I still felt doubtful about all of this, which was the exact opposite of how I had to feel if I was going to be a true medium.
“And you have to get her there,” Kim said. “It won’t work if you don’t get her there.”
“What if she doesn’t want to?”
“Trick her,” she said.
“Trick her?”
“Yeah. All you have to do is get her there.”
So, after months and months of not talking to Gabby and of being by myself and nothing, after months of all that, I tricked her.
A week before her birthday, I put a postcard in her mailbox that said, Happy Birthday from Forever 21! Come in on your birthday and receive five free items of jewelry!!!! I put in a lot exclamation points and used Photoshop to make it look real. At the bottom of the card I put, 50 percent off all maxidresses, just to make sure.
Then I put it in her mailbox when no one was home.
It had to work.
Five free items of jewelry? She couldn’t resist.
So on the day, luckily a Saturday, I got to Meadows Mall right when it opened at ten.
I lugged the Snickers bars, the Fresca, the Ladyhawke, etc., etc. I brought all of it in my dad’s old backpack and walked into Forever 21 when the employees were still turning on the lights.
“Welcome to Forever 21,” said a girl with sexy straight hair. I was wearing a yellow Big Bird T-shirt and really bad white leggings. I was also wearing Kim’s TEVAs. I did not fit in at Forever 21.
So the girl said welcome to Forever 21 and I said, “Hi,” and then I pretended like I was looking at pants.
When she started folding shirts, I made my way to the jewelry.
•
I thought Gabby would come early. She was a major birthday girl, which meant she’d have a lot of plans. So many plans.
She’d want to hurry and get this over with.
I looked at earrings for an hour.
Then I looked at shirts.
Then I looked at earrings again.
All day long, I walked around Forever 21 with my huge backpack.
At first I was optimistic.
Then, as the day wore on, I started to feel anxious.
Maybe she figured it out. If she knew it was me she wouldn’t come.
For sure.
At one point a man with no hair and tight Bermuda shorts that were quite fashionable, came over and said, “Miss? Can I help you?”
I’d been in the store for about six hours, so I didn’t blame him for thinking I was a weirdo.
I said, “Yes. Do you have any dickies?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“Dickies,” I said.
My mom wore dickies and it was unfortunate.
“I have to find just the right one,” I said. “It’s for a dickies competition.”
He blinked several times and said, “You know, I can’t help you.” And he walked way.
•
By eight at night I had to face the fact that she wasn’t coming.
Even though I didn’t think she would, I didn’t think she really would, a part of me, in the back somewhere with the sweaters and tights, a part of me thought she would come. She’d have to come.
I almost left and then I decided to wait until they closed. What would one more hour hurt?
She didn’t come.
Didn’t come.
Didn’t come.
Then, at eight forty, twenty minutes before closing, she walked in.
She was alone. She was wearing a romper that most people could never pull off, and she walked straight to the jewelry section.
I was sitting on the floor by the cardigans. The night manager, Megan, she’d asked me if I was okay, and I’d told her I was waiting for a friend and then she didn’t seem to mind if I camped out.
I stood up as fast as I could and almost ran over to jewelry, my gigantic bag knocking some shirts off a rack.
“Gabby,” I said, out of breath.
She looked up from the necklaces.
“Crap, Em. You scared me.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
She looked back down at the necklaces. Picked up a peacock on a chain.
“Gabby,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s your birthday.”
“I know.” She put the peacock on and walked over to the mirror. I followed her too close behind.
“Can I . . .”
I stopped
She looked at me in the mirror. “Did you give me the postcard?”
I said, “Uh.”
She turned around. “What are you doing? What is going on?”
And then she said, flicking my bag, “What is this? What is in the backpack? You are turning so freaky.”
I stood there.
A bead of sweat formed on her perfect forehead and I said, “Okay.”
And she said, “Okay? Okay? What does that mean? Okay?” Her voice got loud. “I wasn’t going to come. I knew you made that stupid card. I saw you put it in my mailbox (crap) and I thought this is sad. This is really really sad. Everyone thinks you’re crazy, Em. Everyone. I thought, I should help poor Emmy. I should help you. But then I thought, screw that. You didn’t even like the deer I made you and you act like you’re the only one who misses her. You’re selfish.”
I’m selfish.
I’m selfish.
I’m selfish.
A lady named Betsy who I helped fold shirts for an hour, she came over and said, “Is everything okay?”
Gabby said, “Uh. No. Get away from us.”
Betsy looked at me with concern and I nodded. “It’s okay.”
Then I said, “I’m selfish.”
No I didn’t. Instead I just stood there while Betsy walked away.
