“A good smoke,” I heard myself say out loud. A smoke? I don’t smoke. If my mom caught me smoking, she would kill me. She likes to say “I want to catch you stealing before I catch you smoking.” But I wanted a cigar—not even a cigarette!—so much that I didn’t care how much trouble I would get into if I got caught. I went back into the front hall to put on my coat and go out to find a place that would sell cigars to a thirteen-year-old who looks like he’s nine.
What was wrong with me? I wondered for a second if I should tell a grown-up. But if I told a grown-up, I wouldn’t be able to get a cigar. And I had to have one. Right away.
In our front hall, the wall across from the elevator is covered in mirrors. It’s very hard to walk past it and not catch a glimpse of yourself. Julia spends hours staring at her reflection here. But on my way to get a cigar, I caught a glimpse in the mirror of something that made me stop. When I turned for a second look, I was expecting to find staring back at me nothing more than my own reflection. But my own reflection—my frizzed-out hair, my untucked shirt—was gone. This totally blew my mind, but I swear it was true. My reflection—me—I wasn’t there.
It took me a second to see what was in the mirror in my place: an old man. His white hair was cut short, and his eyebrows were bushy. He wasn’t fat, like Santa Claus. He was thin and looked strong. He was dressed in a plaid wool shirt and jeans that looked like they were about to go in the knees. He was smiling a little too intensely, like someone who has been hit on the head with a shovel.
It was Grandpa. Grandpa-who-was-dead.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, waiting for the vision to go away.
But Grandpa was still there. He turned when I turned. When I stared again, he stared. I lifted my left hand. He lifted his right. I waved. He waved at the same exact time. I could look down and see my own self, but when I looked into the mirror, the old man was me.
I felt like one of those guys in a cartoon who runs over a cliff edge and then hangs in the air with his legs moving. I was thinking, If this doesn’t go away pretty soon, I’m going to have to start thinking it’s real.
I walked up close to the mirror and looked at the man there—Grandpa. I really looked, the way you stare into your own eyes, wondering how other people see you. Go away, I was thinking. Now it is time for this to start making sense, I thought. But it didn’t make sense.
And then the cold got worse. Not a little worse. Or a slow worse. A really fast, bad worse, like suddenly, the cold I’d been feeling before was actually warmth and this new, unbearable, sharp pain was redefining what it meant to be cold. The new cold had come from the inside of Grandpa—the bloodshot whites of his eyes. The second I looked into them, the cold in my chest suddenly spread, like an explosion into my shoulders, down my arms, through my hips, to my toes and then back up. The cold pounded against the inside of my forehead. It clogged my ears. I couldn’t seem to take a breath. When I tried to look down, I found I couldn’t move my eyes. They were locked on to Grandpa’s.
“Stop it,” I said, though it was hard to move my lips. “Let go.” And then—because I didn’t have time to figure out if I should try not to panic or just beg, I begged. “Please,” I said. “Please, please, please.”
The cold feeling had moved all the way down to my feet. I could hardly feel them, and it was like they were getting heavier, like I was being pulled down. I pedaled my arms, gasping, kicking my feet to try to make them grab on to the floor, but the floor was feeling strangely un-solid. There was no one to call for help. My parents were at work, and Julia wouldn’t get home from school and ballet for hours.
“Help!” I begged Grandpa in the mirror. He wouldn’t let go of my eyes. “Let me go.” He just stared.
I felt my legs disappearing. I was sinking into a current of dark air that was so cold it was thick, like water right before it starts to freeze. Moving down faster and faster, I struggled against what was pulling me in. I couldn’t see.
Mr. Blum once told us that when you step outside in the Arctic, it takes one minute to get frostbite, which is your skin freezing so badly it dies. It wasn’t my skin I was concerned with. It was my bones. I was so cold I worried they were going to crack.
