Exit Point

by Laura Langston

  Where I want to be is home. But I still follow the direction of his finger.

  A crystal skyline gleams in the hazy distance. There are other buildings too, huge structures in shapes almost impossible to believe. All reflecting rainbow prisms of light.

  “That’s heaven?” I ask.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Heaven was not all floaty and soft like you might think. It was as real as a full keg on Friday night. Only, so far, not as much fun.

  “Who are you?”

  “Your guide,” Wade says. “I’ve been with you from the beginning. You have some decisions to make. I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t want to make decisions. I want to be alive.”

  “You are alive,” he says. “In a different way and in a different place.”

  I think to myself, This is not the place I want to be.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Wade promises. “Trust me, after a while death will be more real to you than life ever was.”

  I can’t hide a thing from Wade. He knows what I’m thinking.

  “Of course I do.” He nods. “I know every thought you’ve ever had. I know everything about you, Logan. What you did in your life, what you should have done, what you didn’t do.”

  Anger bubbles up from somewhere deep inside. “I’m only sixteen. I didn’t have enough time to do anything important.”

  “You’d be surprised at what some people accomplish in sixteen years.”

  I don’t want to hear about other people. I only care about me. And getting back to my family. “If you’re my guide,” I ask, “why didn’t you stop me from getting in that damned car. Why didn’t you keep me alive?”

  “I tried. We discussed that particular temptation at length.” He watches me calmly. “You knew your father would push you to stay with the competitive swimming. Your father saw your refusal as another sign of laziness. But it wasn’t. You also knew the argument might get out of hand. And you promised me—you promised yourself—that if it did, you would stay and work something out with your dad. Instead, you took your frustrations out behind the wheel of his car. I warned you not to race on Houser Way.”

  My anger reaches a rolling boil. I am furious at him, furious at myself for being in this unbelievable situation, and I’m scared. I don’t want to be dead. “You’re lying. You didn’t warn me about anything.”

  “I did. You just don’t remember. But you will. In time, you’ll remember lots of things.” He points to the water. “But for now, watch this.”

  The water shimmers flat, into a silver screen. Pictures of my life play out in front of me. Not the things I did, but the things I could have done. I see myself graduating from high school; I feel my parents’ joy. I see Hannah unexpectedly pregnant; I know there is a problem with our baby. I see Amy surrounded by trouble; I know I am supposed to help her.

  “Those were things you wrote into your contract before you were born,” Wade tells me when the pictures fade. “Things you agreed to do. Now you won’t be there to do them. You have altered a mess of probable futures, Logan. Not only have you ended your own life, but you’ve changed the lives of everyone around you.”

  I know my parents still hurt. Their pain is inside me, beating where my heart used to be. Suddenly, I am desperate to be alive. I ache with the want of it. I want to go home to Dad’s stupid high standards and Mom’s “crock-pot surprise” suppers and Amy’s constant blabbering. Home to Hannah. “Let me go back! Give me another chance.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  The accident plays out in slow motion in my mind. I am there again. Laughing with Tom. Waving to Hannah. Getting in the car. Booting the engine. Peeling off in a squeal of rubber. I hear the crash. Feel the heat. Taste blood bubbling in the back of my throat.

  It happened. I really am dead. There is no going back. “But I went home for the funeral,” I whisper.

  “You can hang around the living all you want,” Wade says. “All you have to do is think of a person or a place and you are there.”

  “So I can say good-bye to my folks? Let them know I’m okay?”

  Wade hesitates. “You can try, but it takes skill to communicate with the living,” he finally says. “And the living have to be willing to see the signs.” He shrugs; his snake tattoos ripple up and down his arms. “You can’t do much on earth when you’re dead. And hanging around doing nothing gets boring fast.”

  Hanging around doing nothing has always been my number one pick. Now I could do it for the rest of my eternal life.

  So why wasn’t I smiling?

