Robin Wasserman - Frozen

Lia Kahn is dead.

I am Lia Kahn.

Thereforebecause this is a logic problem even a dim-witted child could solveI am dead.

Except heres the thing: Im not.

Dont panic.

It was my fathers voice.

It wasand it wasnt. It sounded wrong. Muffled and tinny, but somehow, at the same time, too clear and too precise.

There was no pain.

But I knewbefore I knew anything elseI knew there should have been.

Something pried open my eyes. The world was a kaleidoscope, shapes and colors spinning without pattern, without sense until, without warning, my eyes closed again, and there was nothing. No pain, no sensation, no sense of whether I was lying down or standing up. It wasnt that I couldnt move my legs. It wasnt even that I couldnt feel my legs. It was that, with my eyes closed, I couldnt have said whether I had legs or not.

Or arms.

Or anything.

I think, therefore I am, I thought with a wave of giddiness. I would have giggled, but I couldnt feel my mouth.

I panicked.

Paralyzed.

There had been a car, I remembered that. And a noise, like a scream but not quite; not animal and not human.

And fire. Something on fire. The smell of something burning. I remembered that.

I didnt want to remember that.

I couldnt move. I couldnt speak. I couldnt open my own eyes.

They dont know Im awake in here. In my mind I heard the pounding heartbeat that I could no longer feel, felt imaginary lungs constricting in terror, tasted the salt of invisible tears. They cant.

To my father; to my mother, who I imagined huddled outside the room, crying, unable to come inside; to the doctors, who my father would surely have had shipped in from all over the world; to Zoie, who should have been in the car, who should have been the one

To all of them I would appear unconscious. Unaware.

I could imagine time slipping by, the doctors voice rising over my mothers sobs. Still no response. Still no movement, no sound, no flicker of her eyes. Still no sign of life.

My eyes were opened again, for longer this time. The colors swam together, resolving into blurry shapes, a world underwater. At the upper fringe of my vision I caught something bulbous and fleshy, fingers prying my lids apart. And hovering over me, a dim, fuzzy figure, speaking with my fathers voice.

I dont know if you can hear me yet. His tone was steady, his words stiff. But I assure you everything will be all right. Try to be patient.

My father pulled his hand away from my face, and my eyelids met again, shutting me behind a screen of black. He stayed. I knew, because I could hear his breathingjust not my own.

As last days go, mine sucked.

The last day I would have chosenthe last day I deservedwould have involved more chocolate. Significantly more. Dark. Milk. White. Bittersweet. Olive infused. Caramel filled. Truffle. Ganache. There would have been cheese, too, the soft, runny kind that stinks up a room as it dribbles down your throat. I would have lay in bed all day, eating the food I can no longer eat, listening to the music I no longer care to hear, feeling. The scratchy cotton of the sheets. The pillowcase, at first cool to the touch, warmth slowly blooming against my cheek. Stale air hissing out of the vent, sweeping my bangs across my forehead. And Walkerbecause if I had known, I would have made him come over, I would have said screw my parents, forget my sister, just be here, with me, todayI would have felt the downy hair on his arms and the scratchy bristles sprouting on his chin, which, despite my instructions, he was still too lazy to shave more than once a week. I would have felt his fingertips on my skin, a ticklish graze so light that, for all that it promised and refused to deliver, it almost hurt. I would have tasted peppermint on his lips and known it meant hed elected gum over toothpaste that morning. I would have made him dig his stubby nails into my skin, not only because I didnt want him to let go, but because along with one last real pleasure, I would have wanted one last pain.

This cant be happening.

Not to me.

I lay there. I tried to be patient, as my father had asked. I waited to wake up.

Yeah, I know: total clich. This must be a dream. You tell yourself that, and maybe you even pinch yourself, even though you know its cheesy, that the mere act proves its not a dream. In a dream you never question reality. In a dream people vanish, buildings appear, scenes shift, you fly. You fall. It all makes perfect sense. You only reject weirdness when youre awake.

So I waited to wake up.

Big shock: I didnt.

Stage one, denial. Check.

I learned the five stages of grief when my grandfather died. Not that I passed through them. Not that I grieved, not really, not for some guy Id only met twice, who my father seemed to loathe and my mother, the dead mans only daughter, claimed to barely remember. She cried anyway, and my father put up with itfor a few days, at least. We all did. He brought her flowers. I didnt roll my eyes, not even when she knocked over her glass at dinner for the third time in a row, with that same annoying arent-I-clumsy giggle. And Zo pumped the network and dug up the five stages of grief.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

Since I was deador worse than dead, buried alive in a body that might as well be a coffin except it denied me the pleasure of suffocationI figured I should be allowed to grieve.

No, not grieve. That wasnt the right word.

Rage.

I hated everyone, everything. The car for crashing. My body for burning, for breaking. Zo for sending me in her place. For living, breathing, partying somewhere beyond the darkness, in a body that worked. I hated Walker for forgetting me, like I knew he would, for the girls he would date and the girls he would screw and the girl he would curl up with in his bed, his arms closing around her, his lips whispering promises about how she was the only one. I hated the doctors who marched in and out, prying my eyes open, blinding me with their pen-size lights, squinting, staring, waiting for some kind of reaction I couldnt give them, all while I was screaming in my head Im awake Im alive Hear me Help me and then the lids would shut me into the black again.

My father stayed by my side, the only one to speak to me, an unending monotonic litany: Be patient, Lia. Try to wake up, Lia. Try to move, Lia. It will be okay, Lia. Work at it, Lia. Youll be okay. I wanted to believe him, because I had always believed him. I wanted to believe that he would fix this like hed fixed everything else. I wanted to believe him, but I couldnt, so I hated him most of all.