sign, and used their stalks to repair his road-shoes, which must have broken when he charged Johnnie-O. “Have you been following us all this time?” Allie asked.
Lief shrugged. “Well, yeah. I had to make sure you didn’t get eaten by no monsters, didn’t I?”
“Great,” said Nick. “We’ve got our own guardian angel.”
“If I were an angel, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
Allie smiled. After all these years Lief had left his forest for them. It could not have been a choice he made lightly, and so she vowed to herself that from this moment on, she would look out for him in any way she could.
They didn’t wait until dawn, figuring Johnnie-O and his gang might come back.
Rather than being troubled by the encounter, Allie found herself heartened by it. Nick was his usual gloom and doom, talking about Lord of the Flies and the dangers of rogue bands of parentless kids-but even in his worry, there was a new energy-because running into Johnnie-O proved that there were lots of Afterlights around. Not all of them would be as unpleasant as Johnnie-O’s gang.
They came to the Hudson River, and stayed on the highway that ran along the Palisades: sheer cliffs, carved by the relentless glaciers of the last Ice Age, which lined the western shore of the river. Traffic became denser, but they bore it no mind, not caring if the occasional car passed through them. In fact, for a while they tried to make a game of it, trying to figure out what song was playing on the radio during the brief instant each car sped through.
“The things we dead folk do to amuse ourselves,” Allie said, heaving a heavy sigh. The game didn’t last long, mainly because Lief, who had never heard a car radio, much less rock ‘n’ roll, felt increasingly left out.
By sunset of the next day, the cheese-grater grid-work of the George Washington Bridge appeared downriver, heralding their arrival in New York City.
Lief was overwhelmed by the sight of the great city looming before him. It was a clear day, and the whole skyline could be seen from across the river. Lief had been to New York before. Twice. Once for the Fourth of July, and once for Mr. P.
T. Barnum s circus. There were tall buildings to be sure, but none like these.
Nick and Allie stared as well. Lief assumed they were also in awe of the spectacular view. In truth, they were awed, but for an entirely different reason.
“I think I know where we should go,” Nick said, a strange hollowness to his voice. Allie didn’t answer him for a while.
“Manhattan is out of our way,” Allie finally said. “We should stay on this side of the river, and keep heading south.”
Nick looked to the city again. “I don’t care what you say. I’m taking a detour.”
This time Allie didn’t argue.
Night had fallen by the time they reached the Manhattan side of the bridge. It took the whole night without rest to make it to the heart of the city.
The towers of midtown Manhattan would have taken Lief s breath away, if he indeed had breath to be stolen. But the most wondrous sights of all were the two silver towers he saw glimmering in the light of dawn as they neared the southern tip of the city. The two towers were identical monoliths, steel and glass twins reflecting a silvery light of daybreak.
“I never knew buildings like that existed,” Lief said.
Allie sighed. “They don’t exist,” she said. “At least…not anymore.”
Lief could tell the sadness in her voice went straight down to the center of the Earth.
PART TWO Mary, Queen of Snots Everlost CHAPTER 7
The Forever Places In the course of time and history there are certain places that can never truly be lost. The living world by its very nature moves on, but some places are forever. The boy now called Lief had the good fortune to stumble upon such a place many years before: a lush mountain forest that had once been the inspiration for poets. The place brimmed with such warmth and good feeling, it inspired countless young men to propose marriage beneath its canopy, and countless young women to accept. The woods caused stiff-collared people to lose their inhibitions and dance among the leaves, wild with joy, even though they knew such dancing could have them condemned as witches.
The forest was a fulcrum of life, and so when it grew old, and a beetle infestation routed bark and bough, the forest did not die. Instead it crossed.
Its life persisted – not in the living world, but in Everlost. Here it would be eternally green, and on the verge of turning, just as the poets themselves would have liked to see it, had they not gotten where they were going.
It can be said, then, that Everlost is heaven. Perhaps not for people, but for the places that deserve a share of forever.
