“You knew better!” she yelled, and I spun toward my mom. She stood, and she was crying, and I couldn’t stand it, but there was nothing I could do. “You were grounded, and you went out drinking anyway. Sabine just got arrested for the same thing and you saw her in that place, but it didn’t sink in, did it? You went out and partied, and Tod paid for it. You got him killed!” Her legs folded and she dropped to her knees on the carpet.
Nash walked through me and sank to the floor with to her. He wrapped his arms around her and they cried, apologizing to each other over and over, mourning me together. And I could only watch, my fists clenched in frustration, separated from them by death, and life, and the devastating knowledge that things could have been different—but that would only have made them worse.
I sank into Nash’s chair, but the cushion didn’t squish beneath my weight. In my current state—present, but powerless—I couldn’t even affect the damn furniture, much less my family. I was no good to them like this. What was the point of making sure Nash lived, if he and my mom were both going to blame him for my death?
I had to take the job. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of killing people for the remainder of my afterlife—I wasn’t even sure I could actually do it—but I couldn’t let them spend the rest of their lives thinking he was responsible for how I died. Not when the truth was the other way around.
I left them like that, crying and forgiving each other for shouting what they thought was the truth. Bonding over my death.
In the living room, I stopped cold in the middle of the floor when my gaze landed on what I’d missed before. The cake. On the coffee table. The candles looked burned, and I knew I would have smelled them, if I were really there.
I moved forward slowly, dreading what I’d see, even as the understanding sank in. The cake would be chocolate, with cream cheese frosting between the layers. The same every year, because it was my favorite. And there it was, printed in blue letters, in my mother’s own curly cake script.
Happy Birthday Tod.
Today I would have turned eighteen.
I waited for the last bus of the evening with three other people, then stepped up through the folding doors when they closed behind the woman in front of me. The bus swayed beneath me as it rolled forward, but I wasn’t jostled, like the other passengers. As if the rules of physics that bound me were a little less precise than they should have been. I was only kind of there, thus only kind of on the bus, and I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was only one deep breath away from falling through the seat and onto the road, where the highway traffic would barrel right through me.
The bus stopped down the street from the hospital, and I didn’t fully relax until my feet kind of hit the concrete and the bus rolled away. Two blocks later, I passed two EMTs unloading a man on a stretcher on my way into the waiting room, wishing like hell I could feel the air-conditioning or smell the antiseptic and bleach.
Levi sat facing the entrance. Waiting for me. “Well?” He stood as I approached, forced to project determination in my bearing, since he couldn’t hear my bold, confident footsteps.
“I’m in.” And I would talk to my mother, even if it got me fired. I hadn’t expected an afterlife, so I wouldn’t be losing much if I died again—for real this time. At least this way she would know the truth.
“I thought you would be.” But Levi’s smile was slow, his thin brows slightly furrowed, and I understood that he was connecting more dots in his head, and he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the picture they formed. “Let’s go make it official.”
I still couldn’t feel the wind.
Levi swore that when I got better at dialing up and down my corporeality, I’d be able to feel and smell things without becoming visible or audible. But that level of competence was obviously going to take more than two days’ worth of practice.
For the moment, I was stuck with an all-or-nothing physicality, and since “nothing” had been deemed good enough for last night’s shift on the nursing home circuit—hopefully my first of many—I figured “all” would work for what I had planned for the morning.
The house looked brighter in the daylight. A little nicer, but no bigger. There were still only two bedrooms and still only two occupants. I was still both dead and homeless, and the previous day spent wandering through town and watching Nash unpack between video games did nothing to make those facts of the afterlife more appealing. But the chance to talk to my mom and set things right made everything else worth it.
Assuming I didn’t give my mother a heart attack.
In the shadow of the front porch roof, out of sight of most of the neighbors, I closed my eyes. I focused on what I should be hearing and feeling. The porch beneath me. The sweltering July heat. The buzz of bees hovering over a flowering vine climbing the porch post.
I thought about what I wanted. Day-to-day interaction in the afterlife is all about intent, Levi had said. Once you’ve gained some control, if you intend to be seen or heard by someone, you will be.
And I damn well intended to be both seen and heard.
Then, suddenly, I could feel it. All of it. Even the sun baking the backs of my calves, the only part of me not shielded by the porch roof. My smile was equal parts relief and triumph as I jogged down the steps, my own footsteps echoing in my ears. I nearly laughed out loud when my finally fully corporeal body cast a long shadow on the grass.
But both my laughter and my confidence died a moment later, when I stood at the door again. No matter how I approached the issue—and I’d thought of nothing else for the past two days—I came up empty. There was just no good way for a dead son to greet his mother almost two weeks after his funeral.
However, when the moment came, my lack of a plan ceased to matter. Fools may rush in, but only cowards run away.
So I knocked. Then I waited, the nervous pounding in my chest a steady reassurance that I’d actually achieved corporeality. That she’d be able to see me. If she ever answered the door.