It’s funny, in video games when you die, it’s not that big a deal. Sometimes it’s even funny, like when a voice comes on that says, “Yay, you win… not!” or when blood and guts spill out of the fighter you’re playing. I’d never for a second in my life thought I was in any danger of dying for real. Until now. It was different. It was scary. All I wanted was to go back to my life. I didn’t care anymore that I wasn’t like Gus, that Julia always won. I wasn’t mad at my dad. I could see in one big rush that I had the best, easiest, happiest life in the world. I wanted it back—Julia, Gus, my dad. My mom. I wanted everything to stay exactly the same as it had always been. I wasn’t ready.
Chapter 5
I don’t remember what happened next. I think I might have passed out from the pain and the cold. I woke up lying on my back.
At least I could breathe again. For a few moments I lay still, just enjoying it, but it’s amazing how quickly you can start to take breathing for granted. Where was I? Underneath me was a hard, cold floor. Was it the tiles of our foyer? No. As I touched it, I could tell it was smoother, and harder.
When I sat up, I saw that I was in a long corridor. Was it a school? The walls were lined with sets of lockers and oak doors with frosted glass windows. I smelled chalk and formaldehyde, which made me think of the high school science rooms at Selden.
“Michael!” The voice came from behind me, and even without having heard it in so long, I knew it was Grandpa’s. I turned, and there he was, crouching down behind me, his back to a locker.
Up close, he looked awful. His eyelids drooped. His fingers were knobby. I couldn’t tell if what was wrong with him was because he was a lot older than the last time I’d seen him, or because he was actually dead, but there was a blue tint to his skin, and his hair was thin, like if I pulled it, it would come out.
Grandpa reached out a hand and touched my cheek. Sort of. I could see his hand there, but where he was touching me, I only felt a shock of cold, as if he were holding an ice cube to my skin. Then he sat down, leaning against the locker behind him, drawing his knees up to his chest.
“Where am I?” I managed to say. “Why are you here? Am I—?”
Grandpa knitted his eyebrows together. “I am dead,” he said. “But you are very much alive.”
“Thank you,” I breathed in the same direction that I usually prayed my “please, please, please” prayer. But did I believe him? If I was alive, and he was dead, how come we were talking?
Grandpa took a deep breath in through his nose, like he was smelling something really good. I don’t know if it was just my imagination, but his skin turned pink—or at least a little less blue—as he breathed in. He looked better.
“That feels beauteous,” he said, taking another deep breath. “I’ve been wanting to do that for—well, I have no idea. Try that, take a deep, deep breath.”
I did what he said, but for me, the air was just… air. “You haven’t said where we are,” I said. “And can you please explain what happened?”
“I wish I could answer your questions,” Grandpa said. “But I’m not sure I understand what’s happening any better than you do.” He breathed deeply through his nose again. “The air smells sweet to me,” he added. “Positively sweet.”
I took a breath myself. Still nothing.
“One minute it smells like cherry-flavored medicine,” Grandpa said. “And the next, it’s like lemon. The tart and sweet filling in a lemon meringue pie.”
I was starting to wonder how I would get back, and all Grandpa could do was talk about pie.
“So you don’t know anything about what’s going on here?” I said. “About how come I got so cold? Aren’t you here to rescue me?”
Grandpa was turning his head to see what I looked like from different angles as if he we
re a photographer lining up a shot. “I didn’t come to rescue you, Michael,” he said. “I’m afraid that you rescued me.” I didn’t quite know what to make of that comment. How had I rescued him? All I’d done was get so cold I must have passed out. And somehow found myself in a place I’d never been.
Was this really my grandpa? It was impossible, of course, but on the other hand, I could see him with my own eyes. I remembered him. And even if I hadn’t, I could hear my mom’s and dad’s and Julia’s voices wrapped up inside the fibers of his voice. He leaned on his words the same way, a way I didn’t even know my own family did until I heard it coming from Grandpa now.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“I know,” said Grandpa. “And yet, I feel so good. I feel so happy to be here. To be with you. There’s something about your eyes,” he said softly. “You have your grandmother’s eyes, and yet…” He squinted. “You’ve turned out looking exactly like your mother in every other way. Your sister, she’s the one who always looked like our side.”
