Abandon (2 page)

“It’s much better to forgive and forget, Pierce,” Dad says every time we speak. “Then you can move on. Your mother needs to learn that.”

But really, the term “forgive and forget” doesn’t make sense to me. Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn’t always healthy (just look at my parents).

But if we forget, we don’t learn from our mistakes.

And that can be deadly. Who knows this better than me?

So forgive? Sure, Dad.

But forget?

Even if I wanted to, I can’t.

Because there’s someone who won’t let me.

I don’t blame Mom for wanting to come back to the island where she was born and raised, even if it
is
ungodly hot, often battered by hurricanes, and may or may not have clouds of mystery chemicals billowing around it, in the same way I picture the evil that tumbled from the box poor Pandora opened and then let loose on humanity.

But if anyone had mentioned to me before I moved here that the name of the place meant Island of Bones in English — and
why
the Spanish explorers who’d found it
had named it that — I probably would never have agreed to go along with Mom’s “we’re going to make a new start in Isla Huesos” plan.

Especially since it’s hard to make a new start in a place where you met the very person who keeps popping up to ruin your life over and over again.

Only I could hardly mention
that
to my mother, either. The fact that I’d ever even been to Isla Huesos once before was supposed to be this big secret (not a
bad
secret. Just a secret between us girls, Mom always said).

That’s because Dad can’t stand Mom’s family, which he feels (not without some justification) is filled with convicts and kooks, not exactly proper role models for his only child. Mom had made me promise never to tell him about the day trip we took to her father’s funeral when I was seven.

So I’d promised. What did I know? I’d never told…

…especially the part about what happened
after
the funeral, in the cemetery. The truth was, I never really thought I
had
to tell anyone, since Grandma knew all about it.

And grandmas never let anything bad happen. Not to their only granddaughters.

So I didn’t even know anyone at Mom’s party except Mom and Alex and Grandma, all of whom had sat in the same row with me at Grandpa’s funeral. That had been a decade earlier, back when Mom’s brother was still in jail.

Uncle Chris wasn’t adjusting very well to life on the “outside.” He didn’t seem to know quite what to do, for instance, whenever one of the caterers walked over to refill his champagne flute.
Instead of just saying, “No, thank you,” Uncle Chris would cry, “Mountain Dew!” and jerk his glass out of the way, so the champagne would pour all over the pool patio instead.

“I don’t drink,” Uncle Chris would say sheepishly. “I’m sticking to Mountain Dew.”

“I’m so sorry, sir,” the caterer would reply, looking with dismay at the growing puddle of Veuve Clicquot at our feet.

I decided I liked Uncle Chris, even if Dad had warned me that he would embark on a dark reign of terror and revenge immediately upon his release from prison.

But all I’d ever seen him do since I’d gotten to Isla Huesos — where he now lived with Grandma, who’d been raising Alex in his absence because Alex’s mom had run off when he was just a baby, after Uncle Chris was sent away to prison — was sit on the couch and obsessively watch the Weather Channel, sipping Mountain Dew.

But Alex’s dad did kind of scare me in one way: He had the saddest eyes of anyone I had ever seen.

Except maybe one other person.

But I was trying hard not to think about
him.
Just like I tried never to think about when I died.

Some people, however, were making both those things extremely difficult.

“Not everyone who dies and comes back,” I said carefully to Uncle Chris, “has the exact same experience —”

It was right as I was saying this that Grandma came teetering down the steps of the back porch on her little high heels. Unlike Uncle Chris and Alex, she’d made an effort to dress up, and had
on a filmy beige dress and one of her own hand-knitted silk scarves.

“There you are, Pierce,” she said, in a voice that made it sound like she was annoyed. “What are you doing out here? All these people are waiting inside to meet you. Come on, I want you to say hello to Father Michaels —”

“Oh, hey,” Alex said, brightening. “I wonder if he knows.”

“Knows what?” Grandma asked, looking bewildered.

