Alastair loomed like a shadow in the white of a hospital room. On the bed below him wheezed an old woman who was visibly fading away, so small and gray in her bed, surrounded by machines on one side and family on the other. No wonder, at first sight, I’d mistaken him for a psychopomp. He looked so out of place as he intruded on this private moment, he could’ve come from another world entirely.
As bad as she looked—perhaps in pain—I rankled with envy.
“Waiting to ask her to dance?” I asked.
He laughed, but with no mirth. “I don’t think she’ll stick around.”
“What does it look like when a soul crosses over?” I asked. “Any light, or tunnels, or fire and brimstone?”
“Nothing,” he said. “They just disappear. At least, every one that I’ve witnessed so far. It could be different this time.”
Probably not. That might’ve been why he took me aside, out to the waiting room. Or he’d decided to put me first, no longer bothered by my intrusion.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
I took a pretend seat, grateful not to feel the stiff, square hospital furniture haunted by anxiety and impatience and bad news—the worst news anyone could get. He followed suit, letting his legs sprawl wide, supporting his elbows as he leaned toward me with his chin on his hands.
“It’s strange not having him around,” I said. “Not being able to go see him. Knowing he won’t be there.”
He stared through the coffee table covered in magazines, as if he knew any of those faces. “Being left behind.”
It hurt to know now exactly what I’d done to Cris.
“I don’t think he went to hell,” I said. “Though I can’t really picture him in heaven, either.” I’d been meaning to ask this for a while now. “What do you think it’s like?”
I braced myself for theatrics. But his voice hummed low, contemplative, as he stared into space. “I’m so used to having a body—even on this side—and talking, going places, having company. What if heaven is nothing like this? If we just become light, or one with the universe, or love? All disembodied and…” He finally looked at me. “Dull as fuck?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Even hell might be more interesting.”
“If it’s the opposite, then it will be darkness: being nothing, apart from anyone and everyone.”
For a moment, I felt an instinctive tug. I’d once wanted exactly that—oblivion. But it didn’t tempt me so much anymore. Just a little, the lingering echo of self-hatred whispering that I’d be better off going before everyone else left me first. Now, I had so many more people who I knew weren’t as ready to abandon me as that voice claimed.
“I don’t like either of those options.”
“Me neither.” He gave a wistful smile. “I don’t know if there are any others, but I hope I’ll come back. Live again and die again. Over and over, and hang out here for a while in between, check in and see how you’re running things around here.”
“Hold up,” I said, startled onto my feet.
His smile trembled a bit. “I’m not truly going to be around for all eternity.”
Some crying came from inside the hospital room with the old woman. We must’ve missed her.
“Don’t you have a better contender?” I asked, trying to soothe my urge to flee by pacing through the coffee table. “Somebody older and wiser?”
“Around here, age doesn’t necessarily correspond with wisdom.”
I slowed down, turning to look at him. “How about… more cool and mysterious?”
He tilted his head up at me. “You think you’re not?”
I did keep to myself. You could call that mysterious. But I had to gesture at the outfit I’d died in.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, holding out my skirt. “I could be a librarian, or a secretary back when they were called secretaries, or a fucking missionary.”
He gave a generous shrug. “I’d call that kind of temporal ambiguity rather mysterious. What really matters is that you got three new souls to join us. You’ve already recruited.”
My instinctive start of a rebuttal withered in my mouth unsaid. He had a point.
My biggest objection made my guts churn. “What if I don’t last here as long as you?”
“I know you will,” he said. “You’ve already proven me wrong so many times. And you know what else? You’ve grown. I’ve often fretted that we can’t, on this side. But we can change, after all.” He laughed, almost to himself at first, then louder, triumphant, getting up to rove around in excitement, spreading his hands wide. “Perhaps that’s why we’re here, in this limbo between heaven and hell. Even if most of us don’t take the opportunity to learn, at least we still get the chance!”
I covered my mouth, blinking to ward off yet more tears. He sounded too eager, asking questions like he expected answers sooner rather than later. “Why are we even talking about this? It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”
His lips pursed guiltily, like he knew something I didn’t, and for once, he felt bad about it. “You never know.”
“You can’t leave.”
“We all go, sooner or later,” he said, getting up and taking my hands. “I take it you’re going to miss me?”
I had to smile to keep from pulling an ugly crying face. “Fat chance.”
* * *
Cris and Ren were laughing together. She sounded more herself. I hung back, wondering if I should give them more time. They were leaving a coffee house he’d no doubt suggested to sober her up. In place of whiskey, she now nursed an expensive-looking bottle of water. He trailed cigarette smoke.
I followed them to the corner where he’d parked. They hovered, no doubt dancing around whether they were going to stick together, or split.
She looked so much like me with her blue hair and paler than usual skin that I couldn’t help it. I had to pretend for a second she was me, on a real date with my boyfriend, like I was watching outside of myself. That made it more bearable when she leaned up and kissed him.
He hesitated before pulling away—just for a second. I almost couldn’t blame him. She looked like me, maybe even smelled like me, tasted like me after all that drinking and smoking.
“Um,” said Ren. “I hate to make this weird—but remember how I literally just told you I’m still in love with Mal?”
He and I both flinched back as she suddenly and immediately sobbed. I shut my eyes, letting out a slow sigh. He glanced up at the passersby weaving around them on the sidewalk, knowing exactly how it looked. So he led her down a nearby alley for privacy.
Through her hands, she managed, “I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.”
He had to light another cigarette. “I think I do. You’re trying to be just like big sis, right? Take up her place?”
By now, all remnants of her makeup had been wiped and worn and cried away. She must’ve meditated on her next words long enough that they seemed to come unbidden, fighting up past her swollen throat as if she were possessed.