And finally, the doorknob turned. I swallowed as the door creaked open, and there stood my mother, a sweating glass of soda in one hand. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and a smear of dirt streaked her forehead. Behind her, I saw dozens of moving boxes, most open and half-unpacked.
She blinked up at me, looking just like she had the day I’d died, except for the dark circles under her eyes.
Then she blinked again, and her mouth opened for an unspoken, probably unformed question. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the metal threshold, splattering us both with cold soda and ice cubes I was relieved to be able to feel.
I grinned, trying to hide my nerves. “At this rate, you’re not going to have any good glasses left.”
Her mouth closed, then opened again. “Tod?” she whispered, her voice unsteady. She thought she was seeing things.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me,” I said, ready to catch her if she collapsed. “Please don’t freak out.” But I should have known better—my mom wasn’t the freaking out type.
She reached for me with one trembling hand and cupped my jaw. Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re really here.”
“As of about five minutes ago, yeah.” I shrugged and couldn’t resist a real smile.
Heedless of the broken glass, she threw her arms around me and squeezed me so tight that I’d have been in trouble, if I’d actually needed to breathe. I hugged her back, reassuring her with my hard-won physicality until she finally let go and pulled me over the collateral damage and into the living room.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, the blues in her eyes swirling with a dizzying combination of confusion and wonder. “Is this real? Tell me this is real. Tell me you’re back, somehow, and I haven’t lost what’s left of my mind.”
“It’s real, Mom.” I wanted to stop there, without saying the part that would kill the new light in her eyes. “But I’m not back.”
She frowned, and that light dimmed, but wasn’t truly extinguished. “I don’t understand. You’re
alive.”
“Not in the traditional sense of the word.” I sat on the arm of the couch, pleased when the cushion sank beneath my weight. “But I think I’m pulling off a reasonable imitation. Check it out.” I spread my arms, inviting her to test my corporeality. “Pretty solid, right?”
She reached out hesitantly and laid one hand on the center of my chest. “But…your heart’s beating.”
“Nice trick, huh? I’m proud of that one.”
She pushed the front door closed with one hand, unwilling to break eye contact, and I could see her warring with denial and confusion. If she were a human mother, clueless about the non-human and post-death elements of the world until her dead son showed up on her doorstep, she’d probably already be in a straitjacket. “What’s going on, Tod? How are you here? I know of a few possibilities, but none of them are…” She dropped her gaze, and when she met mine again, the blues in her eyes had darkened with fear, or something close to that. “What happened?”
“You might want to sit down.”
“No, I think I’ll stand.”
I almost laughed. She always was stubborn. That’s where Nash got it.
“Fine.” I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face, my initial excitement wilting along with hers. “This would be so much easier if they actually issued black hoods,” I mumbled, still struggling for an opening line.
My mother froze, her eyes narrowing. “Reaper. You’re a reaper?”
I glanced at her in surprise. “Wow, first try. Remind me never to play twenty questions with you.”
“This is serious, Tod,” she insisted, her voice hushed even beyond the original whisper. She glanced toward the hallway, where music—something heavily melodic and moody—blared from Nash’s room, then tugged me past the swinging door into the kitchen. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“Uh, yeah, I do. The scythe was a little tricky at first, but—much like golf—turns out it’s all in the swing.” I mimed swinging a golf club, but she didn’t even crack a smile.
“I’m not kidding.” My mother pulled a chair away from the table and sank into it, her frown deepening by the second. “If you’ve signed on with the reapers, then you’re not really here. You’re not alive. I’m not even supposed to see you. They have rules against this kind of thing.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but as you might recall, I’ve never been much for rules….”
“This isn’t funny! Reapers don’t really die, but they don’t truly live either. You can’t possibly understand what that will do to you.”
I sighed and sank into the chair next to her, folding her hand in both of mine. “Mom.” I leaned forward, peering straight into her eyes. “I’m dead, not stupid. I know what I signed on for. Eternity in solitude. Gradual loss of humanity. General indifference toward the living, and a skewed perspective on both life and death.”
“Yes, and—”
“And…there’s the daily extermination of life. Which sucks. It all sucks. It’s not like I’m looking forward to spending the next thousand years alone, disconnected from the rest of the Earth’s population. But at least I’m here. I’m in your kitchen, solid and warm. I still have all my memories, and my own body, and…”
“It’s not the same,” she said. “You can’t just pick up where you left off. You’re here, but you can’t go back to school. You can’t graduate, or go to college, or get married. You can’t have a career, or a family. You’re just going to linger between life and death, sending other people on, but unable to follow them,” she finished, shoulders slumped like I’d somehow added to her burden instead of lifting it. “Reapers either fade from life or start to enjoy taking it. They don’t get happy endings, Tod.”
“I know. I know all of that, Mom.”
Her tears were back, and I couldn’t understand that. Where was the joy? The relief? Could it possibly hurt her worse to think of me as alone and slightly less than human than to think of me as dead and gone? “Then why would you do this?”
“Because the alternative sucks!” I stood fast enough that my chair skidded several inches behind me. “I thought you’d be happy. I’m still here, and I’m still me. Would you rather I crawl back into my coffin? Because I can, if that’s what you want.”
