic I felt about his theory.

  "Yeah." He looked concerned. "It would really suck to be marooned in the afterlife without sex."

  "Are you a virgin?" It was such a stupid question but it escaped my mouth before I could stop it.

  "No."

  I didn't want to hear anything else. I didn't want to know with whom or how many partners he'd had sex with. Had he screwed Gayle? Bethany? Jealousy crowded out my other emotions and I looked away. What had I expected? He was the hottest guy in school. Most girls would have died to sleep with him. Now he was with me and the thought somehow frightened me.

  He turned my head back with a gentle tug on the chin. "Hey, let's not think about this."

  He took my hand and we abandoned the picnic setting on a chunk of ice. I wondered if it would stay there forever. We circled to the dark side of Saturn and flew in its shadow. Chris stopped.

  "You see that?" He pointed to a faint prick of light close to the nebulous planet surface. "It should be pitch black in the planet's umbra."

  "Wow, a football player using ten-dollar words. I'm impressed." I really was. Maybe he wasn't a poet now, but he could be trained.

  He stuck out his tongue.

  I stuck out mine. "You sure know how to frighten a person, Mister."

  We skimmed closer to the dim amber light. I thought it was probably a reflection from the ice, but Chris was so excited by the discovery that I went along for the ride. When I realized the light was coming from the windows of a hulking shadow my excitement grew.

  We had found a spaceship.

  Chapter 5

  "Is it one of ours?" I asked, ignorant as usual about anything geeky.

  We drifted to the windows and pressed our faces against them, then flitted through and looked at a green-tinted display that hovered in the air without support like a hologram. A series of symbols changed constantly on the display. A padded chair large enough to seat the world's tallest man occupied the center of the room. I didn't see any obvious way to control the spaceship, like a steering wheel, for example. An open doorway led to a corridor which stretched as far as I could see.

  Chris reached his hand to touch the display but his ghostly presence didn't evoke a response. I called Kyle. He would love to see this thing. It only took him and Bella a few minutes to arrive. They were still puzzling over the leash that tethered us to Earth but the spaceship snapped them out of it.

  Kyle whooped and jumped around like a kid on chocolate. He and Chris whisked all over the ship while Bella did her own tour. I tagged along with her. We walked down a long gray corridor with a few indentations that might've been doors. After a tedious walk, we reached a cavernous chamber with several square indentations in the floors and walls.

  Everything was so alien that even Bella couldn't identify much of anything. She found a black egg-shaped thing the size of my head and guessed it might be an energy source or drive mechanism of the ship.

  A group of science club nerds showed up out of nowhere. I suspected Kyle had called them. It wasn't long before the place was crawling with frustrated nerdy ghosts who couldn't affect anything in this scientific wonder or enter any of the windowless compartments. Christ was as preoccupied as the others so I decided to sit back and wait on him. I soon grew bored of waiting and simply wanted some answers but so far they hadn't found any aliens or signs of life onboard. The ship was probably automated and the giant seat was probably never used.

  "Whoever uses that seat has different anatomy than we do," Kyle said.

  I glanced at the mushroom-shaped stool. "Maybe a mutant basketball player."

  "That thing could seat an eight-foot giant."

  "Any connection between this ship and our deaths?" Part of me hoped so. Somehow being able to point to a physical object that killed us all would make me feel better.

  "If it has weapons, we can't find them," Kyle said. "Problem is, we can't take anything apart or press any buttons. This sucks, man. Finally found a spaceship and I can't even fly it."

  Despite our ghostly nature, we couldn't go through solid objects unless we could see exactly what was on the other side. Windows were no problem since we could see through them and flit past. Kyle tried to pass through the ship by flitting to a point just on the other side of it. It didn't work.

  More and more people showed up until the place was thick with curious onlookers. The scientific types asked everyone to wait outside but the speed of communications made the task impossible. Our ghost phones were like Twitter on horse steroids. Boredom with the spaceship eventually drove off most of the crowds except for the true fanatics, the ones who'd staked out Area 51 back in the day and worn tinfoil on their heads. Even in the afterlife some of them were still wearing shiny helmets like the true smack-tards they were.

  Ghosts of all nationalities showed up. In Heavenly, we'd remained in close geographical orbit to our neighbors so I hadn't seen many ghosts from other parts of the world until now. In death we still spoke different languages. I met Harbjahan, an Indian boy who showed up one day. He'd dreamed of being a scientist despite his birth in Dharavi, a shanty town outside Mumbai. Mom had told me stories about such places before, but she'd grown up the member of a wealthy family and left India for the United States as a teenager.

