I Woke Up Dead at the Mall (20 page)

The Mall of America is hugely big. There was no reason for me to stay on the fifth level and hang with the dead when there was plenty of room for me down here. Give me the living, any day of the week. I would stay down here and just haunt.

There was a gaggle of little girls, all carrying American Girl dolls, each girl dressed to match her doll. Their mothers abandoned them (temporarily) for caffeine at Caribou Coffee. One of the little girls was the clear leader of the group. She was giving a speech to her smallest follower, while the others looked on.

“Well. Zoe told me that Seana never liked you.” Her words hit the small girl right between the eyes. She clutched her doll a little closer. The leader girl seemed pleased, so she continued. “She only
pretended
to like you because you had a trampoline and she wanted to do trampoline Olympics someday. But now she knows there's no such thing, so she doesn't need to be nice to you ever again.”

The small girl was crying now. The leader girl grinned.
“I'm telling you this because I'm your friend and I think you should know the truth.”

I leaned close to the leader girl and said, “You're a terrible human being. You're going to die someday. And you will be haunted by regrets.”

Just like that, the leader girl started to cry. The followers followed and started crying too. Their mothers emerged, coffee in hand, to comfort them.

“What's wrong?” one of the mothers asked.

“I don't kno-o-o-ow!” the leader girl wailed.

Great. I just made a bunch of children cry. What an achievement. For the record, I was not proud of myself. And I was now getting really good at slithering away. There were lots of places to see.

I smiled as a pair of (living) senior citizens in tracksuits power walked through a cluster of dead mall walkers. None of them saw each other. Can we all pause to enjoy this moment a little bit? The living were mall-walking to fend off death.

“What a good idea. I think I'll go for a walk,” I said to myself. I laughed just a little, but it felt like acid in my throat. I walked among the living on this level. And then I walked on the next level. And the next. And the next. I went upstairs among the dead, where I wouldn't make anybody cry. When I got to Crate & Barrel, I stopped. Really, I should have gone inside, but I just didn't want to. Not yet.

I made a turn and decided to keep walking. So yeah. I walked. Not fast. I walked. Just steady. I walked. The rhythm of my walk began to cast a spell on me. I walked. It was calming. I walked. It was rhythmic and seductive. So I walked some more. Keep going. I walked. I walked. I walked. I…

I'm at the wedding. The lights are too bright and the music is too loud. I know what's going to happen and I'm powerless to stop myself. All I have is pure terror at going through this again. Again. Again.

There I am. I'm eating way too much. I steal a glass of champagne from the dais table. Its sharp taste bites at my mouth. And then I eat some more. The food is meaty and savory, and I feel sort of cruel eating it. And then I'm feeling sick, so sick. Now I'm on the bathroom floor in my mango bridesmaid gown. I'm going under. I'm being torn from my body, thread by thread by thread by thread. It hurts like hell. And then…

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Going under. Hurts like hell. Start over. At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Going under. Hurts. Start over.

(Stop, please stop. I hate this. Make it stop!)

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the
bathroom floor. Going under. Hurts. Start over. At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Going under. Hurts. Start over.

(How long have I been doing this? How many times do I have to do this? Somebody? Anybody?)

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Hurts.

(Please! I'm begging you! Nick! Bertha! Alice! Lacey! Boy! God! Oprah! Anybody! I'm in here, and I'm stuck watching myself die over and over again. Make it stop! Please, please, please. No more. Nick!)

The lights went big, loud, super-bright. Blinding. Piercing through my eyelids. But then it was over. There was a calm darkness around me.

Was this me giving up? Was I done now? No more? Had I exploded into ash? What comes after all this afterlife, after all? I supposed that it was safe to open my eyes.

I was at home. I was sort of breathless and confused. (Aren't
you
?)

Still. Any kind of change from that awful, endless loop of dying and death was a good thing. I'd overlook the fact that I was standing in the middle of my living room dressed once more in the hideous mango bridesmaid gown because, hey, at least I wasn't watching myself die again.

