Death of a Kleptomaniac (14 page)

“I know. I know,” I say. “I don't want to choose wrong. I'm still figuring those out.”

“Well, then, I'll leave you alone,” Louise says.

“Wait! Wait!” I say. “Before you go, could you tell me where to find my grandma?” I'm not sure how to track down people in transit. I doubt my grandmother is at her home in Utah. Am I just supposed to scan the interstate until I feel something?

“Every soul has two instincts. They are centered around your loved ones and your body. During this time, you will always be able to navigate the distance to find your loved ones. And your body.”

“My body?” I say. “That sounds so creepy.”

“Don't think of it that way. Your body housed your soul for sixteen years. They're connected. They're still naturally drawn to each other.”

“I don't want to go looking for my body. I want to find my grandma,” I say. I remember the story Louise told me about staying around her body and missing reliving her life moment and not comforting people. What if I became so overwhelmed that I did that too? I don't need to see it. I don't.

“I'm confident you can find her,” Louise says.

Fine. I'll do it on my own. I stop thinking about everything and everyone, and focus on my grandma. “She's not with my parents. She's not at her house.” I concentrate on her face. Suddenly, I can see her. “I figured it out,” I say. “I can see where she is. She's with my aunt Claire. I can really see them, Louise. They're drinking tea in the kitchen. Can you see people like this? Wow. This is so weird. It's like I have superpowers.”

“Not quite,” Louise says.

I don't hesitate in leaving Ruthann and Joy. They have each other. Though I wish they'd leave Tate alone. He doesn't need to be bothered right now by those two. I shouldn't distract myself. My grandma. Focus. I'm going to see my grandma.

“I need a transport tunnel,” I say.

And it's as simple as that. I make the tunnel appear and then I'm in it, surrounded by gray walls, racing toward my grandmother. Soon I see the city. It's late morning and I'm dropping through a pink-lit sky. Falling with tremendous speed.

Slipping through clouds, I grow nervous about what awaits me. When I visited Henry, it was so painful. I hesitate.

And now, in midtumble, when I look around, the neighborhood doesn't seem exactly right. I'm not in Blackfoot. This is Idaho Falls. I glimpse the Snake River. The airport. And then I'm pulled through a red roof. And then I'm underwater. This can't be Aunt Claire's house. There are legs all around me, kicking and thrashing. I let my soul rise to the surface, and I look around. Women decked out in swim caps, wearing leg weights, lift their arms in time to some rock music. I'm in what appears to be a hotel swimming pool that does not contain either my grandmother or my aunt Claire.

My hesitation caused this. I've run off course, and this feels exactly as it should feel: unsettling. I climb out of the water and walk through the hotel lobby. A large chandelier hangs over the registration area. People are checking out. Families. Businessmen. Vacationing couples. Their suitcases depress me. One woman is holding a map, tracing her finger along a river.

“We can rent a canoe here,” she tells her boyfriend or husband or fiancé or whatever.

I burst through the hotel's large glass window and stand on the street. I will never stay in a hotel again. Or go on vacation. Or rent a canoe with my boyfriend. Or fiancé. Or husband. I will never attend an aerobics class in an overchlorinated pool. All of this has been taken from me. I look back into the hotel. I watch as a man pulls a red apple from a fruit bowl and bites into it. And I wonder how long that guy has left. How long do any of them have? They can't all be healthy. Somebody in there must have heart disease. Or cancer. Or something. When I was hit by death, I had no idea it was coming. It was the most unfair way to die. Why couldn't I have been sick? If I'd had time to prepare and wrap things up, I wouldn't feel so cheated. I could have done a few more things. Settled affairs. Finished business.

I'm so jealous at the thought of somebody inside that hotel dying a slow death from a tumor, constructing a list of last things to do, and checking those items off that list, that I have to turn away. If I had a choice, I would stand here and pity myself for days. I'd pity everything I've lost. But I don't have that kind of time. If I want to see and comfort people before I cross, I've got to do it now. Because if I don't, I may never see them again.

The pull to leave the sidewalk is unmistakable. My grandmother's grief is so powerful that it's finally come for me. And I let it take me.

As soon as I surrender, I'm immediately yanked into the street. Something feels unusual and more intense than my other comfort trips. Is my grandma in traffic? I try to picture her and locate her, but it doesn't work. I see myself. But not how I am now, and not how I used to be. I'm in a casket. Oh my god. It's my body. I'm not being pulled by my grandma. I'm being pulled by
it
.

I try to resist going forward, but it doesn't work. I'm being dragged through the street, tugged through a bread truck, and finally jerked through racks of pastries and doughnuts and snack pies. Then I'm on the road again, being pulled with an intensity that I've never experienced before. Through more cars. Over sidewalks. Under bridges. Around trees. How far am I going to have to travel like this? Will my body still be in Wyoming?

It must have just arrived. That must be what's happening. My body made it to town and it wants to reconnect with my soul. No. I don't want to see myself get made up by the mortuary workers. No. I can fight this. I think of something else. My grandma. For some reason, I can't make myself conjure her up. I think. I think. Nothing happens. Block after block. I'm almost to the old part of town, which houses the two main mortuaries. There is only one thing I can think of that will stop my progress. Even though I don't feel totally prepared to do this, I need to relive a life moment.

