There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared who that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.
—EMII.V DICKINSON
Contents
is
the sweatshirt
the bracelet
the purse
orchids
random acts of existence
is
beyond the boundaries of any one life
daddy-daughter dance
gathering ghosts
is
ghost
the underwear
headache
felicity's shoe
is
a penny for your thoughts
is
rattled
cell communication
infected
the spoon
school peas
is
pain's greater plan
witch's nails
pass to class
baby doll
photo in the wind
the ring
losing myself at disney world
is
the pinecone
physics
is
the note
is
un rattled
gathering as a ghost
am
spirits
am
the end
after the end
epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
UNCORRECTED t-PROOf—NOT FOR SAIE
HafflHCMifiji P y bfobss*. -
I'M DEAD.
Not my-parents-told-me-to-be-home-by-twelve-andit's-two-o clock-now dead. Just dead. Literally.
I think.
I can't fee! a body anymore. No hunger—not even a
stomach. No fingers to wiggle, no feet to tap.
So I pretty much have to assume that I'm . . . gone?
No. I can't be gone, because I'm here.
I won't say that I ve "passed on" or "passed away." I don't
remember passing anything on the way here. For that matter,
I don't remember dying, either. There's some saying
about people "dying of curiosity." But I'm just curious about
how I died.
Curious and . . . frightened. This place—wherever it
is—surrounds me with vibrations. It j u s t . . . Is.
Loneliness and mystery hum through me. I feel like I
just woke up in a dark room that has no clock. And even
worse: no people. Where is everyone I knew when I was
alive? Who are they, and do they miss me? What if I'm in
Hell? Maybe instead of fire and brimstone, hell is just the
feeling of loneliness. I don't remember much about being
alive. I don't even remember my name. But loneliness being
hell? That much I remember.
Ahead I see a bright pinprick of light. Can I reach it? It
seems my only chance for company. The prospect of reaching
that light has replaced the throbbing ache of loneliness
I attempt to move toward the light, but the space that
is . . . Is.. . cloaks me in thick, clinging darkness. It sticks to
me like a disgustingly damp pair of jeans two sizes too small.
I fight it out with Is, pushing against its boundaries, discovering
I can get the bubble around me to expand if I try hard
enough. But just as my space begins to grow, a cloud of loneliness
surrounds me. I discover there's a reason the dead are
stuffed into cozy coffins and small urns. This large empty
space I've created makes me feel even more isolated.
I stop pushing against the boundaries of Is, and it shrinks
into a small bubble again. All the energy that is me beats
comfortably against the boundaries. Now that I am dead, I
guess I have a soulbeat instead of a heartbeat.
• • •
Maybe some time passes. .Maybe it doesn't. Hard to tell
in this place. But one way or the other, I discover the problem
with small, safe places.
They're boring.
I can't decide if my curiosity or my fear is the stronger
emotion. And I don't quite understand how I can be feeling
both if I'm dead. They chase each other around, circulating
and percolating in me. Haunting me.
How is that possible? I mean, if I'm the one who's dead,
how can something be haunting me? I'm supposed to be the
one doing the haunting.
Finally, curiosity chases fear to the perimeter. It's time
to explore.
Not that there's much to investigate. Just that bright
pinprick of light.
I push against Is and expand the bubble of my space
again. This time I discover I can intensify my soulbeat until
it fills the bubble's space with energy. I ride the pulse of my
soulbeat into the ever-expanding bubble as I approach the
light.
It is a ring glowing in the dark. It shines against the
midnight black of space like an X-ray. An image of a bracelet.
What is it doing here?
As I get closer to the bracelet, I find myself floating
right through the glowing circle of light. Photons scatter
everywhere. I feel less lonely somehow with all this light
swirling around me.
And because I can see now that there are more pinpricks
of light.
They are little stars amid my dark existence, scattered
across space at great distances. A spoon. A pair of socks,
hair clips, pieces of paper, peas, a cell phone, keys, flowers,
a handbag, a doll's shoe. More and more. They are artifacts
of a life.
Mine?
! don't know why, but they seem to link me to all the
people I sense I should be with.
I find still more: beads, photographs, a ring, a baby's
rattle, and—how odd—a pair of underwear.
All these images are company at last.