“You don’t look like Julia,” I said, though even as I said it, I realized he did. Julia is tall and narrow—her jaw is long, and her eyes are a little hooded. Grandpa had a lot of the same shapes in his face.
“You’ve already seen it,” Grandpa said, and I sat up straighter.
“You can read my mind?”
“Only a little. But that’s not because I’m dead. Or even because I’m your grandfather. Everyone can do that. It’s funny, how people convince themselves they can’t.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“But you do! When we’re alive we convince ourselves we don’t understand things when we do.”
“This is freaking me out,” I said. “I don’t believe that you’re dead, and you’re here. And we’re talking.”
“I don’t believe it either,” Grandpa said. “But you know what? I don’t care. I want to be here.”
I looked away from Grandpa. There was something kind of blinding about him. I didn’t know if it was his personality or if it was the unrealness of the situtation. I needed a break, and I looked away.
The hallway had started to fill with students. They looked almost like grown-ups, except they were dressed in clothes that were tight in some strange places, and puffy in others. None of them seemed to notice us, sitting on the floor. “You have no idea where we are?” I asked.
“No, I do,” said Grandpa. “That question, at least, I can answer. We’re at Baruch College. My mind must have traveled here after seeing you today, at your school. I never know where I’m going to end up.”
“What do you mean, traveled? End up?”
But Grandpa had gotten distracted by a group of soldiers in heavy black shoes and light brown shirts walking past us. Seeing the soldiers, the girls laughed. “C Company.” Grandpa snorted. “I know those guys. Irish.”
“Why can’t they see us? Why is everyone wearing those costumes?”
“Those aren’t costumes,” Grandpa said. He was answering me as if I were interrupting him watching a movie, giving me the shortest possible answers so he wouldn’t miss anything. “This was 1951. I know because your grandmother”—he pointed to the cluster of girls who were still giggling—“is still wearing her hair long.”
“That’s Grandma?” I said. “This is your college? Where are the dorms?”
“I lived at home,” he said. “In the Bronx. I was in the army back then. It was a paycheck and a chance to go to college. Though not a fancy one—this is Baruch, part of City College. You know City College?”
I didn’t.
“Oy,” he said. “Your father goes away to an elite school, and his son never even knows there could be another way.”
The girl with long hair who was supposed to be Grandma started to laugh really hard at something a girl with short hair said. They leaned together and looked over their shoulders.
“Are they laughing at us?”
“I can only imagine,” Grandpa said, but he was smiling, as if he got the joke.
I think my dad was in high school when Grandma died. I don’t even know what she died of. It’s not something that I think about very much, because I never knew her. But when the longhaired girl pursed her lips, I could see the way that my father pursed his lips, and the way Julia pursed hers. I don’t know why, but the connection between what was real from my own life and these strange, old, dead people, and not knowing where I was, or whether I was really alive—it made me feel dizzy, like you do when you get to the top of a tall building and you look down.
“Let me get this straight,” I tried again. “You’re dead? And when you’re dead, you get to go back to college?”
“It’s not just college. It’s all my life. I go from memory to memory, and I don’t know how long I’ll stay or which one I’m going to land at next. It’s an unpleasant flashing. Just as I’m starting to understand what I’m seeing, I’m whisked to someplace else. Now, with you, for the first time, I’m able to stop and really look. To breathe. To talk to someone.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that. It was nice he was enjoying this, but what I wanted to know was how, if we were stopped inside his memory, was I ever going to get back?
“I’m guessing this is the first day of chemistry class,” Grandpa went on. “It was September, and Stella and I were in the same lab. She asked me to tutor her. I was good at chemistry but too stupid to understand that she didn’t actually need my help. It took me more than a year to get up the courage to kiss her. I guess, actually, I never did—she was the one who kissed me. I was so dumb.”
