The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) (3 page)

"If we can do this, what stops us from flitting to whoever we want to talk to?" he asked.

"Flitting" was the new term going around for how fast we ghosts could blur from one spot to another.  If you knew exactly where you wanted to go, you could flit there in a matter of seconds.

"Guess I'll be your guinea pig again," I said.

He flitted to me after I answered his call.  He tried it without me answering but couldn't.

"Thank God," he said, "or whatever imaginary deity created this place.  At least I don't have to worry about my parents flitting in on me while I'm taking a dump."

I laughed at the absurd notion that a ghost would ever need or want to use the bathroom.  I was keeping a mental list of all the things we'd never have to do again.  I hadn't had to pee once and didn't even think about it.  No bathrooms, no embarrassing periods or cramping.  No hot flashes for older women or menopause.  No pimples, no unwanted pregnancies.  My list was getting pretty large for my memory to handle since I didn't have anything to write with.

But the last thing on my list made me a little sad.  No more babies.  I hadn't seen a single baby in the afterlife.  The Robertsons down the street had given birth to their third child just before the end.  I'd seen the Robertsons in the afterlife with their two daughters but not the infant boy.  They were frantic.  Then I saw them gathering with Ms. Tate's religious group and praying for answers.  It wasn't just ghost babies I was worried about though.  There would be no more human babies.  Ever.

Humans as a species were extinct. 

Everything occurred in phases.  The "Holy Crap, We're Dead!" phase was marked by mass hysteria.  Mass euphoria resulted from the "Holy Crap, We're Free of Life's Burdens!" phase.  Now things had shifted into the "Holy Crap, We Can Do Whatever We Want!" phase in which mass indulgence made the ancient Romans look like teetotalers.

Aside from those reserved groups of religious people who were still waiting on their god or the Flying Spaghetti Monster to save them, people began to experiment with insane possibilities.  And yeah, I was one of those people.  The apparent lack of anything that could kill us—not to mention insane boredom—certainly made us braver.

Kyle ran across Bella Duck when we were planning his craziest idea for an adventure yet.  He did something I'd never seen him do.  He walked up to her, explained how he'd fantasized about her ever since our freshman year in high school and told her she was hot.

I'd never thought Bella Duck was hot.  Even disregarding her oddball last name she was strange and nerdy.  I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.  She didn't wear thick glasses or have a nose stud anymore, thank goodness, because nose studs make me think of boogers, and boogers make me gag.  But she wore a drab brown skirt which was odd considering people in the afterlife could change clothes any time by willing them to change.  The moment I'd figured that out was better than stumbling across a hidden gallon of Choco-Choco Pecan Crunch ice cream in the freezer that my brother hadn't dipped his snotty little nose into.  Who needs a bedroom-sized walk-in closet when your wardrobe is only limited by your imagination and willpower? 

Maybe Bella didn't care how she looked in brown or that it washed out her skin tone.  Then again, a lot of people had chained themselves to a specific self-image over the years until it stuck to their ghosts like glue.  Kids had a really easy time changing clothes.  For us teenagers it wasn't too hard.  Adults like Ms. Tate seemed to never change appearance.  I'd bet Ms. Tate hadn't changed hairstyles since circa 1960.

Admittedly, Bella looked a lot better without bottle-bottom glasses and her hair was long and darker now.  She gave Kyle a funny look, like she'd never considered him a candidate for anything, much less a boyfriend.  Kyle was tall, a little gangly, with a thick patch of unruly brown hair.  He was cute, but most of my friends thought he was nerdy and self-absorbed.  It was just his way.  He liked to think up crazy stuff and experiment on it inside his head until he figured out a way to do it in the real world.  He was the kind of guy I could imagine revolutionizing computers or something really techie one day.  At least when all that stuff mattered.

"Hey Lucy," Bella said after Kyle's candid outburst.  She eyed Kyle again and smiled.  "I don't know you that well, but it looks like we've got a lot of time to correct that."

Kyle smiled and his face flushed.  "Luce and I are planning a cool trip.  You should come with us."

"I was thinking of visiting Africa," she said.

"You're thinking small."

"She's thinking normal," I said.  "Don't frighten the poor girl off."

"I saw Chris Rogers yesterday," Bella said.  She smiled at me in a knowing way and I wondered if Michelle, our mutual friend, had told her about my crush.  "He looked really sad.  Said he hasn't found his family yet."

