Layoverland

by Gabby Noone

  The words come out of my mouth, but I don’t even know if they’re true. My mind goes to Emmy—the only person I truly consider family. Not just the Emmy who sends me texts throughout the day to remind me to drink water because she knows my body is 75 percent coffee and Diet Coke. Not just the Emmy who reassures me that I’m cute even when I get spooked out by accidentally opening the front-facing camera on my phone while lying down on my bed. Not just the Emmy who I fiercely protected when we were around everyone else, but who was the only person I could trust being vulnerable with when we were alone.

  Instead I think of the Emmy who exists somewhere else right now. The Emmy whose life I’ve ruined, hopefully just temporarily. The Emmy who probably hates my stupid guts, even if they are currently sitting in a grave, all thanks to Caleb and his shiny SUV.

  “Anyway,” Jenna says, smiling sadly and rubbing her head. “My hair started to grow back before I died, so at least I’m stuck with a semi-cute pixie cut. Enough about me, though. How about you, Bea? What’s your story?”

  I hug my arms to my chest, protecting myself against the chill of the blasting hotel air-conditioning. Or maybe it’s just the thought that this is it; my story has truly ended and I have nothing to show for it except the permanent flecks of mascara running down my cheeks.

  “I don’t really have a story,” I answer. “I died alone in a car accident and now I’m here.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true, but I won’t push it any further for today. You know . . . you’re a tough nut to crack, Beatrice,” Jenna chides. “But you’re a nut I’m gonna crack one day!”

  I grab a pillow and unsuccessfully try to smother my face with it.

  THE DOOR TO the staff room is locked, which by now I realize isn’t so much a precautionary measure as it is a ploy to stroke Todd’s extremely inflated ego.

  “What’s the password?” he calls as I knock at the door.

  “I refuse to say it.”

  “Beatrice?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the password?”

  “You just acknowledged that you know it’s me.”

  “It’s protocol.”

  “It’s ‘Toddcanshoveastickuphisass.’”

  “Beatrice.”

  I sigh. Deeply.

  “It’s ‘Todd can flip an omelet without it breaking.’”

  The door opens.

  “You know, that’s not that impressive of a skill,” I say.

  “I don’t even have to use a spatula. I just,” he says, miming flipping a pan, “flick of the wrist.”

  “Ugh.”

  Inside, Sadie sits at the front of the room and waves me over to the seat next to her.

  “Good morning, everyone!” Todd yells from the front of the room. “It is with a heavy heart that I must announce our beloved team member Sadie will be leaving us today. After selflessly helping thousands of people move on to Heaven, she has officially fulfilled her quota.

  “Sadie,” he says, looking into her eyes, “I just want to personally thank you from the bottom of my heart for your commitment to the work that we do here.”

  It feels like Todd is giving a wedding toast. I half expect him to pull out flutes of champagne for all of us.

  “Let’s all give her a round of applause,” he concludes.

  “Thank you, thank you so much,” Sadie says, before anyone has barely put their hands together. “Todd, if you don’t mind . . .”

  She stands up and gestures for him to move aside.

  “I just wanted to really quickly say to all of you that I know you’re jealous of me and that’s okay. I will be looking down upon all of you from my beautiful Jacuzzi-filled mansion in the sky and laughing for the rest of eternity. Ciao, losers!”

  With that, she takes off her white gloves, throws them onto the floor, and walks out of the room for the very last time.

  For the first time in my whole existence, I spontaneously applaud.

  “NUMBER 03675, NUMBER 03675,” blares over the intercom.

  I’m waiting at the departures counter for my assignment when I see Caleb ambling up the aisle toward the counter. He’s probably back to witness the big show of me freaking out at someone for some reason or another. But as he gets closer, his face looks like he’s just seen a ghost. I mean, in the earthly sense given that everyone here is technically a ghost.

  He walks up to me and stands uncomfortably, shifting his weight back and forth on his slides.

  “Bea,” he says.

  “What do you want now?” I say, inspecting my eternally chipped nails.

  “I have something really important to tell you,” he says with a sober look.

  I stand up straight, suddenly alert.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s just that,” he breathes. “I . . . am . . . number 03675.”

  18

  Caleb slides his passport over to me, breaking out into a smile. I look at the random number printed on the inside, what I thought would be the least relevant bit of information the passport contains. It really is his lottery number.

  “And I swear to you, I did not bribe anyone else to get called this soon,” he says as I continue to stare down at the passport.

  It’s not fair that he gets to move along to Heaven this soon. I can’t let him get away from me that easy. He deserves to suffer.

  “Todd,” I call behind me, my voice shaking with anger. I cough once to hide it. “His number was called.”

  “All right, line up in the sectioned-off area over there,” Todd says to Caleb. “Actually, you know what? Why don’t you just take him out to the hangar, Bea? He can be your assignment.”

  “What? No!” I blurt out.

  Both Caleb and Todd turn to stare at me.

  “Is there a problem with that, Beatrice?” Todd asks.