“No…” She stood and reached for me, but I backed away, and she looked bruised. “I’m sorry. I’m grateful for the chance to see you again. To get to touch you and talk to you. But honestly, the circumstances scare me. You may still be yourself now, but death changes you, Tod. There’s no escaping that. If you’re lucky, you can slow the process, but you can’t stop it. And I don’t want to see you change.”
“You won’t have to,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “As long as I have you and Nash, I’ll still be me. And after you’re gone, none of that will matter anyway. So why can’t you just be happy for me? This was the only way I’d get a chance to…” I stopped before I could say it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I wanted to tell her calmly, not on the tail end of a fight about my afterlife, which oddly mirrored every fight we’d ever had about my future—back when I’d still had one.
“A chance to what?” She waited expectantly, and suddenly I wished I could just tell her that I didn’t want my death to hurt her like my dad’s did.
That was true. But it wasn’t the reason I’d come, and I hadn’t signed up to ferry souls for all of eternity just to punk out on the most important truth I’d ever possessed.
“A chance to tell you that it’s not Nash’s fault. What happened…it wasn’t his fault, and you both have to stop blaming him.”
“I don’t blame him.” Guilt lined her face, though her irises held stubbornly still.
“You don’t blame my actual death on him, I know. But you both blame him for the circumstances. But you don’t understand what really happened. It wasn’t his fault. It was mine.”
“What does that mean? What happened that night, Tod?” she asked, sinking back into her chair, and I could tell from the dark thread of trepidation in her voice that she was starting to get the picture, even if it hadn’t come into focus for her yet.
I sat across from her, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, bracing myself for what had to be said, and for the possibility that she’d never look at me the same way again. “First, promise you won’t tell Nash. You have to make him understand that it wasn’t his fault, but you can’t tell him what really happened. It wouldn’t be fair to him.”
Knowing that he lived because I’d died—even if it was my choice—would lead to survivor’s guilt thick enough to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Okay…” Mom said, but I knew without asking that if she thought it was in his best interest to know, she’d tell him, no matter what she’d promised me. There was nothing more she could do for me, but he was still alive, and still her responsibility. Nash had to come first now. And I understood that.
“I’m not sure how much you know about Grim Reapers. Do you know what it takes to qualify…?” I asked, and the sudden startling comprehension in her eyes was answer enough.
“Oh Tod…”
“It’s okay, Mom. It was my choice.”
“It was supposed to be Nash?” She sounded stunned. Numb.
“Yeah.” I frowned when I could see where her thoughts were headed. “But you’re thinking about this all wrong. As much as I’d love to be remembered as a martyr—I’m sure that’d lead to some serious play in the afterlife—that’s not how it happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t watching him that night. I left to pick up my girlfriend, and I didn’t even check on him when I got back. Or at all. I don’t even really know when he snuck out. Then, when he called, I bitched about having to pick him up. I yelled at him on the ride home, telling him what a worthless pain in the ass he was.” I took a deep breath, then spit out the rest of it, to get the bitter taste off my tongue. “That’s the last thing he heard before that asshole slammed into us. The tru
th is that if I’d been watching him, he wouldn’t have been on that road in the first place.”
At first, she could only stare at me, trying to process everything. “So you…?”
“So when the reaper spelled it out for me, I had to do it. I couldn’t let me yelling at him be the last thing he ever heard.”
“I can’t believe you did that….” She scrubbed her face with both hands, and stray curls tumbled over them, effectively blocking me out. I had no idea what she was thinking or feeling.
My heart dropped into my stomach, and the tone of my entire afterlife suddenly seemed to depend on what she said next. On the judgment I would surely see in her eyes. Her hands fell from her face slowly and my mother stared at me through layers of pain and regret I couldn’t imagine. “I don’t think you even understand what you gave up for him. I don’t think you will, until we’re both long gone.”
“I don’t think you understand.” My own guilt was a strong, steady pressure on my chest, slowly compressing my lungs, sending an ache through my heart. “This wasn’t some noble gesture, Mom. I wouldn’t have had to save him if I hadn’t put him in the path of that car in the first place. I just needed you both to know that it wasn’t his fault. I made the call.”
Finally she nodded, though she looked like she wanted to argue. “Thank you. For all of it.”
I stood to go—I’d had all the post-death reunion I could stand for one day—and she stood with me.
“Are you going to get in trouble for this?” she asked. Translation: Am I going to lose you again?
“I don’t think so. My supervisor’s pretty cool, for a dead kid. He brought me here the other night, and I’m pretty sure he knows where I am now. If I get caught by someone else, he’ll deny knowledge, but he’s not gonna bust me himself.”
In retrospect, I’d realized what Levi obviously understood from the start. Watching my family mourn wouldn’t make me want to let them go. It would make me want to keep them close—and that was the only benefit worth accepting the job for.
“In that case, don’t be a stranger.” Her eyes teared up again and she sniffled, pulling me close for a hug. “It can’t be like it was before, but you’re welcome here any time.”