Such places are few and far between, these grand islands of eternity in the soupy, ever-changing world of the living. New York had its share of forever-places. The greatest of these stood near Manhattan’s southern-most tip: the two gray brothers to the green statue in the bay. The towers had found their heaven. They were a part of Everlost now, held fast, and held forever by the memories of a mourning world, and by the dignity of the souls who got where they were going on that dark September day.
The three kids approached the great twin towers in silence. What they saw as they neared them was not at all what they expected.
There were children there. Dozens of Afterlight kids playing on the grand marble plaza: hopscotch, tag, hide-and-seek. Some were dressed like Allie, in jeans and a T-shirt. Others were more formal. Still more had clothes that seemed more from Lief’s time, all coarse and heavy. A few kids wore the gaudy bright colors of the seventies, with big hair to match.
They hadn’t been noticed yet, as they stood just beyond the edge of the plaza.
Allie and Nick were almost afraid to step onto it, as if doing so would cross them into yet another world. They stood there so long they sank to their ankles, even with their road-shoes on.
As Lief’s sense of awe did not have history nor context for this place, he had no problem moving forward. “C’mon,” he said, “what are you waiting for?”
Nick and Allie looked at one another, then took that first step forward, onto the very solid marble of the plaza that no longer existed. After the first step it became easier. It felt strange beneath their feet, so much solid ground. A team of girls playing double-dutch jump rope noticed them first.
“Hi!” said an African-American girl in drab clothes and tight cornrowed hair.
“You’re Greensouls, aren’t you?” All the time, she never stopped spinning her two ropes. Neither did the girl on the other end, who seemed entirely out of place there in the plaza, dressed in teddy-bear pajamas. Other girls skillfully jumped in and out of the arc of their spinning ropes. One girl took enough time away from the game, though, to size them up. She wore a sparkling silver halter top, and jeans that were so tight, she looked like a sausage bursting out of its skin. She looked Allie over, clearly unimpressed by Allie’s non-glittering wardrobe. “Is that what they wear now?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Then the girl in tight jeans looked at Lief, examining his clothes as well.
“You’re not a Greensoul.”
“Says who?” said Lief, insulted.
“He’s new to the city,” Allie said. “He might have crossed a long time ago, but he’s still kind of like a ‘Greensoul.’”
A big red handball came flying past, chased by a group of younger kids. The ball flew out of the plaza and into the street, crowded with the living. “Hurry,” one little boy yelled, “before it sinks!”
Another boy raced out into traffic, grabbed the ball that was already beginning to sink into the pavement, and disappeared beneath a city bus and two taxis. He paid them no mind, passing through the trunk of the last taxi as he stood up with the ball, and happily ran back to the plaza.
“You remember all those things your momma told you not to do?” said the girl with the corn-rows. “Like not running out into traffic? Well, you can do them here.”
“Who’s in charge?” asked Nick.
“Mary,” she said. “You oughta go and see her. She loves Greensouls.” Then she added, “We were all Greensouls once.”
Nick tapped Allie on the shoulder. “Look,” he said.
By now their presence had been noticed by most of the kids around the plaza.
Many of the games had stopped, and the kids stared, not sure what to do. Out of the crowd a girl stepped forward. She had long blond hair that nearly touched the floor, wore a tie-dyed shirt, and bell-bottoms so big, the cuffs practically trailed behind her like a bridal train. A ’60s hippie girl, if ever there was one.
“Don’t tell me,” said Allie, “your name is Summer, and you want to know if we’re groovy.”
“My name’s Meadow, and I don’t say groovy anymore, because I got tired of people making fun of me.”
“Do you have to insult everybody you meet?” Nick whispered to Allie, then turned back to Meadow. “I’m Nick, and this is Lief. The rude one is Allie.”
“I wasn’t being rude,” Allie insisted. “I was being facetious. There’s a difference.”
“No sweat,” said Meadow, which was almost as bad as groovy. “C’mon, I’ll take you to Mary.” Then she looked down. “What are those on your feet?”
