Devine Intervention

by Martha Brockenbrough

  A holographic picture of Gabe’s head and upper body lowered from the ceiling.

  “JEROME!”

  My head rang like a gong.

  “Dude. I am right here. You don’t need to use my skull phone.”

  “THIS CONVERSATION IS BEING RECORDED TO ENSURE THE INTEGRITY OF OUR INTERACTION.”

  You know it’s worse when they start being all official.

  “Okay, fine. I’m listening.” I put my hands in my pockets in case I got the shakes. In the background, the stuff Gabe calls music was playing. When he was alive, he was all into old-school rock, and he had his earthly record collection covered by the heavenly choir, Nun of the Above, which that jerk-off Howard does sound engineering for. I’d get a monster shock if I said what I thought of their version of “Runnin’ with the Devil.” Howard has no respect for guitar tone, and when Eddie Van Halen finds out what he’s done to that song, there’s going to be hell to pay. Literally, I hope.

  “YOU WERE MARKED AS ABSENT THIS MORNING. WHAT WAS SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU DID NOT PARTICIPATE IN GROUP THERAPY?” Gabe shifted his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth.

  I took one hand out of my jacket pocket and smacked myself in the forehead, in the universal “Oh, I am such a dumbapple” gesture.

  But I am a dumbapple to hit my forehead, on account of the arrow. It took a couple seconds to absorb the pain before I could talk again. On the bright side, it wasn’t hard to make a sad face for real. Gabe’s shoulders shook up and down a little bit and he might have been laughing at me, but it could have been my vision, which goes haywire when someone touches the arrow.

  “Dude,” I said, when I could finally talk. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “YOU HAVE THIS APPOINTMENT EVERY DAY AT THE SAME TIME.”

  “Dude,” I said. “I’m seventeen. Cut me some slack.”

  “Please don’t call me dude. It’s disrespectful,” Gabe said in his normal voice. He crossed his arms across his sweater vest. “Also, you have been seventeen for sixteen years. It’s getting old, son. It’s not like you can stay in rehab forever. At some point, they’re going to make me send you down. I’m afraid that point might be now.”

  Then he went back to the voice that would be recorded. “YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR QUOTA OF ABSENCES FOR THE TERM. IF YOU MISS ANY MORE MEETINGS, YOUR ENROLLMENT IN OUR PROGRAM WILL BE TERMINATED. PLEASE PRESS ONE TO INDICATE YOU UNDERSTAND.”

  I touched my chin. That’s known as “pressing one” to these people. I had to breathe out through my nose real hard so I didn’t get crazy mad.

  “Jerome,” Gabe said.

  “What?” If he didn’t bring Heidi up, I wasn’t going to.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything at all? About the soul you’re guarding? If you don’t want to make a disclosure here, you can always refer to your handbook for guidance.”

  Grown-ups can be stupid, even the professional ones assigned to deal with kids like me. No, there was nothing else I wanted to tell him. Yeah, Gabe, I want to tell you I killed my human so that you can send me down to one of the levels for the rest of eternity.

  Idiot!

  “Gabe? There is something else.”

  He put his hands together, all prayerlike, and he tilted his head a little bit to the side, like he was posing for his stained-glass portrait.

  I made my most sincere face and said, “It’s important.”

  He smiled and his eyes got bright, like he was a kid who’d seen Santa.

  “I really, really … like your vest.”

  For a second I think he believed me, and then I saw the two halves of his mustache dive down like a pair of burrowing prairie dogs. I would never admit this without feeling a red-hot pitchfork in my sitting bits, but I actually felt kind of bad. I sometimes forget that the guy is proud of his vests, which he wears on weekends. If you spent your human life wearing a religious dress and sandals instead of actual clothes made for a dude, maybe having a vest would be sweet.

  “Can I go now?” I said. “I have to look after Heidi. You know, protect her soul and all that.”

  He opened his mouth like he was going to say something. The toothpick hung there. That was some sticky saliva. He pulled a watch out of his pocket and looked at it. Then he put it away, made prayer hands, nodded once, and said, “YOU MAY GO IN PEACE.”

