I Woke Up Dead at the Mall (21 page)

Alice came running to me first, practically screaming with delight and launching a hug-fest here in the Mall of the Dead. But when she hugged me, she whispered in my ear, “It's over now. You must never go back.”

“You're awake! Excellent!” Lacey cried as she hugged me so hard I thought she might crack my ribs. If someone had told me on our first day in the mall that Lacey and I would end up completely overjoyed to see each other, I would have drowned that person in sarcasm. But here we were.

Lacey's face was different than I remembered it, or at least the look in her eyes was completely changed. They were open and curious, and her facial muscles were a lot more relaxed. She looked younger than ever. This must be what letting go looks like. Lacey was a new Lacey.

Bertha welcomed me (and my now rose-pink bracelet) back with open arms. And to her credit she didn't utter the phrase “I told you so” once. At least, not yet. Each and every time I stretched my tired muscles, I smiled. And I meant it.

Alice understood everything, rushing us all to the food court, where Declan and I could put our feet up and recover.

The taste of bread and salty butter was so simple, perfect, and complete, I nearly started crying. The sound of conversation had magic in it, even when it was Declan complaining that his bracelet was not a flattering shade of pink. (“I'm an Autumn. I need something with more yellow!”)

“Sarah.” Bertha spoke gently. “I'm certain that the group would benefit from hearing about your recent walking experience. You know, it's highly unusual for someone to walk for such a brief time.”

Time. I had forgotten about time.

“How long was I walking?” I asked. “A few hours?”

“Five days.” Bertha said it like it was nothing. Five days of nonstop walking. I was right on the cusp of complaining about this when Alice caught my eye. She had been in the afterlife since 1933. She had walked for years at a shot. I should maybe shut the hell up. So I did.

“The really fun part was how I got to relive my death over and over again. There are lots of unpleasant ways to die, and puking your guts up is somewhere on that list. Probably near the top. Anyway, I relived it a lot. Probably from the moment I first took the poison to the moment I left my body. Over and over again.”

“Gross,” Lacey said under her breath, which was louder than most people's normal volume.

“Yeah, gross,” I agreed. “But then I had these other dreams. I think I was haunting. Just a little. First I was at my home, and my dad was there—”

Bertha was all aflutter. I think she twitched whenever anybody used the word “haunting.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Bertha corrected me. “You were not dreaming, and you were certainly not haunting. That's quite impossible. You never left the mall, I assure you.”

“Trust me. I was haunting,” I replied.

“I'm sure you
think
you were haunting.” She spoke to me like I was an idiot child. “But you weren't. It's impossible.”

I took my feet off the table and leaned toward her.

“Oh, I was haunting, all right,” I said, but she shook her head. “And you know what else? I've haunted before. At night. When I went to sleep, I had dreams, but the dreams were real. And while I was mall-walking, I dreamed that I saw my dad and Karen at a doctor's office. He totally trusts her now.”

“You're just tired, dear.” She was in full-on I'm-talking-to-a-fool mode.

“Hey! Did we just have the exact same dream?” Declan asked. “There was a lady talking to you. And you know what? I had another dream where I got to hydrate my skin at Ulta.”

“That was my mother you saw,” I explained. “And it wasn't a dream. I don't know why it happens, but I have these weird haunting episodes with people who are connected to my old life.”

“Wow. Yeah. I could feel like you were pulling me into these dreams. I went to Ulta.” Declan touched his face gently. “It really happened. So I was haunting,” he said.

“Impossible!” Bertha declared, in what was clearly a losing battle. “The dead don't dream!”

Declan ignored her, leaning across the table like he was
sharing juicy gossip with me. “Wasn't it creepy when she was rubbing his hands like that?” he asked.

“I know, right? And the way
he
apologized to
her
!” I added. “I wish I could deck her, I really do.”

“You're making this up,” Bertha insisted, but Declan talked over her.

“This was real,” he said. (A moment of insecurity: Declan is the person supporting my argument. Is that good?) “Karen is most definitely trying to kill Sarah's father. And now he thinks that if he hears Sarah, it's all in his head, like she's an illusionation. Sarah and I saw the whole thing.”

(Okay. Vocabulary issues aside, go Declan.)

Bertha's mouth fell open as I spoke. “And I'm going to save him. Just you watch. Where can I find the Boy? I need to go back. Again.”

This was Bertha speechless: mouth open, eyes wide, perfectly still.

I kind of enjoyed it.