But I need them to be closer together so I can spend
time with all of them at once. Is there a way to click and
drag them onto a desktop-sized spacer
No. Apparently Is hasn't picked up on the whole wireless
concept yet, and I will have to go to the ends of the U
niverse to find all my companions. I'd better start now if—
My trip has already come to an abrupt halt. I've hit the
next object. It's a sweatshirt, and I can't bear the idea of
moving and leaving it behind.
I know it should make me feel warm, but its stark white
glow fills me with longing. A sense of missing something—
more intense chan any feeling I've yet had—pounds through
me. And suddenly I know I wasn't meant to be here alone. I
know I expected to find Gabriel waiting for me.
But who is Gabriel?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT f OR SALE
H«Mtfift!flg&£wbfeftfiH
the sweatshirt
I'M NOT SURF. WHY this sweatshirt fascinates me so much.
Maybe it's the missing smell. I sense that the most im
portant
thing about this sweatshirt is supposed to be its scent,
but there aren't any smells in //. I want to put the sweatshirt
on, but I've got no body here in Is, either.
I try to what it felt like to have a body and imagine
mysel f pulling warm fabric over my head....
And then suddenly everything changes. Knowledge—
not just some strange half memory—rips through me,
scattering me across space and darkness, through nothingness
and shadow. I am propelled toward harsh light. The
sound of voices swells as I come closer and closer to them.
Metal chairs scrape across linoleum, addingan unharmonious
of me hover, dancing in the air, and then unite into something
not quite solid yet more substantial than I have been.
I have a misty almost-form.
I'm back in the world.
In a classroom. An art classroom. I recognize myself,
standing at a sink a few feet away. I'm trying to get red
paint off my hands. I remember this moment: junior year,
second-hour art class. A sense of joy at being back in the
real world courses like blood through mv almost-being, but
it's strangely mixed with anger: I know that I'm about to
discover that the sweatshirt is missing.
And then I know so much more. Suddenly I'm drowning
in memories that take on half shape s. They fill me with
panic as I founder around in them.
I know my name: Madison Stanton. I remember my
mother, her deep red hair; my father, tall and playful, with a
baritone that rumbles comfortingly; mv house and its smell
of eucalyptus; school; teachers; my best friend, Sandra; my
older sister, Kristen; my pet cat. Cozy; and—Oh, God—
Gabriel. Gabriel whose sweatshirt I am about to lose. All
these memories threaten to pull me under a tide of grief
and loss.
It is the sound of my own laughter that acts as a life
jacket. I float up out of the memories to focus on this
moment, on myself standing at that sink. I'm laughing with
Sandra. I can't remember what about, though. I'm tempted
to move closer.
But first I need to go rescue the sweatshirt. It's about
to be stolen. And I know by whom. I left it on the back of a
chair—so I wouldn't get paint on it—over on the other side
of the partition that divides the room. If I can get to the
sweatshirt before Dana does, mavbe I can keep her from
stealing it.
I try to move toward the partition but have trouble figuring
out how to do it. I don't quite have a body, so the
physics of movement as I'm used to it on Earth just isn't
happening. But I'm also not merely a collection of light particles
the way I've gotten used to being back in Is. Great.
How many diflerent states of existence can there be?
I have to figure out how to use some bizarre combination
of floating and running to move. Just as I reach the
partition, though, I bounce backward. Rubber-band style.
The elastic that holds me to mv real self over at the sink has
stretched too thin. I go shooting backward almost all the
way to the real me over at the sink, who's still busy laughing.
What's the matter with her? Or should 1 say "me"?
How am I supposed to refer to the living, breathing Maddy
Stanton? "Her" seems so not "me." And yet, she's not me.
She doesn't even seem to sense that I'm here. And can't I let
her know how clueless she's being about what Dana's doing
8
my house on Sunday, and I've been making good use of it
ever since. Yesterday he asked for it back. Uh-unh. No way.
He's not getting it back until it's so dirty it absolutely has
to be washed. No use keeping it after it's lost the essential
Essence of Gabriel.
It's been a good few days. I'm thinking about raiding
Gabe's dirty laundry when I have to give this sweatshirt
back.
But when Sandra and I return to the table, the sweatshirt
isn't there. My book bag is still sitting on the seat of
the chair—exactly where I left it. The sweatshirt should be
on the back of the same chair. I glance quickly at the other
chairs around the table, but it's not sitting on the back of
any of them, either.
"What's wrong?" Sandra asks as I start doing a weird
version of Duck Duck Goose with all the chairs, sliding
each out and checking to see if the sweatshirt has somehow
migrated onto its seat.