They looked down to the bundles of sticks extending from the soles of their shoes. “Road-shoes,” said Nick. “Kind of like snowshoes, so we don’t sink, you know?”
“Hmm. Clever,” said Meadow. “But you won’t need them anymore.”
They took off their road-shoes, and followed Meadow across the plaza toward Tower One. Behind them, the rest of the kids returned to their games.
They passed a fountain in the center of the plaza, and Meadow turned to them.
“Would you like to make a wish?” Meadow asked. A closer look revealed the fountain to be full of coins beneath the shimmering water.
“Not really,” Allie said.
“Mary says every Greensoul who comes here has to make a wish.”
Nick was already reaching into his pocket.
“I don’t have a coin,” Allie said.
Meadow just smiled. “Sure you do.”
And so to prove it Allie reached into her pockets, and turned them out. “See?”
“What about your back pockets?”
Allie sighed and checked her back pockets, knowing full well they were empty-she never used her back pockets. So it surprised her when she found the coin. Not even Johnnie-O’s goons had found it. But then, she had given them such a nasty look when they had reached for her rear, they never actually checked her back pockets.
“Weird,” Allie said, as she looked at the coin.
“Not really.” Meadow gave her a hippie love-fest smile. “With all the money living people spend, everyone has at least one coin in their pocket when they cross.”
“I once had a coin,” Lief said, dejectedly, “but it got stolen.”
“Make a wish anyway,” said Meadow. “Mary says all wishes have a chance of coming true, except one.”
Nick threw his coin in, then Allie threw hers. She made the wish every Greensoul made. The wish to be alive again. The one wish that didn’t come true.
Once their wishes had joined the others in the fountain, Meadow led them toward Tower One. Lief was the ultimate tourist, staring heavenward to where the towers touched the sky. He bumped into other kids again and again, for he refused to look down. “How do they stay up?” Lief asked. “Wouldn’t something so tall fall down?”
Allie was not a girl quickly given to tears, but she had found herself crying at least once a day since her arrival. Sometimes it was the revelation of just how drastically her existence had changed that would draw tears to her eyes. Other times it was the depth of how much she missed her family. Today the tears were sudden and unexpected.
“What’s the matter?” Lief asked. But there really was no way to explain to him.
She wasn’t even sure of the reason. Was she crying with joy that this place had left a permanent impression on the world, and that it was still here in Everlost? Or was being here a reminder of how much was truly lost on that awful day when the towers crossed so violently from the world of the living? So many souls got where they were going that day, when they shouldn’t have been going at all.
“This is wrong,” Allie said. “Children shouldn’t be playing here. It’s…it’s like dancing on a grave.”
“No,” said Meadow, “it’s like putting flowers on a grave. Mary says the more happiness we bring back to this place, the more we honor it.”
“So, exactly who is this Mary?” Nick asked.
Meadow scrunched up her lips, trying to think of how to explain. “Mary’s kind of like, a shaman, you know? A spiritual leader. Anyway, she knows lots of stuff, and so she pretty much runs things around here.”
The elevator stopped abruptly and the door slid open, to reveal that they had come all the way up to the observation level. They could tell because of all of the coin-operated binocular machines lined up by the narrow windows that stretched from ceiling to floor. But everything else here had changed. It must have been remodeled into a makeshift orphanage. Just as in the square below, young Afterlights from various time periods lingered, playing games or just sitting, waiting for something to happen to them. Allie still wasn’t sure whether this was like some desecration of hallowed ground, or if having children here was somehow healing.
As they walked around the floor to the north side, they passed a food court with a pizza place and a hot dog stand. The counters were closed. It looked like they hadn’t served any food in a long time-but at each table sat kids, eating what appeared to be very, very small pieces of cake.
“That can’t be,” said Lief. “They’re eating. How can they be eating?”
Meadow smiled. “Mary traded something for a birthday cake. She shared it with all of the younger children.”
“But, we don’t eat,” said Lief, confused.
“Just because we don’t, doesn’t mean we can’t when there’s ghost food around.”
“Ghost food?” said Lief. “There’s ghost food?”