Bertha refused to help me. “It was a mistake the first time. Why would you want to repeat a bad mistake?” And other stuff. For me, her words all dissolved into “blah blah blah.”

Lacey, Alice, and Declan looked at each other. They were the picture of reluctance.

“I don't want to go see them,” Lacey blurted out. “I think the Boy is a little bit crazy. And besides, when they look at me I feel like they know all my secrets. Even the ones I don't know myself. They scare me.”

“They terrify me,” Alice whispered.

“I'll go with you,” Declan offered with a shrug. “Who's the Boy, again?”

“That's okay, you guys,” I conceded. “I'll go and talk to them alone.”

I went to Toys“R”Us. And just started talking. To myself. (Remember how we're not judging?)

“Are you here? Boy? Oprah? Old Testament Guy? Mother Teresa? Oprah?”

There was no answer, but that wasn't stopping me. “Here's the thing. I need to go back to Earth one more time. I need to finish saving my dad. So. Would you please tell Bertha to get that elevator going and send me back?” And then I remembered to add “Please?”

And then they appeared.

They just sort of ambled around a shelf of coloring books. The girl Boy was starting to get the hang of the yo-yo, while the boy Boy was shaking a Magic Eight Ball.

“Should I add a bowling alley to this floor?” he asked it.

“Excuse me?” I tried to interrupt.

“ ‘Reply hazy. Try again later,' ” he read from the ball. He looked up at me and said, “What does that mean?”

“Please,” I began, leaning heavily on that magic word, “I don't have much time, and I need a favor. A request. Please!”

The girl Boy dropped her yo-yo, and the boy Boy dropped his Magic Eight Ball with a great thud. I had their attention. Here goes.

“My stepmother is going to kill my father,” I began.

“We know that already. But. Are you Snow White or Cinderella?”
the girl Boy asked. And she looked like she was serious.

“Neither. I'm Sarah. And I need to find a way to stop this woman.” The girl Boy laughed at me.

“How are you going to do it?” the boy Boy asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, assuming that they might know if I was lying.

“Didn't you already save him?” the girl Boy said. “Isn't that why we sent you back before?”

“Reve-enge!” the boy Boy sang out to the sky. “She wants reve-enge!”

“Please!” My voice began to break. “I just want to save him. That's all.”

“Why?” the boy Boy asked.

“Because. He's going to die.” I had to choke out the words. “Please.”

“So?” the girl Boy answered, reexamining her yo-yo. “Dying isn't so bad. Sometimes it's messy, and sometimes it hurts. But lots of things are messy and hurty.” Then she stopped eyeing the yo-yo and said, “Isn't it nice here? You have nice food and nice things, right? Wouldn't you want something like that for your daddy?”

That felt like a trick question, so in my desperation I ignored it. Besides, I knew I was much too emotional to handle a debate with the Boy, so I just kept begging.

“Please. When I haunt them in my dreams, I can't get them to hear me. But if you send me there, I can tell him he's in danger.” I added an extra “Please!” just in case it would help.

The Boy stopped playing.

“What else can you do?” they asked in unison.

“I have dreams that might be more than just dreams. I draw people to me. I sort of haunt them, I think. And when I talk to living people, they sort of hear me. They do as I say. At least, here at the mall they do.” I watched as this revelation landed on them. They checked in with each other silently. It looked like this might work in my favor.

“And what about when you were alive?” the boy Boy asked. “Did you have special abilities?”

“She did!” the girl Boy loud-whispered. “You just know she did! She probably knew things or saw things that most people can't.”

“That's true. I did have that ability,” I said. They were both so delighted at being right, they clapped their hands.

“Told you!” the girl Boy squealed.

“But I said it first!” the boy Boy whined. “I knew she was different. I called it the first time we saw her.” He stomped his feet and seemed ready to lose it.

“But I made it stop.” I interrupted the tantrum. “I only had it when I was little. I didn't keep it with me when I got older.”

“What?” The boy Boy was sort of outraged. “You gave up on being special?”

I knelt down on the floor, so that I was eye to eye with him. He was deadly serious.

“Yes.” I was (finally) owning it as I was saying it. “I didn't want to be special. I just wanted my mother back. And I'm sorry. If this was a gift that you gave me, and I didn't appreciate it when I was alive, I'm truly sorry. Please don't punish my father for my mistake.”

“Waste not, want not,” the boy Boy mused. “I don't know what that means.”

