18 Truths (2 page)

I had a while to figure it out, I supposed. I sought out God in my studies—though we didn’t have teachers here; class was more like homeschooling ourselves. There were plenty of books…Olga would’ve been happy to know that. I was pretty sure her idea of Heaven included an unlimited supply of books and coffee.

So, I tried to figure out the God stuff. I mean, He was real, obviously. But Leo told me my job now was to get to know Him, and I had no idea how to do that. I mean, the Dude didn’t even visit! I just wished I would’ve had my, “Luke, I am your Father,” moment a little sooner in life. Then, if Olga was in Heaven, I would’ve been there with her. Pretty much, before I died, the only religion I knew had been Star Wars. I didn’t claim to be an expert on much, but nobody could deny my status as a Jedi Master when it came to all things created by George Lucas.

I figured if Darth Vader could overthrow the emperor at the last second and still be saved, then maybe that was what Juvie was all about. God wasn’t through with us yet. We all had a little bit of Luke and Vader in us; we just had to choose which one we were going to listen to the most.

Bo took a seat at the picnic table and poured himself a bowl of cereal. “What’s eating your brain? You’ve been quiet since we stepped in here.”

“Star Wars,” I answered through a mouthful of chocolate chip pancakes. Piles of food mysteriously appeared on the tables at mealtimes, but then they also magically disappeared after an hour, so you had to be quick.

“Dude, that horse is dead. Time to put the stick down.”

The orange juice I sipped squirted out of my nose a little as I let loose a laugh. “Look around, dude. Reality has absolutely no place in my world.”

I got sidetracked by the sight of Julia eyeballing me from across the table with those big baby blues of hers. She had the look of a girl who knew she was exceptionally beautiful and knew that you knew it, too.

“What?” I mumbled.

“You have bed head.”

Julia reached over and smoothed down my hair. We’d been going steady for four weeks now, my new record. Our courting was proof we weren’t trying to create a Utopian Society here by any means. So far, our relationship had been filled with happiness and disappointment, confusion and clarity, and all the other things, good and bad, that made dating interesting.

She leaned away from me, shaking her blonde-streaked brown hair as she plopped back down on the bench. Her yellow sundress gave her an angelic glow, but this one was no angel, which was what I liked about her. Julia was about as far away from Olga as I could get, so there weren’t many reminders about the girl I lost when we hung out together.

“You sleep well, handsome?” Her waggling eyebrows seemed to suggest to everyone else at the table that we fooled around last night before our midnight curfew.

“Sure,” I agreed, but my tone conveyed otherwise. Last night was the first time we advanced past kissing and rounded second base, so I should’ve had sweet dreams and all that. I didn’t know why, but I felt so guilty afterwards. Okay, so I lived in the Underworld and was much more aware of sinning or whatever. But that wasn’t really what bothered me. It felt like I cheated on Olga, which sounded crazy since I was never gonna be with her.

“Aw, what’s wrong?” Julia asked in her annoying, puppy dog voice.

“I dunno,” I answered, bringing my best analysis of the situation I was in to the table.

Julia shot me a dirty look, but Bo intervened and started telling her about the weird dream he had last night. We all had weird dreams here, and we told them in detail, almost like ghost stories around a campfire.

I got so lost in deep thought about my Olga dreams that my brain had to travel a few dimensions back to present when the food disappeared and Julia called my name.

She stood behind me now, wrapping me in a hug. It didn’t even come close to producing the warmth Olga’s arms had once held for me, but it was the best substitute I could find here.

Stretching my arms above my head like a cat, I stood and faced her. “You’re hot,” I said ruefully.

She laughed. She had a nice laugh.

“How do you view our relationship?” she asked.

The weight of our four-week courtship settled upon me at last. Here was Julia. In an otherwise miserable existence, she’d brought a little light to my life of late. But she wasn’t Olga. She was a carefree indulgence on my part. Did I hope my attraction would bloom into something more like love at some point? Sure, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

“I’m crushing on you, girl. You know this.”

My answer possessed a nugget of truth, but her eyes flashed for a second and I was pretty sure I pissed her off. Clearly, she viewed me as more already.

“It’s just that, like, it feels like there’s this invisible wall between us. Can we talk about the accident?”

“No,” I deadpanned.

“Conner, please. You’ve never opened up to me about it, and I think it would help us grow closer. I told you my death story.”

She talked about dying a lot. She was an artist and into painting all these watercolors depicting her drug overdose. In truth, I’d experience never-ending shame if I died from swallowing too many pills. What a stupid way to die.

“What’s there to dissect? I took my annual first spring sail on Lake Michigan with my best friend. Lightning struck me. I wasn’t wearing a life jacket, and the voltage and hypothermia formed a deadly combo, inducing cardiac arrest.”

Truth: just the thought of that day made my throat close up. I knew now how wide, high, and deep this galaxy was, but this conversation had a way of making me feel claustrophobic.