  When Harb first showed up, I couldn't understand a word he said or thought to me but I noticed he liked to wear a lab coat and oversized glasses which made him the only "scientist" I'd seen wearing such gear. The other researchers didn't take him very seriously and I was nice to him so he spent most of his time tagging along behind me. Chris and I had become somewhat famous for discovering the ship but Harb was the only person who took our fleeting celebrity status to heart. I was pretty sure he had a crush on me too. I felt like a skeezy old cradle robber but there wasn't much I could do to keep him from tagging along after me like a puppy.

  Harb shot out of the ship one day, jabbering excitedly to me. As usual, whatever he was saying sounded like gibberish, so I asked him to slow down and pantomime. His face grew serious and a look of frustration clouded his excitement. He grabbed my wrist and an uneasy sensation flood
ed my being. I looked down and saw that his hand and mine had merged. When I say "merged", I don't mean he was holding my hand or anything cute like that. Our hands were inside each other.

  I meant to scream but fear transfixed me on the gruesome sight. In that instant, some part of Harb seemed to flow into me in a manner so intimate that I could almost see his entire life flashing before me. I saw filth, children drinking contaminated water, felt the press of thousands of bodies. I felt heat, hunger, and inconsolable sadness followed by resolute anger. The feelings roared through me almost too fast to track and then ended. My mind was alone again.

  Harb backed off a distance, dark eyes fearful. I think he expected anger, but I was too much in shock to say anything else.

  "I am sorry, Lucy. There was no other way."

  My mouth went dry just like it used to do when I was alive and surprised. "I can understand you." The words from my mouth were alien to me but I understood them.

  "You are speaking my dialect now." He smiled, then in English said, "And I can speak your language."

  "How?"

  "My friend from the old life merged with me by accident a month after this life started. He frightened easily and clung to me constantly."

  I had expected Harb to speak with one of those musical accents usually associated with Indian people, but his accent was virtually non-existent. "Where is he?"

  "Looking for meaning elsewhere. I believe he inherited bravery through our merging." He stuck out his little chest.

  "You can merge with anyone?"

  "I can, but I have found that most people I meet cannot do this on their own. I tried to teach an older woman I met but she still could not do it."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. The older the person was at death, the harder it is for them to learn the new ways. Those who are very young can do almost anything but don't have the discipline. Now I only use it with people I trust. I believe this ability could harm if used improperly."

  "You're pretty young yourself."

  "I had the advantage of a hard life which bred great discipline into me. I also had to find creative answers to survive."

  "Can you teach me how to do this?"

  "I already did." He held out his hand. "Here, try it."

  I reached for his hand and a memory not my own rose from my conflicted emotions. I touched his hand, realized we were all the same molecules, and merged. The flood of memories overwhelmed me and I withdrew with a gasp.

  "It's hard to control the flow, Lucy. Even I can hardly manage it." He turned back toward the ship. "What I wanted to tell you earlier is they discovered what drives the ship."

  "The engine? Is that what made you so excited?"

  "It's very exciting."

  "You look so young but all of a sudden you seem and sound so grown up."

  He nodded. "I'm young, but I was never allowed to be a kid."

  I gave him a hug. He reminded me of my little brother even if he was a few years older. And he looked so cute and serious with the lab coat and oversized glasses. I mussed his thick hair. He backed away and looked insulted. I laughed.

  The discovery of the ship's engine, or drive unit, as the scientific types liked to call it, excited and further frustrated the researchers. Kyle explained to me why they thought it was the ship's drive. I thought they'd made too many assumptions. How they determined that a silvery fluid undulating in a clear cylinder actually made the ship putter around the universe was beyond me. I guess it made more sense than the black egg Bella had found earlier. Kyle went nerdy on me after that so I backed off and let him win the argument.

  "Better check your pants, Kyle. I think you had a nerdgasm."

  "You're just jealous I'm having so much fun."

  If I'd been expecting the science to rub off on me after spending so much time out there, I was wrong. Chris provided the only reason I needed to be there and since he was no scientist himself, we still spent plenty of time together. One of the side effects of my merging with Harb turned out to be a better understanding of the excitement he and the others felt about the spaceship, but his lack of a scientific background left me clueless. I also sensed traces of sadness and bitterness left by his memories.

  The idea of merging with others excited and reviled me. I thought about trying it with Chris but his memories might make me sick with jealousy. I might see memories of him having sex with other girls, or discover some hidden part of his mind and feelings that he reserved for another girl. I didn't want to know those things. I didn't want to risk discovering that he was a mere mortal like the rest of us. I also didn't want my jealousy to overwhelm the happiness I wanted.