  I swear he does the loud voice to rattle my skull. He knows it hurts me worse than it does the other guys. No way was I going to return the prayer nod after that. He could mark it in my permanent record if he wanted.

  Gabe disappeared in his cloud of incense, which reeked. If he were a car, his engine would need a serious tune-up.

  Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shove my ringing head in a bucket of cold holy water. I couldn’t sneak Heidi in the back way on account of she couldn’t see it, so I had to figure out what else I could do with her. For that, I needed that handbook. The next group session was in less than a day. If I hadn’t figured something out by then, I was looking — at best — at spending my eternity on Level V, Sloth, where they hand wash dirty underwear for the entire population of Hell all day, every day. The soot stains are epical. That alone was serious motivation.

  Chapter 1, Subsection ii:

  The Ten Commandments for the Dead

  I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.

  II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.

  III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.

  IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE HEAVENLY ADVISORS.

  V. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THE FOOD OR THE DRINK OF THE LIVING.

  IT WAS A long walk around the mall to the main entrance, through an icy parking lot littered with cigarette butts and lined with struggling trees, but Heidi didn’t mind. In truth, she felt most comfortable on the edges of things. She put a tentative hand on her hair, which went Medusa when it got wet. There was no telling the damage it could cause anyone who looked at it.

  She made her way to the glass doors at the front entrance. Behind her, cars cruised the lot, looking for parking. The air smelled of food-court grease, tissue paper, and new shoes, three scents that always lifted her mood. Maybe Jerome was right. This was a good idea.

  She stepped on the automatic door sensor and waited. Nothing happened. She stomped. Still nothing. She jumped. Then she remembered. These things would never work for her again. She’d have to walk through the glass.

  She held her hands out in front of her and took a tentative step in case the glass affected her differently than the wooden door at home. Her hands slid right through. She felt molecules swirling around her wrists. She pulled them back. With her body stripped from her soul, nothing separated her from anything else. She was one with the universe, just like they talk about in those woo-woo shows on television at two A.M. She had no words to capture it. Bizarre. Mind-melting. Freaky. Was this what it felt like to belong in the world? She held her hands there, just enjoying the dance.

  The glass doors whuffed open, and she felt sudden heat. Three boys had walked right through her, one of them wearing a puffy vest and baseball cap she’d recognize anywhere. Sully. If she’d followed him out of the assembly instead of doing the Talentpalooza!! tango, would she be here? Everything might have been different had she made that one choice, listened to Jerome. She wouldn’t have frozen at the basketball game, might not have needed the walk, might not have fallen through the ice. She might still be alive.

  The doors closed. She stole a peek at the back of Sully’s jeans as he walked away and then, in her mind’s eye, saw his freckle-spattered face, as though the artist who’d made him had finished the job with a good shaking of the brush. He’d walked right through her without noticing, which meant she could walk beside him without his knowledge. She could smell his shampoo, listen to the swishing music his vest made as his arms brushed the fabric. She ran through the door to catch up, wincing in anticipation of pain she might feel passing through the glass. But it didn’t hurt. She was part of the glass. It was part of
her.

  Then he turned and looked over his shoulder, directly through her, and laughed at something, and any courage she might have possessed evaporated. Death hadn’t changed everything. He was still himself. She was still Heidi. And even though she was invisible, the thought that she wouldn’t be welcome, wouldn’t be what he’d want, made it impossible to keep going. And what was the point, anyway? There wasn’t much of her left, not anything you could see or hold or feel.

  She stopped and steadied herself. Sully and his friends flowed into the crowd. She watched them disappear, letting the voices of strangers wash over her, feeling them walk through her, seeing if she once again felt at one with the universe.

  She didn’t. She felt like nothing at all.

