When I died…
• I was sixteen.
• I was in love.
• It was the spring of 1970.
• Until the very end, I thought I’d live forever.
• My death wasn’t peaceful or bittersweet. I never saw a white light. I didn’t pass away quietly in my sleep. My family was thousands of miles away.
• My death was pain. Fear. Helplessness. Begging.
• I knew my killer.
• My death was slow.
• I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t see my grandmother, my aunt, or my pet hamster that died when I was seven. I didn’t think about the things I still had yet to do. The places I hadn’t seen. The people I should have forgiven. All I could think about was how stupid I was.
• I wish I could have talked to my father one last time or at least written him a letter.
• Such a foolish, foolish girl.
• Now I’m dead.
• I’m not in heaven.
My name is Molly.
The lake is neither cool nor warm. If I had to define it as something, I guess I’d say it’s average. It’s never overheated or chilled. Never boiling or frozen. I haven’t waded into its depths, but once I reached down and ran my fingers along its surface. The water felt foreign against my skin. Different. Not the way water is supposed to feel. I remember childhood, jumping from the dock at my grandparents’ cottage. That heart-stopping moment when cold water meets hot skin. Gasping. Giggling. Screaming at my brother for pushing me in. I miss that.
I’m not even sure if I have a body temperature to worry about anymore.
I miss a lot of things.
The way an apple tastes when you first bite into it. The sweet, juicy flesh that explodes across your tongue. The stickiness that tickled my hands. I used to wipe my juice-covered fingers on Julian’s lips so I could have an excuse to kiss him. I miss the times I stayed up so late, the sun began to peek through the shadows. The world smells best first thing in the morning. Clean and crisp, like walking on a mountaintop. Like a newborn baby. Before the heat, traffic, shops, and people add their own scents to the air. Before everyone’s love, pain, boredom, happiness, sadness, and a thousand other emotions add to the earth’s gravity and weigh everything down.
I miss music. The freedom it represented, the bass vibrating through my stomach, and especially the way it got beneath my skin and made me glow. Dancing. Spinning, twisting, arms spread out, toes stepping on top of each other, imagining every dream there ever was. Falling down. Laughing.
I miss the way Julian used to hold me, as if nothing mattered in the world other than the two of us simply existing. Sitting out in a field, covered in that old blanket of his, red and white like a checkerboard, smelling faintly like horses. We’d watch the sun set. Listen to the crickets serenading each other in the grass. I’d press my head against his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath his shirt. Taking my hand in his, he’d whisper into my ear. He’d pull me close just to hear each breath I’d take.
I miss love.
All those things are memories.
But not forgotten. Never forgotten.
In this world, nothing changes. The lake spreads out before us, a gigantic body of brilliant blue. The water might be deep or it might be shallow. No one ever goes in. It’s clear and practically unmoving, except for the gentle lapping of waves against the pebbles that make up the shoreline. I’ve never seen whitecaps or even driftwood. There are no storms or even soft breezes.
We are deep in the valley of nonexistence. Mountains enclose us; bold, bare rocks stretch upward toward a solid blue sky that never turns dark. No clouds. There are trees—thousands, if not millions, of silent sentinels: pine, red cedar, Douglas fir, and dozens of others. I couldn’t possibly identify them all. They never change colors because seasons don’t exist. No wild animals, either. No eagles scanning the ground for dinner as their gigantic wings spread outward in a straight line. No squirrels, with their big baby eyes, hoarding nuts. No fish. No spiders. Not even an ant to crawl across my skin.
Sometimes when Parker is bored, he’ll try and go for a walk. But he always comes out the exact same place he enters, and he’s never sure how he manages to go in such a roundabout way.
We live on the shore of our lake. There are no houses because we don’t need to go inside. No one sleeps or even rests their eyes. Our bodies are never exhausted. They don’t age, get worn, change from the climate, or even get paper cuts. No one ever falls ill from a cold or flu. No burst appendixes or severed limbs.
We don’t eat or drink. No one ever complains about being hungry because such things are in the living past.
We are ageless.
Perfect.
So is our world.
Parker says that sometimes things do change. The décor, for example, wasn’t always the black metal benches with their curls and fancy designs. Thin, French-style patio tables with bright-colored parasols give the place a dated, early-1900s feel. Patio lanterns made of tissue paper are strung from the pines—useless, since the small candles inside have never been lit. Parker says that one day the tables were simply there, replacing the wooden benches that preceded them.
Just like the sparse outdoor furniture, we are outdated too. Most of us are still wearing the clothing we died in. Parker wears his lounge suit and bowler hat. The jacket rests on a tree stump, and a long time ago he rolled his shirtsleeves up and unbuttoned his collar because I told him he looked too uptight. What I’d really like to do is convince him to grow his hair long so I could weave it with flowers. I’d like to run my fingers through it and feel its thick coarseness. Sometimes I think I’d like to kiss him. But hair no longer grows, and there are no blooms around to be picked. And love is just a memory to prove I was once alive.
I sit on a wood log with Parker and sometimes Mary. She wears her corset and often complains how hard it is to breathe. But of course she’s simply exaggerating. She no longer needs air. She once tried to rip away the layers of her long dress, exposing her legs for everyone to see. But she had a change of heart, and in the blink of an eye, everything returned to normal.
As for me, I wear the clothes I died in: a yellow peasant blouse and a long white cotton skirt. Thankfully, the bloodstains are gone. My feet are in sandals, and I have beads around my neck. They annoy me sometimes, the way they clack when I move. It makes the others notice. It makes me notice. I’d take them off, but without them I’d feel wrong.
On my finger is the silver band with the tiny diamond, the last thing Julian gave me before I died. His promise to take care of me forever. To love me until death did us part.
Sometimes I wonder if he looks up at the sky and thinks about me. Maybe late at night he wakes from a dream with my name on his lips. Or he’ll see something that helps him remember, sending a brilliant flashback to an older time and place. Would such things still make his heart ache? Did he ever come to terms with what happened to me? Did he find a new love? Sometimes I worry that he’s passed on and found his own lake. Wherever he is, he’s not here.
Because we are in a certain type of afterlife.
We are the restless. We are the dead.
And as far as I can tell, there’s no way out.