UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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I’ve read articles; I’ve seen it in magazines: It’s dangerous to be young. When I was alive, I watched scary movies where young, beautiful girls were the first to die. I read magazines that told me all about how young actresses fell from great heights—how they got cellulite or turned into sloppy drunks or got into car accidents that were their fault. I once read about a girl who was kidnapped from the Target parking lot because her attacker liked the color of her hair. I suppose beauty can be dangerous too.
Pauline’s physical beauty was the smallest part of her. It distracted some people from seeing her. Sometimes, even me.
I know now I’m not here to take care of unfinished business or to get revenge or to set right something I did wrong, like you read about in ghost stories. I did right, it turns out. And that’s left me knowing this: I’m still here, simply because it’s hard to leave. I’m here trying to say good-bye. I’m watching my life and my world flash before my eyes, but slowly, because that’s the right way for a person to make an exit.
It was always my story I was trying to learn.
I venture out of Door County. I float over the flat heat of Texas, down across the low, brown hills to Austin, moths trailing in my wake (if it’s possible, there are more of them than ever). I spot her from light-years away; her messy hair, her jerky movements, her way of trying to hide her looks.
I don’t know what year it is, but I can see she’s in her early twenties. She must be on her lunch break, because she’s stuffing a chili dog into her mouth as if it’s her last meal on earth, but I know it won’t be. I know she has a long and happy life ahead of her. I know that, inside the bar, she plays songs for tips and sings like a bird. But when she gets a break, she comes out to sit on the curb and soak up her beloved heat. Abe sits beside her, gray around the jowls, and gets the last bite. I don’t know how they found each other again, after I died; I haven’t seen that moment yet and I guess I never will. I do know Pauline only plays at bars that allow her to bring him with her.
She sits there on the curb with her face to the sun, moving on to her fries. Inside, a song is playing on the jukebox, and she listens all the way through, drinks the last of a Coke, and smooths out her tight, sparkly jeans and her tank top, then scratches Abe’s ears. She never seems to sense that I am there. She twirls her wedding ring around her finger when she sees him.
He walks up the street in a white T-shirt stained with grease. He’s been working on cars, but he always times his lunch breaks around hers. He’s filled out since his teens; his arms are thicker, his body is more muscular, and his face is older—but his skin is still that boarding-school creamy pale.
He sits beside her without a word, and they fight over her fries with their fingers. I know they talk about me; I know they try to keep me alive and with them all the time. But today they say nothing.
I don’t know if there’s a heaven or not, but I like to imagine anyway that the angels made me and that they did it carefully. They kneaded my skin into arms and legs. They caressed my human shape and patted it down so that everything would look right. They gave me a few extra caresses too, because they knew they were sending me into life on earth, and they knew life on earth can break your heart. They gave me a brain for a helmet. They massaged a heart in through the backs of my ribs so that I could feel pain and know when to back up. I haven’t seen the angels yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they appear. Like I said, there are so many things I was wrong about.
For instance, I used to think that things, in the end—if it was really the end—turned out neat, clean, and symmetrical. But that’s not how it is. And I know this because I know that the Door County Killer was never caught, that he was a stranger to us, and that we were just unlucky when he came onto the peninsula that fall. It could have been anywhere. He never killed again in our county after that winter. I don’t know why—what chemicals set him loose and what reined him in.
I’ve seen the moment of his death, on a ferry in southwest Canada, in his later years—unfairly, too late. The ferry sinks, and he’s stuck in the bathroom—just the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Hairica, and those other girls. I guess maybe that’s symmetrical after all.
You can see his skeleton if you want; you just have to sink down into the river. If I had hands and time, I’d scatter his bones and wait for them to dissolve for millions of years if I had to.
But it’s nearing time for me to dissolve, myself.
I’ve already said good-bye to my parents; I’ve drifted through their new apartment in Chicago more than once. I know what they’ve lost and what they’ve gained: I’ve seen the nights when they’re awake until morning from grief. I’ve seen the days when they’ve started to feel slightly alive again, scattered among so many steps backward. I’ve watched them pack and sell the house, get new jobs, and leave Door County the same way they came in. I’ve watched my mom standing in the kitchen holding a toddler just to feel him close to her. They’re not blood, but they’re connected. He has big, brown eyes and hyper legs, and he’s the most beautiful thing. I wish I could teach him what I know, but I guess that’s a pretty common wish for those who’ve already lived. I wish that I could be his guardian angel. But I know I’m not allowed to stay.
