Exit Point

by Laura Langston

  Exit Point

  Laura Langston

  Orca Soundings

  For Kory.

  “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” —Aesop

  Copyright © Laura Langston 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording or by any information storage

  and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission

  in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Langston, Laura, 1958-

  Exit point / Laura Langston.

  (Orca soundings)

  ISBN 1-55143-525-X (bound) ISBN 1-55143-505-5 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8573.A5832E95 2006 jC813’.54 C2006-900407-2

  First published in the United States, 2006

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006921007

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Logan is dead, but he

  realizes he still has unfinished business.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing

  programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada

  through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the

  Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design: Lynn O’Rourke

  Cover photography: Bigshot Media

  Orca Book Publishers Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626 Stn.B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  Printed and bound in Canada

  09 08 07 06 • 5 4 3 2 1

  Chapter One

  He says I died at the wrong time.

  I’m not sure I’m dead to begin with.

  I’m lying on a bed in a round, white room and I can’t move. There are people around me, dressed in gray robes. They hold me down. Not with their hands, but with something.

  I stare up to where the ceiling is supposed to be. There is no ceiling, only sky. A pale, bleached-out sky vibrating with an eerie glow. Like a planetarium ceiling before the show starts. There are colors around me too. Moving colors. They quiver and ping and make a wind chime kind of music.

  “I’m dreaming, right?”

  No one answers out loud. Instead I hear his voice in my head and this is what he says: There are five exit points in any one life. Five points when a person can die and not mess with the Big Plan.

  “You should have waited for exit point five.” Now he speaks into my ear. His breath is hot on my skin. “Instead you took an easier option. You took exit point two.”

  If I had waited, I would have died on June 9, 2066, at the age of seventy-seven, by choking on a grape.

  Instead I died October 28, 2004, in a car that crashed and exploded on Houser Way.

  I was sixteen years old and afraid to face my future.

  So I didn’t.

  At least this is what he says.

  Fear thuds in my chest. For a minute, I wonder if he’s right.

  Nah.

  I’m dreaming.

  The robed ones take colors and put them into my body. Red gives me a jolt, like diving into a cold pool on a hot day. Green is what it feels like when you come out of the water and wrap yourself in a towel: comfortable and warm. Blue makes me sleepy. Sleeping is something I’m good at. I drift off.

  It’s either a dream or I’m coming down. Except I haven’t touched a thing in almost two weeks. Except the beer. I had four cans of Bud before I took the keys to my dad’s car. And six more, that I remember, before Tom and I had the race. And that’s all that I do remember.

  Then...nothing.

  The nothing part scares me awake. I struggle to sit up. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

  Hands hold me down. A wind touches my face; I can’t hear what the people around me say. Then I hear a voice I haven’t heard in three years. “Keep yer shirt on, Logan. You’ll know everything soon enough.”

  “Gran?” I can’t move to turn my head, so Gran appears above me, but she doesn’t look sick or wrinkled. She looks way too young to be Gran, except the beady eyes are the same. And so is the large, bumpy nose.

  “It’s me, Logan. Damn, your timing’s bad.” Frowning, she puffs on a cigarette. “I’ve got five hundred on Devil’s Pride in the seventh. You could have waited for the race to end before getting antsy.”

  Gran fades in a buzz of gold light. Someone talks to her. I hear words, but they are all garbled and muffled like someone speaking under water.

  If I were dead and in heaven, Gran wouldn’t be gambling. She wouldn’t be cranky. And she wouldn’t still be smoking cigarettes. Or maybe Gran went down instead of up. And I followed her.

  Gran is back. Her frown is gone. She smiles. This is a dream all right. The only time Gran smiled was when she won at the track. Gran had been a cranky old bitch. Even before getting lung cancer.

  “Excuse me, young man.” Her smile slips. “I was never a cranky old bitch. And this is no dream, Logan. You’re deader than a doornail.”

  There’s more gold buzzing. Gran fades again, but she returns in three blinks. “Let me try that again. Taking your father’s car was a stupid move. Not to mention drinking all that beer and trying to impress Hannah by driving like a lunatic. You are dead, Logan. You are not going to wake up in your own bed, late, like you always do. You will never again rush out the door half-dressed. You will never again use your charm to get a good mark, avoid your chores or impress the girls.”

  Gran turns, speaks to someone I can’t see. “He’s my grandson. I’ll speak to him however I want.” She turns back to me. “Face it. You took exit point two. You had written in your life contract that you’d hang on to exit point five. But the next two years of your life were gonna be tough. Tougher than anything you’d go through in the next sixty years. You thought it would be too hard, so you bailed. No surprise there, Logan. You always did take the easy way out.”

  Seeing Gran makes me feel better. But not in the way you might think. The thing is, I don’t believe in life after death. I figure when you’re dead, you’re history. But Hannah—she’s my girlfriend—Hannah thinks that when we die, we’re met by the dead people who loved us the most. Remembering this makes me feel way better. Gran loved us, I guess, in her own way. But she loved the horses and herself more. She wouldn’t waste her time sitting on heaven’s welcoming committee.