  The desire to merge with him continued to build to the point where my conflicted emotions overrode the joy I should have had with Chris. His desire to merge with me in a sexual way started to drive me crazy. At seventeen, I still wasn't ready to have sex even though I was a ghost. Part of me wanted it badly but a deep fear had taken root inside me. What if my lack of sexual activity during life deprived me of enjoying sex in death?

  I had to leave and clear my mind. I didn't tell anyone where I was going. I hadn't seen Robby for a while, so I visited him and told him I still couldn't build a bed to tuck him into, but I was working on it. Mom and Dad had visited him so he seemed happier than last time. He'd developed a crush on a few cute little girls. Temptation to merge with him and give him a head start on such things arose but I quashed the idea. If I gave him too much of my own experience, I would rob him of being a kid. Like Harb, he'd stop seeing things with that innocent filter and lose a part of himself.

  I really needed isolation for a while. Somehow I had to overcome the crap in my head, the baggage I'd brought over from my dead body that continued to make death too much like life and high school. So I went on vacay. I flitted to several continents before arriving at Antarctica. It was no paradise in the usual sense of the word but it had a lot to see. I amused myself by watching penguins without the bite of the cold or subzero winds to worry about.

  Despite the lack of colors, Antarctica's beautiful and otherworldly landscape won me over. I explored the mountains and the surrounding ocean. Dusty snow had all but buried everything. From atop a mountain I watched as a massive winter storm blinded the continent with its fury then abated to reveal a clear night sky.

  Chris, Kyle, and others tried to contact me during my period of isolation but I turned aside all calls except for a brief one with Kyle to let him know I was okay and not to worry. It felt good to be on my own without the churning uneasiness and confusion that had infected me over the last month.

  On a large white plain, I discovered a permanent camp with an aircraft hangar and square concrete buildings. Curiosity pulled me inside despite the risk of dead bodies further depressing me. But the facility seemed abandoned.

  As I walked inside the halls, I heard music echoing from one of the small rooms that lined the corridor. Excited that I could finally listen to music again, I rushed into the room and stopped. Someone else had already discovered this oasis of pop music.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," I said to the young man sitting on the cot.

  He didn't acknowledge me.

  "Do you mind if I listen with you?"

  No answer.

  I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. He shouted jumped up, his eyes darting wildly about the room.

  "Are you deaf? I didn't mean to surprise you."

  The man couldn't possibly have missed me in so small a room. His gaze, however, went right through me. The truth of my amazing discovery eluded me for a moment until my dull mind put together the facts. He couldn't see or hear me but it was obvious he had all his senses. What differed between the two of us was that this man was alive.

  I touched him again. He placed his hand to the spot my finger touched and rubbed it as if the skin had gone cold.

  "Bloody isolation must be getting to me worse than I thought," he said in a British accent.

  I backed off, not wanting to make the l
ast living man on Earth go mad. Excitement invigorated me and my first thought was to flit to Chris and tell him the incredible news. But my excitement faded somewhat as I thought of the odds. This man had little chance of surviving the elements, much less making it back to more comfortable environs. Had his isolation somehow protected him from whatever killed everyone else? I searched the grounds and found some answers on a schedule posted in the communications room.

  Eight flights had ferried people to the coast. The last flight was supposed to evacuate him before winter set in. Apparently it had never returned for him. I decided to keep the discovery of the last man alive to myself for now. The moment the word got out, this poor man would be haunted by a billion ghosts, each one wanting to reach out an icy hand and feel a living human. It would drive him crazy. Besides, we couldn't do anything to help him.

  Chris tried to contact me for the third time that day. I figured something urgent had come up so I flitted into space, contacted him, and then went to him. He hovered a distance from the spaceship with a group of other guys. His questioning gaze seemed concerned and angry all at once.

  "Lucy, where have you been? Why have you been ignoring me?"

  "I needed time alone."

  "Are you mad at me for spending time on the ship?"

  "Of course not. I got tired of hanging out in space and went back to Earth for a breather."

  He sighed. "We figured out what those symbols are."

  "And?"

  "It's a countdown."

  Chapter 6

  I couldn't stay away from Antarctica and the man living there despite the drama going on above the planet. His name was Nick Duffy. He was twenty-two years old, had eyes blue as the Antarctic ice, thick brown hair, and a British accent. On the rare occasion that he smiled, it seemed the sun came out on the long winter night.

  Most of the information available on him was posted in the communications room. He was listed as flight crew, so I assumed he had piloting skills. He busied himself by jogging up and down the narrow corridors. A small gym provided the opportunity for more intense exercise and he exhausted himself working the punching bag. He was tall and lean but his muscles looked firm.