Nick looked at him and shook his head. “You’ve been around a hundred years, and you didn’t know there was ghost food?”
Lief looked like a kid who had missed the bus to Disneyland. “No one ever told me.”
Seeing the smaller children eating the birthday cake reminded Allie how hungry she was. Just like her craving for sleep, she knew her hunger would eventually pass, but there was no telling when. If it had been she who had gotten the birthday cake, she would not have been so generous as to share it with anyone.
Maybe with Nick and Lief, but certainly not a hoard of little kids.
“You’ll really dig Mary,” said Meadow. Allie had to admit there was something comforting when Meadow’s lingo matched her clothes.
A makeshift wall had been built, blocking off the north half of the floor.
Mary’s personal residence. A scrawny little kid with curly blond hair stood at the door like a pint-size guard.
“Some Greensouls to see Mary,” Meadow announced.
“Greensouls!” said the curly-haired boy excitedly. “I’m sure Miss Mary will want to see them right away.”
“Okay then. Ciao,” Meadow waved a quick good-bye, and sauntered away.
“She’s funny, isn’t she?” said the curly-headed boy. “Meadows always good for a laugh.” He put out his hand to shake. “I’m Stradivarius,” he said, “but everyone just calls me Vari. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Miss Mary.”
Miss Mary’s private residence was full of mismatched furniture. Just like the kids here, everything seemed to come from different times and different places.
It was all furniture that had crossed into Everlost: bright to the eye and hard to the touch. Apparently Alary was good at collecting things that had crossed over.
When Mary saw them, she came gliding toward them, graceful on her feet. Allie wasn’t one to judge a person by her wardrobe -after all, the snobs from her school judged her often enough-but you couldn’t help but notice Mary’s dress: rich emerald velvet, with white lace cuffs and a lace collar so tight it seemed about ready to strangle her.
“It looks like you must have died on the way to a wedding,” Allie said. Nick didn’t settle for rolling his eyes this time. Instead he elbowed Allie in the ribs. “No,” Nick said. “That was me.”
Alary never broke eye contact with Allie. “It’s impolite to comment on how someone crosses.”
Allie felt heat rise to her cheeks, surprised to know that she could still blush from embarrassment, but Alary took her hand warmly. “Don’t feel bad,” she said.
“I was just pointing it out. You couldn’t possibly be expected to know-you’re new to all of this.” She turned to Lief and Nick. “There are many things you’ll be learning about your new lives and until you do, you mustn’t feel bad if you make mistakes.”
“I’m not new,” said Lief, unable to meet her eye.
“You’re new here,” Mary said with a warm smile, “and so you have permission to feet just as new as you want.”
Nick couldn’t look away from Alary. He was captivated from the moment he saw her. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful-she was also elegant, and her manner was as velvety smooth as her dress. Everyone introduced themselves, and when Nick took Mary’s hand, she smiled at him. He was convinced that her smile was just for him, and although his rational mind told him otherwise, he refused to believe she smiled at everyone that way.
“You must be tired from your journey,” Mary said, turning and leading them deeper into her apartment.
“We can’t get tired,” Allie said.
“Actually,” said Mary, “that’s a common misconception. We do get tired, exhausted even -but it isn’t sleep that refreshes us. We’re refreshed by the company of others.”
Allie crossed her arms. “Oh, please.”
“No,” said Vari, “it’s true. We gain strength from each other.”
“So what about Lief? ” Allie asked. By now, Lief had gravitated to the window, more interested in the view than anything else. “He’s been alone for a hundred years, and he’s got plenty of energy.”
Mary didn’t miss a beat. “Then he must have found a marvelous place, full of love and life.”
She was, of course, right. Lief’s forest had been a sustaining place for him.
Allie didn’t know how to feel about this “Miss Mary.” Allie hated know-it-alls, but in this case, Mary actually did appear to know it all.
“We’ve turned the top floors of this tower into living quarters-but most of them are still empty. You’re free to choose where you’d like to stay.”
“Who said we were staying?” said Allie.