“What the light was that Pierce saw when she died,” Alex said. “I think it was the Pearly Gates. But Pierce says scientists say it’s…what do they say it is again, Pierce?”

I swallowed. “A hallucination,” I said. “Scientists say they’ve gotten the same results in test subjects who weren’t dying, by using drugs and electrodes to their brains. Some of them saw a light, too.”

“That’s
what you’re standing out here doing?” Grandma asked, looking shocked. “Committing blasphemy?”

After I died and came back, my grades took a downward plunge. That’s when my guidance counselor at the Westport Academy for Girls, Mrs. Keeler, recommended that my parents find something outside of academics in which to get me interested. Children who fail to do well in school can often still be successful in life, Mrs. Keeler assured my parents, if they discover something else in which to “engage.”

Eventually, I did find an interest outside of academics in which to “engage.” One that ended up getting me kicked out of the Westport Academy for Girls and landed me here on Isla Huesos, which some people call paradise.

I’m pretty sure the people who call Isla Huesos paradise never met my grandma.

“No,” Alex said with a laugh. “Blasphemy would be saying the light is coming from between the legs of their new mom as they’re being born into their next life. Of course, if you were Hindu, that wouldn’t be blasphemy at all.”

Grandma looked like she’d just bitten into a lemon.

“Well, Alexander Cabrero,” she said sharply. “You are not Hindu. And you may also want to remember that I’m the one making the payments on that junk heap you call a car. If you’d like me to keep on doing so, you might want to think about being a little more respectful.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Alex murmured, looking down at the champagne puddle on the ground while, beside him, his father did the same, after quickly removing his baseball cap.

Grandma glanced over at me, seeming to force her expression into something a little softer.

“Now, Pierce,” she said. “Why don’t you come inside and say hello to Father Michaels? You won’t remember him, of course, from Grandpa’s funeral, because you were too young, but he remembers you and is so happy you’ll be joining our little parish.”

“You know what?” I said. “I’m not feeling so good.” I wasn’t making it up either. The heat was starting to feel oppressive. I wished I could undo a few of the buttons in the front of my too-tight dress. “I think I need some air.”

“Then come inside,” Grandma said, looking bewildered again. “Where it’s air-conditioned. Or it would be if your mother hadn’t opened all the doors —”

“What did I do now, Mother?” Mom appeared on the back porch and snagged a cocktail shrimp from the tray of a passing caterer. “Oh, Pierce, there you are. I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.” Then she saw my face and said, “Honey, are you all right?”

“She says she needs some fresh air,” Grandma said, still looking bewildered. “But she’s standing outside. What’s wrong with her? Did she take her medication today? Are you
sure
Pierce is ready to go back to school, Deb? You know how she is. Maybe she —”

“She’s fine, Mother,” Mom interrupted. To me, she said, “Pierce —”

I lifted my head. Mom’s eyes seemed darker than usual in the porch light. She looked pretty and fresh in her white jeans and loose, silky top. She looked perfect. Everything was perfect. Everything was going to be great.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, trying to keep down the panicky sob I felt rising in my throat.

“Go, then, honey,” Mom said, leaning down from the porch to press on my forehead with her hand as if she were feeling for a fever. She smelled like she always did, of her perfume and something Mom-like. Her long dark hair swept my bare shoulder as she kissed me. “It’s fine. Just don’t forget to turn on your bicycle lights so people can see you.”

“What?” Grandma sounded incredulous. “You’re just letting her go on a bike ride? But it’s the middle of the party.
Her
party.”

Mom ignored her.

“Don’t make any stops,” she said to me. “Stay on your bike.”

I turned around without saying another word to Alex and Uncle Chris, who were both staring at me in astonishment, and headed straight for the side yard where my new bike was parked. I didn’t look back.

“And, Pierce?” Mom called after me.

My shoulders tensed. What if what Grandma had said made her change her mind?

But all she added was “Don’t be too long. A storm is coming.”

E
veryone wants to
believe that there’s something else — something great — waiting for them on the other side. Paradise.

Valhalla. Heaven. Their next — hopefully less horrible — life.

