I Woke Up Dead at the Mall (10 page)

And once again I was in a dream. I was back in my room, stretched out on my bed, surrounded by stuff that I loved. Mom came in and sat down next to me. This was starting to feel sort of normal. I pulled myself up to sitting. “Hi,” I said.

“It's begun,” said Mom. “He's starting to die, a little bit every day. It's going to be slow. Not like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

“Can I save him?” I asked.

“Maybe. I don't know.” She shrugged as she spoke.

“See? This is how bad the Knowing is. I couldn't save you. I can't save him. But I get to worry and stress and suffer about it. I hate this.”

She stepped away and started sifting through my desk, which was littered with paper, pens, headphones, and odd-shaped paper clips. If I had been alive, I would have protested: come back and never let go.

“Have you moved on?” I asked. “Are you someone else now?”

“Yes. I did,” Mom conceded. “I moved on a long time ago.
But some deep part of me will always be drawn back to this place. To you.” She looked all around her. “I was so happy here. I wish it could have lasted. But when I wake up, this will just be another dream that I forget. And I'll be back in my new life.”

“Don't forget,” I urged her.

“Oh, Sarah. All those piano lessons and you could never write your own melody?” Mom asked as she studied one of my half songs. “I'm not sure Lennon and McCartney would be okay with you just borrowing theirs.”

I blinked at her kind of hard. “Is that what's important right now?”

She abandoned the music on my desk and returned to the bed next to me. She took both of my hands in hers. “I just want you to fulfill your potential. And move on. I'm so glad I got to move on. I'm happy.”

And then I woke up.

Death was making me nocturnal. Alice and Lacey were fast asleep as I crept out of our Crate & Barrel home and into our mall. Up on our floor, we had pretty much everything we needed. I padded around as quietly as I could and gathered my supplies. Staples: yellow paper, a ruler, black and blue pens. Brookstone: the Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Piano keyboard and headphones.

These were pretty common items, and as I gathered them I realized that they had stuff like this downstairs, where the living could roam and shop and waste their lives. I was about
to do something I could have done so easily when I was alive. What was so important that stopped me? What had I been waiting for?

And yes, I could take a hint, Mom. I needed to communicate to Dad through
music
, not just words. Wasn't that what she'd been trying to tell me? (And by the way, simple, direct, declarative sentences would work really, really well.) Okay, I did sing to him at my funeral, but maybe it had to be one hundred percent completely and totally from me. My own Beatles-free composition. Okay, then. Let's get to work.

Downstairs, in the quiet dark of the empty mall, I made myself at home in the aquarium, locking in on the gentle rhythms that surrounded me while I fashioned a few pages of blank sheet music. A school of gray fish with long snouts hung suspended in the water like floating toys. I suppose they were waiting for daylight. I hoped they liked music.

I thought that I already knew the song I would write. I had a few lyrics bouncing around in my head, and a hazy melody in there somewhere. It was going to be a song to Dad, urging him to get the hell away from Karen and naming her as my killer:

Dad, get out of here

Don't let Karen near

She will kill you, if she can

Ignore that. I was just brainstorming, okay? And anyway, the real song began to write itself, and it didn't want to be a scary warning like that. I couldn't force it, couldn't hold it in, any more than a living person could hold their breath
indefinitely. It needed to breathe and be in the world. When I reached the end, I sang it start to finish.

Here it is. It's my first full song, so don't be too judgy, okay?

The Story I Tell Myself

(Music and lyrics by Sarah Evans)

Turn your face to me

Turn your gaze and see

All the pain surrounding you

Every song you hear

With a heart sincere

Brings a chance for you to do

Something more

Than

Be

Alone

Something more

Than

Be

Unknown

Be the one who does

More than she who was

Be alive in joy and hope

Be the one who does

More than she who was

Be alive in joy and hope

By the time I was finished, the stores were opening downstairs and living people were firing up super-bright lights
while they gripped large cups of coffee. The night security guard walked past me. Whistling a little piece of my melody. The one that I had just written.

“Hey!” I called out. “Did you hear me?” But he kept walking, just as if he hadn't heard me at all.

The entrance was sort of jammed with a school trip, where a long row of elementary school kids were noisily filing into the mall. A teacher led the group like a mother duckling. The first girl in line had a mischievous, giggling boy behind her. He was signaling to his friends that he was going to push the girl in front of him. He was silently laughing too hard to carry it out. Yet.

As he prepared to give her a shove, I leaned into the girl's ear and said, “Duck!” She did a kind of duck and twist in my direction. Without her there, the boy shoved his teacher with all his might. “Oooooh!” the kids said in chorus. He was in trouble and they all knew it.

“Nice move!” another boy shouted to the girl who had ducked. She beamed with joy.

I needed to find Nick. I raced upstairs to the land of the dead, where everything was unraveling at the food court. Everybody had food, but nobody was eating. Declan was at the salad bar, filling a bowl with greens that he examined leaf by leaf. Nick was studying the ingredients in his burrito. At first, I assumed he was trying to figure out how to improve it, but then I realized that he was looking past it, not at it.

It took me a minute to figure out that something had gone horribly wrong while I was at my funeral, and it was only going to get worse.

“So? Thornton Wilder Day?” I said, helping myself to some of Nick's fries. “Did everybody choose well?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “It was…” He searched for the word, then looked into my eyes and found it. “Surprising.”

Lacey sniffed and said, “Mine rocked.” But her voice was so dark, so somber, it didn't make sense.