  “This is a dream, Gran. You don’t even look like you.”

  Gran snorts. “You think I liked looking old?” When I don’t answer, she adds, “Being dead has its advantages. I don’t need Oil of Olay anymore, plus I can have all the cigarettes I want. And there’s a race going on somewhere every day.”

  Yeah right. “If I was dead, I would have seen that white light everybody talks about.” Hannah had told me about that too.

  “You cheated yourself by leaving early. In more ways than one,” Gran tells me. “Dying by grape would have been less violent. You would have lived long enough to learn what you were supposed to learn. Then when you died, you would have gotten the whole she-bang. The tunnel, the light, maybe even an angel or two.” She clucks her tongue. “Even I got an angel, Logan. All you got was a massive boom, heat that melted your brain and then nothing.”

  Gran’s words jolt me. I remember. It wasn’t quite like that.

  It was a boom, a flash, melting heat and then nothing.

  Until now.

  “Holy crap.” I start to shake. “Am I really dead?”

  I might be in heaven but all hell is breaking loose. The tinkling win
d-chime sounds grow louder; there’s a flurry of movement. Gran fades into the milk-glow sky. “Wait,” she cries, “I’m not finished with my grandson yet. There’s something else I need to tell him.”

  But the colors around me get stronger: zap, zap, zap. Hot, cold, sleepy. And the colors take Gran away.

  My whole body shakes. My stomach heaves. “What’s going on?” My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; it’s hard to talk. “Where am I?” If I don’t sit up...if I don’t get something to drink...I’m gonna puke.

  Suddenly, there is an extra-large pop in my hand and I am upright. I struggle to adjust my eyes, to figure out where I am.

  This place is huge. Open to the sky, to the air. And there are beds. Lots and lots of beds. I peer into the haze. At least I think they’re beds. Before I can make sense of things, I see him sitting at the end of my bed. The guy who spoke to me earlier.

  “Hello, Logan.” His eyes—one green, the other blue—study me carefully.

  I’ve never met this guy before.

  Yet I know him.

  Tattoos crawl up his arms and meet below his neck. “I’m Wade.” He pushes frizzy brown hair back from his face, revealing two studs in his left ear.

  Wade? To me he’s Snakeman. And I’ve been dreaming of him since I was four years old.

  But I’ve never seen him in 3-D before. And I’ve never had him reach out and touch me like he does now.

  This isn’t looking good.

  Wade gestures to the pop. “Drink,” he says. “Your memorial service is about to start. You’re gonna need that to get through it.”

  Chapter Two

  They put something in the pop.

  That must be why I feel majorly stoned and blank in the head.

  I sort of remember an accident. And being in a hospital talking to Wade. I remember him. But I can’t remember what we talked about. Or how I got from that round, white place to where I am now.

  Now is a church in Kent, Washington. When I was little, we used to come here at Christmas. I remember that.

  I sit beside Wade in the back pew. Organ music plays. Pale October sun shines through the stained glass windows. My school picture is up front, by the altar. It’s extra large, like they’ve blown it up or something. There are flowers all over the place and people too. I might know them, but I might not. It’s like my memory is on pause. Only bits and pieces are getting through.

  “Why’s my picture up there?”

  Wade doesn’t answer. Feeling stoned, I don’t ask a second time. I don’t even try to figure it out. It hurts to think. Besides, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.

  Until I see Mrs. Shields pushing a wheel-chair down the aisle.

  “That’s Tom.” Suddenly I am more awake. “My buddy.” Tom’s legs are in casts. Cuts crisscross his face. Was he in the accident too? I try to remember, but the lead in my head won’t go away. “Hey, Tom, what happened? Tom! I’m over here.” But he doesn’t look at me. He stares at his hands instead. And then his mother wheels him past. “Tom, I’m back here,” I call. “Tom!”

  “He can’t hear you,” Wade says.

  Wade’s full of shit. I open my mouth to argue, but then I see Hannah coming down the aisle between her mother and father. My Hannah. Her long, blond hair is messy straight, not curled and fluffed up like normal. Her face is puffed, her eyes red. She weeps into a tissue.

  “Hannah!” I reach out. But she walks too fast. She’s gone before I can grab her.

  “Everybody’s ignoring me!”

  “They’re not ignoring you,” Wade says. “They can’t see you.”

  His words don’t make sense. But I don’t have time to try and figure them out, because then I see my parents and my sister, Amy. They come out a side door at the front of the church. Dad’s bent over like an old man. He’s on one side of Mom, Amy’s on the other. Mom looks like she can’t walk on her own.

  I jump up and run down the aisle toward them. Moving sharpens my senses. I recognize people now: Mr. Levesque, my French teacher. The principal, Mrs. Edwards. Casual friends from the swim club. Aunt Susan and Uncle Herb. Plus Tom and Hannah. Brian and Seth. Even their parents. I know everybody here.

  Everybody.