  My body freezes and my heart pounds. I’m not prepared for this. I still haven’t gotten back at him. My plan to frame him was a failure. I haven’t had time to figure out my next big move in seeking vengeance on my unsuspecting murderer. I’m back to square one. How am I going to get even with him if I’m always being watched?

  I look at Caleb.

  His face is open, innocent.

  Maybe this could work. Sadie said that inside memories is one of the few places that aren’t under constant surveillance. I could do whatever I want with him. I can drag him through his most embarrassing, most painful memories so he’s forced to revisit them and feel the discomfort all over again.

  I can make the process as long and excruciating for him as possible.

  Sadie even said that if I can’t move someone along after thirty sessions, they get pushed backed into the lottery, forced to wait to be called again. I could make his life hell for a month, then get him pushed backed into the lottery so he’s stuck here indefinitely.

  I still have a few thousand souls to go. What’s wasting a little extra time on one of them going to matter to me in the long run?

  “No,” I say at last. “It’s no problem at all. As long as . . . Sorry, what’s your name again?”

  “Caleb,” he answers incredulously.

  “Right,” I say, not looking at him and turning toward Todd. “As long as Caleb here is fine with that.”

  “Um. Sure,” he says.

  “Okay then,” Todd says, looking back down at his paperwork. “Get to work. You’re already five minutes into the first session. Ticktock!”

  I wave for Caleb to follow me.

  “I hope you’re ready to spend a lot of quality time together,” I say once we’re almost out the door.

  “Oh, believe me, I was born ready,” he says.

  But out of the corner of my eye, as I turn to lead him off toward the tarmac, I see Caleb take one big nervous gulp and his face goes pale.

  WHEN I DIRECT Caleb t
o hop on the passenger seat of the golf cart, I expect him to crack a “You got a license for this thing?” joke or something, but he just stares solemnly off at the sky and gets in.

  “Do you ever . . . get freaked out by the concept of infinity?” he asks instead.

  “No,” I say, giving him a sidelong glance.

  “Really?”

  I think it over for a minute.

  “Well, there was this girl who sat in front of me at school and got an infinity symbol tattooed on her lower back,” I admit. “It kind of ruined the whole concept for me.”

  “Okay, maybe infinity is the wrong word,” Caleb says with a half smile. “I guess I meant eternity? Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m relieved that there’s clearly something after death. And that I’m here and not Hell. But doesn’t forever seem, I don’t know, kind of excessive? Like, why can’t we just appreciate the time we have on Earth? Why do we think we deserve forever? And say you’ve been existing for, like, even just ten thousand years out of forever. Won’t you start to forget old memories just because there’re too many of them to keep track of? It all just makes me feel more sad than hopeful.”

  I stare straight ahead and say nothing. The truth is, I know exactly what he means. That in some ways the idea of going to Hell makes more sense to me because at least we as a society agreed upon what it looks like: fiery and horrible. But Heaven seemed just way too rife with possibility. It was overwhelming to think about in its own way. But how am I supposed to just nod along and agree with him when it’s his fault that my own time on Earth was cut short before I could really even appreciate it?

  I pull up next to the hangar and park.

  “Sorry,” Caleb says. “I’m not really making sense. You’re probably just gonna say that moving on to Heaven is yet another privilege I have that I’m taking for granted.”

  “Well, yeah,” I say, looking down at the tiny steering wheel. “But Heaven seems kind of boring, if all of the earthly depictions of it are true. I picture myself stuck in some medieval-looking garden wearing a robe like the one Mary wears in that Christmas farm scene for, like, all of eternity.”

  “You mean the manger scene?” Caleb asks, his face lighting up.

  “Yeah. You know what I meant.”

  “I did, because, as you can probably tell by this conversation, Catholic school really messed me up.”

  “I get that. As you can probably tell, that one week of Bible camp I went to really shook me to my core.”

  Caleb just shakes his head at me.

  “Anyway,” I say, pointing to the hangar door. “Time for us to get to work.”

  I step out of the cart and walk ahead of him to unlock the door. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hoping to erase the last five minutes of conversation. Now is not the time for us to relate to each other.

  “Take a seat,” I say, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible while Caleb follows me inside.

  He stops in his tracks and stares at the Memstractor 3000.

  “This thing won’t kill me, right?” he asks.

  “You’re already dead, genius,” I say, leading him over to the chair. “I’ll need to see your passport again.”

  “Oh, you mean you haven’t memorized it by now?” he jokes, taking it out of his pocket.

  “No,” I say a little too seriously. I grab it and turn away, inspecting it like I really haven’t seen it before, and take a deep breath.

  Caleb is not my friend.

  Caleb is the reason I died at that intersection.

  Caleb is not interesting.

  Caleb is not cute.

  Definitely not cute.

  “Anything interesting?” Caleb asks as I stand and stare at his passport.

  Not YOU! That’s for sure! I scream internally.

  “Mmm,” I mumble.

  I flip the passport shut and hand it back to him, as if it not only has a transcription of his death, but of my very thoughts, and I can’t stand to look at them any longer.

