Exit Point

by Laura Langston

  He is getting away with it.

  This can’t be happening.

  Mom stares at Aunt Susan. Aunt Susan stares back. They are two sisters caught on opposite sides of the same horror. Aunt Susan believes her husband. Mom wants to believe—she needs to believe for Amy’s sake—but she isn’t sure.

  Listen to your instincts, Mom! He’s lying.

  A tiny frown puckers Mom’s forehead. “But if Uncle Herb was just looking at your rash,” she asks Amy, “then why don’t you want to go to his house anymore?”

  There’s a hush in the air. Dad and Susan are embarrassed; Herb is angry.

  Yes, I think. Yes!

  Amy doesn’t know what to say. So she says the first thing that pops into her mind. “I miss Logan.”

  The air in the room sags. The other beings retreat, taking their sadness and their disappointment with them. Shocked, I stare at my baby sister.

  She had her chance and she blew it.

  I can’t hold it against her; I blew it too.

  “Of course you miss him, honey.” Aunt Susan gives her a tender, shaky smile. “We all do.”

  Ignoring Amy, Herb leans over and squeezes Dad’s shoulder. “This has been a hell of a time for you guys,” he says softly. “It’s no damn wonder Amy is overreacting.”

  It is over.

  I have failed.

  Pulling Amy into my arms, I hold her tight. And I cry. It is not enough. It is nothing.

  But it is all I can think of to do.

  I will not leave her. Wade tugs at me, drags on my energy, pulls on my mind.

  Leave me alone, I yell. I can’t leave my sister.

  I won’t leave her.

  Later that night, when Amy is asleep, my parents come to her room. I sit on the end of her bed and watch while Mom covers her, while Dad checks the catch on her window.

  I will be with Amy, I have decided, for the rest of her life. What she goes through, I will go through too. When Herb abuses her again, I will be there. I won’t be able to stop it, but I will share Amy’s pain.

  It is my punishment. I deserve it.

  “She hasn’t been herself lately,” Mom says. They have stopped in Amy’s doorway; they watch her sleep.

  “None of us have,” Dad says. Because Logan died, he thinks.

  They back away, pull Amy’s door shut. Curious, I leave the bedroom and follow them. They settle in the kitchen.

  Mom scoops coffee, pours water. Her movements are jerky; her eyes are troubled. “Maybe something did happen but Amy is afraid to tell us.” She flicks the switch on the coffeemaker.

  Two days ago, I would have jumped up and down, screamed and yelled at her words. I’m finished with that. They can’t hear me. And what’s the point of trying when I’m going to fail anyway?

  “Barbara, we’ve been over this. Nothing happened,” Dad says. “We need to put this behind us.”

  “Herb’s always shown Amy a lot of attention,” Mom murmurs. “Too much in a way.” The coffee hits the pot with a splatter and a hiss.

  Dad’s eyes flash angrily. “What are you suggesting?”

  Mom shrugs. Her wise self has gotten her attention and it won’t let go. “I don’t know. Something about this doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”

  “This is Herb we’re talking about,” Dad says. “We’ve known him for over twenty-five years. He’s a father. A husband. A good man.”

  Mom looks away. “Maybe,” she says softly.

  Dad glares at her. “Herb is a pilot, for God’s sake. A captain. Pilots fly planes, keep people safe. They don’t go around hurting people.”

  Mom thinks, That is the dumbest thing Robert has said in years.

  I agree. Mom knows that evil can wear any uniform.

  But I know where Dad is coming from. He won’t let himself think that Herb would hurt Amy. If he thought that, he would have to admit that he failed as a father. That he failed to keep his daughter safe.

  And for my dad, failure is never an option.

  Unlike me. I was born to fail.

  Chapter Ten

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Logan, quit feeling sorry for yourself.” Gran is beside me. I feel her hand on my arm. I smell cigarette smoke and her musky perfume. “You weren’t born to fail any more than I was born to be a supermodel.”