  But at least Mrs. Fields smelled as good as Jerome promised. If she couldn’t be one with the universe, merging with warm chocolate chip cookies was a good consolation prize. She leaned over the counter and felt the vapors twirl through her. Then she moved closer so she was standing in the counter, fanning the sweet, buttery warmth upward, feeling it fill her arms, her chest, her head. Eating chocolate chip cookies was good. But becoming one with them? That was something else, something infinitely better. Even after the clerk whisked away the tray and loaded the cookies into the display case, she felt warm and silky sweet. She had to close her eyes to concentrate on it. How could Heaven even come close?

  The experience left her giddy. She had to sit on a bench, taking care not to become one with its molecules and slip through to the tile floor. A group of senior citizens doing mallercise creaked by, giving her time to muster the courage to look for Sully and his friends. Eventually she found them at the food court. They sat at a metal table, facing a tray full of future heart attacks. Sully was working on a paper bowl of garlic fries, stuffing them in his mouth two and three at a time, wiping shiny fingertips on his pants every so often, the sort of thing that Heidi would call disgusting if Rory were doing it, something she wouldn’t dream of doing herself.

  Somehow, though, it was fine when Sully did. She wondered for a moment why she cut him all that slack, and none for herself, but she had no answer. Instead, she sat in the empty chair at his table and watched him eat, stunning herself by wishing she could be a fry, held between his fingertips, brought slowly to his mouth, as though all she needed to imagine contact with another body was to lose her own altogether.

  He picked up his soda, and Heidi tried to hyperventilate out of habit. Ice cubes clicked against one another in his wax-coated cup. Beads of condensation twinkled and dripped over his fingers. He wrapped his lips around the straw and sucked until he’d drained the drink. Then he stood, wiping the salt and grease off his palms and onto his thighs. He went to the soda machine and helped himself to a refill. It was embarrassing how much she enjoyed watching him without his knowledge. Had Jerome felt the same way about her?

  On Sully’s way back to the table, he slapped his hand against his hip pocket and pulled out a buzzing phone. He worked his thumb around the screen as he walked.

  “Either of you guys know someone named Heidi?” he asked his friends.

  She didn’t dare move. Could he see her? Why was he asking about her? Did he … Could he possibly? … Maybe he liked her?

  “Nope,” said the one in the blue flannel shirt. Heidi was fairly sure his name was Owen. He went to a school across town. She’d seen him at track meets. He was fast, even if he had an embarrassing tendency to make victory fingers as he crossed the finish line.

  “Really tall girl? Reddish hair?” said the other boy, who was a couple of years younger. “Her brother’s in my class. Why?”

  “Tammy texted me. She fell through the ice at the pond this morning.”

  “Tammy fell through the ice?” the other boy said.

  “No, asshat. Heidi did.” Sully used his thumb and middle finger to flick his friend’s forehead.

  “Bummer,” Owen said. “Was she hot?”

  “I don’t know,” Sully said. “Can’t remember her.”

  “Not hot,” said the boy in Rory’s class. Roger. His name was Roger. He had a blob of sour cream from his burrito on his lip. “Huge. Like a cross-dressing lumberjack.”

  “Yeah, I figured I’d have remembered who she was if she was hot,” Sully said. He took the lid off his cup and crunched a few ice cubes between his molars. “Wait. Was she the one in your talent show video?”

  Heidi was drowning all over again. She reached for the edges of the table for support, but panicked and her hands flashed through. She felt weak and sick, as if someone had punched a hole in her soul. Even the food court lights seemed dimmer than they had been just a few moments before.

  Sully cursed. Soda had splashed all over his lap, darkening his crotch. Ice clattered on the floor. He stood, wrapped in the laughter of his friends.

  Then came the hand on her shoulder, warm and solid.

  “Don’t tell anyone I did that,” Jerome said. “It’s against the rules.”

  “The rules?”

  “I can’t knock shi — OW! — off tables.”

  “You did that?”

  Sully mopped his pants with a napkin.

  “Guy’s a jerk,” Jerome said. “He’s Howard’s soul, but Howard’s in Victoria’s Secret again. You’d think he’d have figured out the secret by now. There are no nipples on the womannequins.”