"No way," Kyle said.  "It's been weeks now."  He vanished for a moment, then reappeared.  "Yeah, weeks, according to the digital watch on my rotting corpse."

"How'd you do that so fast?" Bella asked.

I brushed Bella on the shoulder so I could add her to my ghostly contact list.  "Did you touch Chris?"

"So I could keep in touch?"  She laughed at her own pun.  "Yep."

"Would you have him meet us?"

Kyle raised an eyebrow.  "Copy cat."

I shrugged.  "We're all dead, right?  Might as well go for the gold."

"Yeah, then you can live with rejection tearing you apart for eternity."

I punched him on the shoulder.  "Thanks, jackass."

Bella contacted Chris and flitted to him.  We followed.  Chris sat on a boulder that rested in a clearing.  A thick forest surrounded us; pine needles and leaves carpeted the ground.  I took in the gorgeous scenery and put my hand under a shaft of white sunlight that penetrated the dense canopy.

"Are we on Earth?"  I picked up a twig and counted to ten, but it stayed in my hand.

"A forest," Kyle said and snatched a leaf off an oak tree.  "An honest-to-God forest in the afterlife.  Sweet!"

"Found it by accident," Chris said.  "Been all over the place looking for my folks."

I walked up to him, a speech already prepared about how much I'd wanted to kiss him ever since I'd first set eyes on him.  How much I wanted to feel his strong arms tighten around my waist and have those deep blue eyes stare longingly into mine.  But my stupid ghost tongue wouldn't work and nervous energy made my heartbeat flutter.

"Lucy, did you find your parents?" Chris asked.

He remembered my name?  We'd only spoken a couple of times, just in passing during class changes.  But a wall of pretty girls always surrounded him:  Bethany, Susan, and worst of all, Gayle, with that little sneer of hers whenever she looked at anyone outside her perfect circle.  I never had a chance to break into his world.  Instead, I had watched for an opening and hoped.  But it had never come.

"Luce, you there?" Kyle asked.

I snapped out of my daydream.  "Uh, yeah.  I found them.  Took a few days though."

Chris sighed.  "Thank God.  I know they're here somewhere.  So many people are wandering and flitting all over the place that it makes it impossible to find anyone.  If I could just find someone who'd talked to them or touched them so they could flit me there it'd be great."

"You were close to them?"

"Well yeah, they're my parents."

Congrats, Lucy, you win the prize for stupidest question ever.
  I was failing so hard it made that place where my heart used to be hurt.

"Can you believe I met the President?" Chris said.

Kyle's eyes widened.  "Of the United States?"

"Yeah."  He laughed, a bitter edge to his tone.  "Of all people, I found the President but not my parents."

"What does he think of this mess?"

"He seemed pretty relieved."

"Did he think he was a failure?" Bella asked.

Chris shrugged.  "He thought it was ironic that we'd spent billions on security and still ended up dropping dead."

"Nobody seems to care what happened," I said.  "Just that it did."

"Doesn't matter how we died," Chris said.  "Not anymore."

Kyle swooped to the top of a tree and whistled.  "This place is huge.  It goes on forever."

"Maybe this is where trees go when they die," Bella said.

We laughed.

"Wanna let them in on our trip plans?" Kyle asked me.

"You're going to freak them out."

"Where are we going?" Bella asked.  "The moon?"

"Bingo," Kyle said.  "And maybe even further."

Bella shook her head.  "And to think I was joking."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute," Chris said.  "Won't we burn to a crisp in the atmosphere or freeze in space?"

"I've already been out of the atmosphere.  I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe until I remembered we aren't breathing anyway.  We just think we are."

Chris let out a resigned sigh.  "Might as well.  Nothing for me here."

"Dude, you have forever to find your parents.  Let's have fun."

"Yeah, okay."

"We have to go to Earth first," Kyle said.  "This place doesn't seem to be connected to space as we know it."

We shifted dimensions over to Earth.  Most people simply called it shifting by now since figuring out that we existed on different planes of reality or something like that.  Kyle had spoken to numerous scientists asking them for theories.  He'd even gone looking for Einstein and other famous brainiacs.  So far he'd only found a few of the not-so-famous ones and they hadn't been able to explain much of anything.  True to form, though, many of them were building coalitions to study the afterlife.

In the meantime, Kyle threw caution—if such a word could even exist anymore—to the wind and did whatever he wanted.  Now he'd brought us into his mad scheme to eventually conquer the universe.