I turn away from Austin. I drift up over Wisconsin, along Washington Island, over birds, the ocean, Canada, Alaska, the North Pole. A pleasure trip around the beautiful northern world. And then I turn south again. There’s one more thing I know I’ll see, a last piece of the past that’s waiting to take me with itself.
It’s January, and Liam and I are in the car driving north; he’s taking me on the surprise that’s just for me. I’m eating a bag of chips while Liam tries to navigate. It’s quiet as we pull into a deserted parking lot surrounded by tall trees. We get out, and Liam leads me along a dim, wooded trail. And suddenly the trees open out, and there before us is the most beautiful spring, crystal-blue-white and practically glowing. We strip down to our underwear in the cold air and, though I’m scared because I can’t swim, I trust him. He holds my hand as we slide into the water, and we suck in our breath from the change in temperature; the water feels warm against the frigid air. I float my arms around his neck and wrap my legs around his waist, holding onto his back.
He tows me into the middle of the spring, and we can see the trout swimming underneath us, circling flecks of silver. Liam laughs, and it echoes around the spring, but no one is there to hear but me—the ghost me and the living me.
Beneath us the water dances, and the sand far, far below bubbles like clouds. We’re like two angels floating over heaven. It’s our perfect moment, and it never disappears. Even now I can see us, even long after the moment is gone. Love can’t be taken back once it’s given.
Liam says, “I’ve got you.” And moves me from his back, holding one hand against my stomach. I know what he wants.
I stretch out my arms, like I’ve seen other people do, and I push my legs behind me, and—with his hand there to catch me—I swim.
This is what I think the world is showing me. We are souls at a common cause. We are only here to love. That was my great story all along. We are here to take chances, and fail, and keep trying.
I’m back in the cellar on Water Street, alone, and the hole is big enough for me. I can’t seem to stop moving toward the brightness. The curiosity is overwhelming me now.
If only I could take even one thing with me. Just a bracelet or a slip of paper or even the memory of a duckling or even a sound or a line from a song. Just one memory to remind me of who I am would make all the difference.
I want to have a last look at something real. I catch glimpses of other times and other moments, but they go quickly. A woman stands in the empty field above, before the house is built. The field is buzzing with grasshoppers, and as the woman walks, butterflies and moths spring out of the tall grass around her feet. The view, the clean breeze, it seems like a place where only happy things could ever happen. “We’ll build it right here,” she says to the man walking behind her. As if she can picture the house exactly as it should be—a wide front porch, where she can sit and catch the lake breezes, a sweeping yard, dormers for the upstairs windows; the perfect place to begin a life. She spins the cherry bracelet on her wrist. She touches her stomach, where life is growing. The future is everything to her.
And then I’m past it.
Suddenly I fear what’s coming next. I try to remember all my favorite songs. I run through as many as I can.
I step inside the bright hole, of my own free will, and here I see the last thing I was expecting to find. It’s my grave. There’s my headstone, and underneath the dirt I see my bones.
But I’m not in them. I have nothing to do with my bones at all. I’m something else. I realize that I’m bigger than my bones and bigger than my cellar and bigger than Door County. I’m part of something that’s made entirely of me, and yet of which I’m only a speck, a small piece. It turns out I’m not alone.
Suddenly I’m smiling. I feel as big and wide as the earth or the universe or even bigger, like I will disappear, but I will never really disappear. It turns out death is something of a joke. It’s indescribably funny. And I laugh. The world seems to open up—crack open—sing.
There’s a feeling of lightness in the air. And this is when the moths disperse. They fly apart, a flurry of night colors: dusk green and twilight blue and luminous white. They circle out; they’re like the eye of a hurricane, and they’re rising. Their beauty makes me want to cry, but then I realize it’s my beauty, I’m them and they’re me, and I’m flying apart too, going in a thousand different directions, each of which will end only God knows where. We, the moths and me, are like tiny angels ourselves. We circle toward a million moons, a million points of lights. And then, as if my life were a tiny pinprick of light in a long, beautiful, mysterious night, I go. I am gone.