  “You need to move on, Logan. It’s harder—you’ll have to take the rap for choosing exit point two—but for once you won’t be taking the easy way out.”

  Easy is good. Rap-taking is bad. “Where would I move on to?” I ask warily.

  “That depends on how much good you did when you were alive and where you deserve to go.”

  I feel the fires of hell burning already. I wasn’t a bad person. I just wasn’t particularly good, if you know what I mean. “I need to let my parents know I’m okay,” I say. “I’m going back.”

  “I don’t recommend it,” Wade advises. “I’d move on if I were you.”

  That’s when I notice tiny lights—pinprick blobs—off in the distance. They bounce in the air over the lake, and they swirl in groups by the crystal buildings. Instinctively, I know the blobs are people.

  Or they were.

  The thought is not comforting.

  One of the blobs breaks free and floats toward me. The wind picks up. There is a flicker of golden light. The blob grows bigger, more defined. Then Gran stands in front of us, wearing a cherry red dress and a hat the size of a small car.

  “Just a minute, Wade. Fill Logan in on the rest of it.” She tosses her head, and the purple hat practically topples her over.

  “Fill me in on the rest of what?”

  But Gran and Wade don’t pay attention to me. The two of them stare at each other—a six foot four tattooed Snakeman and a five foot nothing scowling Gran. They are talking without words—I know it—but I can’t figure out what they are saying.

  Then Gran turns to me. I am struck again by how young she looks. How much thinner she is.

  “Just another perk to being dead. You can eat all the Krispy Kremes you want.” Gran winks, then turns serious. “Here’s how it is, Logan. When you move on, you go across that lake to face the Council. Once you do that, there’s no going back. You cut your ties to earth. You cannot be around the living again without permission.”

  “Then why are you back?” I ask.

  “You and I have a history together,” Gran says. “And the Council thought it would be easier if you had a familiar face around to help you make your decision.”

  “Moving on isn’t such a bad thing,” Wade interrupts. “Seeing the Council is a great honor.”

  Gran looks at him, rolls her eyes. “A great honor?” She snorts. “You haven’t gone before the Council in fifteen hundred years. How would you remember? Those guys are tougher than a general with a prickle in his butt.” She turns back to me. “They do your life review. And it’s a killer. Every single thought you had, every single thing you did, you go through it all over again. They watch. You watch. If you did good, you feel good. If you did bad, you feel waaaayyy bad. At the end of it all, they want the good to outweigh the bad. They want to know you did the best you could with what you had.” Gran quirks her eyebrow at me. “You up for that, Logan?”

  It sounds like something Dad put me through on a fairly regular basis. The “you could do more with your life if you tried” lecture. Come to think of it, it sounds like something Gran used to tell me when she was alive too.

  I frown. “I don’t get it,” I say. “Wade says moving on is the better choice. Staying behind is the easy way out. You hate it when I take the easy route.”

  “Who said anything about taking the easy route?” Gran’s hat slides; she reaches up, straightens it
. “You want to ace the Council, you go back to earth and do something to make those guys sit up and take notice.”

  “Arlene,” Wade warns, “that’s enough.”

  But Gran pays no attention to him. Her beady brown eyes bore into mine. “You go back and make your life count! You make sure that rat bastard doesn’t get to Amy and then you—”

  “What rat bastard? What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Arlene, no!” Wade’s voice drowns mine out. “You’re not supposed to interfere like that.”

  There is a shuffle of wind, a muffle of words. “He’s my grandson. I’ll interfere however I like.” Then Gran folds in on herself and is gone.

  I turn to Wade. “What did she mean? What rat bastard?”

  But Wade is silent.

  I have no choice now. If there is someone after Amy, I have to go back.

  Except, getting there might be tough. There isn’t an airport—or even an Amtrak station—in sight.

  Chapter Four

  I float near the ceiling in Amy’s class at school.

  The kids are writing; their heads are bent over their books. It’s amazingly quiet for a class of grade fours.