  We are in a dark, tunnel-like space, whipping up and down hills and going around corners with roller-coaster speed. Brilliant star clusters—or maybe they are entire galaxies—flash by faster than I can blink. I am too stunned to speak. One minute I am in the kitchen with my parents; the next minute I am here. Wherever here is.

  Wade’s voice comes from my right. “This is the route you took when you died,” he says. Back then, you were asleep. Now you’re awake.”

  Up ahead is a warm, welcoming light. I know that beyond it lies the garden, the round building with the robed ones, the crystal city. Wade has yanked me back! “I want to stay with Amy.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Wade says. “You have to come back regularly to recharge.”

  “You never told me that.” The light is growing brighter. We are nearing the end of the tunnel.

  “I never told you a lot of things.”

  We burst out of the tunnel into dazzling brightness. It’s like sunlight on steroids. There are others nearby, but I see only vague shapes. I look down at my fading self and realize that pretty soon I’ll be a vague shape too. We drift through the warm air. I know without being told that we are heading for the round place.

  Gran reaches over and pats my hand. “You did good.”

  I can’t remember Gran ever patting my hand. I wait for her to add, “Too bad you failed.” She doesn’t. Wade gives me a satisfied nod. I stare from one to the other. “But I didn’t stop Herb. Amy’s still in trouble. I didn’t do good at all.”

  “Yes, you did. For once, you didn’t run away from a challenge,” Gran says.

  “That wasn’t a challenge, that was an impossibility.” A picture of Amy’s scared gray eyes flashes through my mind. And Herb’s evil blue ones. Panic rises. “I need to get back. Amy needs me.” I try to stop moving, but it’s like I’m on a cosmic conveyor belt. A force beyond my control keeps me going forward.

  “Keep yer shirt on, Logan,” says Gran. “You’ll be going back soon enough. You’re not done yet.”

  Wade practically groans. “Arlene, we agreed to give Logan a little time before we told him. He needs to rest.”

  “Told me what? And what do you mean, I’m not done yet?”

  Out of the mist, a slot machine appears. We stop in front of it. “You have to see this!” Gran’s brown eyes dance as she pulls me forward.

  I don’t care about gambling. Not now. Not while Amy’s in trouble.

  Gran reads my thoughts. “This has nothing to do with gambling and everything to do with your life.” She pulls on the lever. “Remember when Wade asked you to think about the nice things you’d done for people?” Images tumble through each of the three slots, one after another after another.

  I remember. Everything I told him, he shot down. He didn’t care that I’d done chores or bought people birthday gifts. He was looking for something bigger, like saving somebody’s life or volunteering in an African orphanage or something.

  “No he wasn’t.” Gran reads my mind again. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing at all. Look.” The images slow, then stop. I study the pictures lined up in the three squares. The first one is me, about a year ago. In the second one there’s an old woman wearing a tattered parka, struggling with too many grocery bags. In the third one I am there helping her.

  “Do you remember?” Wade asks.

  I flip back through time, search my mental hard drive, but I can’t remember. I shake my head.

  “You were walking home last October,” Wade says. “She almost dropped a bag of groceries coming out of Albertsons. You went over to help.”

  Now I remember. The woman was missing a front tooth. And she drove a beat-up old Gremlin. I’d
never seen a Gremlin outside of a magazine before.

  “That one simple act had a huge impact.” Gran pulls the lever a second time. “Watch.”

  New pictures line up, only this time I get the feelings behind the scenes. I see the woman drive away after I help her put the groceries in her car. She is almost crying. It is the first time anyone has helped her in months. In the second picture she is caught in traffic, but instead of feeling angry and rushed, she is calm. She stops for a pedestrian, then lets two cars merge ahead.

  “She’s doing those nice things because of you,” Gran says. “You touched her inside.”

  This is too sucky sweet for me. I frown. “No way.”

  “Yes way,” Wade insists. “You did a good deed, Logan. Nobody asked you to do it. Nobody saw you. You did it because it was the right and caring thing to do. Helping that lady was like throwing a stone in a pond. The impact rippled out far beyond what you could see.” He points to the last square. “Look.”

