I Woke Up Dead at the Mall (7 page)

The café was jammed with weary college students who needed a coffee IV. The music switched to a thumping reggae beat and the energy of the place ramped up. I had been keeping my focus on Living Sarah, not on the anonymous jumble of faces and voices all around us. She opened her laptop, plugged in her headphones, and became her own planet in a crowded, noisy galaxy. She worked dutifully away at her paper on the Battle of Antietam, where 3,654 people died.

She should have looked up.

I did. And my entire universe capsized. I was now in the land of infinite impossibility. I let out a small cry and reached out to the sight before me.

At the next table the manager of the café was interviewing a candidate to pour coffee. Was this guy qualified to pour coffee? Did he have the right people skills for coffee-pouring?

It was Nick. He was two feet away. Nick. Living, breathing, grinning Nick was trying to get a part-time job pouring coffee. It was inexplicable.

“Sarah!” I shouted. “Take off those damn headphones and
look at him
.” She typed a pithy insight about Antietam. Great.

“Nick! Nick, look over here!” I yelled. He kept his focus and his crooked grin trained on the manager. They were shouting to be heard over the crowd and the reggae playlist. “It's me, Sarah!”

I crouched right next to Nick and studied his face, his carefree smile, his shoulders. At that moment I couldn't
remember if it was impossible to change the past or just something Bertha and the Boy didn't want us to do. And right then I didn't care. I was on fire with desperation. I would make this happen. I must.

“Please! Nick! Go meet that girl! Right there!” I pleaded with him, as he nodded politely and attentively at the manager. “Don't go out with Fiona. Go out with Sarah. Go to her dad's wedding with her. You could both live. You could both survive. If you
just meet each other
!”

(Please, please, please, please, please, please, please! Please. Just let me have this chance to live past sixteen. Please, please, please. I don't want to die. I want to have a life, and I want Nick to be part of it. Please, please, please, please.)

Living Sarah never took her eyes off that damn screen.

The café manager stood up. “Well. We'll let you know,” he said as they exchanged a handshake and a nod. Nick sat down, looking defeated.

“Nick! Look at that girl right there! Talk to her! Save both of your lives!”
I shouted as hard, as loud, as I could. Even the living were having trouble being heard over the din.

Just then Nick looked over at Living Sarah. He studied her face for a few long seconds. He smiled.

But then he stood up and left the café without saying a word to her. She never looked up, and he never looked back.

I turned to Living Sarah and said, “You're an idiot.”

How many times had Nick and I been in the same room at the same time when we were alive? Did we ever ride the subway together? Did we go to the same movies? Did we sit by the fountain in Washington Square Park and fail to see each other through the sparkling water?

I started to follow him outside, but I couldn't go. I couldn't travel that far from Living Sarah. When I tried, it felt like I was pushing up against a thick pane of glass.
“Nick!”
I shouted after him, but it was pointless. I sat on the steps and watched him turn a corner and be gone.

After way too long, Living Sarah emerged from Think Coffee and walked up Mercer Street in the exact same damn direction that Nick had just gone. “Oh come on! Sarah!” I shouted. But she was listening to her music, rushing for home, for dinner, for the last few months of her life, and for her ugly, violent death.

That's right, Sarah. Hurry up. You don't want to be late for all that.

We were in Brooklyn, where all of the living people at this table were about to have Ethiopian food. Dad and I hadn't tried it before.

“It's kind of like soul food. You'll love it!” Karen exclaimed. “And if I'm wrong, I know where to get the best pizza outside of Italy.” She ordered for the table.

(Okay, so breathe. Let go of the Nick sighting. This is nearly the end of your Thornton Wilder Day. Enjoy how happy everyone is. Remember the delicious food. Breathe. This matters. This. Is. Good.)

She raised her glass in a toast and said, “Thank you. Thank you both for allowing me to share in this special day. I can't tell you how overjoyed I am to be here and to say happy birthday, Sarah!”

We all clinked glasses (I had ginger ale, thank you). Karen nudged Dad and said, “Go on. Give her a sip of champagne. Just a taste won't hurt anything!” She giggled.

Dad looked around the restaurant as if the police might be waiting for him to make just this kind of mistake before they pounced. But Karen smiled, and Living Sarah blink-blinked in over-the-top innocence. Dad laughed and passed her the champagne.

I remembered that moment so clearly. It felt as if I were filling myself up with tiny helium balloons, getting ready to float away. And I remembered liking the sensation.

“That's enough!” Dad said, and took the glass back. Karen and Living Sarah shared a conspirators' giggle. (Being alive was so sweet.)

