I nod. “Couldn’t take my eyes off them.”
“Those are the towers. Jhana is the park where our tower is. We live in these suites, kind of like dorms. There are two people per suite, and sixteen of us per floor. It’s only teens, except for the floor advisor we have. The adults get their own apartments in the city. Anyone under thirteen automatically gets a ticket, regardless of whether they’re prepared or not. Seems pretty arbitrary, but I guess they have their reasons.”
I heave a sigh of relief. Aaron was twelve. He got a ticket.
“What is it?” Hannah asks.
“Nothing.” I rub my forehead with my fingertips. “This is all too much.”
She nods. “Hard to think about much on the first day, other than ‘Oh my god, this can’t be happening,’ right?”
“I really freaked out on Crosby.” My cheeks burn with shame. “That orientation thing? I flipped out, and he … ”
“What?” She leans in, intrigued.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Don’t even sweat it. You can tell me when you’re ready. Whatever happened, don’t worry. Crosby is an expert at dealing with us ‘lost kids.’”
“Lost kids?”
“Almost everyone who ends up here died unexpectedly. Car crashes, drugs, drowning. Accidental deaths. When we get here, some of us don’t go with the flow so well, you know?” She leans in even closer, and lowers her voice. “And then there’re the murder victims and suicides. Those are the worst. They’re so … ”
“What?”
She shrugs. “You’ll see. Anyway, Crosby is a pro at dealing with first day freakouts. You’re going to be okay, Dez.”
“No offense, but we just met. Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’ve been here 756 days. I think that qualifies me to say so.”
“I was fine until a few hours ago when I wound up on that train. This?” I look around the room. “This is about as far from okay as a person can get.”
CHAPTER NINE
Hannah brings me to a lush garden at the edge of a sprawling park. Ornate stepping stones meander along the banks of a crystal-clear stream, leading the way through the tropical beauty. Exotic birds sing a welcome from the treetops. The air is sweet with the scent of the flowers lining the path. Six towers form a semicircle along the park’s perimeter opposite us.
“Welcome to Jhana Park,” Hannah says.
“This place is amazing,” I say. The tension begins to seep from my body. It’s a welcome relief from the near-constant fear and anxiety I’ve felt since stepping off the train.
“Feeling better?”
“A little.”
“It’s the park. Always does the trick, no matter what kind of day you’re having.”
“Guess I’ll be spending a lot of time here.”
“If you ever get bored with this spot, there are thirty-five more just like it. Parks, towers, and all.” She points to the emerald tower, second from the left. “That’s our dorm.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You’ll be spending quite a bit of time passing through here. Our counselor meetings are in the main complex. This is the quickest way back and forth.”
A toucan swoops down from the tree canopy and lands with a ruckus on a bush right next to Hannah. “Hey, Pip. I was wondering where you were.” She reaches in her pocket and produces a handful of green grapes. “Here you go, buddy.” She holds out her delicate hand to the bird and he makes greedy work of the fruit. He squawks at her, looking for more. “Sorry, that’s it. If you want more, you’ll have to get it yourself.”
He takes off, making as big of a commotion leaving as he did arriving.
“Pip?” I ask.
“Great Expectations was the last thing I read before I died. Had it with me on the plane. You ever read it?”
“Had to. Twice. Once in eighth grade Honors English, once last year in Brit Lit.”
“I was reading it right before the crash. Twenty pages to left to go, and … boom.” She makes a plane with her right hand and crashes it into the runway made with her left.
“If you want to know how it ends, I’d be happy to—”
“No,” she interrupts, her voice sharp. “No way.” Hannah looks up to the tree where Pip disappeared. She kicks a pebble, sending it tumbling down the path ahead of us. “No wonder I’m still here after two years.”
I look up into the trees, trying to spot the toucan, but he’s vanished. “So, why’d you name him Pip?”
“Because he thinks he’s fancier than he is. He thinks he’s so special, so above it all, but he’s just a bird. He’s lovable, but he forgets where he comes from. He has a huge ego, but he relies completely on handouts and has no problems taking them.”
“Pretty clever,” I admit.
Hannah leads us to a footbridge crossing the stream. She leans against the railing. “Crosby’s cute, huh?”
“Yeah, just don’t piss him off.”
“When you’re ready to tell me about it, I’m all ears.” She tosses a pebble into the water. “You may not have seen it yet, but he’s super funny. It’s too bad he isn’t into girls.”
“I’m pretty sure staff dating residents is a bit of a no-no.”
“True.” She slouches forward and rests her chin on her hands. “Slim pickings among the residents, too.”
“Not a hot dating scene?”
“Not so much. Plus, we’re really not supposed to date.” She straightens, and leans in close. “Their loss, right?”
“Right.” I let myself get lost for a moment in thoughts of boys.
That hot sophomore who gave us the campus tour in Providence. His name was Henry. Comparative literature major from Chicago. Green eyes and curly, sandy blond hair. Told me to look him up in the fall. Said he was sure I was Brown material.
He’ll never even know I’m dead.
We continue down the path heading toward the towers, silently soaking in the serenity of the beautiful park.