"Gabe's sweatshirt is missing," I tell her. I'm not holding
out a lot of hope that she's going to sympathize with the
true extent of this tragedy. She's been teasing me for the
past two days about how my obsession with the sweatshirt
is my subconscious attempt to have sex with Gabe.
"It can't be missing," she says matter-of-factly. "It was
on the back of the chair when we went to wash our hands."
I'm cursing myself. I took off the sweatshirt so I wouldn't
in
on the other side of the wall?
I try again to reach Dana, to stop her from stealing the
sweatshirt. No luck. The living Maddy pulls me up short
once again, only this time I get too close to her. She exerts
some kind of magnetic pull on me. And then instantly I
became her.
oge 17
The water suddenly gets too hot on my hands. "Aiya!" I
shriek, reaching to adjust the temperature.
Sandra turns the water off. Ever the conservationist.
"You're not Lady Macbeth trying to wash bloody sins off
your hands, you know."
So Sancra. Thirty seconds ago, we were laughing about
the way her calc teacher got a piece of toilet paper stuck in
the waist of her skirt, then came to class and taught half
the hour without ever realizing it was there. Now Sandra's
making obscure references to Shakespearean tragedies.
She handsme the roll of paper towels sitting on the counter,
flicking water in my face at the same time. "Thanks," I
sav, rolling my eyes.
"Sorry," she says, grinning.
We head back over to the table where we've left all our
stuff. Time to put Gabe's sweatshirt back on. It smells wonderful.
Totally him. I've had it for two days. He left it at
9
get paint on it. What's a little paint, though, when the alternative
is no sweatshirt at all? I've moved on to playing Duck
Duck Goose with the other tables.
No sweatshirt.
There's only one explanation for what could have happened
to it. Dana.
Suddenly I'm so angry that I'm afraid I might turn into
Lady Macbeth with some bloody sins to wash off my hands
after all.
Sandra sees how upset I am. She grabs me by the arm.
"Hey, Maddv, it'll turn up."
"Dana took it. I'm sure she did. I don't know whether
to be mad that she's trying to mess with me and Gabe, or
creeped out by what she might be planning to do with it."
"What do you mean, 'do with it'? What can she do with
k?"
I notice
that Sandra isn't trying to reassure me that
Dana hasn't taken it.
"What if she's going to sleep in it or something?!"
"You mean like you do?"
Such. A. Cheap. Shot. "He's my boyfriend," I say defensively.
I can't even begin to express how horrified I am by
the idea of Gabe's ex sleeping in his sweatshirt. "She can't
get over the fact that they've broken up, and I'm sick of it."
Sandra starts rubbing my arm. "Hey, calm down. She's
not going to sleep in it. She's over Gabe."
n
Hardly. She's been a major pain ever since he dumped
her and started dating me.
Sandra has known me since we were live. She can see
what I'm thinking. That's why it's worth having a best
friend. Saves on words. "Seriously," she tells me, "this thing
between the two of you, it's about you and her, not about
Gabe. She doesn't want him back. She just wants to mess
with you. It gives her satisfaction to make you miserable,
because you made her miserable when you started dating
him."
I give her my best skeptical look.
She steps back, flicks her brown curly hair over her
shoulder. This is a sign she means serious business. The
hands even go on her hips. She's got one of those fragile,
thin builds (and. yes, I've been jealous of that ever since
we were about ten and the differences in our body types
became clear to me), but she can generate presence when
she wants to be taken seriously. Like now. "What better way
lo upset you than to take something of Gabe's from you?
Then she gets to watch you go off."
Sandra nods her head over toward where Dana is standing
with some other girls. Dana's smirking in a way that—if
I'm honest—actually scares me. How can someone have the
look of a jack-o'-lantern and a model all at oncer "Look at
her," Sandra says. "She doesn't have the sweatshirt, so she
obviously hid it somewhere around here."
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
tfaD&1 Colli ai.Publi.jhs.rj
the bracelet
THOSE OBJECTS OF LIGHT . . . I know row what they all are:
items I lost during my lifetime. They have found their way
here, to return me to my own life, and—ohmygod—do I
ever want to go back.
It's strange that back in the art room when I became the
living me, she never seemed to realize there was . . . well,
another me—a dead one—hanging around somewhere.
But in a way it was also nice she didn't notice me. When I
became her, it meant I was truly . . . alive.
I want that experience again. I want to be with the people