The Catastrophic History of You And Me

by Jess Rothenberg

  I called up to the bus driver. “Sir? Can you take me to my house, please? It’s not that far. My mom and dad’ll pay you, I swear.”

  He kept driving. Didn’t answer.

  “Sir?” I tried to stand up to get a little closer to him, but the bus swerved suddenly and I was thrown back into my seat.

  Bounce, bounce.

  I tried again, gradually making my way down the aisle. “Sir? Sir, please.” I clung to seat after seat, inching my way toward the front of the bus and trying not to topple over in the process. My shoes stuck a little on the floor. Like someone had spilled a soda and never bothered to clean it up.

  It took me a minute, but I finally made it to the seat right behind him. A little lightheaded and dizzy from all the bouncing.

  “Excuse me,” I said again, louder this time. “I asked if you could please drop me at my house? It’s number eleven Magellan Avenue, just off Cabrillo.”

  “I’m not authorized to make any unscheduled stops.”

  I suddenly felt nervous. How was I going to get home? I didn’t have a phone or any money or anything.

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  Bounce, bounce, bounce.

  “Already got off.”

  “How long was I asleep?”

  Bounce.

  “Long time.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “Not my problem.” He reached up for the microphone. “Last stop, two minutes.” A shrill, high-pitched screech came over the loudspeaker. I flinched, covering my ears.

  We rode along in silence, the nighttime flying by, until I felt the bus shift and groan into a lower gear. We were slowing down. Tires crunched as we rolled into a gravel-filled parking lot, a red neon light glowing just ahead of us. Finally, the bus came to a slow, grinding stop. It let out a massive sigh as it took its last breath and settled into park.

  I rubbed another clean spot on the foggy window and tried to read the strangely familiar neon sign.

  Wait. What?

  In an instant, my head began to spin as forgotten sights and sounds and smells came crashing back. A tornado of hot, ripping pain and shooting stars and bottomless black holes. Laughter and tears and echoes of a boy shouting to me across a smoke-filled highway littered with motorcycle debris. Candles and claustrophobia and earth and fire and mud, seeping, searing into the cracks.

  I clutched my head. My brain felt like it might explode.

  Digging.

  Let me out.

  Scratching.

  Help me.

  Clawing.

  Please.

  Silence. Stillness. Staleness. Darkness.

  Endless.

  The old man’s voice broke through, snapping me back. “That’s it, everyone off.”

  I swallowed, shivering. The fire and pain vanished as fast as it had hit.

  “Where am I?” I whispered.

  Nowhere. I’m nowhere.

  “Last stop.” He reached over, grabbed the yellow lever, and pulled it open with a grunt.

  I felt a rush of cool air as the bus door opened, and noticed the familiar smell of ocean mixed with wildflowers. Only now, there was a tinge of something new. Sort of like dirt. Also, it was chilly. I crossed my arms and wished I had a jacket.

  No, my hoodie. The one with the baby penguins on it.

  I still had one more question, but something told me I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Sir?”

  His smoky eyes burned into mine as I took a deep, nervous breath.

  “What’s the last stop?”

  He nodded toward the open door. “Welcome to forever.”

  CHAPTER 6

  ooh heaven is a place on earth

  Heaven. (Sort of?) I’m not really sure what I expected the whole After Life thing to look like exactly, but I was pretty sure it would’ve had something to do with fluffy clouds and giant waterslides and golden-doodle puppies and, like, galloping around on a black stallion all day, every day.

  Not quite.

  I stepped off the bus and took in my surroundings. Okay, definitely not earth. I mean, it felt like earth. It looked like earth. It even tasted like earth, as weird as that sounds. Except much, much sweeter, like the air was made out of maple syrup, or a pumpkin spiced latte.

  Hamloaf, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

  But as I watched the bus pull away—as it began to really sink in that I was completely alone in a creepy parking lot without a jacket or a phone or a friend in the world—I began to sense something else buried below all of that delicious sweetness. Something sour and full of decay. An undertaste.

  Then I got it.

  The air tasted like dead flowers.

  No, dead roses.

  Just like the ones they’d had at my funeral. Just like the ones they’d scattered all over my grave after they’d lowered me in.

  I could still hear the hollow thump-thump-thump of thorny stems hitting the oak casket as the flowers had landed, one by one, on top of me. I could still remember the way the smell had begun to transform as the hours, days, and weeks had passed.

  Sickly, putrid, sweet.

  Suddenly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the taste was everywhere. On my tongue, up my nose, down my throat—choking me with the thought of death and dying and rotting pink petals. It made me want to throw up, even though there was nothing left inside me.

  It didn’t matter.

  I threw up anyway.

  I coughed and choked and twisted on the asphalt, gravel and dust clouding my eyes and hair and lungs until the only thing I could do was curl up in a ball and wait the misery out. Every single part of me ached, sort of like the universe was exploding inside my skull, or like my body was tearing itself apart in order to rebuild everything from the inside out. To re-create some twisted semblance of me.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Brie back together again.

  When the worst of it subsided, all I could do was lie there on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness and bouncing between a weird mix of snapshot memories. The way Jack’s nose scrunched up whenever he smiled. The way Hamloaf always woofed and farted in his sleep. Wooffart, fartwoof. The cold, green, churning Pacific.

  It was like I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. I was twelve, riding down the freeway with Dad in his red convertible, singing “God Only Knows” with the Beach Boys. I was nine, darting through the sprinklers with Sadie and Emma and Tess, laughing as Hamloaf chased us across the yard, biting at our bikini bottoms. I was fifteen, biking with Jacob down to Mavericks beach on the very last night of summer. The night he held my face in his hands and told me he loved me.

  A sudden jolt of heat forced my eyes open, and I blinked hard, feeling my pupils dilate and then contract. For a mo-ment, there was nothing but black. But soon, a soft red glow began to creep its way toward me like a pair of twisted hands, motioning for me to follow. Finally, from across the parking lot, my eyes settled on the source of the light: a familiar neon sign, buzzing and blinking and warming up the dark.

  I squinted as the world came back into focus. And when it did, I read:

  Little Slice of Heaven

  “Huh?” My throat felt scratchy and full of ash. “The pizza place?”

  I lay there for a while on the asphalt, mesmerized by the eerie flashing glow that had settled all around me. Slice had been my family’s all-time favorite pizza spot since forever. An Eagan family tradition for years and years, even though the tiled floor is kind of gross and the booths are straight out of the seventies—all orange and brown striped with big rips in them that have been duct-taped over like ten thousand times.

  It wasn’t the best pizza south of San Francisco.

  It was the best pizza on the entire West Coast. Maybe even the world.

  And because Slice sat just across the street from the ocean, about eighteen hundred feet above sea level, the view was amazing. Or, as Dad always used to say, “heavenly.�
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  This is all just a bad dream, I told myself. I’m totally in bed, totally safe, totally snuggled. Hamloaf’s next to me. Jack’s down the hall. Everything is okay.

  But still, why the crazy nightmare? I’d probably eaten something funky. Or maybe I had a history test coming up. Or I’d forgotten to floss.

  Except then I remembered.

  Jacob. I had a fight with Jacob.

  I shoved my hands inside my pockets.

  Empty.

  I looked around frantically for a pay phone.

  I’ve got to call him. I know he’s sorry. I know he didn’t mean—

  My stomach let out a crazy, out-of-control growl, interrupting the thought. Whoa there. Guess I was hungrier than I realized. Slowly, very slowly, I managed to crawl to my feet. I put one foot in front of the other, making my way toward those familiar glass doors. Every step I took was one step from my old life on earth. One step farther away from my friends and family, and into the red, radiant neon light.

  I tried not to think about it.

  When I got close enough, I peeked through the windows. From the outside looking in, the place seemed just like usual. Cracked checkered floor, bad lighting, squeaky ceiling fans, peeling yellow paint, one million pizza boxes stacked way in the back. I tried to ignore the fact that my family’s favorite booth was empty, even though I could almost see them sitting there. Memories of Mom laughing while Dad and Jack flicked sugar packets back and forth across the table.