I find a flat, smooth stone on the ground and curl my thumb and index finger around its contours. With a practiced sidearm move, I toss it across the surface of the stream. Hannah and I watch as it skips six times before disappearing into the water.
“Wow, nice,” Hannah says, impressed.
“Thanks, Hannah,” I finally say.
“For what?”
“Today sucks, and … ” I shrug. “Just, thanks.”
The tower lobby is spectacular, surrounded in glass with gleaming white marble floors. A garden filled with exotic plants sits in the center. The entry boasts gorgeous views of Jhana Park and the city. An elderly woman with gray hair in a tight bun sits at a reception desk, greeting passers-by who make their way to and from a large bank of elevators. Hannah waves to her as we pass.
At the elevators, Hannah presses the call button, and I remember a childhood trip to Chicago, the one when we took the train. It was my first visit to a skyscraper—the John Hancock Center—and I was gung-ho to see it. But when we stood at street level, I craned my neck back as far as I could and looked straight up into the sky. I declared, “It’s too big, and I’m too little. I’m not going.” My dad convinced me to be brave and get on the elevator, and I treated everyone aboard to a one hundred–story ride of bloodcurdling shrieks. The ride back down involved stopping on every floor so I could “take a break.” It took an hour and a half.
“I hate elevators,” I say. “Kind of a phobia of mine.”
“How else we going to get up a five hundred-story tower? Besides, we’re already dead. You worried about getting extra-dead or something?” The doors open and she steps aboard.
With no other choice, I follow. Much to my relief it is a quick and uneventful trip to the ninety-fifth floor. “Here we are,” she announces as we step off the elevator. “Home weird home.”
To the left, wooden doors numbered one through nine span the length of the wall. The rest of the floor is a huge, semicircular common area. An assortmen
t of tables, chairs, and couches is scattered throughout, and a lounge boasting a variety of table games—foosball, pool, air hockey, and ping pong—runs into an enormous library.
I’m taken aback by the rows and rows of curved bookshelves that spread out to the wall of windows, taking up at least half of floor ninety-five. The shelves are contoured to the shape of the outer wall and reach all the way to the ceiling.
“Whoa,” is all I can manage.
Hannah nods. “Impressive, right? They say no one’s ever been here long enough to read them all.”
I consider the vastness. “So, we won’t be stuck here more than a century or so? That’s comforting.”
“They have every title you can imagine, and plenty you can’t. If I really want to finish Great Expectations, I can.”
“So why don’t you?” I ask. I walk to the nearest shelf and grab the first book I find. On the Road. “Did you know Kerouac wrote the first draft of this on one huge roll of paper?” I hold the book up for inspection and find Hannah glaring at me.
“Would you want to relive careening off a runway in a fiery crash?” she asks. “’Cause that’s what comes to mind when I hold Great Expectations.”
My heart sinks. Nice going, Dez. “Sorry, Hannah. I really need to think before I open my mouth.”
She forces a smile onto her face and waves off my concern. “Don’t sweat it. It’s your first day.”
I gesture to the wall of doors. “So, which one are we?”
“Number six. Come on.”
We pass a series of posters plastered on the wall between the elevator doors and the first suite. A perfect looking girl with long, flowing hair and gleaming white teeth smiles serenely out at me from the final poster, hands on hips.
THINK. PREPARE. BECOME.
As Hannah reaches to open our door, someone calls out from behind us.
“Hey, Hannah. Who’s your new friend?”
She stiffens before turning around. A boy in his mid-teens emerges from the library, a grin spread across his face. He casually pushes his dark mop of hair back with a flip of his hand, revealing hazel eyes glimmering with trouble. He glides over to us.
He holds up his wrist.
LEVEL 02-095-125
“Go ahead, take it in.” He sticks his chin out a bit, and smiles. “You must be the fresh meat I heard about.” He extends his hand. “I’m Herc.”
“Back off,” Hannah tells him, her demand betrayed by the slight quaver in her voice. “Let’s go, Dez.”
He steps between us, forcing her to step back. “What’s the hurry?”
Hannah’s arms are stiff at her sides. She stares daggers into his back.
“Trying to be impressive?” I say. “Because it’s not working.”
He chuckles. “Aw, let’s not get off on the wrong foot.” He clucks his tongue and leans in a little closer. “That deer-in-headlights look gets me every time.”
“What?” I stand frozen, baffled by what’s unfolding. “What’s going on, Hannah?”
“You don’t want to do this right now, believe me.” She grabs my wrist to steer me away, but I stay put.
Herc looks me up and down. “Desperate looks good on you. There’s just nothing like that ‘body is still warm back home’ stare.”
My overtaxed brain is sent into overdrive. “I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny, or clever, but whatever it is, you suck at it.”
“Oh, so you’re a tease of the oral kind, huh? Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes, please.”
My hands form fists, which I decide to place on my hips rather than his face. “Listen, Herc, is it?” I take a step toward him. “I have had one hell of a day, and am in no mood to deal with any more crap. My advice to you right now is to back off.”
