Amy Huntley - The Everafter

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Digital Edition
Published: September 2009
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN-13: 9780061964572
ISBN-10: 0061964573

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There is a solitude of spaceA solitude of seaA solitude of death, but theseSociety shall beCompared who that profounder siteThat polar privacyA soul admitted to itselfFinite infinity. EMII.V DICKINSON

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Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright About the Publisher I'M DEAD. Not my-parents-told-me-to-be-home-by-twelve-andit's-two-o clock-now dead. Just dead. Literally. I think. I can't fee! a body anymore.

No hungernot even a stomach. No fingers to wiggle, no feet to tap. So I pretty much have to assume that I'm... gone? No. I can't be gone, because I'm here. I won't say that I ve "passed on" or "passed away." I don't remember passing anything on the way here.

For that matter, I don't remember dying, either. There's some saying about people "dying of curiosity." But I'm just curious about how I died. Curious and... frightened. This placewherever it issurrounds me with vibrations. Is. Is.

Loneliness and mystery hum through me. I feel like I just woke up in a dark room that has no clock. And even worse: no people. Where is everyone I knew when I was alive? Who are they, and do they miss me? What if I'm in Hell? Maybe instead of fire and brimstone, hell is just the feeling of loneliness. I don't remember much about being alive. I don't even remember my name.

But loneliness being hell? That much I remember. Ahead I see a bright pinprick of light. Can I reach it? It seems my only chance for company. The prospect of reaching that light has replaced the throbbing ache of loneliness with a quivering hope. I attempt to move toward the light, but the space that is... cloaks me in thick, clinging darkness. cloaks me in thick, clinging darkness.

It sticks to me like a disgustingly damp pair of jeans two sizes too small. I fight it out with Is, pushing against its boundaries, discovering I can get the bubble around me to expand if I try hard enough. But just as my space begins to grow, a cloud of loneliness surrounds me. I discover there's a reason the dead are stuffed into cozy coffins and small urns. This large empty space I've created makes me feel even more isolated. I stop pushing against the boundaries of Is, and it shrinks into a small bubble again.

All the energy that is me beats comfortably against the boundaries. Now that I am dead, I guess I have a soulbeat instead of a heartbeat. Maybe some time passes..Maybe it doesn't. Hard to tell in this place. But one way or the other, I discover the problem with small, safe places. They're boring.

I can't decide if my curiosity or my fear is the stronger emotion. And I don't quite understand how I can be feeling both if I'm dead. They chase each other around, circulating and percolating in me. Haunting me. How is that possible? I mean, if I'm the one who's dead, how can something be haunting me? I'm supposed to be the one doing the haunting. Finally, curiosity chases fear to the perimeter.

It's time to explore. Not that there's much to investigate. Just that bright pinprick of light. I push against Is and expand the bubble of my space again. This time I discover I can intensify my soulbeat until it fills the bubble's space with energy. I ride the pulse of my soulbeat into the ever-expanding bubble as I approach the light.

It is a ring glowing in the dark. It shines against the midnight black of space like an X-ray. An image of a bracelet. What is it doing here? As I get closer to the bracelet, I find myself floating right through the glowing circle of light. Photons scatter everywhere. I feel less lonely somehow with all this light swirling around me.

And because I can see now that there are more pinpricks of light. They are little stars amid my dark existence, scattered across space at great distances. A spoon. A pair of socks, hair clips, pieces of paper, peas, a cell phone, keys, flowers, a handbag, a doll's shoe. More and more. They are artifacts of a life.

Mine? ! don't know why, but they seem to link me to all the people I sense I should be with. I find still more: beads, photographs, a ring, a baby's rattle, andhow odda pair of underwear. All these images are company at last. But I need them to be closer together so I can spend time with all of them at once. Is there a way to click and drag them onto a desktop-sized spacer No. Apparently Is hasn't picked up on the whole wireless concept yet, and I will have to go to the ends of the U niverse to find all my companions.

I'd better start now if My trip has already come to an abrupt halt. I've hit the next object. It's a sweatshirt, and I can't bear the idea of moving and leaving it behind. I know it should make me feel warm, but its stark white glow fills me with longing. A sense of missing something more intense chan any feeling I've yet hadpounds through me. And suddenly I know I wasn't meant to be here alone.

I know I expected to find Gabriel waiting for me. But who is Gabriel? UNCORRECTED E-PROOFNOT f OR SALE HMtfift!flg&wbfeftfiH the sweatshirt I'M NOT SURF. WHY this sweatshirt fascinates me so much. Maybe it's the missing smell. I sense that the most important thing about this sweatshirt is supposed to be its scent, but there aren't any smells in //. I want to put the sweatshirt on, but I've got no body here in Is, either.

I try to what it felt like to have a body and imagine mysel f pulling warm fabric over my head.... And then suddenly everything changes. Knowledge not just some strange half memoryrips through me, scattering me across space and darkness, through nothingness and shadow. I am propelled toward harsh light. The sound of voices swells as I come closer and closer to them. Metal chairs scrape across linoleum, addingan unharmonious musical accompaniment to the voices.

Flickering specks of me hover, dancing in the air, and then unite into something not quite solid yet more substantial than I have been. I have a misty almost-form. I'm back in the world. In a classroom. An art classroom. I recognize myself, standing at a sink a few feet away.

I'm trying to get red paint off my hands. I remember this moment: junior year, second-hour art class. A sense of joy at being back in the real world courses like blood through mv almost-being, but it's strangely mixed with anger: I know that I'm about to discover that the sweatshirt is missing. And then I know so much more. Suddenly I'm drowning in memories that take on half shape s. They fill me with panic as I founder around in them.

I know my name: Madison Stanton. I remember my mother, her deep red hair; my father, tall and playful, with a baritone that rumbles comfortingly; mv house and its smell of eucalyptus; school; teachers; my best friend, Sandra; my older sister, Kristen; my pet cat. Cozy; andOh, God Gabriel. Gabriel whose sweatshirt I am about to lose. All these memories threaten to pull me under a tide of grief and loss. It is the sound of my own laughter that acts as a life jacket.

I float up out of the memories to focus on this moment, on myself standing at that sink. I'm laughing with Sandra. I can't remember what about, though. I'm tempted to move closer. But first I need to go rescue the sweatshirt. It's about to be stolen.

And I know by whom. I left it on the back of a chairso I wouldn't get paint on itover on the other side of the partition that divides the room. If I can get to the sweatshirt before Dana does, mavbe I can keep her from stealing it. I try to move toward the partition but have trouble figuring out how to do it. I don't quite have a body, so the physics of movement as I'm used to it on Earth just isn't happening. But I'm also not merely a collection of light particles the way I've gotten used to being back in

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