Nick nudged her with his elbow, harder this time. “Allie…” he said between his teeth, “it’s impolite to turn down an invitation in this world. Or in any world for that matter.”
But if Mary was offended, she didn’t show it. “Consider this a rest stop, if you like,” Mary said cordially. “A way station on to wherever it is you’re going.”
“We weren’t going anywhere,” Nick said with a smile. He was trying to sound charming, but instead wound up sounding heavily sedated.
Allie was fully prepared to smack that starry gaze clear out of Nick’s eyes, but she restrained herself. “We were going home,” she reminded him.
“Of course that would be your first instinct,” Mary said with supreme patience.
“You couldn’t be expected to know the consequences.”
“Please stop talking to me like I’m ignorant,” said Allie.
“You are ignorant,” said Van. “All Greensouls are.”
It infuriated Allie that it was true. She, Nick, and even Lief were at a disadvantage.
Vari went over to a cabinet, and pulled out three books. “Here; a crash course in Everlost.” He handed them each a book. “You have to forget what you know about the living world, and get used to the way things are here.”
“What if I don’t want to forget the living world?” Allie asked.
Mary smiled politely. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “Letting go is hard.”
“Tips For Taps,” Nick said, reading from the cover of the book. “‘By Mary Hightower.’ That’s you?
Mary smiled. “We all must do something with our afterlife,” she said. “I write.”
Allie looked at her own volume, impressed in spite of herself. She leafed through the book. Three hundred pages at least, and each page handwritten, with painstakingly perfect penmanship.
Well, thought Allie, we came here looking for answers-and now we’re in the company of the Authority of Everlost. What could be better? Yet for some reason Allie didn’t feel all that comforted.
In her book Death Be Not Dull, Mary Hightower writes, “Afterlight Greensouls are precious. They are fragile. There are so many hazards for them here in Everlost, for they are like babies with no knowledge of the way things are – and like babies they must be nurtured and guided with a loving, but firm hand. Their eternity rests on how well they adjust to life in Everlost. A poorly adjusted Afterlight can warp and distort in horrifying ways. Therefore Greensouls must be treated with patience, kindness, and charity. It’s the only way to properly mold them.”
CHAPTER 8 Dominant Reality Mary Hightower detested being called Mary Queen of Snots, although there was some truth to it. Most of the Afterlights in her care were much younger than her. At fifteen, she was among the oldest residents of Everlost. So when kids closer to her age arrived in her towering domain, she paid extra-special attention to them.
She sensed, however, that Allie was going to be a problem. To say that Mary didn’t like Allie would be a stretch. Mary, quite simply, liked everyone. It was her job to like everyone, and she took it very seriously. Allie, however, was dangerously willful, and could spell disaster. Mary hoped she was wrong, but had to admit that she seldom was. Even her worst predictions came true-not because she had any glimpse into the future-but because her many years in Everlost had made her a keen judge of character.
“The Greensouls are taken care of,” Vari announced after he returned. “The boys chose a room together facing south, the girl chose a room alone facing north.
All on the ninety-third floor.”
“Thank you, Vari.” She gave him a kiss on the top of his curly head, as she often did. “We’ll give them a few hours to settle in, and I’ll pay them a visit.”
“Would you like me to play for you?” Vari asked. “Mozart, maybe.”
Although Mary didn’t feel like listening to music, she told him yes. It gave him pleasure to bring her happiness, and she didn’t want to deny him that. He had been her right-hand man since before she could remember, and she often forgot that he was only nine years old, forever trapped at that age where he wanted to please. It was wonderful. It was sad. Mary chose to focus on the wonderful. She closed her eyes and listened as Vari raised his violin, and played a concerto she had heard a thousand times, and would probably hear a thousand times more.
When the sun sank low, she went to visit the three Greensouls. The boys first.
Their “apartment” was sparsely furnished with flotsam and jetsam furniture that had crossed over. A chair here, a desk there, a mattress, and a sofa that would have to suffice as a second bed.