My mind races through my childhood and teen years. It saddens me that this doesn't take that long. What should I experience again? Who do I want to see and feel? Everyone. But it was so rare that we were all together. My father worked so much. I'm running out of time. Then I remember that I don't have to pick an exact moment. Instead, I can select a sensation. Luck. I want to feel lucky and be with my family. That's the moment I want to relive. “Luck and happiness and everybody I love in one place!” I yell. “That's the life moment I want to relive right now!”

All movement stops. The traffic-packed roadway disappears, and in front of me I see a carnival. And my family. And I even see myself. I look so young, dressed in a pink sundress. Nobody is moving. I walk into the portrait and approach my frozen self. My face is filled with joy. I am on the verge of tossing a ring onto the neck of a glass milk bottle. I don't hesitate. I let my soul walk into my eight-year-old body, and the scene unfolds.

“Don't expect to win,” my dad says. “All these games are rigged.”

“There's always a few winners,” my mother says, patting me gently on the shoulder.

I can't make myself do anything other than what I actually did eight years ago. But I can feel everything. The air is laced with the smell of buttered popcorn and cotton candy. And my hands feel sticky from a cherry snow cone that I just finished.

“I feel lucky,” I say. “This plastic ring will land perfectly on top of that bottle.”

I lean forward over the counter.

“Gotta stay behind the line,” the carnival worker says.

I shuffle back a step and stand up a little straighter. I glance down at my pink sandals decorated with yellow sunflowers. They were my favorite shoes that summer. The night I got them, I even slept in them.

“She's eight years old,” my father argues. “We don't need to nail her to the wall with rules.”

“If I let everybody lean, I wouldn't have any stuffed animals left. The challenge is what makes this a real game,” the worker says. He claps his hands and cheers me on. But I suspect he wants me to lose.

“Aim short,” Sadie coaches. “The last one went past it.”

“Right,” I say. “I saw that.” I extend my arm and practice throwing the plastic ring several times. I know what happens. I know I win my next toss. But my eight-year-old self is overwhelmed by the anticipation and has tons of adrenaline coursing through her system.

“Winning is overrated,” my grandma says. “You should be having fun.”

“I am going to win,” I say. I let the ring fly from my fingertips. It sails less than three feet and catches the edge of a bottle. It circles and circles and finally falls.
Clink!

“You won!” Sadie cheers, grabbing me from behind. “You get anything you want!”

“Nice job,” my grandma says. “With that kind of tactile judgment, you could grow up to be a surgeon.”

“No way,” I say. “I want to make chocolate art for a living.”

My mother laughs. “We watched a show on cable last week, a documentary about a famous chocolate artist. He replicates Renaissance paintings in three-inch-by-three-inch chocolate squares.”

“Sounds delicious,” my grandma says.

“I want to be your assistant,” Sadie says.

“Okay,” I say. “But be careful. Tempered chocolate is extremely hot. There's a serious risk of burns.”

“I will be so careful,” Sadie says.

“All right, Molly,” my dad says. “Pick your toy.”

“The peacock!” I cry.

Of course I pick the peacock. It's the biggest stuffed animal at the stand.

“Here you go!” the worker says. “And may you stay this lucky forever.”

“I will!” I say, galloping off with my prize. The sun pounds down on me, and I skip over the asphalt. The dark surface makes the air above it steam. All my life, heat used to bother me, but feeling it again now, I can't get enough of it. I enjoy the sensation of sunlight warming my exposed shoulders while heat wafts up from below. Sadie catches up to me and grabs my hand.

“You're a winner!” she hollers.

We run ahead of my parents. Ahead of my grandma. I focus on how it feels to run. I focus on the temperature of the air around me. Sadie and I skip and gallop and rush forward toward more adventure. Where do we go next? I don't remember. A small rock slips into my sandal, and the weight of my body lands on it. A piercing pain shoots through my heel, and it's thrilling to feel something so specific. Then the pain starts to dull. My moment is ending. I know I don't get to stay in my body much longer.

There are so many things I wish I'd done. There was grass nearby. Why didn't I slip off my sandals and run through it? And there was a slide just a few feet away. Moreover, I completely bypassed the petting zoo. Why was I in such a hurry? The sound of the carnival hums through me. Roller coasters. Popcorn machines. People laughing. I run alongside Sadie, clutching her sticky hand. My stuffed peacock smells like sawdust. Poorly sewn and overstuffed, my toy will burst within the year, and my mother will throw it away.

I'm still running, but there is no Sadie. No carnival. I'm a soul again. Standing on a street corner where people around me are dressed for fall. Jackets. Scarves. A few of them are already wearing gloves. Is it that cold out already? I can't feel anything. An overly bundled-up woman pushes her baby stroller through me. The morning is ticking away. I shouldn't stand on this corner much longer. If I don't visit somebody soon, my body will try to find me. I'm not ready for that. I'm not ready for that at all.

My grandma? Sadie? Tate?