His confident smirk fades but the malicious glimmer in his eyes stays put. “That time of the month, babe?”
My fingernails dig into my palms. “Get the hell away from me. And my name’s Dez. Want to find out if you can die twice? Call me babe again.”
He struggles to come up with a reply, and finally settles for cursing under his breath as he slinks off into the library.
Hannah shakes her head. “Sorry about that.”
“What the hell is with that guy?”
“It’s complicated. He’s complicated.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t add a pair of black eyes to his complications.”
“He’s an ass, but you’re going to see a lot of him around here. Best advice is to just ignore him.”
“Ignore that? Not likely.”
“You have enough to worry about right now. Don’t add him to the list.” She opens the door to our room and flicks on the light. “Welcome home.”
To our right is a door to another room. Just inside the doorway, on the left, is a pneumatic tube like the one Mr. Potter used. “What’s that?”
“The message system. If anybody needs to send you something, it’ll come in there. That’s how they deliver our tickets out of here, too.”
A couch and two chairs face a flagstone fireplace on the right wall. On the left side of the room are two beds, with closet doors on the wall behind them. Curved floor-to-ceiling windows take up the entire wall on the far side of the room. Cushioned bench seating runs the length of the windows.
The view of Atman City is stunning. The city’s hodgepodge of architecture climbs up a series of stepped foothills toward the base of a mountain shrouded in mist. The immensity of the sprawl makes me gasp.
“To hell with the rules,” I say. “How does anybody stay away?”
“Did you not hear Crosby?”
“Yeah, but still, haven’t you been tempted?”
“Tempted? Maybe. Crazy enough to go? Not a chance. I like being a nine, thanks.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re caught in the city, you automatically get dropped to level two.”
“Well, I’m only a one, so that’s not much of a deterrent.”
She shakes her head, the slightest hint of a smile on her face. She turns away from the window and points to a door. “Bathroom’s in there.”
I pry my eyes away from the view. “You mean we still need to, uh … ”
Hannah snickers. “No. It’s just there for effect, kind of like everything else around here.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Why are there beautiful gardens, waterfalls, and who knows what else in heaven?”
I shrug.
“Because it’s nice,” she says. “It’s what everybody wants. What everyone expects. Same thing goes here, except all this stuff is designed to make our transition easier. They give us the things we’re used to, and we learn little by little to not need them anymore.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“The bathroom has an awesome soaking tub. We don’t need that either, but I’m not going to complain.”
She walks over to the beds and flops down on the one nearest the windows. “This bed’s mine, but we can switch if you want.” She lies on her back with her arms out to her sides.
“This one’s fine.” I collapse on my new bed. The closet doors behind us come into focus as I roll over onto my back. “What’s in there?”
Hannah shifts onto her side and looks. “A full wardrobe. All in the right sizes and styles. Pretty much what you’d pick out on your own, given plenty of time and an unlimited budget.”
“But only three-quarter sleeve or less,” I say in a high, clipped voice.
“You’re catching on.”
“So, do we sleep? Or are the beds just here because they’re comfy?”
“It isn’t sleep, exactly.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s a kind of meditative state called Dream-State Reflection. We call it DSR for short. It’s a therapeutic guidance through life events that have brought us to Atman.” She recites the last sentence like she’s reading it right from the manual.
I shake my head. “Not so sure I like the sou
nd of that.”
“Sounds kind of freaky, right? Especially after all you’ve been through today. But it’s really not so bad. Believe it or not, it’s actually kind of calming. You get to just watch all these events that shaped you. It’s kind of like watching a movie, except it’s about your life.”
“I could use some calming after all this craziness.” I grab a pillow and cover my face. “I’ve just about given up on it all being a dream.”
“Me too.”
With a sigh, I heave myself out of bed and head for the closet.
Whoa.
It’s a walk-in, with an entire wall of shoes, and row upon row of tops, pants, skirts, shorts, and dresses. I can see I’m going to need to spend some quality time in here, and soon. For now, I grab a T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of cute sandals.
My dad’s voice echoes in my mind. “You’re taking off sandals to put on … sandals?”
I change clothes, carefully fold up my sundress, and put it in a shoebox I find on the floor. Wearing my new outfit, I emerge from the closet, feeling the slightest bit better. “So what’s next?”
Hannah glances at her wrist. “We have almost three hours before DSR begins. And since today is Saturday, it’s a free day. We can pretty much do what we want.” She sits up. “Do you want to go meet everybody?”
“Herc was enough of an introduction. I think I’m going to go check out the game lounge. Maybe wander a bit.”
“Just be back in time for DSR.”
CHAPTER TEN
Without a plan, I wander deep into the library’s stacks.
The silence and solitude offered by the thousands of books surrounding me is a welcome reprieve. Arms outstretched, I run my fingers across the spines of a multitude of tomes. I begin to relax as I transition from skimming the titles to scanning them with interest. The comforting scent of books fills my nose as my fingers come to rest on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
“I know how you feel, Alice.” I pull the book from the shelf and let it fall open to a random passage.
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
Life, A.D. Page 5