Because the real problem was, I wasn't just watching myself die. I was
feeling
it. I was in it. And that horrible sick feeling of being extracted from my body was bad enough the first time. The repetition was unbearable.

So I'd wear anything as long as that stopped.

In fact, home looked sweeter and more precious than ever
before. I smiled with more joy than I may ever have felt when I was alive. I was here! In the land of the living!

I finally took a step and felt the carpet give way just a bit beneath my feet. Wow. That felt excellent. I looked around and saw Dad, sitting on the sofa.

And Karen.

She was holding his hand in both of hers. And he was tolerating that. She was smiling.

“Dad!” I yelled. “It's Sarah! Please don't trust Karen!”

He didn't hear me. Not even a little. And then my skin started to feel funny. Sort of like a sunburn that somebody was pushing and twisting. Oh no. The lights changed and flashed. They hurt my eyes. No, no, no. (Maybe it's just a dream? Just a dream. Stop worrying. Just breathe.)

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Hurts.

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Hurts.

At the wedding. Eating. Drinking. At the wedding. On the bathroom floor. Hurts.

If you watch yourself die enough times, you get
just
a little bit numb to it. The awful feeling becomes tolerable because you know just how bad it will feel and how long it will last. It becomes a repetitive story with a predictable ending, even though you care enormously about the protagonist. That's what was happening with me.

I was a little bit aware of some stray intrusions on this
cycle, but I didn't manage to dream (or haunt?) again. And I mostly knew that yes, I was now a mall walker. There were sounds on the breeze now and then, and they may have come from the people at the mall, but I couldn't be sure. I was safely uncomfortable repeating the story of my death over and over and over again. My legs and feet were serving as the motor that ran the story again, once more from the top.

I could swear I heard Bertha a few times, saying, “Wake yourself up, dear. You can do it. Haven't you suffered enough?”

But I couldn't answer her. (BTW, the answer would have been
No. I need to suffer more
.)

Or maybe I was just being awful. To her and to me. Just try waking up. Just try. Just for a change. I summoned strength/courage/free will/fury/love/chutzpah/and anything else I could find. Wake up. Wake up.
Now
.

I didn't see the wedding, the bathroom, or my home. Things were sort of darkish. And then I heard a new voice. A male voice speaking right to me. It was Declan.

“Wow. This sucks,” he said. I had to agree. I could see him, sort of blurry, like he'd been photographed with the wrong filter, but it was definitely Declan. Walking right by my side. We were in rhythm.

“Are we awake now?” I asked him.

“I don't think so,” he said. “I don't feel awake. Maybe this is like a dream. Or haunting. Or something.” Clearly he didn't know the answer. “Whatever this is, you just made it happen, Sarah.”

Me?

The lights were medium-bright, showing us that we were now in a hallway. “Where are we?” I asked.

“We're in a hallway,” Declan answered, helpful as ever.

Up ahead of us was a mahogany-brown door that I had never seen before. Of course we opened it. Of course we walked through it. Of course.

So far, every dream had happened in a familiar place. But I didn't recognize where I was now. This looked like a kind of living room, with pretentious art masks on the walls and a big desk on one side. Everything was brown or olive green. Sort of like the floor of a forest. I had definitely never seen this place before.

And there was my mother. (It wasn't fair that I was dead and people were haunting
me
.)

“Now what, Mom?” I asked her. “Is this an intervention? Is this about Nick? Because I'm not done being upset about him, so don't bother yelling at me to get over it. And have you actually returned from the dead to nag me? Really?”

“Yeah, I don't think I'm the one making this happen,” Mom interrupted. “You are.”

“Um,” Declan began. “Okay then, Sarah, first of all, thank you. Even though things still do kind of suck, and I may have to go back to reliving my death over and over again, I'm really thankful for getting drawn into this break. Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” I replied, even though I wasn't sure that I was the reason for any of this. But hey, he was saying it to me, so I accepted it.

