Sure enough, when a summary of Chelsea’s last life spit from the slot, the details were scant: “Middle-school student. Cause of death: head injury while skateboarding.”
“Tell me something I didn’t know,” Chelsea said, balling up the piece of paper and sticking it in her jeans pocket. A second printout shot out of the slot and floated to the ground. Chelsea knelt to pick it up.
“Eighteen-year-old banana picker. Cause of death: fall from a tree,” she read aloud, and then dropped the paper. “No wonder I’ve never liked banana bread. This is too freaky.”
“Here comes the next one,” Skye said, catching the printout and handing it to Chelsea.
“Sweet,” Chelsea said with a big grin after she read it. “Nineteen-year-old surfing champion. Cause of death: drowning in twenty-five-foot wave.” She let out a low whistle. “Now that’s the way to go.”
“Sounds to me like you need to be a little more careful.”
“Your turn,” Chelsea said, gesturing toward the machine. “Hop on.”
“It’s not going to work for me. I haven’t had any past lives.”
“I know, but maybe it will tell you what your future life will be like.”
“I seriously doubt that, and furthermore, I don’t think I necessarily want to know how my life will come to an end.”
“Let’s just see. Come on.”
Deciding to humor her, Skye stepped on the platform and thrust down the arm. The machine jerked and started spitting out a printout. Skye laughed. “I wonder what kind of nonsense this thing will come up with.”
Chelsea pulled out the slip of paper from the front and examined it. “Snap! There’s something here.”
“Let me see,” Skye said. She took the printout from Chelsea and read it softly to herself.
“Twenty-five; unemployed. Cause of death: N/A.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “That’s silly. The machine must be broken.”
“Another one is printing out,” Chelsea said excitedly.
“Obviously it’s giving me someone else’s lives,” Skye said, ignoring the piece of paper that came from the machine. “Let’s go. Brock will be at the reptile house any minute.”
“Are you sure you’ve never had a past life before?” Chelsea asked, tripping behind her.
“Don’t you think I would know if I had one?” Skye said as she pushed open the exit door of the arcade. “There’s something wrong with that machine. Maybe when a new soul steps on it, it prints out a lot of junk. I’m not surprised. It’s a toy, after all.”
“I’m a little confused about this new-soul business. Did you just appear in Heaven one day, or were you a baby, or what?”
“New souls are fully functional adults from the start,” Skye explained. “I was created a little over a year ago.”
“How? Were you hatched? Did you come by stork?”
“No,” Skye said with a laugh. They’d arrived at the reptile house, a concrete circular building with a cartoon cutout of an alligator just outside the entrance. So far there was no sign of Brock.
“There’s a place in the Supreme Being Sector where new souls are born,” Skye said. “It’s an enormously popular attraction. You should go there.”
“Will you take me?”
“Sure. How about sometime this week?” she said just as she saw Brock approaching.
“Skye! You look beautiful as usual,” Brock said with a delighted smile. He wasn’t looking too shabby himself. The man was catch-your-breath handsome. A thought occurred to her. Was it possible her encounter with Ryan had primed her well, so to speak, and she’d now overflow like a fountain with feelings for Brock?
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Skye said, linking arms with him. “Brock, this is Chelsea. She’s one of my clients, and she’s been anxious to meet you.”
“So you’re the boyfriend?” Chelsea said. She folded her arms across her chest and scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. “What exactly is it that you do?”
“Brock’s the anchorman for Today in Heaven,” Skye said, giving Brock’s chest a covetous pat. “He interviews all sorts of saints and important angels. Recently he snagged an exclusive telephone interview with God, and he wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.”
“What kind of questions did you ask?” Chelsea said.
“My first one was a toughie. I asked Her, if You’ve created everything, who created You?” said Brock.
“What was her answer?”
“Well, it was really intriguing. She hemmed and hawed a bit, but then She said—” The ringing of his cell phone interrupted him. “Yes,” he said, bringing the device to his ear. After a moment of listening, he returned the phone to his belt. “A last-minute press conference has been scheduled in the Supreme Being Sector. Apparently they have some extraordinarily good news to announce. I’m so sorry, Skye. I gotta go there right now.” He brushed Skye’s lips with his own. “Can we do this another time?”
“Sure,” she said, touching her lips where he’d kissed her.
There was nothing there. He might as well have been a tree trunk she’d brushed up against.
After he sauntered off, Chelsea said, “Are you sure he’s the guy for you? I didn’t see any sparks flying.”
“It was that noticeable?”
“Yeah. You looked kind of bored.”
“It’s funny. I always thought Brock was the one for me, but then I met this other guy and then…”
“What other guy?”
“Never mind,” Skye said quickly.
Even someone as inexperienced as Chelsea would probably question her getting wobbly-kneed over a man living in another dimension.
“Come on. Tell me.”
Skye decided to ignore her question. “Maybe I should take you back to newcomers’ quarters. It’s getting late.”
“It is not,” Chelsea protested. “You promised you’d spend the whole day with me.” Her lower lip jutted out like an open drawer.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I did promise. What would you like to do?”