Ethiopian food is excellent. Try it, if you ever get the chance. It arrived as one big communal platter of foods, arranged in dollops over a massive round flatbread. You tear off a piece of bread and dip it into one of the foods arranged on top. It's a meal and an activity. And it made us all so happy. I found myself wishing that the food court had Ethiopian food, or that Nick could make some for us, as I drifted in and out of the conversation.

Good food. Good people. It should have ended there. I would have felt all happy and satisfied with the day. No, I couldn't get Living Sarah to meet Living Nick and change both of their fates. But I could come to terms with it all and take one more step toward moving on. I could. Eventually. I smiled as Living Sarah opened her presents. Earrings! Gift cards! A book! Thank you! It was all so painful and lovely at the same time. I think that's how it was supposed to feel. And if it had ended right then, that's how it would have felt.

But the meal came to an end, and Living Sarah left the table for the restroom. Dad brought the check to the front to pay. And then I knew.

Karen had killed me. My wicked stepmother had killed me. Fairy tales are true. Lacey was right. My life was turned inside out.

Allow me to explain:

Dad kissed her and left the table. When he turned to walk away, leaving her alone at the table, her smile dropped like an anvil. She was a different person now. Her mask was removed and I was seeing the real Karen for the first time. She
sneered, sighed, and rolled her eyes as she watched him walk away. Okay, yes, secretly being a bitch just made her a bitch, not a killer. True. But as soon as he was gone, she began eating mushrooms. The food that killed me. The food that she claimed to hate and avoid. She picked them out of Chinese food whenever we ordered takeout. She plucked them off of pizzas. She made it very clear that she would never, ever eat “the dreaded
shroom
.” That was a lie.

When Karen and Dad were putting together the wedding menu, she made a big, magnanimous deal about allowing mushrooms on the menu. “Marriage is about compromise,” she explained sweetly. “You two should have what you want.” I felt kind of victorious. I bet Dad did too. And isn't that what a good con artist does? They make you think that the whole awful idea was yours. She maybe even batted her eyes when she said it.

Karen killed me. But why? It was clear that she had this planned for quite a while. Why did she hate me that much?

I turned to watch Karen smile, her mask now firmly in place, as she reunited with Dad and Living Sarah. They were walking toward the exit, heading for home. Inching me one day closer to my awful death.

“Hey.” My voice just barely escaped my throat. “You guys! Karen's a liar! She's going to have poison mushrooms at the wedding. She's going to kill me.
Get away from her!
”

They didn't hear me, of course. And now Bertha was by my side.

“It's time to go, dear,” Bertha said. I reached for her and threw myself into her arms. I cried against her shoulder in shaking, painful sobs.

“Help me!” I tried to say.

“Oh no,” she whispered gently. “My poor Sarah. Was it too painful? Was the day too important?”

When I could finally speak, I said, “They were all important.”

Bertha was watching a different scene at the table behind me.

“Why is Declan here?” she asked. She pointed to an attractive busboy. He gave a friendly nod/salute to Karen—he seemed to know her. But she shook her head briskly and turned away into the night, looking just a little bit pissed off.

Declan watched her go. He looked a little hurt, a little confused, but then he fixed his hair and everything was okay. For him.

“Where is Declan? Where is he?” I was storming through the mall. Bertha struggled on her little legs to keep up with me.

“Sarah! Please! This is a matter for the Boy!” Bertha called out. “Please do not consider taking justice into your own hands.”

I found him at Ulta. His face was painted with a green mask, and he was filing his nails. (Did he have any idea he was actually dead?)

“Let me handle this,” Bertha insisted.

“What did you do?” I asked Declan.

“A pore-minimizing mask,” he explained. “You should do it too. Seriously.”

I thought my head was going to explode. I groaned and stepped away for a second. Bertha took Declan by the hand and sat him on a stool by the counter.

“Declan, dear, we need to understand what role you played in Sarah's life.” She sounded like she was explaining algebra to a kindergartner. “And in her death.”

I spun around and shouted, “Hey! Didn't you have to fill in that questionnaire? Didn't you have to say the worst thing you ever did? How did you answer that? What did you write?”

“I wrote…” Declan eyed the floor as he answered. “I wrote that I told this actor friend that he looked good in taupe. That was a lie. He looked terrible in taupe, but I convinced him to wear taupe to every audition. It really messed him up. I'm still so ashamed.”

Okay, so now I fully understood the level of stupidity I was dealing with. I took on the same tone that Bertha had. I spoke…very…slowly.

“Tell me about Karen. Karen Blake,” I said.

“Okay. Don't freak out at me,” he began.

“Karen!” I ordered him.

“Karen. Yeah. She was going to get me set up in LA.” He turned to Bertha and explained, “I belong in LA. They'll really get me there.”

“Start at the beginning,” I said. And he did.

Actually, Declan decided to tell us his life story, all about the trials of being beautiful.

