Layoverland

by Gabby Noone

  By the time I snapped out of it, the sky was turning dark and there were no cars left. I realized what I was doing; I was waiting for Emmy to meet me after school, like always. One teeny, tiny piece of my heart truly believed that at the end of the day, she’d show up. But she didn’t. So I put my keys in the ignition and drove off into the night, with no idea of where I was headed.

  35

  “It was you?” Caleb says breathlessly, closing his eyes.

  I reach to turn the machine off so we don’t have to look at the wreck a second more, but it goes off on its own as Caleb’s helmet flashes green.

  He stands up from the chair and reaches out like he wants to do something but he’s not sure what. He puts his hand to his forehead and paces back and forth, gasping for air.

  “Bea, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I can’t believe this,” he says, the words flying out of his mouth. “I’m just . . . so, so sorry.”

  He thinks what I just witnessed is news to me. I stare at him blankly, then turn and look at the floor.

  “Why aren’t you freaking out?” he asks. “You should be punching me in the face right now. Did you not just see what I saw?”

  “I already knew,” I say quietly.

  “What?”

  “Do you remember when I found your passport? Your time and place of death were the same as mine, and I knew the crash wasn’t my fault, so I figured—”

  “You knew this whole time and you didn’t tell me?”

  I nod once.

  “You knew I killed you and yet you just sat through all my memories. Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know!” I blurt, tears forming at the corners of my eyes. “I mean . . . I do know. I wanted to waste all thirty of your sessions so you wouldn’t make a breakthrough and would have to be stuck here, like me. And I guess I thought if I forced you to relive all your worst moments, revisiting all the pain, it’d be like some kind of satisfying revenge for what you did to me, but—”

  “But you became my friend. You hung out with me. I showed you my dream. I mean, we kissed, Bea,” he interrupts. “How could you make out with your . . . your . . . killer?”

  He spits the last word out, disgusted. But I can’t tell if it’s disgust pointed at me or himself.

  “I don’t know,” I say flatly. “I guess it’s because I’m just some kind of freak.”

  “I actually started to have second thoughts about leaving here,” he says, shaking his head. “You made me think for a minute that it’d actually be better to stay here with you than move on to Heaven. The whole reason I asked you if you could help get my lottery number called that first day was because I was so desperate to move on and see how my abuela was doing in the hospital. God, I’m so . . .”

  He pauses, a look of realization crossing his face.

  “Was that all part of your plan to put one over on me?” he continues. “Make me fall in love with you, then reveal that I killed you so I’d feel like even more of a monster?”

  “Make you what?” I say with a humorless laugh. My organs feel like broken glass at the sound of fall in love with you.

  He stares into my eyes and he doesn’t look angry anymore, just sad. So devastatingly sad. Like his whole body could just crumple onto the floor.

  “Never mind,” he mumbles.

  “The stuff with your memories was on purpose, but I didn’t plan anything else,” I say, raising my voice. “And you were the one who kissed me first, even if it was just in your dreams. You were also the one who killed me, okay? I’m the one who gets to be mad! I get to be confused about what this all means!”

  I cross my arms and it’s like I can visualize every bit of feeling I had for Caleb shrivel up inside my chest.

  Caleb looks at me and swallows hard.

  “I’m sorry about the accident,” he says with finality.

  “Okay then,” I say, suddenly taking on a coldly professional tone. “Congratulations, Caleb. We’ve successfully figured out what was holding you back from Heaven. I think it’s time for you to move on.”

  36

  Caleb follows me back to the airport in silence, keeping about a foot of distance between us. I walk slowly, my body drained of all energy. I wish I could lie down right on the asphalt of the tarmac and become one with it, just letting airplanes roll off my back forever instead of having to make sense of my stupid feelings.

  When we reach the departures counter, Sadie and Todd are standing beside it, staring me down.

  “You,” Todd says, pointing a finger at me. “You’re in big trouble, young lady.”

  “Why?” I ask, moving my eyes between them. “Is this because I went out there without you, Sadie? Look, don’t worry about it. Caleb’s done.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Caleb’s mouth twitch slightly.

  “Wait, really? You did it? He’s moving on? That’s amazing! Oh, Bea, I can’t thank you enough.”

  Suddenly she grabs me by my shoulders and hugs me, lifting me about a half inch off the ground.

  “No problem,” I say, wiggling out of her grasp. “Glad to help.”

  “I’m going to Heaven!” she exclaims, reaching out for a high five. I reciprocate half-heartedly.

  “We’re going to Heaven!” she says, turning to Caleb and offering him a high five as well.

  He gives her a sad smile and extends his hand in an even less enthused manner than I did. It doesn’t matter, though. Sadie is too blissfully unaware to notice that my and Caleb’s faces look like we’ve just returned from war.

  “Well, all right then,” she says, taking a deep breath to calm down. “Bea, you’ll just have to fill out the discharge forms, and Caleb, in a few days the next flight will be taking off.”

