Chapter Two

 

Something went wrong. This isn’t right. I should be floating away on a cloud into a sea of light. Instead, utter blackness fills my vision. The void is so complete I can barely tell whether or not I exist. Or if I ever existed at all. What on earth have I done?

Suddenly, there are flashes of life. Episodes from a life that are not my own. They come at me so suddenly it’s as if someone hit play in a darkened movie theater, and the film picked up in the middle of a scene.

I see a girl. She’s several years younger than me. Maybe fourteen. Mousy brown hair, pulled back in a small ponytail.

She’s in a house. It’s dark outside the kitchen window where she’s making mac-n-cheese for dinner. A man walks in. He’s tall with a graying beard and mustache. He sets down a yellow construction hat on the table. The man must be her father, but there’s no greeting from either of them. He grabs two plates from a cabinet and places them on the table. Cups, silverware, and a gallon of milk follow. The girl spoons the mac-n-cheese onto the plates. Not a word is spoken between them.

The scene disappears and everything fades to black. As I wait for the light to reappear, I question my existence. Is this a dream? I killed myself.

Didn’t I?

The movie jolts to life. The girl sits in a classroom, copying math problems from the board. I move closer to her, but it’s not my body moving. More like I’m working a movie camera, gliding down a dolly track to focus on my target. As I watch over her shoulder, she pulls out a black notebook. The cover design appears to be a hot pink heart, but the swirly lines that make up the heart look more like thorny vines. In the margin of her notebook, she scribbles book titles: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, A Walk to Remember, Thirteen Reasons Why.

Blackness. This time I’m left in the dark so long, I almost forget about the girl.

The next vision shows me a crossword puzzle, and for a moment I think I’m finally seeing something other than the nameless girl’s life. But then the camera zooms out, and I see her tapping her pencil against her ponytail. She sits on a twin bed covered with a pink comforter. Piles of well-worn paperbacks are stacked where a nightstand should be. A cheap black alarm clock rests precariously on top. The girl flings the puzzle aside and pulls up a canvas bag from the floor. She reaches inside and pulls out a stapled set of papers. My view shifts so that I swing around her. At the top of the page in pretty blue ink the words “Please see me” are written in neat cursive letters. The girl crumbles the pages, throws them and the bag onto the floor, and crawls under the covers.

The darkness returns, but only for a short while.

She’s in the kitchen again. In fluffy pink slippers and sheep-adorned pajamas, she pads her way across the room. She pulls a knife from the magnetic strip that hangs over the sink. She heads out, knife in hand, flipping the switch as she goes. The way through the hall is dark, but I can hear the rubber bottom of those pink slippers on the wooden floor. A light is flipped, and she stands before a mirror in a tiny white and blue bathroom.

As she stares at her reflection, I realize my image is not reflected in the mirror. Even though I’m right behind her, all I see in the mirror are her red-rimmed eyes, her stringy brown hair, and those blasted sheep pajamas.

What happened to my eyes, my hair, and my body? I know I’m dead, but shouldn’t I see something in the mirror? I used to have the shiniest chestnut hair, and I’d braid a few small strands at the front to create depth in my otherwise flat mane. And my eyes were big and brown with thick lashes. Looking at the pathetic girl in front of me, I realize I never appreciated how pretty I actually was. No model, that’s for certain. But no train wreck either.

In front of me, the girl looks down at her left wrist and then pulls the knife closer to her eyes to examine its blade. Like a surgeon inspecting her instruments before operating, she runs a finger along the knife’s edge. Then she holds the flat edge of the blade against her left wrist, and I scream, begging her to stop, but it’s the proverbial nightmare problem. I feel the shriek deep in my soul, but no sound follows.

Blackness curls around the edges of my vision when another voice cries out.

“Vera!”

The girl looks up. The knife is thrown into a small drawer under the sink just as the tall man with the graying beard walks in.

“Vera, what are you doing up?”

The girl doesn’t answer. She simply flips the light switch and walks out.

Blackness again. At least now I know her name.

 

Something about the last scene brings back memories. My vision has changed. What I see now is my own life. Not Vera’s. The most recent memories come first.

On my bed is the note I scrawled on a page torn from my English notebook. It lists all the reasons I hated my life. Next to it rests the heaven drawing and the newspaper clippings from the car accident. Once again, I can feel the cold metal of the trigger, and I remember how far I had to stretch my petite fingers to make the gun go off. For the briefest moment, I can smell the smoke and hear the high-pitched scream that followed, and then the darkness surrounds me once more.

 

The other details of my life are fuzzy. I know I was unhappy. That is more than obvious, but at the moment all I really remember is anger. Anger directed toward God. He had failed me, I was sure.

And now where is He? Where am I for that matter? If I’m dead, shouldn’t I be somewhere other than Earth? Watching periodic episodes from a girl’s life interspersed with inky darkness and memories from my own life certainly isn’t what either Ally or I had imagined heaven would be, and yet I’m certain this can’t be hell either.

I move my hands to see if I can feel my way through the night that surrounds me, but there’s nothing there. Panic sets in. What if I’m stuck in the darkness for good? Is that even possible? I was taught in Religious Ed classes that God is light. Does this endless darkness mean there is no God?

Before I can even finish the thought, the girl’s bedroom reappears. She has pulled the pink comforter up around her neck, and in the moonlight that peers through her bedroom window, I can see a tear rolling down her cheek.

“Oh, God,” Vera gasps. Her voice is low, but I can hear her plainly. “Why am I so alone?”

I glide to her bedside. She is petite, like my little sister. I want to sit on the edge of her bed, hold her hand and tell her that she’s not alone, that I’m here. I reach for her only to remember that I have no hands, no body, no voice. Instead, I stay by her bed, listening to her gasping sobs, watching her toss and turn, until finally exhaustion consumes her and she falls asleep.