by Gabby Noone
“Honestly? It was a huge bummer.”
I didn’t feel amused or invigorated the way I did when our first soul, Wendy, revealed to us that she ran a guy over with her car. I felt weird and sad, like I just witnessed a classmate I barely know’s dad have a breakdown in front of me.
Sadie pulls me aside so we’re out of earshot of anyone else. The waiting room is emptier this morning, which I assume means most of the people whose numbers weren’t called have retreated to the hotel until tomorrow.
“What do you mean?” she presses.
“I mean, look at him,” I say, glancing at Charlie. He’s sitting on a bench a few feet behind us, absolutely bawling like a newborn in a business suit.
“Yeah, but you got him to realize what was holding him back! He had been living in denial for so long and you’re the first person he admitted it to. That’s what’s important.”
“He doesn’t seem at peace about it, though.”
“Well, he’s grieving now, but he’s got it off his chest. Peace will come to him in due time.”
“If you say so,” I mumble.
“It can be hard at first. Believe me, I know,” Sadie says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “But soon you’ll have gone through so many people’s memories, nothing will faze you. Look, let me use the analogy the person who trained me used: It’s like being an ER doctor. The first time you have to pump someone’s stomach will be disturbing, but after a while, your job just becomes one big blur of bodily fluids all the time. You won’t even give it a second thought.”
Great.
Two souls down.
Only 4,998 souls to go.
WITH THE WORKDAY over, my mind returns to the Caleb Problem. If I knew that harassing an agent was a punishable offense from the beginning, I wouldn’t have freaked out at him that first day. I would have strung him along until the last second, when I would’ve reported him for bribery to the Disciplinary Council, just for being an entitled prick, regardless of whether he hit me with his car or not. They could’ve had him in their grips and punished him.
But would they have? Sadie said they don’t like when people take justice into their own hands here.
My stomach grumbles and I’m too exhausted from a morning of solving a businessman’s deepest emotional regrets to figure out the answers. First, I need to eat lunch. Then I need to take a nap.
Instead of sitting down to eat, and potentially running into Caleb before I’m ready, I stop at the hot dog cart I spotted on my first day. Although, maybe it’s a completely different cart. The main hall loops around the center of the airport, so that when you walk through it, it feels like the repetitive backdrop of a video game level you can’t seem to beat.
Hot dog cart. Newsstand. Food court. Bar. Hot dog cart. Newsstand.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised when I’m handed a hot dog submerged in red Jell-O inside a bun covered in yellow Jell-O, but it still makes me gag.
I return to my hotel room, and as I kick off my shoes and sit down on the edge of my bed, I feel the creeping sensation that something isn’t right. I look over at the other bed to my left and jump up, accidentally dropping my fake hot dog mustard-side down onto the carpet. A pair of beady eyes is peering into my soul. A pair of beady eyes that belongs to a pink stuffed poodle, but still.
I carefully pick up the toy dog and flip it over, convinced it must be bugged, or worse, contain some kind of explosive device. But before I can inspect it further, I hear the toilet flush in the bathroom and the sound of the sink turning on and off. The door opens. I drop the poodle onto the bed and instinctively put my hands up.
In the doorway stands a petite white girl with a super-cropped red pixie cut, wearing a baby-pink velour sweat suit that’s a size too big for her frail-looking frame.
“Oh, hi!” she says, walking over to me. “I’m Jenna! You must be my roommate!”
12
“So, let me get this straight, you assaulted Dominic Reed with a Hot Pocket?” Principal Spoglio asked me, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
“More or less.” I shrugged.
He opened his eyes and stared at me, incredulous.
“It was in self-defense!” I exclaimed.
This was not my first visit to Mr. Spoglio’s office, which itself was way less intimidating looking than you’d think a principal’s office would be. Or, at least, it wasn’t even trying to be intimidating the way most principal’s offices tried to be on TV, with their heavy wooden desks and fancy trophies that said useless things like AWARD OF DISTINCTION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION.
His office had only one small window, cinder-block walls, a ceramic football-shaped pencil holder, and an abundance of dusty Penn State football merch. Like many teachers at my school, Mr. Spoglio thought being obsessed with his college football team was a replacement for a personality.
“Beatrice, look: I know being a young woman in this day and age is not easy. As the father of two girls of my own, I get it.”
He gestured to a framed professional portrait of him and his wife holding hands with two toddlers on the beach, the whole family wearing matching white shirts and khaki shorts. This was approximately the third time this year he’d said something to that effect to me, then pointed to the picture as proof of his undying understanding of my womanly struggle.
“And between you and me, I know Dominic Reed doesn’t have the, uh, most outstanding character.”
“You don’t say.”
He gave me an exhausted look.
“But, Beatrice, you need to exhibit some impulse control!”
I slouched down, letting all my hair fall behind the back of the uncomfortable chair I was sitting in.
“Listen to me, I know you’re not stupid,” he said.
“Oh, thank you so much!”
“In fact,” he said, ignoring me, “I think if you didn’t get so distracted by all these petty squabbles all the time, you could be one of our brightest students. Just like that little sister of yours!”