  “A few days?” Caleb asks through his teeth. “But I’m ready to go now.”

  “Hold your horses,” Sadie says, raising her palms. “Some of us have been waiting for this moment for years, okay? You can handle a few more days. Just relax. Say goodbye to the friends you’ve made. It’ll be fine.”

  Caleb’s winces at the mention of “friends.”

  Todd loudly clears his throat behind her.

  “This still doesn’t absolve her of her crimes, Sadie.”

  “What crimes?” I ask.

  “Toddyyyyy,” Sadie cries. “Let her off the hook. Her methods were unconventional. So what? They worked!”

  “Can you please just tell me what the hell you two are talking about?” I ask.

  They give each other a look.

  “Wayne from the Disciplinary Council has requested to see you,” Todd says. “Now.”

  They drag me away, leaving Caleb behind. I turn my head to look at him, but he’s already moving in the opposite direction. I stare at the back of his neck and wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever see him.

  IT’S NOT. NOT technically, because, here in the Memory Experience office, right before my eyes is black-and-white surveillance footage of Caleb and me making out in the elevator.

  “Jeans? I can’t believe you would go out without your uniform on, Beatrice,” Sadie scoffs.

  “This was a mistake,” I say to them. “I should’ve never kissed him, okay? It only happened once and it will never happen again.”

  “Only once?” Wayne presses. He adjusts the film in the projector and the footage on the wall changes to Caleb knocking on my hotel room door.

  “I swear my roommate was having a party that night. I was in the bathroom the whole time.”

  “A party?” Wayne asks mockingly. “Then how come the footage shows that this boy was the only one who showed up?”

  “I didn’t say it was a well-attended party.”

  “And what about that first night you two went out to the hangar after hours?”

  The footage changes again to two small figures darting across the tarmac, l
ike it was taken from a high distance.

  “How do you even know that’s us?” I protest.

  He switches the footage again. Caleb and I appear out of thin air in the waiting room, just seconds after each other. I slump in my chair.

  “Todd, you gave us the keys to go out there,” I say, looking at him.

  Todd crosses his arms. “I cannot confirm or deny. But I can confirm that every choice I make is done with the goal of raising conversion rates. Sir.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say, looking at Wayne. “What’s the problem here? Sadie told me that it wasn’t against the rules to be close to the people I’m assigned to, just a bad idea, for me, emotionally . . .”

  “The problem is,” Wayne says, shutting off the projector and walking toward the front of the room, where the rest of us sit, “precisely that: you were close to Caleb. Because you knew him before you arrived, didn’t you?”

  My mouth falls open. I say nothing. I can feel Sadie’s eyes on me.

  “After our run-in last night, I requested copies of your individual passports from the processing department,” Wayne continues, reaching into his suit jacket and pulling out two thin orange books. “When I looked at them, I was stunned to learn that you and Caleb Smith died just a moment apart in the same location.”

  He leans down so that we’re at eye level, and scrutinizes my face. My cheeks flush.

  “You should have spoken up,” he says in a surprisingly gentle tone. “But I understand why you didn’t. You’re very young, not just in age, but in your role. Your supervisor, on the other hand . . .”

  Wayne stands up straight and looks at Todd.

  “It’s part of protocol as supervisor to check an agent’s passport before assigning them to someone. You’re supposed to be making sure that there are no glaring similarities. Even dying in the same town, let alone the same spot or time, is a conflict of interest and should be cause to reassign the agent to someone else.”

  “Well . . . I mean . . .” Todd sputters, raising his hands in the air. “What are the chances?”

  “Apparently, very likely,” Sadie exclaims, reaching across where I sit between them and swatting his hands down.

  “The Disciplinary Council will prepare an investigation of your recent leadership, Todd, to determine if more time needs to be added to your sentence of employment.”

  “I’ve already been here for forty-five years, man!” Todd says, a vein bursting in his neck. “C’mon, I’ve only got five left.”

  Wayne gives him a hard stare and he shrinks back down into his seat.

  “I’m sorry you had to endure this mix-up, Beatrice,” Wayne says, turning back to me, “but it’s time for you to get back to work.”

  I’m off the hook, but that doesn’t mean I feel good.

  In fact, I feel positively like garbage.

  “BEA, WAIT UP!” Sadie calls after me as I leave the office.

  “Can’t. I’m late. Lottery numbers have already been called and I have 4,997 souls to get to,” I say without looking back.

  “Please.”

  Reluctantly, I slow my steps and turn around. She looks at me with puppy eyes. Puppy eyes that are caked with blue eye shadow.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I wanted to thank you for moving Caleb along today.”

  “I was just doing my job.” I shrug.

  “I realize I put a lot of pressure on you. Of course you wouldn’t have spoken up and told me that you knew him in your past life. I feel like I failed you. I should’ve been this, like, big-sister figure, but instead I was so focused on getting out of here—”

  “Hey,” I say, putting my hand up. “Failing at being a big sister is kind of my specialty.”

