Death of a Kleptomaniac (16 page)

I am in front of the snow cone stand. But since it's October, the small wooden shack is shuttered for the season.

“This is one of my favorite places,” the voice says. “I came here as a child. A teenager. And once I was grown.”

I remember this place. It's where the carnival sets up every year. The place where I won my stuffed peacock with Sadie and my family. It feels like I was just here.

“You like it here too,” the voice tells me. “I can tell.”

And then the voice isn't a voice anymore. It's a soul. A woman in her forties walks toward me. She's wearing clothes like I've seen my grandmother wear in photographs from her college days. Her pants flare at the bottoms, and her loose gypsy top drapes her thin frame in oversized ruffles. She has gray hair and sort of an angular and mischievous face. If I saw her at the carnival I'd think she was a fortune-teller.

This is the first soul besides Louise's that I've spoken with since I've been dead, and it's a little exciting. I wave at her, and when she waves back I notice that one of her long sleeves flaps in the wind. That's odd because a breeze doesn't make my clothes move. And unlike other souls, for example, her soul's skin has more color. Her peachy complexion actually looks healthy, practically alive. I'm a little confused, because maybe she isn't a soul. Maybe she's a clairvoyant person or a ghost chaser or something like that. But Louise said that none of those things were real.

“I thought you were a soul,” I say. “But you look like you have a body.”

She smiles at me. “It's part of what I know.”

I'm curious to hear more, to find out what another soul has learned about being a soul.

“I'm eighty-five percent soul and fifteen percent body.”

I've never thought of the connection between body and soul in terms of a percentage before.

“When you're alive, you're fifty percent soul and fifty percent body—for the most part. When you die, you become one hundred percent soul,” she explains.

“I'm dead. So I'm one hundred percent soul.”

“Well, I'm dead too. But I refuse to be just a soul.”

I'd never even considered that an option. “How is that possible?” I ask.

She puts her finger to her mouth. “Don't ask me any questions,” she warns. “You'll draw the attention of your soul's intake counselor. And then I won't be able to help you.”

“My counselor won't let you help me,” I say, trying to phrase my question as a statement.

“Counselors have an agenda. They tell you the minimum amount of information, to limit your options so you'll do exactly what they want. It's all mind tricks and control games.”

This makes sense. After showing me that chicken hatch, Louise has left me on my own to answer all my questions by myself. I don't have options.

“Tell me what you know,” I say.

“Where do you want to start?”

“Being fifteen percent body means you can feel things,” I say.

She nods. “I have a diminished sense of taste, touch, and smell. But, like you, like all souls before they cross, I have perfect hearing and sight.”

I'm jealous. I can't taste, touch, or smell anything. And without this sort of intervention, I may never taste, touch, or smell anything ever again. My sensory future is beyond bleak.

“All souls have the potential to regain their other senses.”

“My intake counselor should have told me this.” My mind turns to Louise and her messy desk and reticent attitude. I'd assumed she was a little inept. But that's not it. Maybe that was an act. Maybe she doesn't want to answer any questions. I'll bet her job of guiding me to the next phase is much easier if I'm kept mostly in the dark. Like a total sheep, I have to follow everything she says.

“Like I said, sometimes counselors edit out a few details.”

“This one seems rather big!”

“Well, it takes hard work to regain your senses. I've been working at it since my death almost forty years ago.”

Just as with Louise, I'm reminded that I'm not just talking to a soul, but to a former human being. And upon realizing this, I become ravenously curious, wanting to know about her life and death and how she ended up uncrossed. But unless I want to alert Louise to the fact that I'm having this conversation, I can't ask any questions. I'm going to have to be a little patient and hope that she just tells me things.

“You probably have a name,” I say. It takes effort to constantly be thinking in the form of statements.

“I'm Hilda.”

She doesn't tell me her last name and I don't press. I want to know how she died, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate for a soul to fish for this information.

“You're probably wondering how I died. It's very natural for souls, especially newer souls, to be curious about this.”

I nod.

“I died right over there,” Hilda says. She points to the river.

“Under the bridge,” I say. I remember the dark sensation I felt when I passed beneath it. That's what it was. I sensed Hilda's place of death.

“Yes, my body was swept under the bridge by the current. But I went into the river upstream. It was a car accident.”

“Your car went into the river,” I say.

“Yes, I was with my dog, Jackson. And I lost control.”

I've lived here my whole life and never heard of that happening. Hilda must have been driving incredibly fast. I glance around for a dog or for any sign of a dog's soul. I'm still not sure how that works. It would be great if I could meet up with Hopkins again. Maybe his name is written on one of my clocks. I should check for that.

“Jackson survived. He was an excellent swimmer.”

Hilda doesn't seem on the verge of tears about her death. If I were standing next to where Peppa had thrown me and the snake bit me, I would be a wreck. Maybe after forty years the pain dries up.

“All of our days are numbered. Nobody escapes death,” Hilda says.

“Well, at least your dog survived,” I say, smiling.

Hilda doesn't smile back. Maybe she wanted her dog to die.

I don't have time to get hung up on this. We need to keep things upbeat and move this conversation along. As we stand and talk, I feel this urgency. I need to learn things as quickly as I can. My funeral is around the corner.

“I want to know everything you know,” I say. “In the postlife, information is delivered so slowly. I'm a smart person. A quick learner. Toss things at me as fast as you want.”

Hilda raises her eyebrows. She seems slightly annoyed at my eagerness to quicken the pace.

