I Woke Up Dead at the Mall (2 page)

Bertha looked down at her sad shoes. “You'll see your family at your funeral and say your
final
goodbyes then. We don't haunt the living. We let go, and we move on.”

“Are you completely and totally sure that I was murdered? Really?”
I repeated it louder, harsher, but she waved me away, which I hated as much as I hated having my personal space invaded.

“I'll meet you and the others tomorrow at our Staples store, after breakfast. You should take a bed in the Crate and Barrel for now. That serves as the girls' dormitory for you and your roomie! Well. Good night!”

She started to click-clack away, but I called after her. “Okay, if you won't tell me who killed me, at least tell me what I should do now.”

She sighed, and it looked like she was trying to remain upbeat while dealing with a fool.

“Shop! Help yourself to whatever you need or want. Food, clothing, books, and so on. Crate and Barrel has some lovely throw pillows. You may be here for…a while. Oh. And everything is free.”

Welcome to the Mall of the Dead.

Please be completely honest in your answers so that your death coach can help you to move on. We don't know what you did back on earth. We only know how you died. We don't know when you're lying. But you do.

Please note: You will not move on to heaven or hell. Heaven and hell are back on earth. Your mission now is to return there
.

When I was alive, I didn't really care all that much about clothes. Well, I cared a medium amount. But right now, I had an urgent need to stop looking like a walking slice of fruit. I began exploring the stores available to me.

Our floor (the Floor of the Dead?) surrounded the dizzying mallverse below. I leaned over the railing and peered into the semidarkness. The roller coasters off to my right were fast asleep. Looking around this top floor, every store was brightly lit and fully stocked. But there were no cashiers, no salespeople or customers. The only people I saw were those slow-walking ones who didn't speak, and they never went inside any of the stores.

I took a small wheelie suitcase and roamed the stores, seeking the necessities of life. Or death. I headed directly into Anthropologie. Hello, soft dark skinny jeans. Hello, pale blue cotton V-neck T-shirt with no words on it. Goodbye, uncomfortable, ugly, unnatural gown. Hello, strappy sandals. I don't mind (too much) that you show my mango
pedicure. Goodbye, old-lady pearl earrings. Hello, dangly silver wires. Hello, big, shiny trash can. Would you like a whole lot of mango chiffon?

I was starting to feel like myself again.

Now that I was dead, could I see my mother again? Where was she? Why didn't she come greet me? I looked around as if she might be sneaking up behind me. It was a little hard to realize how much I ached to see my mom. I needed her now, more than ever.

“Mom,” I whispered. “We're both dead now. Please come see me? Please help me?”

Thinking about her, I was suddenly bursting with a million questions about life, death, afterlife, God, war, ghosts, reincarnation, karma, heaven, angels, Mount Olympus, my hamster, my cat, recycling, to be or not to be, and why good things happened to bad people. I was dead. I could have the answers to everything. Tomorrow, with Bertha, I could unlock the secrets of the universe. At the Staples store.

At Ulta, I unleashed my hair from its windswept prison. I found a brush that promised to promote shine and health in my hair. The giant mirror magnified my face to the tenth power, which is always terrifying, so I flipped it around to life-size.

What a very normal, alive activity this was. I let myself fall into a trance as I brushed and brushed. I even started humming a little bit, which helped break the huge block of silence that surrounded me. I studied the reddish-brownish straight-as-a-pin hair that I inherited from Mom. My skin was littered with a few faint freckles that you had to be thisclose to me to see. My eyes were a grayish blue/bluish gray. I stared at my
reflection and brushed. Who killed me? Why? How? And did the police catch them already? (Please!)

Backing out of the store, I bumped into a young woman who was one of the mall walkers I had seen before. She had long straw-blond hair and was wearing a baggy oatmeal-colored dress.

“Sorry,” I said. But she just kept walking, staring straight ahead.

“Okay then!” I shouted. “Great talking with you. Catch you on the next lap.”

She didn't even slow down. Just kept walking.

I sat down on a bench and watched the mall walkers. The next person to pass by was a woman dressed in an embarrassing Goth Girl outfit. Black hair, lips, nails, clothes, and enough eyeliner to circle the globe. Oh, honey.

“Hey!” I shouted. “How's it going?”

She didn't slow down either. Next up was a guy dressed in some kind of wizardy/
Game of Thrones
robe, but I let him keep walking. There was a long, oppressive silence. But then I saw him. A boy. Fresh-scrubbed, like a kid who lived on some wholesome farm. But his face held a stony sadness that took my breath away. He kept coming toward me.

“Hey!” My voice was unrecognizably deep. It felt like sandpaper in my throat. “Just keep walking! Okay? Keep walking!” But he stopped, right in front of me. His vacant eyes fixed on me. Sort of.

“What?” I asked him, as if I were daring him to utter a single word.

The zombie boy's mouth dropped open, just like
The Scream
. His mouth got so big, I sort of thought it might reach
the floor. But then he let out a small cry, followed by two words: “No…more…”

He looked up to the ceiling as his face turned to ash. Then his body, his arms, his legs, all dissolved into ash. He was, ever so briefly, a sculpture of ash suspended in the air. And then the ashes dropped to the floor. He was gone. The air smelled faintly like someone had just blown out birthday candles.