  The image comes alive for me.

  The woman is home. She is caring for a man who has cancer. He says something mean to her. I know it’s because he is scared, and he is taking out his anger on her. But instead of getting mad back, she soothes him. She even gets him to laugh a little. I know it is because she feels soothed inside.

  I look away. I know the man dies three days later. The woman cries for months. But she will always remember the last time he laughed.

  The slot machine fades. We start moving again. For a long time I am too embarrassed to speak. Then I ask, “Why did you show that to me?”

  “Because that good deed got you a grace point,” Gran says.

  I frown. “What’s a grace point?”

  “An opportunity earned.” Wade pushes his frizzy brown hair back from his face; the studs in his ear gleam in the bright light. “Here’s how it is. Your Gran went to the Council. She showed them that you were trying to help Amy, that you did a good deed for a stranger. They rewarded you with an opportunity.”

  “It’s not easy getting an audience with those guys,” Gran interrupts proudly. “And they don’t give opportunities to any old shmuck either.”

  “What kind of an opportunity?”

  Gran and Wade exchange glances. The last time I was over here, I couldn’t pick up their thoughts. This time I can. They are arguing about who gets to tell me.

  It’s not hard to figure that this opportunity will blow.

  “They are giving you the opportunity to materialize in front of one person,” Gran says, “in order to save Amy.”

  “Materialize? You mean, come back to life?”

  “Geez, Logan, for a smart kid you can be damned stupid sometimes.”

  “Arlene!” Wade sighs. “Be nice.”

  Gran ignores him. “Not materialize as in flesh and blood and bones materialize,” she tells me, “but materialize enough that the other person can see you and hear you and know that it’s you.”

  My mind races with possibilities. I could appear in front of Herb and scare the living shit out of him. I could go to Hannah...or to Mom...or to Amy herself.

  “But there are conditions.” Wade’s words snap me back.

  “What conditions?”

  Wade’s blue and green eyes fasten on mine. “You get one shot only. And if the person who sees you doesn’t believe, you can’t go back and try someone else.”

  That sucks. Still, I could be there. On earth. In front of someone. “Okay.”

  “There’s one other thing.” When Gran looks away, I know this isn’t going to be good. “If you do materialize,” Wade says, “you have to agree to leave the earth plane forever. You have to go across the lake, appear before the Council and get on with your life here. You can’t hang around Amy like you’ve planned.”

  Leave the earth plane forever? Never see Amy again? Or Mom or Dad or Hannah?

  Then something else occurs to me. I begin to sweat. “What if I try and I fail and Herb keeps abusing Amy and I can’t go back to protect her?”

  This time Gran looks at me. “There’s only one solution,” she tells me. “You can’t fail.”

  Chapter Eleven

  You cannot fail.

  I think about Gran’s words all the way back to the round, white place.

  They remind me of something Dad repeated before every swim meet: Failure isn’t an option.

  It was a phrase I came to hate.

  “Feed him green,” Wade says when the robed ones come close. “Not blue.” He tells them he wants me calm but not sleepy.

  The haziness in this huge place has lifted. The lines of my body may be fading, but I see more clearly than I ever have before. I see beyond the beds and the park and the shimmering lake and the crystal city. I see as if I’m standing on a mountaintop looking down.

  And I realize something I’ve never realized before.

  I am between two worlds. This is not the best place to be.

  Wade sits on one side of my bed. Gran sits on the other. They watch me and wait. They expect me to accept the opportunity they’ve presented.

  I’m not sure I can.

  For one thing, I don’t want to cross that lake and leave my family forever. For another, how can I pick just one person to materialize in front of? I want to materialize in front of all of them.

  “You can’t.” Wade picks up my last thought. “Besides, there’s only one good choice.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Wade, cut the kid some slack.” Gran is irritated. “That’s like going to the races and betting on the long shot.”