Julia eyeballed me again, probably trying to gauge my mood to see if she could push me, but all I gave her in return was a glassy stare.

“Why does it take so much effort to even make cracks in you? Why do you act this way? We’re here to heal. You can’t do that by bottling everything up.”

I felt my body bending away from her without actually moving. “Ugh, Julia. I don’t know. Maybe I can’t let myself move on because I don’t know what happened to Olga. Did she die too? Is she in Heaven? Did she survive the accident? Is she happy if I’m gone? Because honestly, even though people here constantly surround me, I feel alone and I don’t know why that is other than my best friend isn’t here with me. And that’s what keeps me up at night, all the dreams about her. But there’s also not a damn thing I can do about it, is there? Because nobody likes to give us real answers around here.”

There was a gleam in her eyes, like she understood. “Thank you. I just wanted you to acknowledge the elephant in the room. You’ve put Olga on this pedestal, and I’m never gonna live up to your hero. I’m tired of competing. You can’t date a memory, but you can date me.”

I couldn’t help myself. This was my Achilles’ heel—I couldn’t stand to have anyone angry with me, so I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “You’re right. And I do want to date you, okay?”

On her tiptoes, Julia pressed her forehead into mine and we saw eye to eye, literally and figuratively. I’d become that good at lying—able to look someone in the eye and still bear false testimony. Our lips touched briefly, and as we hugged, I promised myself I’d truly focus on Julia. I’d focused all my thoughts on Olga, and it was time to get them back… because she wasn’t coming back.

“Oh, looks like we have an audience, honey.”

I twisted to get a look at what she saw behind me.

“Olga?” I whispered. I dropped my hands from around Julia and turned to face Olga completely.

“Olga?” I repeated, this time at a regular volume but my voice cracking. Then I shouted, “Olga!” and ran to her.

It turned out that my first impulse wasn’t to drop down to my knees and propose. Instead, I touched her. I wanted to make sure she was real. Lifting her off the ground, I swung her around and around again.

Truth: God, if this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.

“You can’t change the truth,
but the truth can change you.”
—Anonymous

ne month ago*

Growing up, when I thought about spirit guides, I thought of the Native American legends and Disney movies portraying bears, horses, and wolves who offered advice and comfort to the heroes in stories. I definitely never imagined
I’d
become a spirit guide, or that they were even real.

I crossed my legs again, the torn vinyl seat cover scratching against my thigh, and flipped through the same
Stone Soup
children’s magazine for the fifth time. If I didn’t occupy my hands, I might break down the light brown door where Dr. Judy waited with a black hole, ready to suck away the future I spent the past year building for myself.

“What’s taking so long?” Nate asked in a not-so-quiet voice, brushing a muscular arm against my own, sending chills down my spine.

Behind us, a secretary sat at a desk in the receptionist area, noisily working over a piece of gum like a cow chewing his dinner, and I could smell the cinnamon flavor from my seat.

“Shh,” I answered him, trying not to blush—something I should have been able to manage since I’m dead, but nope. Amazingly, our bodies were carbon copies of when we were alive. The only thing really changed was that we could walk through walls and appear at random places, just by willing ourselves to go there, which was pretty stinkin’ cool.

“Why?” He trained his blue-green eyes on me, making me itch to go back in time to twelve hours ago.

Back to Lake Michigan, him serenading me with the
Summertime
song he wrote about us, strumming his guitar. Back before we knew we’d been dead for the past year.

Pretty much back before everything suddenly became so complicated.

“They can’t hear us, remember?” He gestured around the therapist’s office waiting room.

I uncrossed my legs and snatched glances at the other people in the waiting area. One teen girl like me clenched her hands together in a worrying knot. A man with a Detroit Lions ball cap pulled low sat next to a tiny elderly woman wearing a blue scarf around her neck, looking lost and frightened. I blinked back tears, thinking about my parents visiting
my
therapist for grief counseling.

When I say therapist, I do so using air quotes in my mind because Dr. Judy isn’t a real one—she’s a spirit guide like us… well, like we were going to be. I wasn’t even sure what the job entailed, but Nate and I were about to find out. Dr. Judy was our spirit guide after we died, we just didn’t know it until today.
Or that we were even dead!
I was having a hard time processing that truth.

I studied Nate, the weight of the world on his shoulders, making him slump in his seat. Yup, it had been one of those days.

“Do you know any good jokes?” Nate asked with a half-crooked smile. “Because I could sure use one right now.”

I took his hand in mine and squeezed. “We both could, but nope. Witty sarcasm is more my thing.”

Nate leaned toward me and pressed his forehead against mine, his coffee colored hair slipping over his left eye. I felt his breath on my lips, the fresh scent of spearmint washing over me. Somehow, everything about Nate reminded me of my favorite things.

I sighed, not wanting to disappoint him. “What did the ocean say to the sand?”