I wanted to scream-cry-run, scream-cry-run, scream-cry-run. But I didn't. I closed my eyes. Tight.

I wanted my mom. I wanted her to hug me and tell me that everything would be okay. Wow. I hadn't let myself long for her in so many years, and now it felt like the need was reaching out from the deepest part of me and taking over. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter.

Maybe when I opened them, this would all be some fever dream and it would be over. I'd be back at the hotel, with my dad and Karen hovering over me, smiling in relief that I was back with them. It would be like that last scene in
The Wizard of Oz
. Everyone was worried about me, but now I was okay.

I opened my eyes and looked in every direction: mall, mall, mall, mall. One huge damn mall. So I closed them again. Obviously this place was way more dangerous than Bertha had let on.

“Murdered.” The word flashed like a beacon inside my head. Murdered. Why? Who? Why? I spoke out loud but very quietly. “I want to get out of here. I want my dad. I want my life. I want my room. I want my music, my stuffed animals, and my phone, and everything else. I even want pop quizzes and paper cuts. Help. Please.”

I wasn't exactly praying. Just talking. “Mom. Mommy? Are
you out there somewhere? Can you hear me? Please, please help me.”

Bertha's words ricocheted in my skull: I had to finish the unfinished business of my life. Then again, my life was nothing but unfinished business. I was unfinishable.

Whatever had been sustaining me so far disintegrated. The breathless shock of the new (dead) world I inhabited took a damn breath, as something inside me fell away, fragile as a robin's egg, and I let myself tumble into tears. It was a deep, hard cry that rattled my shoulders, jackknifed my knees, and sliced me in two. I was dead. Someone had hated me enough to kill me. I felt as thin and lost as that boy who had just turned to ash.

The sound coming from me was a kind of keening, terrible song. Eventually I formed the word “help.” Not very loud, not very clear, but on and on. Help, help, help. I have no idea how long it took me to figure out that someone was sitting next to me, whispering, “Shhhhhh. I'll help you.”

I felt a cool hand on my left shoulder. It belonged to the straw-blond girl.

“I'll help you,” she said. “I'm awake now. Can you take me to Bertha?”

I jumped to my feet and let out a small scream. The other walkers kept walking, but this one was smiling at me. I stood there, openmouthed and stupid.

“Who are you?” I asked, and yes, I did sound scared. “What do you want?”

“I'm Alice,” the girl said. “I just want to sit down.” And she did.

“I'm Sarah,” I answered.

“You just died. Is that right?” she asked. She looked extra-happy to be sitting. So I nodded and sat down too.

Alice didn't seem dangerous. She seemed pretty tame.

She was staring at the stores around her as if she had just landed on a space station.

“I'm fine. Really.” I used my best fake I'm-an-electronic-device voice so that I sounded more together than I felt.

Alice was a bit dreamy, staring at her surroundings. “The last time I was awake, this was a shopping mall. But it seems bigger now. Shinier. I don't recognize any of the names.”

“The last time you were awake?” I asked. I didn't need to fake calm anymore. I was calm. And curious.

“I died a long time ago. I've awakened twice before. This time I really need to move on. I need to”—her eyes searched the stores, as if they carried the right words—
“get over it.”
Those were the words she settled on. “I have to
get over it all and move on
. This walking is the worst thing in the world, believe me.”

(Here's what I didn't say: I just saw one of the mall walkers burst into ash, so the walking part might not be the worst thing in the world. I didn't say that because she looked way too fragile to hear it.)

I finally took a moment to really look at her. She should have been a figure in some tea-colored picture from Ellis Island or a PBS show my dad would want me to watch.

“When did you die?” I asked.

She smiled knowingly. “I died in 1933. And Bertha died twenty-two years before me.”

“You died in the Great Depression. Bertha has been dead for over a century. I died today. We're all here at the mall,” I said, just needing to work with some big, fat headline facts.

“Would you mind if we went to the girls' dormitory?” she asked. “I've been walking since 1999. I could use a rest.”

The mall was dark and dreamlessly quiet, simulating nighttime, I guess. I wondered if it would do this darkness thing every night. Alice stopped in Talbots and bought (well,
took
) the most awful granny nightgown I've ever seen. Inside Crate & Barrel we made our way past patio furniture and found a collection of beds with an excessive number of blankets and throw pillows on top of them. Did Bertha put them there?

“Perfect!” Alice exclaimed. She was pulling back the covers on a four-poster bed and settling in. “I've always loved sleeping here,” said Alice.

“Why?” I asked.

“No nightmares,” she replied. “We dead have no dreams of any kind. And after my long, walking nightmare, this is just what I need: it's like a little taste of death. Or at least what I used to think death would be like.”

Okay then.

“Good night, Sarah!” Alice called out, half breath/half voice. “Sleep well.”

I'd never been good at falling asleep in strange places. And this was by far the strangest place I'd ever been. So here I was. In bed. Awake.

Closing my eyes, I stared into the darkness before me. To be or not to be. To sleep, perchance to dream.

At the mall.