I’d never kissed anybody, or even come close. Gus has, but only at camp. “But you got married,” I said. “It must have all worked out in the end.” The girls were starting to gather up their books to go inside, and in spite of my worrying about being able to get out of this memory, I found myself wanting to know what happened next. “Are we going to get to see you soon?” I asked. “It must be amazing to watch yourself.”
“Oh, no, it’s horrible,” said Grandpa. “All these memories are horrible. All I notice are the mistakes, what I did wrong. How I didn’t say what I meant to, how scared and shy and angry I was. I hate seeing all the opportunity wasted.” A soldier walked past us, toward the wooden classroom door. He reminded me a little of Ewan, the way Ewan looks down at the ground and not up at the faces of the people around him. But mostly the soldier looked like my dad, except that he wasn’t as tall. What was similar was the way he stepped lightly, as if he was afraid of making too much noise.
“That’s me,” Grandpa said.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I guess I knew.”
“You notice that way of walking?” Grandpa said. “It came from growing up in an apartment, living with too many relatives. There was never enough of anything. Everyone was always telling me to be quiet.”
“Dad does it too,” I said. “He stoops a little.”
“Does he?”
“Hey, I can’t even tell what color your hair was, it’s cut so short,” I said.
Grandpa made a face. “I don’t understand why I was so embarrassed about my hair all my life,” he said. “It was curly, beautiful, just like yours.”
I put my hand on my head. “I hate my hair.”
“Really?”
“It makes me look like Ronald McDonald. And my dad hates it too. He’s always trying to make me cut it. My mom just says it makes me look cute, which is kind of worse.” Then I told Grandpa what I’d never admitted to anyone else. Who’s he going to tell? I thought. He’s dead. “But if I cut it, I’ll look even shorter.”
Grandpa burst out laughing.
“Do you think it makes me look taller?”
“Does it make you feel taller?”
My face went hot.
“You keep it just the way it is,” he said.
“Thanks.” I wondered what it would have been like to have him be my grandpa when he was alive. I had this idea that I could tell him things, and
he’d be the one coming to watch my basketball games, and he wouldn’t care if my team won or if I played. Under his plaid shirt, his shoulders sagged, and I wondered if he’d been thinking the same thing. I tried to touch him, but I got so cold I pulled my hand back like I’d touched fire. “Are you—are you really dead?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, a phlegm gargle. “Yes,” he said. “I’m dead. Though I feel good. I have no idea what’s happening, but I feel good. The first time I saw you, you were in your room, with your dad. Daniel. That first time I felt you, there was something electric between us. I’ve been wondering what made it happen. You have your grandmother’s eyes—I’m wondering if that’s why we have a connection. But maybe it was something else. What were you talking about with your dad?”
“You,” I said. “Sort of.”
“Your father was talking about me?”
“No,” I said. “I was wondering why no one was acting like it was a big deal that you were dead.”
Grandpa winced.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“It’s okay,” said Grandpa, though he didn’t exactly look like it was okay.
“It felt like a shot when it happened,” I said. “Like I was getting a shot. It hurt.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, and he looked momentarily sad. “But the energy! I felt myself wanting things. I felt myself having the strength to want things. The spinach. Speaking out to your father. And to that other boy, your friend.”
“He’s not really my friend,” I said.
“Well, whoever he is. When you were with him, I felt a little bit like I could help him.” He looked tired again. “Was it horrible, coming into the river? You were crying.”
“The what?” I said.
“Oh, sorry,” Grandpa said. “I don’t know why, but the only way I can explain this place I’m stuck in is by calling it a river. It’s a cold river, with strong currents.”
“I thought you said you were inside your memories.”
“Yes,” he said, “I am—but the memories are inside the river. They’re strung together in long tunnels that I travel through without knowing where I’m going next or why.”
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