Things went so disastrously wrong when I tried to visit my grandma that it seems like it might be a mistake to try her next. Maybe she isn't ready for me yet. Maybe that's why I went off course and landed in the pool. She may need more time. I try to relax and figure out where I should go. One name keeps surfacing.
Sadie.
Of course I should visit Sadie. In a way, I was just with her.

I'm traveling faster than ever, speeding through the world with a ferocity that would break a body apart. Then I'm in the sky. Blue everywhere. And I fall into a car. Sadie is driving. The radio is blasting, and she's got on dark sunglasses. Dressed in jeans and a cute green jacket I've never seen before, she looks unlike her normal self. Fashionable.

“Do you even know I'm dead?” I ask.

She doesn't answer me and keeps driving. She flips through her CDs until a song featuring a ukulele pulses out of the speakers. If I were alive and riding in this car with her, I would tease her for listening to this sort of music. Possibly I would turn it off. She cranks it.

“You idiot!” Sadie yells.

A tense anger fills the car. It pushes me away from Sadie. This is a new energy, unlike anything I've felt before.

“Never in a million years would I have thought this could happen to you!” Sadie shouts.

I guess she knows.

“Calm down. Where are you going?” I know we can't have a real conversation, but for some reason I like to pretend that maybe we will.

“Shit!” Sadie yells.

I watch as she swerves to miss a squirrel.

“Don't be afraid to hit a squirrel,” I say. “And please stop driving like a crazy person.”

Sadie continues to drive at a high rate of speed. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks. “You left a total mess. And who's going to clean it up? Joy Lowe? I doubt it. Ruthann Culpepper? No, Molly. She won't. Because you befriended a ridiculous narcissist.” She rips off her sunglasses and tosses them onto the seat. Her eyes are red. She wipes tears away.

“You're being really hard on me,” I say. I stare at the sunglasses that have fallen through my lap.

“Did you think I was stupid?” Sadie asks, hitting the steering wheel.

Her energy is so intense and angry that I find myself forced outside the car, sitting on top of the roof. I have to fight against her anger to get back inside and remain next to her.

“Ease up or I can't stay,” I explain. “I'm trying to give you comfort. You can't aim all this anger at me.”

Sadie inhales three deep breaths. “I know what's in your room.”

This is bad. Because I think she means the stuff I've stolen. I had no idea that Sadie knew I took things and kept them in my room.

“You think I don't know that you had a serious impulse-control disorder? You think I didn't notice when things went missing?”

Her energy again tries to drive me away. I focus on the sadness I can feel underneath her anger, and I cling to it and remain beside her.

“I feel terrible about that stuff,” I say. “I tried to stop. But sometimes one person can't control everything.”

“And what are your parents going to think when they find it? Stealing stuff was so stupid. And so was dying.”

Tears run down her cheeks and land on her jeans. She shouldn't be driving. She should be at home. Why are all these grieving people driving?

“I'm right here,” I say. “I'm trying to comfort you.”

“Jesus,” Sadie says. “If we ever meet in the afterworld, the first thing I'm going to do is punch you in the face.”

“Okay,” I say. It takes every last shred of focus to keep me in the car with her. “It's hard for me too. You think I want to be dead? You think I want my parents to find what I've taken?”

“I feel like I should try to fix things,” Sadie says. “And how can I do that? Break into your house? Hire a professional cat burglar?”

She makes everything sound impossible. But I see the reality of what she's saying. “It's not your problem. You don't have to undo what I did.”

“This isn't my job! It's who you were. Shouldn't your parents know?”

It's hard for me to imagine my parents finding out that I stole from my friends and family and also perfect strangers. I even stole from the store. They won't understand. My dad will freak out, and my mother will be crushed. I hope they don't overreact and start thinking terrible thoughts like,
We didn't even know our own daughter
. What if finding out damages our connection? If anything happened to their clocks, I don't know what I'd do.

Sadie pulls her car into a driveway, but it's not hers and it's not mine. I feel the urge to stay with her, but I also feel a tug toward the house. I try to figure out which friend Sadie is visiting. Then I realize where I am. I'm at Tate's house! Why did Sadie drive here? Is she even friends with him? I'm confused.

Sadie gets out of her car. And when she does, I tell myself not to follow her. I talk to my soul like it's a dog. “Stay put! Stay put!” Arriving at the doorstep of every grieving person is exhausting.

I am still following Sadie. No. I don't want to be here. “Stay put!” I yell again. And finally my soul slows down. I don't want to see Tate. I don't want to be around angry Sadie. My soul is on the verge of stopping, but then I hear Tate's voice.

“Are you okay?” Sadie asks him.

Why is Sadie even at Tate's?

“No,” Tate says. “This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.”

“Me too,” Sadie says.

I pass through several walls until I reach Tate's room. It's a mess. There are clothes and sports equipment and books and DVDs scattered all over his floor and desk and bed. Unlike Henry, he doesn't have band plaques on his walls—he's got the standard dude posters: swimsuit centerfolds. Mostly blondes. Where are all the pictures of his trips? Belize, Peru, New Zealand, Costa Rica?