Lief sat on the floor trying to make sense of a Game Boy. It was an old device by living-world standards, but certainly new to him. He didn’t even look up when Mary entered. Nick, on the other hand, stood, took her hand, and kissed it. She laughed in spite of herself, and he blushed bright red. “I saw that in a movie once. You seemed so… royal, or something, it just seemed like the thing to do.
Sorry.”
“No, that’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it. It was very…gallant.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t leave behind chocolate on your hand,” he said. She took a long look at him. He had a good face. Soulful brown eyes. There was that hint of Asian about him that made him seem…exotic. The more Mary looked, the deeper his blush. As Mary recalled, a blush was caused by blood rushing to the capillaries of one’s face. They no longer had blood or capillaries – but Greensouls were still close enough to the living world to mimic such physiological reactions. He may have been embarrassed, but for Mary, that crimson tinge in his face was a treat.
“You know,” she told him, gently touching the chocolate on the side of his lip, “some people are able to change the way they appear. If you don’t like the chocolate on your face, you can work on getting rid of it.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
Mary could sense that he was having another physiological reaction to her touching his face, so she took her hand back. She might have blushed herself, if she was still capable of it. “Of course, that sort of thing takes a long time.
Like a Zen master learning to walk on hot coals, or levitate. It takes years of meditation and concentration.”
“Or I can just forget,” offered Nick. “You said in Tips for Taps that people sometimes forget how they look, and their faces change. So maybe I can forget the chocolate on purpose.”
“A good idea,” she answered. “But we can’t choose what we forget. The more we try to forget something, the more we end up remembering it. Careful, or your whole face will get covered in chocolate.”
Nick chuckled nervously, as if she were kidding, and he stopped when he realized she wasn’t.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “As long as you’re with us, you’re among friends, and we will always remind you who you were when you arrived.”
In the corner, Lief grunted in frustration. “My fingers don’t work fast enough to play this.” He banged his Game Boy against the wall in anger, but didn’t stop playing.
“Mary…can I ask you a question?” Nick said.
Mary sat with him on the sofa. “Of course.”
“So…what happens now?”
Mary waited for more, but there was no more. “I’m sorry… I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“We’re dead, right.”
“Well, yes, technically.”
“And like your book says, we’re stuck in this Everlost place, right?”
“Forever and always.”
“So…what do we do now?”
Mary stood up, not at all comfortable with the question. “Well, what do you like to do? Whatever you like to do, that’s what you get to do.”
“And when I get tired of it?”
“I’m sure you’ll find something to keep you content.”
“I’m not too good at contentment,” he said. “Maybe you can help me.”
She turned to Nick, and found herself locked in his gaze. This time he wasn’t blushing. “I’d really like it if you could.”
Mary held eye contact with Nick much longer than she expected to. She began to feel flustered, and she never felt flustered. Flustered was not in Mary Hightower’s emotional dictionary.
“This game’s stupid,” said Lief. “Who the heck is Zelda, anyway?”
Mary tore herself away from Nick’s gaze, angry at herself for allowing a slip of her emotions. She was a mentor. She was a guardian. She needed to keep an emotional distance from the kids under her wing. She could care about them – but only the way a mother loves her children. As long as she remembered that, things would be fine.
“I have an idea for you, Nick.” Mary went to a dresser, and opened the top drawer, getting her errant feelings under control. She pulled out paper and a pen. Mary made sure all arriving Greensouls always had paper and pens. Crayons for the younger ones. “Why don’t you make a list of all the things you ever wanted to do, and then we can talk about it.”
Mary left quickly, with a bit less grace than when she arrived.
Allie found the paper and pens long before Mary showed up in her “apartment,” or “hotel room,” or “cell.” She wasn’t quite sure what to call it yet. By the time Mary arrived, Allie had filled three pages with questions.
When Mary came, she stood at the threshold until Allie invited her in. Like a vampire, Allie thought. Vampires can’t come in unless invited. “You’ve been busy,” Mary said when she saw how much Allie had written.
“I’ve been reading your books,” Allie said. “Not just the one you gave us, but other ones I found lying around.”