“You threw it away. And now you found it again. You had to die to find what you wanted and needed. I think that's funny,” said the girl Boy. They looked at each other, and then she came close to me.

The girl Boy took my hand in hers. “You're a special one. You need to break away from your old life as soon as you can. Your daddy is very close to death. Very. It will come for him soon. Let him die. Let him go.”

So apparently I was all specially special. Woo-hoo! There was a voice inside me that let me know when things were going to happen. I was able to save the lady in the green coat, but I couldn't save my own mom. I didn't understand it and I didn't want to. Okay, let's be honest: I retreated from a
lot
of stuff after she died. But this special sauce that was me, well, it had followed me into the afterlife. It's why people could hear me the way that they did. It's why I had these dreams where I was haunting. Special, special me. Whatever.

When I'd been alive, this gift didn't help me save my mother. And now that I was dead, it couldn't help me save my father from my wicked stepmother.

I would like to exchange this gift for something more useful, please.

The Boy refused to let me go haunt. My bracelet held the faintest traces of pale pink. I'd be moving on soon. So would Alice and Lacey. Declan had a tiny drop more color in his bracelet. Bertha was more determined than ever to see us all
move on. Maybe she was sick of us? Anyway, she did her classic cluck-sigh as she forced a smile and invited us all to her affirmations session. Yep. That's right. She had everyone repeating affirmations into a mirror.

“I will move on to a beautiful new life.”

“I deserve a life of joy and service.”

“I will appreciate the gift of life when I have it again.”

Declan was a little distracted by his reflection, but he joined in. Not me. I looked past the mirror, past this afterlife. What could I do?

We were back among the Legos, drifting among living people and brightly colored toys, where the high-pitched screams from the roller coaster began to feel like my favorite song. I thought of Nick, of Harry and those crazy first days of death. A little boy dropped a Lego down his mother's pants, which started a loud, kind of ugly scene.

I stayed out of it.

“This place makes me think of Harry,” Lacey said. She was on my right and Alice on my left. “I wonder what he'll be like in his next life. I hope we meet. I hope we get married and have beautiful bald babies!” I think she had given this fantasy some thought.

“When I go back, I'm going to be an independent woman,” Alice declared. “No man will be master of me!”

“Good for you.” I smiled. “I can't begin to think about what I want next time around. I can't accept that my dad has to die like this. He deserves better.”

“Yeah, your stepmother sounds like one scary bitch,” Lacey said. And as she spoke, she flicked a Lego into the crowd. No one noticed it. But I stared at the empty space where the Lego had been. There was a kind of supernova explosion in my mind.

“Lacey! It's you! I need your help,” I said breathlessly. And yes, I realized that I seemed a little too frantic to be taken seriously. I did my best impersonation of a calm person.

“The elevator,” I explained. “I bet you could work it again. And you could get me back there.” I tugged at her sleeve. “Come on! Why didn't I think of this before? You can do this. I need to go. Right now.” But Alice and Lacey didn't move, didn't speak. It was maddening. “Now!” I repeated, and I may have sounded like I was ordering them around. Because I was.

“Whoa,” Lacey began. “First of all: chill. You don't want to be the girl who tries to tell me what to do. Bertha says we're like a day away from moving on. My bracelet is nice and light. I want to keep it that way. Don't you want to move on?”

My bracelet was nearly white. It showed faint signs of shimmer. I was nearly ready.

“I don't care about that!” I half-lied. “She's going to kill my father. I'm running out of time.”

“How will you stop her?” Alice asked. Okay, maybe that was a reasonable question any other day, any other time, but
not now
! I needed a way to explain this whole mess in ten seconds or less. It didn't exist.

“Please,” I said simply. “You two know me. Just trust me, please. This is important.”

I looked at Alice and then at Lacey. They looked at each other and nodded.

“If I end up mall-walking, I'm going to kill you,” Lacey whispered.

“Declan, I need you to use your acting skills,” I said to him.

He nodded sagely, as if he were the wise old man on a mountaintop and he'd been expecting us to come to him eventually with this very request.

“Hey. Sure. After all, I do sort of owe you one,” he said.

I shouldn't have asked. But I did. “What do you mean?”

“Well. I put the mushrooms on your plate. How could I have been so stupid? I trusted Karen, and you ended up dead. And you act like you pretty much forgive me. You even woke me up, I think. So. Ya know.”

“Oh, Declan.” I took his hand as I spoke. “It wasn't your fault. She tricked all of us. And now you're going to help me save my dad.”