It’s just that I’ve
been
to the other side. So I know what’s there.

And it’s not paradise. At least, not right away.

It’s a truth I’ve had to bear alone, because nothing good has happened to the few people with whom I’ve shared it.

So sometimes I just have to get out before I say — or do — something I’ll regret. Otherwise, something bad will happen.

He
will happen.

Mom understood. Not about him, of course — she didn’t know about him — but about my needing to get out. That’s why she let me go.

Tearing down the hill from our new house, the breeze in my hair instantly cooling me off, all I could think about was Grandma.

“Man? What man?”

That’s what Grandma said the other day at her house when I got up off the couch, where I’d been sitting watching the Weather Channel with Uncle Chris, and followed her into the kitchen to ask her about Grandpa’s funeral…more specifically, what had happened in the cemetery afterwards.

“You know,” I said. “The man I told you about. The one with the bird.”

We’d never had a chance to speak about it again. Not since the day it happened. Not only was that day supposed to be a secret — just between us girls, Mom and me — Grandma and I had never been in the same room together again, thanks to Dad.

As the years went by, what actually happened that afternoon in the cemetery began to seem more and more like a dream. Maybe it really
had
been just a dream. How could any of it have actually happened? It was impossible.

Then I died.

And I realized that what I’d seen that day in the cemetery not only hadn’t been a dream, it had been the singularly most important thing that had ever happened to me in my life. Well, up until my heart stopped.

“Go outside and play for a little while,” Grandma had said. “Your mom’s busy right now. I’ll come get you when we’re done.”

She and Mom had been in the cemetery sexton’s office after the funeral, signing the last of the paperwork for Grandpa’s tomb.

Maybe I had been a little fidgety. I think I’d knocked something over on the sexton’s desk. I wouldn’t be surprised. Like my cousin Alex, who’d also been there, I’d always had a problem paying attention.

Unlike Alex, my problem resulted in being less, not more, heavily supervised. Because I was a girl, and what kind of trouble could a girl get into?

I remember Mom looking up from whatever forms she was helping Grandma to fill out. She’d smiled at me through her tears.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she’d said. “Go on outside. Just stay close. It’ll be all right.”

I had stayed close. Back then, I always listened to my mother.

I found the dove just a dozen yards or so from the cemetery sexton’s office. It was limping along the path between the tombs, one wing dragging along behind it, obviously broken. I immediately raced after it, trying to scoop it up, since I knew if I brought it back to my mom, she’d be able to help. She loved birds.

But I just ended up making things worse. The bird panicked and half flew, half leaped into the side of a nearby crypt, crashing against the bricks.

Then it just lay there. As I hurried to its side, I realized with horror that it was dead.

Naturally, I began to weep. I’d already felt pretty sad, considering the fact that I’d just been at the funeral of a grandparent I’d never met, then been kicked out of the cemetery sexton’s office for my misbehavior. Now this?

That’s when the man had come along the path. To me, a first grader, he’d seemed impossibly tall, almost a giant, even after he knelt down beside me and asked why I was crying.

Looking back, I realize he was only in his teens, hardly a man at all. But as tall as he was, and given that he was dressed all in black, he’d seemed much older to me than his actual years.

“I was t-trying to help,” I’d said, nearly incoherent with sobs, as I pointed to the bird. “She was hurt. But then I scared her and made it worse. Now she’s dead. It was an ac-ac-accident.”

“Of course it was,” he said, reaching down to scoop up the limp, fragile body in one hand.

“I don’t want to go to hell,” I wailed.

“Who said you were going to hell?” he asked, looking bemused.

“That’s where murderers go,” I informed him tearfully. “My grandma told me.”

“Well, you aren’t a murderer,” he assured me. “And I think you’ve a bit of time before you have to start worrying about where you’re going after you die.”

I wasn’t supposed to speak to strangers. My parents had drilled this into my head.

But this stranger seemed nice enough. And my mother was only just down the path, inside the office. I was sure I was safe.