“Good-they will be very helpful for you.”
“-and I have some questions. Like, in one book, you say haunting is forbidden, but then somewhere else you say that we’re free spirits, and can do anything we want.”
“Well, we can,” said Mary, “but we really shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“And anyway-you say that we can have no effect on the living world-they can’t see us, they can’t hear us… so if that’s true, how could we ‘haunt,’ even if we wanted to?”
Mary’s smile spoke of infinite patience among imbeciles. It made Allie furious, and so she returned the same “you’re-an-idiot-and-I’m-oh-so-smart” smile right back at her.
“As I said, it’s complicated, and it’s nothing you need to worry about on your first day here.”
“Right,” said Allie. “So I haven’t read all the books yet, I mean you’ve written so many of them-but I haven’t been able to find anything about going home.”
Allie could see Mary bristle. Allie imagined if she had been a porcupine all her quills would be standing on end.
“You can’t go home,” Mary said. “We’ve already discussed that.”
“Sure I can,” Allie said. “I can walk up to my house, walk in my front door.
Well, okay, I mean walk through my front door, but either way, I’ll be home. Why don’t any of your books talk about that?”
“You don’t want to do that,” Mary said, her voice quiet, almost threatening.
“But I do.”
“No you don’t.” Mary walked to the window, and looked out over the city. Allie had chosen a view uptown: the Empire State Building, Central Park, and beyond.
“The world of the living doesn’t look the way you remembered, does it. It looks washed out. Less vibrant than it should.”
What Mary said was true. The living world had a fundamentally faded look about it. Even Freedom Tower, rising just beside their towers, seemed like they were seeing it through fog. It was so clearly a part of a different world. A world where time moves forward, instead of just standing still, keeping everything the way it is. Or, more accurately, the way it once was.
“Look out over the city,” Mary said. “Do some buildings look more…real…to you?”
Now that Mary had mentioned it, there were buildings that stood out in clearer focus. Brighter. Allie didn’t need to be told that these were buildings that had crossed into Everlost when they were torn down.
“Sometimes they build living-world things in places where Everlost buildings stand,” Mary said. “Do you know what happens when you step into those places?”
Allie shook her head.
“You don’t see the living world. You see Everlost. It takes a great effort to see both places at the same time. I call it ‘dominant reality.’”
“Why don’t you write a book about it,” snapped Allie.
“Actually, I have,” said Mary with a big old smirk that made it clear Mary’s was the dominant reality around here.
“So the living world isn’t that clear to us anymore. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means that Everlost is the more important of the two worlds.”
“That’s one opinion.”
She thought that Mary might lose her cool, and they’d get into a nice fight about it, but Mary’s patience was as eternal as Everlost itself. Keeping her tone gentle and kindly as it always was, Mary gestured at the city beyond the window, and said “You see all of this? A hundred years from now, all those people will be gone, and many of the buildings torn down to make room for something else – but we will still be here. This place will still be here.” She turned to Allie. “Only the things and places that are worthy of eternity cross into Everlost. We’re blessed to be here-don’t taint it by thoughts of going home. This will be your home far longer than the so-called ‘living world.’”
Allie looked to the furniture around the room. “Exactly what makes this folding table ‘worthy of eternity’? “
“It must have been special to someone.”
“Or,” said Allie, “it just fell through a random vortex.” She held up one of Mary’s books. “You said that happens yourself.”
Mary sighed. “So I did.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just contradict yourself? “
Still, Mary lost none of her poise. In fact, she rose to the challenge better than Allie expected.
“I see you’re smart enough to know there are no simple answers,” Mary said.
“It’s true that things sometimes do cross over by accident.”
“Right! And it’s not a blessing that we’re here, it’s an accident.”
“Even accidents have a divine purpose.”
“Then they wouldn’t be accidents, would they?”