“It’s like there’s this empty spot, this void in the world. Nobody else sees it, but I feel it. It’s nothing—literal nothingness—and there’s lots of nothing in the world, but this nothing feels so wrong. There’s not supposed to be nothing there. Everyone’s going about their lives like there isn’t something missing. She might as well have never existed. I can’t let her not exist. It’s up to me; I’ve got to fill up the void. But it’s so hard. It keeps closing up, and for little bits at a time… I forget. I actually forget. I can’t do that. I’ve got to save her space in the universe, or else—what if it closes up? What if there’s really nothing left?”
As her shoulders caved, overtaken by sobs, he went ahead and put both arms around her. This time, I envied him more. At least she finally got a good fucking hug, even if it wasn’t from me.
“If you’re right—” He gulped, staring over her head. “If she’s really gone—”
Even after all this time, perhaps he still struggled to fend off a shadow of doubt.
He sniffed, eyes glassy. “You don’t have to worry about holding her shape in the world. She’s doing that herself. I’m not the same, now that I’ve known her.” He pulled back enough to look into her eyes, hands still steadying her shoulders. “There’s so many people she’s touched and molded you don’t even know about, all her fingerprints you can’t see.”
Cris’s tears weren’t even dramatic anymore. Simply there, gliding quietly down her face. “I just want her here.”
He finally glanced up to meet my stare, fighting a smile. “Maybe she is. But I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want to see you cramping her style.”
As his hands slid off her shoulders, he grabbed her purse strap. She didn’t seem to notice until he started rummaging through the bag.
“Hey!”
He handed the purse right back, after confiscating her bottle of whiskey.
She growled. “How am I supposed to sleep tonight?”
“You won’t.”
Despite her glare, she made no move to try and snatch the bottle back.
“Call me if you feel tempted,” he said. “No matter how late it is. I’ll do my best to talk you out of it. Just don’t try anything sexy.”
That got an old-fashioned scoff out of her, like I used to rile her up to hear. So for all her posturing, she still had some of that old prudery left. I welcomed it back.
They traded phones to put their numbers in, and began the dance again, staying or splitting.
“Wait,” said Ren.
She went still. My phantom heart thundered in anticipation.
“Just so you know—” He gulped, voice hoarse. “Mal loves you.”
Her lips twitched, eyes glinting again already. “When did she say that?”
“She didn’t,” said Ren. At least, I hadn’t until recently. But he had to go off the sister she knew, not the person I’d grown into after death. “Not in so many words. I used to hear it in her voice.”
“What did she tell you?”
Good thing we’d spent the last few days preparing.
“Everything,” he said. “She was so proud of you, every time you nailed an exam, or met your goal for a canned food drive. And she worried for you, about your mother’s influence, whether you’d ever meet a guy who’s not too scary religious. She regretted missing so much of your life. But she thought you guys would have time to make it up.”
I didn’t expect what burst up out of her mouth to be a laugh. “You do think she’s still around, though, don’t you?”
He shook his head, a little panicked.
“You said she loves me—present tense.”
Ren breathed a ragged sigh. “You got me.”
She smiled—her own smile that I hadn’t seen in a long time, faint and slightly mysterious, like the Virgin. “Even if she isn’t here—if she’s gone for good—I still love her.”
My lungs seemed to fill impossibly, as if I’d opened my ribs like shutters, letting in some fresh air.
Ren smiled back. “See you around?”
Her soft gaze withered. “You’ll be hearing from me when I can’t fucking sleep.”
She turned to go at last, her blue hair bouncing over her shoulders, curling again at the ends.
* * *
Once she’d left, he remained in the alley, finishing up his cigarette. I waited for him to get the obvious out of the way.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “She made the first move—you saw that, right? It surprised me, but you know I’d never. I mean—not that she’s gross or anything, far from it—but she’s not you.”
He stopped and stared, wide-eyed and gulping in the face of my silence. I just laughed.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, and nearly meant it. “I’m kind of glad you got a real smooch.”
His eyes hardened. “What do you mean real?”
“Come on, you know what I mean.” I waved it off, because I didn’t want to talk about it, not yet. “Aside from that, it seems like you had a nice time.”
His slight shrug was defeated. “As much as I could with another breather.”
I tensed at that word choice. “What?”
His skin flushed. “I just wish I could’ve told her the truth about you and me, and the afterlife. I forgot how it feels to have to hide.”
My guilt roiled in my guts. “You might be getting too comfortable rubbing elbows with the dead.”
He pulled in closer, reaching for me. “I like you better than the living.”
I tried not to make it too obvious as I leaned away from his touch. “Right, that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
My words tasted bitter, like medicine, coming up rough. But they’d do him good, even if it felt more like harm. “Does it really count as a social life if all your friends are dead?”
Now he glared, his eyes glistening. “How about my love life?” His voice shook, though I couldn’t tell if it was with anger, or anguish. “Don’t you count?”
I could hardly keep my own voice together. “I didn’t think this through. Do we really have to talk about the long term, here? I mean, we met past our expiration date.”
He refused to look away, not fighting the tears. “I thought you’d changed. You said you wouldn’t disappear again.”
“This isn’t about that! I’d stay with you if I could, for the rest of my life, even—” My voice pitched, and then cracked. “Except I don’t fucking have one.”
I didn’t mean to yell at him. Only at myself. I’d carry this regret for the rest of my existence, however long that lasted.
We stared at each other, a couple of inches away, but worlds apart. The gulf between life and death. Like the void between a high rooftop and the earth below.
Then we both reeled back from the figure appearing between us.
Evie looked apologetic for spiriting with no courtesy distance. But she had good reason.
“They’re back.”
Ren turned to me. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
He didn’t wait for me to reply, sprinting down the street to his car. It might be a while until we got to finish this conversation.