  Getting here was amazing too. All I had to do was think “Amy” and then I heard the sucking noise—the same one that took Gran away—and I popped into place. I don’t know where Wade is. I don’t care.

  All I care about is Amy.

  And finding whoever Gran was talking about.

  Considering the way Gran exaggerates the failings of the male species, I figure the rat bastard is probably some nine-year-old with an attitude. I study the heads of the boys. Which one, I wonder, is bullying Amy?

  More to the point, what am I going to do about it?

  For a minute, I am surprised and disappointed to find Amy in school. I just died. That ought to be good for at least a week off. But as I look at the orange and brown Thanksgiving decorations on the wall—the turkeys and the horns of plenty—my eyes are drawn to the calendar beside the door.

  November 28.

  I have been dead a month.

  Shock makes me fall from the ceiling. I land in a sprawl on the floor beside Amy’s desk. Sitting up, I see the slight pucker of concentration between her eyes and I smell the baby powder scent of her soap.

  Love balloons inside my chest. It is like I am seeing my sister for the first time. My love for her is a warm, bursting thing, a strange and unusual thing. I don’t think I have ever felt love this big before.

  I whisper Amy’s name. She does not look up. I raise my voice just a little, automatically glancing at the teacher. Then I remember. No one can hear me.

  “Amy,” I say in a loud, powerful voice.

  Her eyes flicker. She sighs and stops writing. Then she starts up again.

  I recall Wade’s words: It takes skill to communicate with the living, and the living have to be willing to see the signs.

  Obviously I lack the skill to send the right sign.

  I feel a familiar snap of impatience with myself. Then I hear Wade’s voice inside my head.

  Relax, he says. It’s not like you have to be anywhere.

  Yeah, right, I mutter, staring hard at Amy. I wonder who she’s scared of. I speak again. “Who’s bugging you, Amy? Tell me, okay?”

  Slowly, like it is the most natural thing to do, I slide inside Amy’s mind. She is writing the words of a story, but she is not concentrating. Her thoughts are a crisscross tangle. She misses me. She is scared she will die too. She is angry. At me for leaving, at Mom for being so sad, at Dad for pretending not to be. A piece of Hannah sits inside her mind too. Hannah has made her feel better about my death. I am grateful for that. Yet underneath everything is the blackness. The fear.

  I stare at it, hard. It spills its poison through me in the same way blood flows through arteries.

  Amy isn’t scared.

  Amy is terrified.

  And when I see who she is terrified of, I am sickened. I am shocked.

  And then I am there beside him.

  The cockpit glows with a million buttons, along the walls, in front of me, even on the ceiling. I recognize the airspeed indicator and the altimeter because once, when I was little, he gave me a tour of a plane. Outside the window, I see red lights flashing on the nose tip, wisps of clouds trailing by. It is loud in the cockpit, and warm. But there is a thick, oily something hanging in the air that scares me cold.

  It is the living, breathing presence of evil.

  And it is coming from the rat bastard to my left.

  Uncle Herb.

  “Throttle back the engine,” Uncle Herb tells his co-pilot. “Prepare for landing.” He is annoyed. I don’t need to see the thin set of his lips to know it. He picks up a hand-held radio and speaks into it. “Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Underwood here. Due to heavy fog in Seattle, SeaTac airport is temporarily closed. We are being re-routed to Portland International Airport. On behalf of United Airlines, I apologize for any inconvenience.”

  I register his words, but mostly I look into his familiar blue eyes. There’s a flatness behind them that stretches forever. I shudder. How come I never saw it before?

  “Anyone who wishes to deplane in Portland and make other arrangements to get to Seattle,” Uncle Herb continues, “please alert a flight attendant. Thank you.”

  “We’re about eight minutes away,” the co-pilot tells him when he hangs up the radio.

  Uncle Herb nods, busies himself with one of the control panels. “The tower expects us to be grounded overnight,” he says. “I was supposed to watch Brad’s basketball game. Son of a bitch.”