“Why don't you tell me how you died?” Hilda asks. “You're so young.”

I guess since she has shared, it's only polite for me to share too. “It's a sad story,” I say. “I was on a date and fell off my horse and hit my head on a rock and got bitten by a snake.” I don't mention that it was the bite to my butt that proved fatal. It makes my death seem a little comedic.

“That's awful,” Hilda says. “How old are you, seventeen?”

“Sixteen,” I say. Which will forever be my answer to that question.

“Sixteen. Unbelievable. Life is so unfair.”

She stares down at me, pitying me for my young death.

“It is unfair,” I say. But deep down I keep hold of this irrational hope that some time in the near future things are going to turn fair for me again.

“Follow me,” Hilda says. “Let me show you something.”

I follow her into the closed snow cone stand. The delivery window is boarded shut, and the side door is locked with two shiny metal padlocks. Hilda enters it like she owns the place. Inside, we find that everything is stored away for next season.

“You probably miss being able to touch and hold things,” she says.

I nod. “Yes.”

“Well, watch this.”

Hilda mesmerizes me as she reaches up, grabs a cabinet knob, and pulls opens the wooden door. She knocks stacks of paper cones from the lower shelf and they tumble to the floor. Then she opens a second cupboard containing a row of snow cone syrups.

“I love making the bottles drip,” Hilda says.

With the palm of her hand she presses the pump tops, making sweet liquid ooze down the sides of the bottles.

I want to ask her why she's trashing the snow cone stand. But I don't want my mind to transmit my question to Louise. I sort of understand why Hilda is doing this. It must feel amazing to make things move.

“You look like you're really enjoying yourself,” I say. If I were fifteen percent body, I don't know that I'd waste my energy vandalizing a snack area. I think I'd go and touch things that mattered. Like the people I love.

“I can feel the cabinet's hardness and the syrups' stickiness,” Louise says.

I want to ask her how, but I force myself to phrase this as a statement. “You must have had a good teacher to learn how to do this.”

“I taught myself.”

That's amazing. It never would occur to me to teach myself to feel things again. I'd just accepted that I'd lost that ability forever. But now I know better.

“I can teach you,” Hilda says, “but it will take time.”

I shake my head. “I don't have time. There are people I have to visit. I've got two life moments to relive. And I have to maintain an upbeat attitude the whole time or I'll bust more of my clocks.”

Hilda seems entertained by my to-do list. “Molly, I see people make this mistake every day. They die. They're given a chore list. Then they race to finish it, and once they're done, they cross into a place where they never experience any real feeling again. Don't doom yourself to such a grim fate.”

“Death just happens,” I try to explain. “It's inevitable. We all meet this grim fate.”

“Wrong!” Hilda says. She flings open another cupboard and sends a box of straws showering down on me. They pass through my soul and make pinging sounds as they land on the floor. “It's a lie that you have to cross and never feel again. I didn't cross, and look at where I ended up.”

I'm not really itching to wind up in a seasonal snack hut. But I don't say this, because I'm also really intrigued. This means I could live in my house again. My bedroom. I could be around my parents. I could watch my brother and sister grow up.

“Molly, the first step in regaining your senses is that you must refuse to cross.”

“I can't do that. My funeral is in two days. I think I have to cross.”

“No, you don't. At your funeral, as your body is being interred, a door will open. You'll want to walk through it. It will feel like the right thing to do. But if you want to regain what you've lost, you must refuse it.”

I keep thinking about my parents. The twins. My friends. Henry. Even Tate. I could remain a part of their lives. I like what Hilda is telling me. I think I want this.

“What's your destiny, Molly?”

“I'm not sure. Louise hasn't told me. I guess my job is to advance.” But I really have no idea what the next phase holds for me. I look down at the snow cone cups littering the floor. I feel ashamed that I wasn't more successful in life. And that I died so ridiculously. “Maybe I'm getting what I deserve,” I say, trying to explain.

“You're being way too hard on yourself. Nobody gets it right. You just do the best you can. Don't beat yourself up over a few poor choices.”

I nod. It feels good to have her support.

“Let's skip to what matters now. How many clocks do you have left?” Hilda asks.

Wow. Hilda knows about the clocks. She has the postlife and its rules down. “Maybe sixty. But I might have lost a few more today,” I say.

Hilda's eyes grow wide with surprise, and she opens a third cabinet, containing napkins. She takes a stack in her hands and tosses them up in the air. “That's not enough connections for a meaningful afterlife. You'll be very lonely if you cross.”

She says this with such certainly that I have no doubt it's true. After she's finished tossing the napkins around, she walks up to me and puts her arm around my shoulder. I can't feel it, but I like the gesture. Louise doesn't even try to pretend that she cares about me in this way. But Hilda seems honestly invested in my eternal happiness. Hilda, unlike Louise, doesn't just see me as part of her job. I feel lucky to have met her.

“Wouldn't you rather stay and watch your family? All the exciting things that happen—you could be right in the same room with them.”

I think about this option. Of course I want that.

“Come outside,” Hilda says.

We exit the little shed and we're out in the bright afternoon. A blue jay lands on a fence nearby. I'm struck by a strange feeling. I'm lucky that I can still see the color blue. I should soak it up. Then I realize something. I don't know how I know this, but I do: once I cross, I'm not going to be able to see colors. I'm going to lose my last two senses. I want to ask Hilda whether or not this is true. No. I can't ask any questions. I'll save this for Louise.