Gabby said, “I wasn’t going to come. I had plans. But then all day I couldn’t stop thinking about how pathetic you are. How sad your life is.”
Then she said it. She said this: “Kim wouldn’t want you to be like this.”
I watched her mouth move and I felt like I was falling. I felt like I was falling in a bucket of pudding, but it was pistachio pudding which I hate, and Gabby was on the rim of the bucket and she was saying, how sad your life is, how sad your life is, how said your life is and I said, “KIM.”
“Kim? Where are you?”
“Emmy, did you hear me? She wouldn’t want you to be like this.”
When she was done talking and they had come on the intercom and said they were closing, when all that happened, I said, “Gabby?”
And she said, ”What?”
I tried to say something. I tried to say, Will you help me talk to Kim? Will you help me? Or maybe, I’m sorry. Maybe I tried to say I’m sorry.
But instead I just stood there.
Gabby left Forever 21.
I knocked over a tray of rings.
I didn’t see Kim that day either.
• 53 •
I sometimes feel like I’m a dot.
A dot in the middle of millions and millions of other dots. Dots holding babies. Dots wearing bikinis. Dots on bikes. Dots in sports cars. Dots eating Doritos. Dots calling me fat. Dots on horses. Dots on buses.
Dots watching me. Me watching dots.
Dots.
I sat there. Once again on a city bus, a tiny tiny dot.
Dot.
A dot watching strip malls and golf courses and Hummers and palm trees and GET CASH NOW places pass by. Like it was a normal day.
Today is a normal day and I am a dot.
Kim was a dot, too, I guess, but it never felt that way. She felt like much more than a dot.
My phone buzzed.
I looked at it. Skeeter.
I stared at his name.
I could answer it. I could ask him to come.
He would come.
I should tell him to come.
But then I knew he felt bad for me and I was pathetic.
I turned it off.
I could do this.
• 54 •
On the ride back from Dr. Ted Farnsworth Perry said, “How was it?”
I looked out the window and Kim said, “Great. It was great.”
“What was it about again?” Perry asked. “Some kind of skin care thing?”
I looked at Kim and she said, “It was essential oils.”
Perry nodded. He smiled at Kim. He smiled how everyone smiled at her, like he loved her and wished she loved him back. He didn’t know she was dying.
What if he did? Would he still love her?
When they dropped me off I said to Kim, “Are you coming in?”
“No,” she said. “I think I’ll go home.”
I wanted her to come in. I wanted her to come in and never leave. To just stay with us. Safe.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
Then I watched them drive away.
•
That night I messaged her.
“Are you okay?”
“You forgot to take the CDs,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.”
I didn’t want the CDs and I knew she knew it.
“Do you really not want to do this?”
I stared at the computer.
“I don’t think we need to,” I wrote.
“Em,” she said. “We do.”
I sat there.
Then she said, “Good news though.”
“What?”
“I found a link.”
“What?”
She sent it to me. THE GREAT JOURNEY THROUGH DEATH.
“What is this?”
“Click on it,” she said.
The website was purple, with yellow type and horrible.
It said when you die these things happen:
Your body turns off. The organs completing their missions, one by one.
Your spirit departs from the body during the rigor mortis stage.
Your spirit could go to a white light if the soul has been properly prepared.
Your spirit could possibly enter another body to teach lessons of love and awareness.
Your spirit could enter the realm of cosmos, becoming a part of heaven and earth.
Or your soul could perish.
Then it said, BUT DON’T DESPAIR! CAN YOUR TECHNOLOGY PURIFY AND CLEANSE YOUR EXISTENCE, PREPARING YOU FOR THE GREAT UNKNOWN? and there was tiny computer flashing in the corner and it said, click here to see how!
“Wow,” I typed.
“I know,” she said.
“Did you click on it?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I thought we could click on it together.”
I smiled. “Okay. Click on it in three seconds.”
I moved the mouse over the opening and closing door. I counted to three and then I clicked.
The screen turned bright blue and started moving up, flying up. There were cartoon angels with harps and doves and people singing and priests holding Bibles and bouquets of flowers and then more angels.
“Wow,” I typed again.
“I know,” she said. “Amazing.”
The screen kept scrolling up and up with more and more images of angels and birds.
Kim said, “I guess my spirit is prepared now for the great unknown.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess mine, too.”
“Do you see the angels kissing?” she said.
“Yep. And the flamingo wearing a tiara?”
For an hour, Kim and I watched the sky flying up on our laptops.
“I think it’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
• 55 •
Right when we got to the strip, the bus driver made an announcement.