  My family sits in the front row, just the three of them. “Mom? Mom, it’s me! Logan.” I am so close I can see the purple smudges under her eyes, the wet tips of her eyelashes. Her lower lip trembles. She stares at me, says nothing.

  I look at Dad. He whispers in Mom’s ear. I smell coffee on his breath. I see a cut on his cheek. I know it’s from shaving.

  I turn to my sister. “Amy, what’s with these two? Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” But Amy’s clear gray eyes are shadowed; her face is pale. She fidgets nervously. Typical nine-year-old. I remember she will be ten soon. Her present is in the car.

  Why does the thought of the car leave me shaking?

  At the front of the church, a man begins to speak. “We are gathered here today to honor the life of Logan Alexander Freemont.” I turn. A minister in white holds a small black book. “Let us pray.”

  People stand. Voices rise.

  So does my panic. It crawls up from my feet and takes over, bit by bit, until the fog in my brain is gone. Until I remember everything.

  I am dead.

  No way.

  I look down. I see my gray sweatshirt. I touch my jeans. The denim is rough under my fingers. I run up and down the aisles, reaching for people. People I know. They slide. Or I slide. Or we both do. Either way, I can’t connect.

  So I yell. I yell at my parents. At Amy. At Hannah and Tom. “I’m not dead! Look at me, guys, I’m alive. I’m here. It’s all a joke. Look!”

  The only person who looks at me is Wade. “It’s no joke, Logan.” He’s halfway across the church and his voice is soft and quiet, but I hear him like he’s whispering in my ear. “It’s real.”

  “I’m not dead. I’m still me. I still have a body and everything.”

  “You are still you, but you don’t have a body. What you’re seeing is a thought form.” He points to a tall gold urn up by the minister. “Your body is in there. You were cremated.”

  Thunk thunk, thunk thunk. My heart pounds in my chest. Dread mushrooms in my stomach. Sweat beads on my forehead. “But everybody knows death is the end. That there’s nothing left but matter.”

  “Death is only the beginning, Logan. Hannah knows that. Lots of people do.”

  Head rush.

  My brain feels like a nuclear explosion waiting to happen. I run to Wade. I grab him by the shoulders, press my fingers into the scaly snakeskin of his tattoos. “If I’m dead, how come I can feel my heart beating? How can I touch you like this? Hear everybody talking? Smell those stupid lilies up there?”

  “It’s the way it works at first,” Wade says. “It’ll change when you move on.”

  “I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to be dead.” What I want is to wake up in my own bed and have all this be a dream.

  “It’s too late, Logan. You’ve made your choice.”

  “I didn’t choose. It was an accident.”

  “There’s no such thing as accidents. You chose to die because you didn’t want to face your future.”

  When I was a kid learning to swim, I almost drowned. It’s like that now. The same terror, the same helplessness, the same feeling that everything is out of my control.

  I hear crying.

  And wailing.

  It is loud and painful. Frightening.

  It is me.

  The robed ones come back. They feed me blue. I resist but Wade says, “It’ll help.”

  Soon, a fuzzy calm drops over me. It veils things, like a thin curtain I can see through but not sharply. I hear the service, watch people hug my parents, see them walk down the steps and out of the church, where they kick the leaves and breathe the cold fall air and get on with their lives.

  They can go home.

  The thought of home takes me there.

  We are in the liv
ing room and it is filled with people and food. Like a party, only nobody’s smiling. My parents sit on the couch. They are surrounded. Grandpop. Amy. Hannah. The talking in the room is like a low rumble. It’s there, yet there’s something more. Something that scares me.

  “I know what people are thinking,” I tell Wade. “What they are feeling.”

  His frizzy brown hair flies out from his face as he nods. “Your awareness is growing.”

  I don’t like it because I have to listen. Mom wonders what she did wrong, how she failed me. Dad feels guilty that we argued, that he insisted I stay with the swimming program. Amy is confused and scared. Grandpop feels like a disappointed old man.

  Everyone hurts.

  And that’s what gets me.

  Their pain is so big and so strong that the room cannot keep it in. It seeps out the cracks of the house, down the sidewalk, along the road, into the air. It is a living, breathing thing and it twists my guts in half.

  I start to cry. I am too upset to be embarrassed. “I have to let them know that I’m okay.”

  “You can’t do that,” Wade says.

  “I have to. I need to say good-bye.”

  “It’s not about saying good-bye, Logan. It’s about the choices you made. The lives you changed. And where you go from here.”

  Chapter Three

  Wade takes me to a park.

  The sky still has that eerie glow; the warm air smells strange, like oranges. And there are flowers all over the place, in colors I have never seen. It’s all too weird. But I’m calm. We sit on the grass. There is a weeping willow tree behind us and a big lake in front of us. It reminds me of a place I used to swim in as a kid.

  “Is this heaven?” I ask.

  “Not exactly. This is more like a way station.” Wade gestures to the massive round dome beyond the tree. “That’s where they put the colors inside you. To heal your energy field.” Then he points across the lake. “But that’s where you really want to be.”