“What's going on? Are you trying to wake us up?” I asked Mom.

“Here's the thing.” Mom sounded very confident, like a TV news anchor. “You've got a big problem. Besides mall-walking. You didn't finish what you were supposed to do.
Karen's winning. I mean, I hate to sound like a jealous first wife, but she's really awful.”

“But Dad left her. I saw him leave,” I insisted, trying really hard not to panic. “I'm the one who got him to leave, and I know, I
know
he understood what I was saying.”

“Uh-oh,” said Declan. “Remember what I told you: she's smarter than you.”

The door to this ugly room opened once more. In came some man I didn't recognize, followed by Karen. Followed by Dad. Oh, Dad. Oh no.

Dad and Karen were seated, all prim and proper on the khaki-green couch. The man sat in a big brown chair. He was studying a folder full of papers and sharing them with Dad. They were full of medical jargon, plus some colorful charts and graphs.

“Your blood work came back perfect, though your cholesterol is on the high side. No toxicology to report,” the guy said.
Translation: I didn't find any arsenic or poisonous mushrooms or any other poison in your bloodstream. You are not being poisoned
.

Well. Maybe she hid it. Maybe it's somewhere else. What was she up to?

Dad and Karen smiled at each other
(stop!)
. “Well, that's good news,” he said.

“You do have a serious heart condition, probably exacerbated by the unbelievable stress you've experienced recently.”

The guy (I'll assume he was some sort of doctor) gave Dad a bunch of pamphlets about diet, lifestyle changes, stress relief, and heart medications.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked Mom in the deepest, angriest tone I could summon.

“I'm not showing you anything!” Mom insisted.

“The Knowing is stupid, pointless, and mean! I can't save him. Whatever she's doing, she's going to finish it. Him. She's going to kill him. And having to watch is just cruel.”

“Pay attention,” Mom said, directing me back to Dad, Karen, and the doctor.

“It's been awful. I was kind of losing my mind for a while there,” Dad confided. “I was hearing things. Or thinking things. It didn't make any sense. I thought”—he gulped before he could continue—“I thought I heard my daughter's voice. In my mind.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” Karen cooed at him, rubbing his hands as if they were cold. (She was cold. That's what was cold. And her coo-voice sounded to me now like a car with bad breaks.)

The doctor smiled kindly. “That's perfectly understandable. The mind can play tricks, especially when you're trying to cope with something that's beyond your reach.”

“Great! Now I'm a hallucination. Even if I could speak to him again, now
he'll never believe that he's hearing me
!” I shouted.

Dad kissed Karen. (Ew.) “I'm so sorry,” he said. “I went a little haywire there.”

Karen smiled too sweetly for my taste. “Don't be sorry. Everything is fine now.”

I couldn't believe I ever fell for her lies. And Dad was still falling for them.

“Since when does Dad have a heart condition? Can you give somebody a heart condition?” I asked Mom. “How? And how do I stop her now?”

But my vision began to blur. Mom was speaking, but I couldn't hear her.

“Mom! Please don't go! Tell me what to do!” I could feel tears stinging my eyes.

Mom was already gone. So was Declan. The room faded to a mossy blur of nothing. No voices, no Karen, no Dad.

Everything changed. Familiar cool light surrounded me. My feet stopped. I was standing still for the first time in I have no idea how long. My eyes were open, but I couldn't figure out what I was seeing. The mall. I was back. And the silence made for an almost painful transition. But I blinked and I waited.

“Sarah? Are you awake? Are you in there?” the male voice asked me. The voice was quiet, but it penetrated deep into my rib cage. This voice mattered, I thought. I had to pay attention to this voice. So I did.

“Nick?” I asked.

He wasn't Nick. He was Declan. I blinked again. Still Declan.

“I think you woke me up,” he said. “That was really weird.”

(And wasn't that the understatement of all time?)

I sat on the floor. My feet hurt.