“I don’t know,” I said, staring up at the dropped ceiling and counting the number of dots on the tiles. “Emmy spends all of her free time on homework and extracurricular stuff. She lives for it. My free time is for me. There’re just so many stupid Instagram videos of people doing their eye shadow and making slime out there and so little time to watch them, you know? Plus, have you ever considered that my quote unquote ‘petty squabbles’ aren’t distractions? Maybe I’m doing everyone a favor by putting someone like Dominic Reed in his place.”
“Beatrice. Seriously. Cut the crap.”
“Wow, the C-word, Mr. S? In the presence of a young lady such as myself?”
At this, Mr. Spoglio placed his head in his hands and began intensely rubbing his face. This was how our interactions usually went. He would try to guilt me into becoming a better person or whatever. I would try to wear him down with increasingly irritating comments. Finally he would just get so tired, he would let me off the hook.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” he said at last. “I’m not going to suspend you for this morning’s incident, but—”
“And Dominic?” I asked, sitting up straight. “Will he be suspended for what he said to my sister?”
“No. He will not. I think he has endured more than enough punishment today.”
“Oh, so you condone him telling my sister that she has, and I quote, a ‘tight as—’”
“Enough!” he said, squirming and gripping the arms of his chair. “No! I do not condone whatever he said, just like I don’t condone whatever the heck it is that you did to him. But . . . next time I will suspend you. And there will be no next time. Is that clear?”
“Hmm,” I said, tapping my hand to my mouth. “How about this: there will be no next time only under the condition that my sister is free to attend the dance tonight even though sh
e was late to school.”
“That’s not how this works, Beatrice. This isn’t a negotiation. I am the authority here.”
“Please, Mr. Spoglio,” I begged. “This isn’t about me. You know I couldn’t care less about the dance. The last thing I want to do is come to school in my free time to drink room-temperature punch and watch my classmates grind on one another, but it’s really, really important to Emmy.”
Mr. Spoglio stared at me, nodding very, very slowly.
“Okay,” he said with purpose, like he had just made a powerful breakthrough. “Your sister is free to attend the dance.”
“Great!” I yelped, bolting out of my seat.
“On one condition,” Mr. Spoglio added, lifting his hand for me to pause.
“And that is?”
“You must also attend the dance,” he said, a maniacal smile spreading across his face.
I stared at him stoically, hoping the intensity of my eyes would make him back down. It didn’t.
“Fine,” I said at last.
“Well then, we’re all done here,” he said, writing me a pass to my second-period class. “Here you go.”
“Gotta hand it to you, Mr. S,” I said, pulling the pass from his grasp. “That was a savage move you pulled on me.”
He smiled to himself and stood to open the door to his office.
“Emily Fox,” he called out into the waiting room. “You’re free to go. See you girls tonight.”
Emmy breathed a sigh of relief.
“See?” I whispered to her as I collected my backpack. “You’re fine. I told you everything would be fine. I’ll see you at lunch, kay?”
She gave me the tiniest smile that I knew meant she’d forgiven me.
13
“Uhhhh,” I say, eyes wide, reluctantly reaching out my hand. “I’m Bea.”
The girl, Jenna, ignores my hand. Instead she comes in for a hug. My whole body freezes. Awkwardly, I pat her back and when I do, I feel small hard bumps on the back of her sweat suit. Rhinestones.
“I see you’ve already met Sprinkles!” she says. “He and I have been through soooo much together, but I’m relieved to see we’ve both come out on the other side. Aren’t we so relieved, Sprinkles?”
She looks at the toy and blows it a kiss. It occurs to me that the only way she could’ve brought it with her here would be if she died clutching it in her arms.
“I’m sorry, did you say ‘roommate’?” I ask, pulling out of her hug. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
“Yeah!” she says, pulling a key inscribed with the same number as mine out of her hoodie pocket. “This really nice lady at the front desk told me she was giving me this room as a special treat.”
“Did she happen to have a bunch of lipstick smeared on her teeth?” I ask.
“Yes! Exactly!”
Damn Belinda.
“I’m so glad they paired me with another girl my age,” Jenna continues. “My plane was full of old guys. I mean, it sucks that you and I passed away so young, but at least now we have each other. It’ll be super fun! Just like bunking at sleepaway camp!”
“Wait, sorry again, but just to clarify . . . you’re also seventeen?”
“Yeah. I know,” she says. “I look really young. I haven’t spent that much time outside these past few years because of the cancer.”
She frowns and stares at the floor for a second, but looks back up at me with a smile before I can even ask if she’s all right.
“So what do you do for fun around here?”
“Fun?” I say, bending over to pick up the sad excuse for a hot dog I dropped on the ground. “I don’t know if ‘fun’ is physically, or even mentally, possible here.”
“Oh no, was that your lunch?” she asks, a look of pity on her face. “You must be hungry. C’mon, we should go eat and catch up and get to know each other! There was an ad for this uh-mazing-looking pizza place on the TV.”