  Tears stung my eyes and I looked down at my ballet flats.

  I’ll see them soon. I’ll be going home soon.

  I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go inside, but given my growling stomach and fairly limited options, it seemed like the best thing to do. Plus, the smell of fresh pizza right out of the oven was killing me. No pun intended.

  I took a deep breath, pushed against the glass doors, and walked inside. Almost immediately, the smell of simmering tomato sauce, crispety-crunchety crust, and melt-in-your-mouth mozzarella engulfed me. Oh wow was that good. I breathed the place in, letting it warm me up.

  Yum, ya-yum, yum yum.

  In the booth to my right, I saw a girl who looked around my age flipping through an issue of Cosmo magazine. Her style was total Princess Punk meets San Francisco hipster: curly blond hair cut into an unfortunate shag-mullet (a shmullet?), thick, black, Cooler Than Thou glasses, and an arm completely packed with hot-pink bangles that jangled and clanked together every time she turned a page.

  Jangle, clank. Clank, jangle.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Across the same booth sat a little boy in a Harvard sweatshirt who looked just a few years younger than Jack. His face—completely drenched in freckles—was glued to a Nintendo DS, locked in some kind of virtual trance. I couldn’t help feeling sad for him, watching his thumbs fly over the keypad at rapid speeds. Five or six was way too young to end up all alone in a place like this.

  Then again, so was fifteen.

  Across the room, a girl in a flowery hat was lost in a cheesy-looking romance novel, and three tables over, a kid dressed as a football quarterback was having a conversation with a girl with Kool Aid–purple hair, a spiked choker necklace, and black lipstick.

  Okay, weird.

  I’d never seen any of these kids before. Didn’t recognize a single face, even though I’d been a regular at Slice my entire life. It felt sort of odd watching a roomful of strangers, especially since none of them had seemed to notice me. I wandered over to a small booth in the corner, where somebody had randomly left a Magic 8 Ball sitting on the table. I smiled.

  At least SOME things never change.

  The family who ran the shop had a thing for collecting stuff—lamps, ashtrays, gumball machines, weird paintings, rabbit heads with deer antlers stuck on them—lots of knickknacky stuff. Over the years, Slice had become a shrine to a bunch of old junk that nobody would ever want, but that nobody would ever throw away. It was kind of awesome.

  I studied the 8 Ball and asked the only question I could think of.

  Can I go home yet?

  Then I picked it up and shook it gently in my hands, watching as the little plastic prism flipped awkwardly inside the bubbly blue liquid. After a second, an answer popped up against the transparent window.

  DON’T COUNT ON IT.

  I put the 8 Ball back on the table, a little less gently this time.

  Whatever. Magic 8 Balls are stupid.

  All of a sudden I felt invisible. Forgotten. Like the universe had played a really mean practical joke on me, even though I’d never done anything to deserve it. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for somebody—anybody—to march through those doors and take me home. To let this whole horrible bad dream end already.

  “Let me be home. Let me be with Sadie. Let me be taking the most insanely evil Algebra II test of all time. Just let me be anywhere but here,” I quietly begged the universe. “Please.”

  But when I opened my eyes, the little boy was still playing his video game. The bangles were still jangling. The quarterback was still trying to score with Lady Gothga.

  I thought the floor might buckle beneath me.

  In fact, I wished it would,

  The sound of fuzzy TV reception snapped me out of my self-pitying haze, and I glanced toward the back of the restaurant, near a giant stack of pizza boxes.

  In the corner—his scuffed army boots kicked up on a small checkered table—sat a kid about seventeen or so who was busy fiddling with an old-school TV remote, trying to change the channel.

  Our eyes met for a split second, and I felt a rush of tiny pinpricks sweep across my shoulders, as if I’d walked through a cloud of static electricity. His eyes were dark—not quite brown and not quite green, like they hadn’t decided which to be. He had a perfect California tan, the kind you only get after a bunch of summers surfing Mavericks. His hair was a dark chestnut brown and cropped short, and when he moved, I noticed the occasional glint of gold where the sun had gotten in.