The bus is having problems. We all have to get off early.
My stomach flipped. We were nowhere near Circus Circus.
In fact, we were in front of the Bellagio, blocks and blocks away.
You can take another bus, he said on the intercom and he was going to give us free transfers.
This stressed me out.
I didn’t know what bus.
Everyone was standing up and things were loud and it meant I’d have to spend way more time on the strip than I’d planned.
On my way to the door a lady handed me an orange.
I looked at her.
“Have a happy day,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. I was going to have a happy day.
So I got off the bus and stood on the sidewalk, holding an orange.
I felt strange, like something was going to happen.
And then it did.
As the exhaust and heat cleared, across the street I saw her again.
Across the street I saw Ms. Dead Homeyer.
Wearing a sombrero.
A HOT BABES DIRECT TO YOU! truck drove by and when it was gone, so was she.
This was not a happy day.
• 56 •
After our visit with Dr. Ted Farnsworth, everything seemed different.
It was the same, but different.
She could feel death coming.
It was on her visage.
He knew.
She knew.
Why didn’t I know?
• 57 •
I stood on the sidewalk with thousands of people pushing past me.
Thousands.
It was spring break time but I’d never ever seen the strip like this.
Not at eleven in the morning.
Not in this heat.
A group of guys in suits. A silver-painted cowboy. Forty-five band kids. Ladies in Bermuda shorts with pink sunglasses. A man yelling that the world was going to end. Babies crying. A woman walking dogs.
In the middle of all this I stood.
Ms. Dead Homeyer had been there. Right in front of Paris Las Vegas. In a sombrero.
And now she was gone.
Did this mean I was doing the right thing? Was Ms. Dead Homeyer going to come back? Sing more Fun in my ear?
I waited to see if she would reappear. Come tell me what to do.
But she didn’t.
Instead I was scorching my neck and I needed to move. I turned toward Circus Circus and almost ran straight into a tall man wearing tall pants, who had a mole the size of Texas on his face.
I gasped.
He swore at me. “Get out of the way.”
But I was frozen.
“You going to get out of the way?” he said.
It was Kim’s uncle Sid.
Kim’s dead uncle Sid that I said I’d never want to see naked.
Ever.
He went around me and disappeared into the crowd.
•
At least he wasn’t naked.
• 58 •
Sometimes it feels like my whole life before she died was a dream.
•
Sometimes it feels like I’m floating.
•
Floating down a river and an alligator says to me, did you know hippos are more dangerous than me?
And I say, what about sharks?
And he says, sharks will bite off your legs and I say, yes. Yes. They will.
• 59 •
Nothing made sense now.
I walked down the street.
And walked and walked.
Was that really Uncle Sid? Or was I hallucinating?
I had to focus. Get to the seminar. He would explain. Dr. Ted Farnsworth woul
d explain. There was nothing in the book about this, nothing even close.
All these people.
People everywhere.
I walked slowly, trying not to touch anyone, which was impossible.
A lady handed me a flyer with a lady on it that I stuffed in my pocket. I knew what it was and I didn’t want to even look at it, but I also didn’t want to throw it on the ground with the thousands and thousands of other pieces of paper.
A kid was crying about a sucker.
And then I saw a woman who looked like my mom’s Jenny Craig counselor, the one who died of cancer.
Was it her?
I couldn’t be sure. I’d only seen her a few times.
Like twice.
But it looked like her. It looked exactly like her. She was laughing with other ladies at a café table.
I kept walking.
Things were slowing down and then speeding up. People coming near me. Their faces animated and huge. Then shrinking. Like I was in a fun house.
Did I recognize them? Had I seen them before?
But then the strip always felt like this to me. Surreal and odd.
Now it was just more complicated.
A man with a cane and suspenders who looked like our old neighbor Harry who’d had a heart attack, and Mom and Dad had to help clean out his house.
But it wasn’t him. It didn’t even look like him. It wasn’t him.
Or maybe it was.
What if everyone was dead? What if that’s why I didn’t like it down here? Maybe all along, the strip was for walking dead people.
Was I dead? Did I die on that bus? Did I die last night? At Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral?
Was I going to be stuck on the strip forever?
I stopped for a second to catch my breath. I tried to not think about the swirling around me but it was impossible.
Everyone laughing, talking as loud as they could, across the street, the Cheesecake Factory with a line of dead people waiting to get in and stuff their faces.
Then there was a car.
A low rider Cadillac with one side higher than the other.
Rap music blaring and a man, a huge man, driving. One arm on the steering wheel, the other out the window.
Fatbutt.
The End or Something Like That Page 11