“Are there any malls here in Heaven?”
Skye and Chelsea spent the rest of the day at the universe’s largest shopping complex, Retail Rapture. Despite the fact that Heaven-dwellers were able to order anything they wanted via their WishBerrys, many, like Chelsea, still enjoyed shopping as a pastime. After hours of scouring the mall for the perfect pair of blue jeans, the teen was reluctant to return to ND quarters and begged Skye to take her home with her.
“We can have a slumber party at your apartment.”
“I suppose,” Skye said, even though she had to go to work in the morning. The teenager would probably keep her up late, but it didn’t much matter. Skye wasn’t getting a lot of sleep these days anyway.
Chelsea managed to turn her visit into a chow fest, ordering up caramel popcorn, pepperoni pizza, and a bag of peanut M&M’s. Skye got into the spirit of things by devouring a pint of fudge ice cream straight out of the carton. After eating their fill, they changed into pajamas and sprawled out in Skye’s living room.
Chelsea wore oversized fluffy pink slippers on her feet and propped them up on the arm of the sofa. “Dying wasn’t at all what I expected,” she said.
“Really?” Skye was digging out the last of the ice cream with her spoon. “What did you think it would be like?”
“I thought it would hurt, like a dentist drill times a hundred. But there wasn’t any pain, just a dark tunnel. Then I saw a bright light at the end. I thought, wow, God’s going to be at the end of the tunnel, and then I wished I’d paid more attention in church because I figured He was going to give me a pop quiz. Who would have guessed the light was just an ordinary fluorescent light and I was standing in your cubicle? I thought you were an angel. You looked like Britney Spears before she got skanky.”
Skye raised an eyebrow. “Then why were you so mean to me?”
“Because you were an authority figure, and I don’t like to be bossed around, especially not in Heaven. Back on Earth, I used to eat substitute teachers for lunch.” Chelsea smiled, obviously proud of her hellion tendencies.
“I also think you might have been a little scared.”
“Was not,” Chelsea said, kicking off her slippers. “Well, maybe just a little.”
Skye yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time for bed.”
“My mom sometimes used to sing to me just before bed. She sang more than anyone on the entire planet. Not too well either,” Chelsea said. “And talk about your hokey stuff. She knew every song Debbie Gibson ever sang.”
“Why don’t you tell me more about your mother?”
“Maybe,” Chelsea said, nibbling on her lower lip. “I could tell you a shocking secret about her, but then you’d have to tell me a secret in return.”
“I don’t have any shocking secrets.”
“We’ll see about that.” Chelsea stuck out her hand. “So is it a deal?”
“Deal.” Skye shook her hand, thinking it might be good for Chelsea to talk about her mother for a while.
Chelsea sat Indian-style on the couch, rocking back and forth. “First off, my mom dyes her hair, and she doesn’t want anyone to know. She used to bury the L’Oreal box under a pile of newspapers in the trash can. Second, she’s a Dr. Phil fanatic and is constantly quoting him. Thirdly—”
“Dr. Phil?”
“Thirdly,” Chelsea said, holding up a hand, “since I died my mom plays all of my old Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs while she drives around in the car. Sometimes she wakes up at night and sits on my bed and smells my pillow for hours.”
“How do you know that? It’s too soon for you to have watched Earthly Pleasures.”
“Yeah, there was some kind of block on that channel in my hotel room,” Chelsea said. “As if that would stop me. At home, I got around the parental controls on the internet and the V-chip on the television.”
“The block’s there for a reason, Chelsea,” Skye said gently. “You aren’t supposed to watch Earthly Pleasures until you’ve been in Heaven a week. It can be very troubling if you watch it too soon after you’ve died.”
“It was awful,” Chelsea said, tugging at the fringe of a pillow. “I was so sad for my mom. I wanted her to know I was okay. That Heaven was a really cool place. I couldn’t watch for very long; it made me want to go home too much.”
“That’s because you tuned in too soon. You haven’t been in Heaven long enough to let go of the people you left behind. Give it a couple more days, and you’ll no longer get upset when you see your mom. Instead you’ll experience the pure joy of seeing her without being attached to her.”
“Does that mean I won’t love her anymore?”
“Of course not. The love never leaves, but once the attachment is gone, you’ll perceive love in its purest, most sacred form,” Skye said. She was not speaking from experience but merely parroting passages of the Hospitality Handbook.
“So being attached to people is a bad thing?”
“It’s only our attachment to others that causes pain,” said Skye, again rotely repeating what she’d learned in her training, when it occurred to her for the first time that she was speaking from experience. Wasn’t she hopelessly attached to Ryan Blaine?
“Speaking of love...” Chelsea crawled to the end of the couch closer to Skye. “Who’s that guy you were talking about earlier?”
Skye waved away Chelsea’s question. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Your turn to tell a secret. I want to hear all about him.”
“Ask another question.”
“No fair.” Chelsea banged her fist on the armrest of the sofa. “We had a deal.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so interested in my love life. Or maybe I should say my lack of a love life.”
Chelsea’s eyes grew big as shot glasses. “You mean the person you love doesn’t love you back?”