  She raises her eyebrows.

  “It’s a long story,” I elaborate. “But just know you didn’t.”

  Sadie reaches her arms out for a hug and this time, I hug her back. With feeling.

  “So are you and Todd over?” I ask, pulling back.

  “Yeah,” she says. “We had already said our farewells before I got on my initial flight. So it was awkward when I got kicked off the plane. Then it was even more awkward when I found out that it was his fault. Now we’re definitely over. He’s not the man I thought he was.”

  She stares wistfully off into the distance for a moment.

  “It’s okay, though. I’m counting on there being a significant number of hotties in Heaven.”

  WHEN I GET to the departures counter, there’s only one person left who hasn’t been assigned an agent.

  And isn’t it just my luck that that person happens to be Gladys.

  “Good morning,” I say, plastering on a smile in spite of the complete disaster of a morning I’ve already endured. “How are you today?”

  She just stares at my feet in silence. It’s so unsettling, it almost makes me pine for her usual screaming.

  In the hangar, she ambles over to the Memstractor, her house slippers squeaking against the floor, like she’s done this a million times. She flips her helmet over her tangled hair and I take a seat.

  “Before we begin,” I say, “I just want you to know that I’ve heard about you. The other agents say that you don’t show them anything. That you refuse to open up. That this will be a big waste of my time. Of course I don’t want to waste my time. I want to get out of here. But I thought you should know . . . I totally get it.”

  Gladys shifts in her seat but still doesn’t look at me.

  “Keeping your guard up is easy. It’s better to scare people away than let them in. Especially when you’ve never really had someone around to teach you how to. So you go through your life thinking that when you let someone in, they can only hurt you, right? And you become this unapproachable bitch because you think it will keep you safe. And maybe it does. Until it inevitably doesn’t.”

  My eyes well up.

  “And what if you were so focused on protecting yourself that you never stopped to consider everyone else around you? And how you were unintentionally hurting them?” I say, my voice catching. “So maybe the point is that keeping your guard up is useless because any of us could get hurt at any time so you might as well . . . let other people in. While you can.”

  Gladys looks into my eyes, which are now streaming with tears.

  “Sorry,” I say, wiping my face with the back of my glove. “I don’t really know where I was going with—”

  “All right, all right,” she squawks. Her voice has a throaty twang to it. “Save your crocodile tears, honey. I get it. And, frankly, I’m getting tired of the food here anyway. So what the hell? Let’s see what’s going on in that head of mine. Turn on the damn machine!”

  I break out into a smile and, for once, everything doesn’t feel totally hopeless.

  37

  A scratchy noise comes out of the PA system as I’m walking back to my room. I didn’t move Gladys along today, but we’re making progress, and that’s more than any other agent who’s dealt with her can say. Without thinking, I find myself holding my breath and clenching my fists, silently praying that the announcement won’t be “Now boarding.”

  Even when I realize it’s just the non-news that a sweater was found in a terminal bathroom and can be recovered at the lost and found, I’m still uneasy (and a little annoyed that the lost and found is finally functioning when I have no use for it). Caleb could be taking off any day now, and the thought of him leaving just like that, the way we left things, feels wrong.

  When I open the door to our room, Jenna is sprawled on my bed, sprinkling glitter on a piece of paper.

  “Where’d you get that?” I ask, realizing its close resemblance to the glitter on the sign Sadie was holding my first day here.

  “I found it in the trash. In the hotel basement.”

  “And you were looking in the trash because . . .”


  “I needed supplies. I’m making decorations for the mixer,” she says cheerfully without looking up.

  “What ‘mixer’?”

  “I’m trying to make my social club happen again. I won’t let one defeat get me down. Attendance was only low because my strategy was weak. There aren’t many people our age around. I figured out everyone here is sixteen or older. I think they, whoever they might be, determined the minimum age in accordance with the driving age. Which is so unfair. We’re not old enough to drink or vote, but we’re old enough to be sent to purgatory? It sucks that there aren’t that many of us. Well, I mean, I guess it’s technically good that there aren’t that many dead sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds, but you know . . .”

  She stops and looks up at me. I realize my eyes have glazed over while she was speaking.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  “No, Jenna, I’m not okay,” I say, sitting on my bed. “We should just determine from here on out that I am never going to be okay.”

  “Why?” she says, putting down her glitter. “Oh. Of course. How did coming clean to Caleb go?”

  So much has happened since Jenna and I last spoke. Too much.

  “It . . . happened” is all I can manage to get out.

  “What happened, specifically?”

  I tell her everything. The fake kiss. The real kiss. The big reveal.

  She absentmindedly puts her glitter-covered fingers to her mouth and bites her nails.

  “Anyway, the worst part of it all is that he said he’s in love with me. Or was, rather.”

  She gasps, briefly inhaling the glitter then coughing it back up.

  “That’s amazing, Bea!” she says hoarsely, clutching her chest.

  “No, it is not amazing. It is profoundly messed up.”