Once on Earth I took a moment to enjoy the feel of wind against my ghostly limbs.  It felt different here, better than the rare breezes in the afterlife.  It was easier to return to the habit of memory left behind in my body and feel alive again.  Chris rested a hand on my shoulder and smiled.  His touch made me tingle in places I didn't think was possible for a ghost.

"You feel better here too, don't you?"

I nodded.  "I feel, I dunno, pure, I guess.  It's so weird.  I hate that I can't affect anything though.  Not even a leaf or a bug."

"Ready to go?"  Kyle grabbed Bella's hand and launched himself into the dusky pink sky.

Chris took my hand.  I went weak in the knees.  My face felt warm.  I giggled at how silly it was.  Me, a ghost, going weak-kneed and fluttery.  Chris smiled.

We took off after Kyle.  The few clouds in the air thinned until the stars went from the Earth's sky to its background.  Large, glorious, and blue, the world spun beneath us.  We left it behind.  Kyle whooped ahead of us.

"How can you make noise in space?" I said, shouting at him.

He turned and made backstrokes with his hands, like he was swimming through the void.  "Because it's all in your head, silly."

Everything was in our heads.  Maybe we were in our heads, or someone else's head.  I didn't care.  I was holding Chris Rogers's hand and dead or not, imaginary or not, I was loving every second.  Chris stared ahead at the moon.  I stared at him.  I loved the stubble on his chin.  The freckle on his right cheek.  The hollow of his neck where it met the collar bone.  I wondered how much of that would remain forever with his ghost image.  I'd already seen others who'd changed their physical appearance dramatically.  Maybe I wouldn't feel the same if he looked different. 

We reached the moon and touched down.  Kyle took us on a tour of the Apollo landing sites, each one marked by flags.  One of the flags lay on its side, partially covered by dust.  Kyle righted it and saluted just before the real universe reclaimed it and flicked it back into its prone position.

"You think living creatures can see the stuff we move?" Chris asked.

Kyle shook his head.  "I think we only move it in our reality."

"I'll bet it was really frustrating for the early ghosts," Bella said.  "Especially murder victims who wanted to tell everyone who their killer was."

"Like that girl Susie Fish a few years back."

Chris looked back at Earth.  "You think anyone survived?"

I didn't know who he was asking but he hadn't let go of my hand yet.  Our ghost hands didn't sweat or get tired even after travelling to the moon.  I thought about Brian Crews, my middle school boyfriend.  His hands sweated way too much.  He was the first guy I knew to get body odor and sweaty wet rings in his armpits.  I wished I had a notebook to add "body odor" to the list of things I didn't miss.  To my surprise, the familiar outlines of a spiral-bound notebook started to form in my hand like a chalk-traced image, but Kyle distracted me and it vanished.

"I'll bet remote tribes in some countries survived," he said.

Chris nodded.  "We should try to find them."

"And then what?" Bella asked.  "Haunt them?  Because we can't talk to them."

"Maybe there's a way," Kyle said.

"Aren't we miserable enough being ghosts?"  Bella shook loose Kyle's hand.  "I don't want to see living humans.  It'd just make me sick and jealous."

Part of me shared Bella's opinion.  The living might make us jealous.  Those poor people would have billions of angry and mourning ghosts haunting them.

"Um, okay," Kyle said.  He looked toward a bright blue point of light.  "I'm bored with the moon.  Want to go to Venus?"

We ended up going to Venus and Mercury.  It scared me at first looking into the boiling mists and what looked like cauldrons of super-heated puke on both planets, but none of it could hurt us.  Kyle ran around like a kid discovering worms in the dirt for the first time.  He explored all the nooks and crannies but complained about his inability to gather samples.  Bella complemented him perfectly, her excitement matching his.  Chris and I walked behind the two geeks and talked.  I'd long harbored the romantic notion that he might be one of those jocks who played football only because his parents wanted him to but secretly had a desire to be a dancer or a poet or something.  Just the thought of him reading poetry to me made me tingle.

"My mom hated football.  She didn't want me to play.  I almost had to quit and join the marching band," he said.

I couldn't imagine Chris in a dorky band outfit.  "But it's the South.  Everyone loves football."

"My dad told me it was a waste of time but thought I might have a shot at a scholarship.  They went to every game and cheered me on anyway."