She reaches to pick up the remote, which would inevitably turn on the TV and play the song of my nightmares.
“No!” I say. “I mean, um . . . I dunno . . . I should probably not . . . There’s this . . .” I gesture vaguely with my fingers around the room toward nothing.
“What?” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Do you have something better to do?”
She doesn’t say it like she’s offended. She says it like she’s hopeful, as if there’s some secret nightclub for the prematurely dead that I can get us into.
I shake my head. As painful as it is for me to admit, I truly do not have something better to do.
“THERE’S JUST SO much to choose from!” Jenna exclaims when we get to the food court.
Really, there isn’t. There’s a burger place, a pizza place, a salad place, and something just called Home Cooking, which strikes me as particularly depressing given that no one here is going home ever again. Behind all of the counters are plastic menu boards printed with faded stock photos of food lit up by fluorescent lights, but there’s no need to order. Like the continental breakfast in the hotel lobby, the food is serve yourself and protected by plastic sneeze guards.
“So how’d you end up getting a job at the airport?” Jenna asks, loading up her tray with a clump of fries from the burger counter. “Seems fun!”
“It’s sort of interesting,” I say, dropping a goopy cheeseburger onto mine. “But it’s definitely not ‘fun.’ My job is my punishment for being a huge bitch on Earth. Or something like that.”
“You don’t seem like a . . . bitch. . . .” Jenna says, whispering the word. “Not to me.”
She wanders over to a tray of “spaghetti and meatballs” at the Home Cooking counter.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know me,” I say, walking behind her.
“No, I can tell,” she says. “I’m good at seeing the best in people. My mom calls it my ‘gift.’”
“Wow,” I mumble. “How convenient for me.”
As Jenna and I turn to take a seat, I stop in my tracks. There at the other end of the food court, I spot Caleb. He doesn’t see me, but he’s moving quickly in our direction. Far too quickly, because he’s . . . jogging? What a show-off. What is with everyone exercising? There’s no point in doing it after you’ve already died and your body is suspended in limbo. Possibly the only nice thing about being here is that the whole concept of “health” no longer exists.
I pull Jenna by the elbow. She squeals.
As Caleb gets closer, I panic and I flip my tray toward myself to cover my face, dropping the burger onto my toes.
“Oh, Bea!” Jenna exclaims, bending down to pick it up with her napkin. “You’re so silly. Always dropping food on the ground. What’s going on with you today?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“But, Bea, tell me, Bea! Please!” she whines, wiping off my shoes.
I dart my eyes over the edge of my tray to make sure Caleb didn’t hear my name.
“Shh!” I whisper.
“Who’s that?” she says, following my gaze toward him as he closes his eyes and pulls the lower part of his shirt up to wipe sweat off his face, exposing a pair of abs that are defined enough to be impressive but not enough to suggest he spends a completely personality-crushing amount of time at the gym. I hate myself for even making this analysis.
“Just be quiet and I’ll tell you in a minute,” I say through gritted teeth.
Finally Caleb jogs away, looping around the other end of the food court, completely unaware of my presence. I wait a few seconds after he passes, and finally exhale.
“So?” Jenna says, standing up with the gut-like remains of my burger in her left hand, her tray of food in the other.
“He’s no one,” I say conclusively.
She raises a single eyebrow.
“Oh, c’mon! You have to give me more than that!”
<
br /> I purse my lips together.
“We have history together, you could say.”
“Oooooh!” she exclaims.
“Ew, no, not like that,” I say, remembering the nausea-inducing sound of his car colliding with mine.
“So you wouldn’t mind if I went for him then?” she asks, biting her lip and smirking, her eyes going wild.
“Yes,” I say a little too loudly. “I mean, no. I don’t know. I don’t care.”
Jenna observes my face for a few thoughtful seconds.
“Well, I guess there are plenty of other fish in the sea. I mean, I think. Statistically speaking, how many teenage boys die? Probably more than girls . . . Boys are always getting into dangerous antics. . . .”
I look her squarely in the face.
“Jenna, do you understand where we are? This isn’t sleepaway camp. This isn’t high school. This isn’t some prom with an ironic theme of ‘crappy airport.’ Now is not the time for meeting boys and having fun. This is some serious existential stuff, okay? We’re dead.”
“Yeah, I know . . .” she says, continuing to smile.
“We are in purgatory,” I say. “PUR-GA-TO-RY!”
Several people in line at the salad counter turn and stare at me with gaping mouths, including a man wearing a race car driver’s outfit.
“What? Is no one gonna just come out and say it?” I ask, making eye contact with him.
“I mean . . .” Jenna says, her smile faltering slightly. “I just thought this could still be a little bit fun. I’ve always associated airports with the excitement of going on vacation. . . .”
“It’s not fun! I’m doomed to be here for a long, long time. So now, if you don’t mind, I need to leave and go to bed so I am well rested for yet another day of selflessly helping others.”
Before she can say anything, I throw my tray onto the top of a trash can and storm off.
“Bea, wait!” Jenna calls after me. “Bed? It’s only the afternoon. You really should eat lunch.”