Alice looked like a bad Precious Moments figurine. Big eyes, solemn face.

“Okay, what's going on?” I asked, and couldn't resist adding, “Who died?”

“Harry,” Alice answered in a dull, quiet voice. Her sadness was immeasurable. Was he somehow deader than the rest of us? I didn't think so. I turned to Harry, but his focus was way past me. Bertha was entering the food court.

“Now?” he asked her. Okay, clearly I was missing something, and it was big. Now what?

“Not quite yet,” she said. “Declan. I'm afraid I have bad news.”

Declan put down his bowl and walked toward her. “Don't make me guess,” he said with a tinge of fear in his voice. “I'm not good at guessing.”

“Your funeral,” she began. “It isn't going to take place.”

“What? You mean it's postponed?” he asked.

“No.” Bertha took his hands and looked him in the eye. “It's canceled, my dear. I'm sorry. Your parents have decided not to have a funeral. I'm so sorry.”

Declan's chin wobbled a bit. “But why?” He gestured to all of us. “Everybody gets a funeral. Why not me?”

“I'm so sorry, dear,” Bertha said again.

“So what's going to become of my body?” Declan sounded like a child. “I wanted to have my beautiful body all laid out so people could look at me one last time.”

“Yes. Well.” Bertha looked at the ground. “That's a bit difficult to explain.”

She hesitated for so long, Declan said, “Try!”

“Rather than have a burial or cremation, your parents have donated your body,” she said at last.

Declan's eyes went wide. “What, to a museum?” You could
see on his face that he was picturing himself as a great stuffed statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And sort of liking it.

“No,” Bertha said. “To a medical school.” Declan squinted in confusion, so she explained further. “Medical students need cadavers. For practice and study.” He still didn't get it completely. “So. That's what they'll use your body for.”

Declan fell back a step. “I get it now,” he whispered. “There's nobody back there who loves me enough to bury me or even say goodbye to me. Nobody will ever visit my grave and remember me. Nobody's crying for me. And they're treating my beautiful body like garbage.”

“Now, Declan, that's not true,” Bertha said. She was studying his face and looked a bit panicked.

“I died all alone. And nobody loved me.” Declan was staring off into the distance.

“Hey, Declan. Buddy. Don't tell yourself that,” Nick said sharply.

“People loved you,” Declan replied sadly. “But not me. I died all alone. And nobody loved me.” Declan repeated it a few more times. Alice covered her face with both hands, unable to watch what was unfolding. I knew what was about to happen: he was slipping away from us, hypnotizing himself with his own words. He was about to become another mall walker.

“Stop it!” Nick jumped from his seat and shook Declan by the shoulders. “Declan! Look at me! Stop saying this to yourself. It isn't true!”

We surrounded him now, following Nick's lead. We commanded him to come back to us, but he didn't blink. He looked past us, his eyes going glassy. “I died all alone. And nobody
loved me.” His voice was dull and slow now. “I died all alone. And nobody loved me.”

“Declan! Buddy! Cut it out!” We launched a chorus of shouts, but Declan was farther and farther away with every second. He went silent and took a slow step out into the mall. And then another and another.

He was lost to us.

Whoever came up with the phrase “rest in peace” clearly had never died. Did I seem peaceful to you?

Harry held up his wrist. His bracelet was completely white, and it shimmered in the light.

“I'm moving on.” He stopped there, letting it sink in. I tried to think of a wise, compassionate answer. But all I could think was
“Nooooooo!”
Nick put his arm around me, knowing that I'd need solid support.

“I was dying for a long time,” Harry continued. “My unfinished business was about how sad I was to miss so much while I was actually alive. But I'm okay now. I can go.”

“When do you go?” I asked.

“Now,” he said, rising from the table.

“Noooooooo!”
I called out. Just then we all turned to see Lacey sobbing loudly, covering her face with her hands. Harry walked over and knelt down beside her.

“Hey, this is a good thing, remember? And if you guys move on soon, we'll all get a chance to meet up next time around.”

“I'll be looking for you,” Nick said. “For all of us. We'll be together again.”

Lacey lowered her hands and wiped her face with her arm, sniffling loudly. “Harry. Tell the truth: do you want to meet me and grow up with me next time?”

Harry drew an X over his heart. “I do. I swear.”

Her expression shifted into something harder, and I saw the Lacey who scared the shit out of everyone back on Earth. Her angry tone didn't match her words at all. “You are the coolest person I ever met. I hate the thought of being here without you. You're moving on too soon. Wait for me.”

“I'm ready now,” Harry said gently.

“Then I am too. Right now.” Her face, her voice, her energy were all poised for a fight.

“You will be,” Harry assured her quietly. “Right now you're still kind of pissed off about Jorge. You've got to do something about that.”

Lacey studied his face. Slowly, slowly the stern muscles in her face melted. “Ya think?”

Now Harry studied her face as if he needed to memorize it. And then he kissed her, ever so sweetly. They locked in a tight embrace, but then Harry spread his arms. “Bring it in, guys! Group hug!”

Our hug was joyous, loving, and all too brief. Harry stepped back and sort of saluted the group. “You're all really beautiful.”

With that, he walked away from us. We stayed back, all still and silent.

Lacey gasped loudly. “Wait!” she shouted. “Harry! Wait up! I have one more question!” She ran out after him, then stopped and turned to us.

“He's gone,” she said. And the finality of death drew us all together once more.