DECLAN'S LIFELONG TRIALS OF BEING THE BEST-LOOKING PERSON IN THE ROOM

He was a beautiful baby. A stunning toddler. A perfect (looking) child. He never experienced any “awkward years” in adolescence, like ordinary humans do.

It's not easy looking this good all the time. Oh. You wouldn't know. Sorry…

Being born this good-looking was sort of a curse. No, a burden. It was a burden, and he carried it. I mean, look around you. How many people are really, seriously beautiful? How many have sculpted bodies, amazing skin, great hair, and faces that the camera loves? See? Not that many.

Beautiful people are an endangered species. Like dolphins or unicorns. It's a thing. Look it up.

He graduated high school last year. Sort of. And now he worked out, waited tables, and kept auditioning. His parents, who were only okay-looking, just didn't understand the responsibility he owed to this gift. They wanted him to get a real job. But real jobs are for ugly people, and real careers are for the ones who are just plain
plain
. So. He didn't talk to them all that much.

Sometimes he appeared in off-off-Broadway plays, but he got bored saying the same lines every night. He dreamed of getting enough money together to move to Los Angeles. That was where he belonged.

“Tell me about Karen!”
I interrupted, trying to bring his story to an end, please, soon.

Karen was a little older, but she really took care of herself. She talked like she was rich, but she lived like she was poor. Which was weird. Anyway. She knew a lot about health foods. And Los Angeles. And movies. And food. And sex. They met at the
gym. And Declan soon discovered that she was really, really, really flexible.

(EWWW!)

What? Anyway. She helped Declan get a cater-waiter job. She was getting married. Again. She'd been married like twice before already, both times to older guys.

The second husband ran a health supplement business, so maybe that's how she kept herself looking so good. But after he died, she found out that the business was almost out of money. So she went looking for a new husband. One with some money. Now that's a positive attitude!

Declan got a look at the new husband-to-be. He needed to moisturize, that's for sure. Anyway. Karen arranged for Declan to have the easiest job of the whole catering staff. He had to wait on the dais table that was just for the bride and groom and the groom's daughter. Done. Easy. And he was going to get paid as much as everyone else. Sweet!

And he didn't question it when she asked him to give a big portion of mushrooms to the groom and then little bits to everyone else. They were almond mushrooms? Almondine mushrooms? Whatever.

Oops. He might have given a little too much to the daughter, but she seemed to enjoy them. A lot. She really wolfed them down. Even ate some of her dad's mushrooms. Oh, and the pill that Karen dropped in the groom's champagne? Declan was
ready to bet that it was Viagra for the old dude's wedding night. He laughed when he saw the daughter drink it. What would it do to a girl? He watched her dancing. He watched her leave. He spent the rest of the evening on the sidelines, quietly doing exercises that would firm his butt.

That was a good night.

“You killed me?” I asked, barely able to summon any voice at all.

“No! No!” he insisted, the green goo on his face now dry and cracking. He looked like Yoda with cheekbones and highlights. “I could never play a villain. I'm just not the type. There's no way I could kill you.”

“Yeah, I'm thinking those were amanita mushrooms. Highly poisonous,” I explained with the milligram of patience I had left.

“But I didn't know! It's not fair to blame me when I didn't even know,” he whined, and something inside me crumbled a little. It was all too easy to believe that Declan knew nothing at all. About anything.

“Didn't she come from a wealthy family?” I asked. “That's what she told us. They made a fortune in health supplements.”

“The second husband was in health supplements. But she was kind of broke when I met her,” he said. “She always told different stories about her family. I just thought she was being creative.”

“Declan. Karen killed me,” I said, and he gasped in response.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I was sure. “She's a liar and a murderer.”

“Whoa. See, here's the thing,” he explained. “When I heard that you died, I asked her what happened. I was all, ‘What happened?' She was really pissed off when you died. And you know, she looked way older when she was angry.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“She asked me a bunch of questions about the wedding, and about you and the food and the pill. But then she stopped talking about you. She promised me she'd come through with the connections in LA. And she fed me a nice lunch. And then I died.”

He paused for a second, a small realization dawning in his vacant eyes. “Hey, wait a minute. I think she killed me too.”

“She's going to kill my dad,” I said.

“Whoa,” Declan whispered. “Um. Am I in trouble? Am I going to hell?”

He was asking Bertha, but I didn't let her answer. “No,” I said. “She fooled us all. You didn't know what you were doing.”

Declan collapsed in the world's biggest sigh of relief. And I felt a tiny bit sorry for him. Poor dim Declan.

“Sarah.” Bertha spoke at last. “Now you know who killed you. Leave the rest to the police.”

“But what about my dad?”

“Let earthly justice prevail,” she insisted.

I pictured Karen in an orange jumpsuit. (Not pretty.)