  I watched him for a moment, trying to figure out what it was that seemed so familiar to me. Army boots, check. Washed-out jeans and faded gray T-shirt, check. Aviator sunglasses hanging from his collar, check. But most impressive of all: The Jacket. Antique brown leather, cargo pockets, knit cuffs . . . even a faux fur collar.

  Then it hit me. It wasn’t his face I recognized, it was his outfit! This kid was totally ’80s. Totally fighter pilot. Totally Tom Cruise circa Top Gun, otherwise known as the BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. I laughed a little under my breath, feeling silly. A song popped into my head and I couldn’t help singing along silently.

  Hiiighway . . . tooo the . . . danger zone!

  Except then I noticed his scar.

  Deep and jagged, starting at the top of his hand, stretching up his wrist, and finally disappearing underneath his sleeve.

  Yikes.

  “All new souls need to check in at the counter,” a woman’s voice suddenly interrupted my internal karaoke.

  I spun around and saw a gray-haired Asian woman sitting on a stool behind the pizza counter. She had a big crossword puzzle spread out in front of her, and was wearing bright red glasses that had slipped more than halfway down her nose.

  “Name?” This time she looked right at me, her voice something like one-third bored and two-thirds annoyed.

  My eyes darted left, then right. Nobody else in the room seemed to care. She was definitely talking to me.

  “Um, Brie Eagan?”

  “You’re late.”

  “I am?”

  She pointed to a clock on the wall overhead that had apparently stopped telling time.

  “Sorry.”

  Crossword Lady waved me over. “Doesn’t matter. Come sit. Paperwork. Also, you can help me with my puzzle.”

  My stomach growled again, this time louder than before. I looked back over at Tom Cruise–inator, who had traded fiddling with the remote for a very delicious-looking slice of pizza.

  Ooh, what is that, artichoke and sun-dried t
omato?

  He kept his eyes on me as he slowly—deliberately—bit into a thick piece of crust.

  Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

  Crossword Lady ahem-ed at me from her counter stool. “First you sign in, then you can eat.”

  Whoa. Mind reader much?

  I got up from the booth and slowly made my way over to the counter, a little miffed. I pulled out a stool and sat, then watched as the woman took out a brand-new file folder and scribbled my name down on the tab. I could see the veins in her snow-white hands as she removed a single sheet of paper from the cabinet, attached it to a clipboard, and slid it over to me across the counter. “I’ll just need you to fill this out.”

  “I think maybe there’s been a mistake.”

  She eyed me but didn’t budge. “I doubt it.”

  “But this is all wrong. I feel fine.”

  She laughed. “You and everybody else in here. Now, paperwork.”

  I crossed my arms and clenched my jaw, feeling my inner five-year-old beginning to act out. “I. Don’t. Have. A. Pen.”

  She pointed at my right hand. “Yes. You. Do.”

  Before I could argue with her, I realized that actually, I did have a pen. Right in my hand, ready to go. I almost fell off my chair.

  How the hell did that get there?!

  The weirdest part? I recognized it.

  No. Way.

  It was the exact same pen I’d had back in third grade. Back when I was an even bigger dork who got so excited I couldn’t sleep before School Supply Shopping Day.

  The pen was white on top and sky blue on the bottom, with six (six!) color options, depending which button you pushed down. You could even press two buttons down at the same time and mix the colors. (I know.) To a third-grade bookworm who’d spent her entire summer practicing her signature in cursive, this pen was a complete and total thing of beauty.

  I’d left it in my desk one Friday afternoon, but when I looked for it the following Monday morning, it was gone. We’re talking Real Life Elementary School Tragedy.

  But then, in a very suspicious turn of events, Chloe Lutz—a girl who wore her hair in pigtails every day, for god’s sake—showed up with a similar (and by similar I mean identical) pen a few days later.

  Et tu, Chloe?