  Wade groans and cradles his head in his hands. I know he wants to ream Gran out, but all he says is, “A little encouragement might be in order here, Arlene.”

  Under different circumstances, I might laugh. Think about it. I’m as close to heaven as I can get without actually walking through the door, and the two people who are supposed to help me are fighting. And here I thought the afterlife was all harps and angels.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  “We are not fighting.” Gran’s eyes flash. “We are disagreeing is all.”

  “Who’s the person you’re disagreeing over?”

  Wade starts to speak, but Gran beats him to it. “Your father,” she says. “Wade thinks you should materialize in front of him.”

  My mouth drops open. “Dad?”

  “If you materialize in front of anybody else, it’ll get right back to your dad,” Wade explains. “He’ll think they’re off their nut. And he won’t believe anything they say about Herb.”

  The thought of performing an “I’m back from the dead” routine on Dad gets my palms sweating. He’d probably kill me. Or he would if I wasn’t already dead. “No way.” I look to Gran for support.

  She won’t meet my eyes. “I need a cigarette,” she mutters.

  “They don’t like you smoking in here,” Wade says.

  She stands. “Guess I’d better leave then.”

  “No,” we both say in unison.

  Gran sits back down. “He’s right, damn him.” She glares at Wade, then turns to me. “If you appear in front of your mom, she won’t believe what she’s seeing. If you appear before Amy, your parents won’t believe her. But if you win your dad over, Amy’s got it made in the shade.”

  I can’t do it.

  Because it all comes down to if.

  If I win Dad over. If he believes me. I’m just a dead guy. How am I supposed to convince him about Herb? “No way.”

  Wade looks at me for a long time. Then he says, “You have an opportunity to change Amy’s life. To right a wrong. To undo some of the damage you created by taking exit point two.”

  And I have another opportunity to fail.

  Like I need that on my mind for the rest of eternity.

  “No.” I’d rather play it safe. Even if it does mean living between two worlds forever.

  Gran’s gaze is reproachful. “You’re taking the easy way out again, Logan.”

  “I’m lazy. I’m supposed to take the easy way
out.”

  “You’re not lazy,” Wade says softly. “You’ve never been lazy. But you have taken the easy way out all your life. Do you know why?”

  I don’t want to answer. I don’t even want to think about his question, but I have no choice. This time I don’t need a screen on the lake or a slot machine coming out of nowhere. This time, all I need are the pictures in my head and my own guilt.

  I’ve taken the easy way out all my life because I’m afraid to fail. How many sixteen-year-olds do you know who want to admit that?

  Like none.

  Which is why I’ve never admitted it before.

  But think about it. It’s easier to walk away from a challenge than to accept it and risk failing. That’s one of the reasons I decided not to go up a level in competitive swimming. I didn’t want to spend all that time training, all that time away from Hannah, only to lose by a sixteenth of a second at the finish line.

  I’d been down that road so many times, I was sick of it.

  But this isn’t about swimming, I remind myself. This is about Amy. And this risk is the biggest I’ve faced in my life.

  Or nonlife. Whatever.

  If I materialize and stop the rat bastard, I have to leave my family forever. If I materialize but don’t stop him, I still have to leave.

  Either way, I lose at the finish line.

  I don’t want to do it. And I don’t have to. This is not like some test I have to take in school. I don’t have to materialize. I can stay where I am, stay with Amy forever, watch over her.

  But I don’t need to see the future to know that Herb would continue to abuse Amy. He would ruin her. And he would ruin others too.

  Dead or not, I can’t live with that. I can’t leave Amy for Herb. I have to try one last time to stop him. Even if it means leaving everybody I love. And even if I fail in the process.

  But appear in front of my old man? No way. “What if I materialize in front of Herb instead?” I ask them. “Give him a heart attack or something?” Now that I’m dead, you probably think I’m supposed to be nice and stuff, but it doesn’t work that way. Besides, a heart attack’s almost too good for Captain Herb Underwood.