  Obviously, I don’t want him to know that when and where he died has any significance to me. If the crash and, subsequently, my death, are the things that are holding him back, I have to make sure he doesn’t conjure memories of it for as long as I can. Or else he might realize the truth and move on to Heaven too soon. And that would just be so unfair.

  I walk back over to him and lower the helmet from the chair onto his head with a harsh thud.

  “Comfortable?” I ask.

  “Never been better,” he says sarcastically.

  I take my own seat and explain how the Memstractor 3000 works.

  “That doesn’t sound real,” he protests when I’m finished.

  “Do you think I would mess with your head like that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Fine,” I say, lowering my own helmet. “What did you eat for breakfast this morning?”

  “What?”

  I flick the switch and turn the machine on.

  Suddenly we’re inside the hotel lobby. Caleb gasps as he realizes we’re standing before a past version of him, shoveling a plate of jiggly scrambled eggs into his mouth.

  “Jeez,” he says. “Is that what I really look like?”

  A blurry figure carrying a tray of food walks right through our invisible bodies. Caleb jumps.

  “Do you believe me now?” I ask.

  He nods and looks back at himself eating.

  “This is so embarrassing,” he says, cringing. “It’s like hearing the way your voice sounds on a recording, but a million times worse.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” I say, even though my true goal is for him to feel constantly, deeply embarrassed. “The more honest you are with your memories, the sooner we can get to the bottom of why you’re here. Just be open. I won’t tell anyone about what you show me. Everything that happens while you’re connected to the machine stays in the machine.”

  At that last sentence, he suddenly stares into my eyes for a long second.

  “What?” I say, arching my brow.

  “Nothing,” he says quickly, turning his eyes to the ground.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s get started, for real this time.”

  Although, I’m not sure where to begin. His most traumatic memory? The time he felt most embarrassed in his whole life? The last time he had the flu? His first wet dream? Ugh. No. I need to ease into this.

  “Think back to when you were a kid,” I say. “What’s your earliest memory?”

  “Umm,” he ponders, closing his eyes.

  Suddenly we’re in a small combination living and dining room with bunches of balloons tied to the furniture and streamers taped to the walls.

  The room is full of people, but most of them are blurry and unidentifiable. Except for three: a toddler who looks like a miniature version of Caleb; a woman in her late twenties with tan skin, wide-set eyes, and a long dark-brown ponytail; and an older woman who looks a lot like her but with short graying hair and glasses.

  The younger woman is clapping her hands and laughing. Caleb gasps again, this time in amazement rather than shock.

  “My mom and my abuela,” he explains.

  Just then, toddler Caleb smears what appears to be blue cake frosting onto her nose.

  “It was my third birthday party. I had two cakes. A Cookie Monster cake and my abuela’s famous—well, at least famous in our family—tres leches cake. I probably only remember this so well because she kept a photo of me eating both cakes at once on her fridge for years.”

  “I thought the whole eating cake with your hands thing happened at first birthday parties. Aren’t you supposed to know how to use a fork by age three?”

  “Yeah,” he says, too mesmerized by the vision of his family to even register offense at my remark. His eyes well up as he watches his mom laugh and wipe the frosting from h
er face with a napkin.

  I guess I’d always assumed everyone else’s early memories were sad and embarrassing, not happy and sweet and literally filled with more cakes than one child can handle. Personally, my first memory is finding out my mom had died and immediately peeing my pants. I need to steer Caleb away from this before he gets too emotional.

  “Did you have a lot of friends as a kid?” I press.

  “Yeah,” he says absently, but his memory doesn’t switch. He keeps gazing at his mother and walks closer to her, then reaches out to touch her shoulder, but his hand begins to pixelate.

  “It’s just a memory. You can’t touch her,” I remind him. “Uh, you said you went to Catholic school. What was that like?”

  Finally he turns and looks at me.

  “It was, you know . . .” he says, his memory suddenly transporting us to a classroom where an elderly nun in a blue habit vaguely gestures to a diagram of the male body with a pointer stick.

  “And that is why you must resist your urges!” she yells to the classroom of boys who look to be no older than twelve. “Sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a sin! Fornicators will be sent to Hell!”

  “Catholic school.” He shrugs, finishing his thought.

  “Wow, guess you weren’t a ‘fornicator’ then?”

  “What?” he says, eyes going wide.

  “Because you weren’t sent to Hell,” I elaborate.

  “No!” he protests, blushing. “I mean, yes. I mean, no, that’s not what I mean. Whatever.”

  “I’m just kidding.”

  “Anyway,” he says a little too loudly, our setting quickly changing so that we’re now standing outside the entrance of a big brick-and-glass building that looks like a fancy high school. “I switched to public school when I was in seventh grade because my dad decided Catholic school wasn’t academically rigorous enough.”

  “Okay,” I say, a hint of excitement in my voice because I think I’m finally onto something. “Do you remember your very first day of public school?”

  “I . . . do,” he stammers. “But I wish I didn’t.”

  The memory shifts again. Now we’re sitting on the bleachers of a school gym full of students sprawled out, waiting for the school day to begin. A banner hanging on the wall says BRENTWOOD SCHOOL DISTRICT: CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE!