Devine Intervention (10 page)

W
HEN
H
EIDI WAS
crying about not being able to talk to Megan, and going all blurry around her edges, I remembered where I'd stashed the handbook. At my dad's house in the little drawer of mystery under the oven. I used to hide stuff there before I died, like spare cash, report cards, that sort of thing. It was a good hiding place even though it was a little dusty and greasy, because no one ever opened it. Opening it would've meant we put pans away, and we only ever washed things on an as-needed basis.

But even if Dad had opened the drawer, he wouldn't have found the book because it's a celestial object. If you've ever walked from one room to the other and forgotten what you were doing, you most likely passed something an angel hid. Celestial objects give off vibes meant to keep people from noticing them, and sometimes the vibes are strong enough to erase your last couple thoughts. Howard thinks it's hilarious to hide some of his Chevy in schools. Jerk.

When we got to Dad's house, I slapped my hands over Heidi's eyes before she could see the place. I wished I could bring her anywhere but there, but the good news was, her edges had crisped up again. Maybe the air at my dad's house was good for giving people a dose of reality.

“I'm already closing my eyes,” she said. “You don't need to do that. And you're squashing my nose.”

I stood behind her with my arms sort of around her so I could reach both her eyes, and she felt warm and good, and she still smelled a little bit like cookies, so on the one hand, I thought about staying where I was. But on the other hand, I wasn't going to be able to get into the drawer if I had my palms stuck on her face.

“Fine,” I said. “Keep 'em closed.”

I walked into the kitchen, which wasn't far from where she was standing, and every so often, I looked back at her. Dad wasn't home, but he'd left a lamp on, and the light from it shined through her hair and blazed up the side of her face so that she sort of looked like one of those pictures they take when you're graduating high school. If she had put her chin on her fist and stayed there for a year, boom! Senior portrait.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Her eyes were still closed.

“I'm staring at you, you dumbapple,” I said. Tip: If you tell people what you're actually doing in a certain kind of voice, they think you're lying. “Good work keeping your eyes shut. If there was an actual job doing that, you would be employee of the month.”

“What's that smell? It is not good, Jerome. Not good.”

I ignored her and bent down and stuck my hand through the drawer and rummaged around in there and pretty soon I felt the handbook. I shoved it in my pocket. Then came the sound of my pop's key in the lock. Heidi opened her eyes. The door creaked and Pop walked in looking about a thousand years old and like maybe he'd stopped at a bar on his way home from work.

“Who's that?” she said, taking a step backward. “Where are we?”

“Nobody,” I said. “We're nowhere.”

I touched her elbow real light and we shooped back to her house so fast it made my head spin. It was worse for Heidi, judging by the way she hung on to me.

“Jerome, you have to tell me first before we do that.” She shoved me away and took a couple of wobbly steps, like she was dizzy or something.

The scene at her house was totally different. People kept coming up to the door, bringing casseroles to one of her mom's work friends, who was stationed in the entry. We hung out in the bedroom to check out the manual without getting bugged.

I'd always liked her room better anyway.

It was like the garage of her life, a place where you keep everything that used to be important on account of it might come in handy someday. She still had a shelf full of smelly old kids' books and a teddy bear that looked like it got chewed on by a dinosaur. She had her shrine to that vampire guy: the poster with him bending down over his girlfriend's neck, and Megan's doll-in-a-box thing she put on the shelf next to it, only someone had taken him out
of the box, which was gonna hack Heidi off once she noticed.

But she also had her desk and a computer and a bunch of humongous books that she used when she was doing her homework and sometimes, when I used to watch her, I could imagine what she'd look like all grown up. It was a real mind-flask. I mean, someday, she'd be older than me. She'd have a job and an apartment and a husband and kids, or, knowing her, a bunch of cats wearing sweaters Megan had knitted.

Maybe I would've still been in the picture, the one angel who never made it out of rehab, and I'd be there with her, telling her what to say to the people who gave her Chevy at work and at bars and stuff, because when she was old enough, we were for sure going to hang out at the ones that had sports on TV and darts and wet T-shirt contests every Saturday night. Well, maybe not the darts because those are just little arrows and I've had enough of those.

But she never was going to get old enough, was she?

There was only one chair, and Heidi sat on it. I was on the bed all by myself, which was fine because I was not thinking about the sort of thing I used to think about doing when I was in bed with a girl, namely, getting a little handsy with her milk cartons. Not that that ever actually happened.

She was still mad at me because of the bingo thing.

“It's just really embarrassing that you did that,” she said. “I feel like Megan had no privacy at all. Like I had no privacy.”

“Look,” I said. “I'm sorry. What would you have done if you were me?”

“I can't even imagine being you,” she said, in a way that made me feel like something you wouldn't want to step in. “And that's not the point. The point is, you weren't respectful of
me
.”

She crossed her arms and wouldn't look at my face. Gabe's instruction manual felt crummy in my pocket, especially given my other assets, so I pulled it out and cracked it open.

“What is that?” she said, pointing at my hands.

“Book. Instructions.”

“Instructions for what? Helping me talk?”

“More than that. All of death, I guess. Never really read it, so be a little more
shh
so I can figure something out.”

The one time I looked at the handbook, I would've died of boredom except for the fact of my already being dead. It has, like, seventeen chapters, some with footnotes at the end, which is the worst. They put the longest words there and they make them so small you have to push your face into the paper. Who needs that? And there's this chart with arrows and things. Just looking at it makes my head hurt.

Also? There are no pictures. You'd think with the kind of technology Heaven has that can send messages directly into our skulls, that'd be the least they could do. Or maybe they could figure out a way where we don't have to read, like maybe with the air TV thing.

“Heidi, I don't know what half of this Chevy means.”