“How?” He looked so young and eager.

“Distract Bertha. Keep her in Staples. Ask for more affirmations. Or talk about something from your life. Do one of her therapy exercises. Anything!”

Declan looked off into the distance, picturing the scene. “Improv. I can do that.” But then he refocused on Lacey, Alice, and me. “What are you going to do?”

“Maybe it's best if you don't know,” I replied. “That way you won't have to lie.”

“But I'm an actor!” He seemed a bit hurt. “I can totally act my way through it. Please? Tell me?”

Lacey interrupted us. “We're taking the elevator back to the living so Sarah can save her dad. Somehow.”

“Cool.” Declan nodded, smiled, and went off in search of Bertha.

Lacey focused on the elevator button. She focused for a long minute, and nothing happened. I knew it wouldn't help to shake her by the shoulders and yell, so I locked myself and my fears into silence.

After a while, Lacey blew out a breath. “I'm out of practice. Losing my touch. Sorry!”

“It's okay,” I said. “You've got this. I know it.”

Alice smiled. “You've got all that life and fury and passion inside you, Lacey. Just tap into it. You can do this.”

Lacey nodded. The pressure must have been awful, because she shook her head, as if she wanted to pretend none of this was happening and none of us were here. She closed her eyes and then,
bump
. The elevator moved. Then the door opened.

Go, Lacey!

I stepped through it and turned to thank her. But she and Alice were right beside me. “Hey!” I called out as the door closed behind us. (How were we going to get back now?)

“Where should we start?” Lacey asked. “I'm ready to kick a little ass.”

I reeeeally should have explained what little plan I had.
I
was the only who was supposed to go back. Lacey, at the very least, needed to return and run the elevator to come back for me. Clearly she hadn't figured out that we were now stranded here. Neither had Alice.

“Let's start at my place,” I said.

The apartment was dark and quiet as I went from room to room to room. No sign of Dad or Karen so far. The place was perfectly clean and spare. Barely lived in.

Could they be at his office? Was he well enough to be at work? Was he sick enough to be in a hospital somewhere?

“Are we too late?” I wondered aloud. “Did she already kill him?”

“How do you know that he's in mortal danger?” Alice asked.

“When I was mall-walking, I saw them at a doctor's office. He has a heart condition now. All of a sudden. And his hair is falling out and he looks terrible.”

“Oh, Sarah,” Alice said. “Maybe that's just life, just nature.”

“Declan knew her, and her whole terrible history. She killed him, I'm sure of that. She killed me by mistake, and now she wants to finish what she set out to do.” I had absolutely no doubt. Alice, on the other hand, looked full of doubt. She drifted off to the window.

I kept searching for any sign of where they might be.

“You know, we never did find any actual, definite poison,” Lacey reasoned.

“Girls! Come here at once!” Alice commanded, and we obeyed.

She was pointing out the window to a bench on the other side of the fountain. I spotted Karen's red hair right away. The salt/pepper/balding man next to her on the bench was Dad. Alive. At least for now. He was leaning forward a bit, and I knew that he was in danger. Zero doubts.

“Wow,” Lacey said. “How did he get there?”

“She must have walked him out there,” I reasoned. “Maybe it's better for her if he dies in public? I bet that helps her look less guilty. Or maybe he was trying to get away from her!” I set my jaw a little too tightly and began to make my way to the door. “Either way, I'm stopping her now!”

Alice and Lacey stayed by the window.

“Come on!” I beckoned, and couldn't quite believe that I had to rush them.

“Not your dad,” Alice said. “Look.”

I didn't want to look. I wanted to go.
Now
. But okay, fine. I would probably need their help, and maybe they knew something I didn't. So I looked. Dad and Karen were still there, on the bench. It was early morning, and the population was still fairly light: workers going to work. That same street musician getting set up to perform near the Washington arch. And an assortment of dead people who were stuck here. The usual suspects. Just another day.

“Look,” Lacey said with more urgency. There was a guy doing jumping jacks near the bench. Or he was waving his arms. Karen and Dad acted like they didn't notice him. Maybe they were being true New Yorkers, ignoring the crazies, or maybe the guy was dead and therefore invisible to them.

When my eyes rested on that figure, he clicked into focus, and the earth seemed to shake. Nick. Absolutely Nick. Unmistakably Nick. My Nick.

I didn't pass through the door or the wall to get down there to that scene. I passed through the window, sailed through the air, and landed in front of Nick. And Dad.