“Worse. He doesn’t even know I exist.”
The teenager clutched her pajama top as if suffering from excruciating chest pains.
“The exact same thing happened to me. Before I died, I was crushing on Josh Carradine. When I passed him in the halls at school, he never looked my way. Even when I dressed goth, and everybody else was gawking at me.”
“Goth?”
“It’s an Earth thing.” Chelsea peeled her nail polish, causing little flecks of sparkle to dot the couch. “I wonder what you could do to make this guy notice you.” She scrutinized Skye for a moment. “Do you own a push-up bra?”
“You don’t understand.” Skye picked up the remote and aimed it at the television. “This is my crush.”
The screen showed Ryan Blaine walking his golden retriever. Skye was surprised to see him exercise so quickly after his motorcycle spill.
“You’re in love with an Earth guy? I thought you said it was insane to lust after Earthlings,” Chelsea said. “Whoa. Talk about your long-distance relationship.” She continued to stare at the screen. “Nice butt. Cute dog.”
A series of lines rumpled Ryan’s forehead. What is he thinking about? Skye wondered as she turned off the television.
“What did you do that for?” Chelsea asked.
“I promised I wouldn’t watch it anymore. Right now it’s difficult for me to see him, since there’s no possible way we can ever be together.”
Chelsea slumped against the couch cushions. “It is kind of bleak. I guess you’re star-crossed lovers.”
“Enough talk about that,” Skye yawned. “I should try and get some sleep.”
Chelsea stretched her arms above her head. “I’m getting a little drowsy myself. Where do I crash?”
“I don’t have a guest room, but there’s an extra twin in my bedroom. Will that suit?”
“Sure,” Chelsea said, clambering off the couch.
A few minutes later, when they were both under the covers in their beds and the lights were turned off, Chelsea said, “It’s strange, but today was the first day Heaven started feeling a little bit like home. You know why?”
“Why?” Skye said, her eyelids closing under the weight of her exhaustion.
“Because of you, Skye. I like hanging out together.”
“Thank you, Chelsea.”
Skye closed her eyes, thinking how she’d enjoyed being with Chelsea as well.
Fourteen
Susan heard the back door slam and the sound of Liberty’s nails skittering across the tiles.
“Hi, honey,” she said, pulling her chair away from the dining room table. She stood up to greet Ryan, who had just come back from walking the slobbering beast. “Would you mind giving these invitations a look-see? This one has a double-beveled frame with a little chiffon bow. It’s sweet, don’t you think?”
“Sweet” came out “sthweet,” and a peeved look crossed Ryan’s face. He probably didn’t think she picked up on it. She tried to control her lisp but couldn’t always manage.
“Whatever invitation you pick is fine with me.” He glanced down at the selection spread out on the table. “But do we really need this filmy jacket around it?”
‘‘It’s called vellum, and the woman at the printer says it adds an elegant finishing touch.”
“It also adds an elegant finishing touch to the price,” he said.
As if cost mattered one whit, Susan thought. The Blaine family had more money than God, for Pete’s sake.
“We don’t have to have it,” Susan said quickly, making nice like always. “Plain will do.”
“It’s okay, Susan,” he said. He smiled and pressed his lips to her cheek. “Go for the vellum if you want it.”
“Thank you, honey,” she sa
id with a smile.
“But no monogrammed matches,” he said. “Remember that wedding we went to with pink matchbooks on every table? Even the wedding cake was pink.”
Susan shot him a blank look. She loathed his jaunts down memory lane. They were like land mines, waiting to trip her up.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember that, sweetie. I’m sure if you keep talking about it, some of it will come back.”
“It wasn’t the greatest wedding anyway,” Ryan said softly. He clapped his hands together to indicate a change in subject. “I assume we’re not having a pink cake.”
“It’s candlelight.”
“What?”
“That’s the color of our cake. It has five tiers and will be decorated with butter-cream rosettes. It looked stunning in the photograph.”
“No chocolate?”
“Of course. The filling will be chocolate.”
“I should have guessed.” He jerked his head in the direction of the den. “I’m going to see if I can catch the beginning of the baseball game.”
“Enjoy yourself,” Susan said, in the fake voice she used when dealing with him. Things were going better with Ryan. She wasn’t goofing up nearly as much. It was so hard for her to constantly pattern her actions after the woman he’d been engaged to before the accident. “Saint Susan” was what she called her.
Planning this wedding was going to be a pain for Susan because she was still fuzzy about some of Saint Susan’s tastes. Would she have been happy with plain white invitations? What kind of dress would she wear? At least she knew enough to pick a chocolate cake. Saint Susan’s love of the cocoa bean was the stuff of legend. According to Ryan, she used to call chocolate her dark lord.
Susan gathered up the invitations and headed into the alcove off the kitchen, which she used as an office. Saint Susan had written poetry in the room, and when she was in the hospital Ryan had once convinced her to read some of the poetry. (“It might help you reconnect with your life before the accident.”) Instead, it had nearly put her to sleep. Saint Susan’s poetry was hard to follow, boring, and none of it rhymed.
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