“Chevy,” she said. “Is that swearing thing going to happen to me? Let me see the book.”

I wouldn't let her, just in case she found out something bad. I wanted to find out why she hadn't been summoned to the gates and all that stuff before she did, so I could fix it without getting her any madder at me than she already was. I also wanted to figure out how she could talk so she could get her last words out like she wanted. I flipped through the manual to see if I could find something that would explain everything. When I got to the part about swearing censors, I decided to do a test because that was the easiest thing.

“Say a bad word. Swear.”

She shook her head and crossed her arms over her milk cartons.

“I don't think so, Jerome. Can I please see the book?” She held out her hand. “Does that have instructions for Communing?”

“I'll show you if you swear.”

“Jerome, swearing's embarrassing!” Her ears were so red they went see-through at the tops. “And I don't want to get a shock.”

“It's not like I said I wanted to touch your girl parts or anything. Just swear.”

“Okay, fine. But I'm not going to say the worst word, just in case.”

She closed her eyes for a second and I could tell she was thinking. There was no change in her cartons, but that didn't surprise me because everyone knows those bits aren't involved in making thoughts.

“You're an —” She paused, like she was afraid it was gonna hurt. “You're an asshole.”

My body jerked all on its own when she said it. That word causes a pretty harsh head buzz. Nothing happened to her, though. It was weird and unfair.

“I can't believe that didn't hurt you.”

“Maybe I didn't get a shock because it's true. You are a world-class a-hole at least half the time.”

I took out my Megan Bingo notebook and pretended to make a mark, just to bug her. Bull's-eye. Her eyes went dark and squinty.

“Jerome,” she said through her hand. Using the worst word of all for emphasis, she told me to show her the handbook.

After I got over my involuntary spazzing, I gave her some friendly advice.

“Don't make a habit of saying that word. Once they get your chip in, bang! And, also? You look real stupid covering your mouth all the time. If you're gonna talk, talk. Stop hiding behind your hand!”

I didn't say it out loud or anything, but it made me mega-nervous that swearing didn't fry her head. Because the Ten Commandments for the Dead? The ones that are in the manual? THOU SHALT NOT UTTER OATHS is the eighth one. They take it totally serious. It confused me when I was new in rehab, because I was getting zapped all the time, even without saying oaths. Then Xavier explained to me that the rule referred to not saying swearwords, any of them, and not only the word
oaths
.

If they don't want you to swear, they should say it plain. Like this. DON'T SWEAR. I had the book open to the page with the commandments.

“Let's look together.” She sat by me, crossing her arms.

“Look at that,” I said. I planted my finger on the page. “It's in crazy moon language. Good luck figuring it out.”

Heidi read it out loud. “THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.”

I looked over at her to see if she picked up on what was funny about that. She looked back with confused eyes.

“Discourse,” I said to Heidi. “Man, that's messed up. I can't believe they care if we have sex with people who are still alive. It's the dead ones you're not supposed to touch. I had an uncle once who worked at a funeral home and he went to jail for —”

“God, Jerome,” she said, once more not getting shocked for saying an oath. “You're lucky you died before your SATs. Discourse is talking.
Intercourse
is sex.” She turned all red.

Huh. I did not know that. All this time, I thought we weren't supposed to be having
sex
with living people. But it turns out that I could've been doing that all along, and it was the
talking
that's not allowed. Chevy! Sex and no talking sounded like Heaven, am I right?

“Look who's all smart and stuff,” I said. I was only kidding, but she reached over and twanged my arrow, and it took a minute before I could make words again.

“I can't believe this,” she said.

“What? That there are no pictures? I know —”

“No,” she said. “The First Commandment says you're not supposed to talk with the living if you're dead —”

“And?”

“You talked with me
every day
. Almost the whole day
long. And I've been trying to talk with the living. You should have warned me!” She got off the bed and took the book with her. “If the doorbell rings one more time … stupid casseroles. Didn't I at least deserve lasagna?” She had a point.

“You know that saying, that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings?”

“Yeah?” she said.

“Total bull.”

“You're completely annoying. You know that, right?”

She maybe had a point. The worse I felt, the less I could control what came out of my mouth. But it's unfair to blame someone for this. You don't get mad at people for being tall or having brown eyes. So why blame them for chronic, incurable mouth diarrhea?

She poked her head through the wall, sneaking peeks at the people milling around, mostly her mom's friends on account of her family wasn't there. This was not improving her mood. I could see it on her face when she popped back in the room, so I tried to cheer her up.

“I'm pretty sure these commandments are more like guidelines,” I said. “You know, stuff to work with.”

“Jerome!” She slammed the book down on her desk. Even though it's spectral, it made the papers on her desk flutter. You can do that sort of thing when you have a lot of emotion zipping around in your essence, like I did when I dumped the soda on Sully's crotch and knocked the salt and pepper shakers over.

“Commandments aren't guidelines. They're firm rules!” She sat, leaning against her desk.

“Really?” I sat next to her on the floor and tried to
give her some puppy eyes. It doesn't work all that good with a forehead arrow.

She made a plate with her hands and rested her face in it the way people do in pie-eating contests. Only, without the pie there, it was a much sadder thing to watch.

“Which level of Hell are they going to send me to?” she said. “According to your book, I've broken the rules. Almost all of them.”

She lifted her head and I saw a hard, bright look in her eyes. She reached for the book again and started flipping from the front to the back, where they describe the levels of Hell. “I mean, I wasn't being ungrateful or cruel or wasteful. I didn't steal anything and I wasn't hypocritical. And I'm certainly not guilty of deceit, am I?”

“I don't know,” I said. I'd been meaning to ask Xavier what
deceit
meant for a while, only he was always so mad when he was accusing me of it.