  “How long were you standing there?” Heidi wiped her dripping nose.

  “Long enough,” he said.

  “Jerome?” Her voice was pebble-small and hard in her throat.

  “What?” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to standing. She was glad to see he looked much better than before. His arrow had stopped bleeding, and his face was a normal color again.

  “I want to get out of here. I need some air.”

  “You got it,” Jerome said.

  They left Sully and his friends behind. Heidi only half noticed the bulky figure in a plaid shirt who materialized in the cafeteria just as they were leaving.

  Chapter 1, Subsection ii:

  The Ten Commandments for the Dead

  I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.

  II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.

  III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.

  IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE HEAVENLY ADVISORS.

  V. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THE FOOD OR THE DRINK OF THE LIVING.

  VI. THOU SHALT NOT LIE.

  WE WENT OUTSIDE the mall and it was kind of darkish because the sun had gone down and most of the clouds had blown away and the sky was nothing but a cold mess of stars.

  She was standing close enough to me that I could still smell the cookies on her. “Jerome,” she said. “How high have you gone?”

  At first I thought she was asking me about drugs. I started to explain how there aren’t any in Heaven, but that wasn’t what she was talking about. She meant the flying kind. Pretty much everyone dead tries it out after they get over the shock of it all. Everyone but me. I never went much above the roof of a semi because I have this fear of heights that would give a lesser guy worse shrinkage than the cold.

  But she didn’t have that problem, and her feet were halfway to the second floor of the mall by the time I noticed, so I sucked it up and hurried to catch her, because at this point the only thing worse than killing her would be losing what was left.

  “What gives?” I said. My voice sounded like someone was throwing rocks at my neck. “There’s this thing I have to find. We don’t have time to be messing around up here.”

  “What thing?” she said. “I thought I could maybe see the entrance to Heaven if I went to the sky.” She squinted.

  “It’s not there,” I said. I tried not to look down. “It’s, uh, complicated.”

  We were seriously far up. Cars looked like bugs, and every so often, the world flashed white when we went through one of the few cloud shreds still hanging around.

  After a minute I said, “You know how the service entrance to Heav
en was at the back of the mall?”

  “I guess so. I never saw it.” Her voice sounded kind of crabby.

  “I guess so, I never saw it,” I said back at her.

  Then I saw the look on her face and remembered that this business wasn’t all her fault. Or even mostly. I was supposed to be looking out for her.

  “Look,” I said. “Heaven’s sort of a trick. The front entrance is different for everyone.”

  I reached my hand toward hers, and I guess she got the message because she reached the rest of the way and grabbed my fingers, and then I didn’t feel so floaty up there, and I hoped she also knew I was saying sorry.

  “I never actually saw it myself,” I said. “I just heard about it.”

  “It seems kind of harsh to do it like that.”

  “I don’t think it’s meant to be that way. What this angel guy, Xavier, said was that you couldn’t get there if you didn’t know where you were going. The back door was pretty much for us guys who had work to do on our souls. It was the service entrance, you know. The front was for people who’d figured it all out.”

  “Like, people who were good all the time?”

  She turned so she was facing me, and somehow our free hands ended up kind of holding each other, and we spun in a slow circle with the stars above and the world below. We were surrounded by blackness all shot up with starlight and it felt huge and cold and lonely except where our fingers touched. I hadn’t touched a person like this for sixteen years. I hadn’t touched a girl like this ever, unless you count that one time Darcy agreed to do the snowball with me at Skate King. I felt like I almost couldn’t breathe for a minute, and I had to close my eyes until the feeling went away.

  “I used to think that and it really got in my grille,” I said. “But Xavier said something like it was more about finding your purpose.” I had pretty much decided my purpose was to ignore Xavier, so I maybe wasn’t getting all the details right, but I gave it my best shot with her. “I think it was going all out on something. It didn’t really matter how good you got or how good you acted, as long as that something was what you gave the world. Basically, making your own heaven on earth while you were alive. That’s the thing. Living the best life you can.”