  The air grows thicker and oilier with his curse. But Uncle Herb isn’t thinking of his son at all. He is thinking of Amy. She is going to the game too. He has plans for her.

  Plans no adult should ever have for a kid.

  For a little girl.

  For my sister.

  His mind slithers and crawls in a million ugly directions.

  I don’t want to know, but his evil is too strong for me. It sucks me in. I see everything.

  Too much.

  Uncle Herb as a child. A teenager. An adult. Thinking perverted thoughts. Doing disgusting things. Horrified, I try to pull back, to look away; I can’t.

  I see him abuse Amy. I watch him cut up her favorite bear, Pookie, and bury it by his hot tub. I feel Amy’s terror as Herb says he will do the same to her if she tells.

  But what scares me most is that I see the future.

  I see how I was supposed to stop him. And how difficult it would be.

  I see myself telling. I hear my father yelling, my mother crying. No one can believe— no one wants to believe—that Captain Herb Underwood is sexually abusing little girls. That he is sexually abusing Amy.

  The family is torn apart. I am responsible.

  Suddenly I know this is why I died. This is the future I did not want to face.

  Instead I left Amy to face a future without me in it. A future with the rat bastard.

  Unless I can figure out a way to stop him.

  Chapter Five

  “What do you mean, you won’t help Amy?”

  “Not won’t, can’t. My job is to help you.” Wade sits across from me. The eerie glow from the sky has turned his frizzy brown hair into a halo around his head.

  We are back in the round, white room. I don’t know how I got here, and here is still weird. The sky still vibrates and colors still quiver and ping, but I don’t care.

  I’m happy to be out of that cockpit.

  But I am not happy with what Wade tells me. “You can’t let that happen to Amy,” I tell him. “She’s just a little girl. You have to do something!”

  My voice disturbs the soothing calm of the round place. The robed ones approach with their colors. Wade sends them away.

  “I can’t change things,” he tells me. “People have free will. Besides, Amy has her own guides. Two, in fact.”

  Wade sends pictures into my mind.

  I see
Amy’s guides. I know they are there because she is facing a lot in her life. I also know that if I stuck around and lived, I would have earned a second guide. And I would have needed it. Because I would be helping Hannah raise our handicapped son. And I would be revealing Uncle Herb as the rat bastard he really is.

  Gran is right. The next two years would have been the hardest of my life.

  But I would have faced my fears. I would have grown up. And I would have helped Amy.

  Instead I was afraid to try.

  Shame burns. I do not look at Wade. Of course it’s stupid. He knows what I am thinking. But I do not want to see the disappointment in his eyes.

  “It’s time to move on, Logan. To accept responsibility for your actions.”

  Wade wants me to go before the Council, do my life review and cut my ties to the living. But how can I leave Amy?

  “There’s nothing you can do for her now,” Wade tells me.

  He is right.

  No one would have wanted to believe the truth about Uncle Herb when I was alive. They’re sure not going to believe me now that I’m dead.

  Which leaves me dead out of options.

  “Oh puuleese!” Gran is back in a burst of gold light. Her energy is so strong that the few robed ones who have been hovering nearby fade into the mist. She wears pink sweats. A cigarette dangles from her mouth. I know she has come from the track. “You can still help Amy. It’s just going to be a little harder, that’s all.”

  I don’t do hard. Even when I swim, I favor the crawl. It’s the easiest and most efficient stroke for competing.

  Narrowing her eyes, Gran turns to Wade. “I don’t suppose you’ve told Logan the real reason you want him to move on? How you’ll benefit from his decision?”

  Wade’s angelic smile is at odds with the blue and red snakes that crawl up his arms. “No, but I’m sure you’ll fill him in.”

  “When you move on, Wade’s job is done,” Gran says as she swings back to me. “He retires. No more following you around trying to make you do the right thing.”

  Gran makes it sound like a life sentence.

  “It was,” Wade reminds me with a chuckle. Even Gran smirks.