“Believe what you want,” said Mary. “Eternity is what it is -you can’t change it. You’re here, and so you must make the best of it. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“All right-but just answer me one question. Is there a way out of Everlost? “
Mary didn’t answer right away. For a moment Allie thought she might tell her something she had never written in any of her books. But instead, all she said was, “No. And in time you’ll know the truth of it for yourself.”
In just a few days, Allie, Nick, and Lief came to know all there was to know about life in Mary’s world. The daily routine was simple. The little kids played ball, tag, and jumped rope all day long in the plaza, and when it got dark, everyone gathered on the seventy-eighth floor to listen to stories the older kids told, or to play video games, or to watch the single TV that Mary had acquired. According to Meadow, there were kids out there who traveled the world searching for items that had crossed over, and they would trade them to Mary.
These kids were called “Finders.” One Finder had brought a TV, but it only played TV shows that had aired on the day it crossed over. The same ancient episodes of The Love Boat and Happy Days played every single day during prime time, and presumably would continue to play until the end of time. Strangely, there were some kids who watched it. Every day. Like clockwork.
Nick watched the TV for a few days, amazed at the old commercials and the news more than anything. Watching it was like stepping into a time machine, but even time travel gets dull when you’re constantly traveling to April 8, 1978.
Allie chose not to watch the TV She was already sensing something profoundly wrong with Mary’s little Queendom, although she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. It had to do with the way the little girls jumped rope, and the way the same kids would watch that awful TV every single day.
If Nick felt that anything was wrong, it was lost beneath everything that was right about Mary. The way she always thought of others before herself, the way she made the little kids all feel loved. The way she took an interest in him.
Mary always made a point of coming over to Nick and asking what he was up to, how he was feeling, what new things he “was thinking about. She spoke with him about a book she was working on, all about theories on why there were no seventeen-year-olds in Everlost, when everyone knew eighteen was the official age of adulthood.
“That’s not actually true,” Nick offered. “That’s voting age, but drinking age is twenty-one. In the Jewish religion, adulthood is thirteen, and I know for a fact there are fourteen-year-old Jewish kids here.”
“That still doesn’t explain why kids older than us aren’t admitted into Everlost.”
Admitted to Everlost, thought Nick. That sounded a lot better than Lost on the way to heaven. Her way of thinking was such a welcome relief from his own propensity toward gloom and doom. “Maybe,” suggested Nick, “it’s a very personal thing. Maybe it’s the moment you stop thinking of yourself as a kid.”
Vari, who was lingering at the door, snickered. He had snickered at every single comment Nick made.
“Vari, please,” Mary told him. “We value a free flow of ideas here.”
“Even the stupid ones?” Vari said.
Nick couldn’t really see why she kept Vari around. Sure, he had musical talent, but it didn’t make up for his attitude.
Mary took Nick to show him how her books were made. The sixty-seventh floor was the publishing room. There were thirty kids there, all sitting at school desks.
It looked like a classroom with kids practicing their penmanship.
“We’ve yet to find a printing press that’s crossed over,” she told him. “But that’s all right. They enjoy copying by hand.”
And sure enough, the kids in the publishing room seemed thrilled to do their work, like ancient scribes copying scriptures on parchment.
“They find comfort in the routine,” Mary said, and Nick accepted it, without giving it much thought.
Allie, on the other hand, had begun to understand the nature of the “routines” these children found comfort in. She grabbed Nick one day, during one of the times when he wasn’t following Mary around.
“I want you to watch this kid,” she told Nick. “Follow him with me.”
“What for?”
“You’ll see.”
Nick was reluctant, but it wasn’t like he had anything pressing to do, so he played along at whatever game Allie had up her sleeve. For Allie, it wasn’t a game, though. It was very serious business.
The boy, who was about seven, was on the plaza playing kickball with a dozen other kids.
“So what are we looking for?” Nick asked, growing impatient.
“Watch,” said Allie. “His team is going to lose. Nine to seven.”
Sure enough, the game ended when the score reached nine to seven.
“What are you telling me? You can tell the future.”
“Sort of,” Allie said. “I can when there is no future.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just follow him.”
Nick was intrigued now. Keeping their distance, they followed the boy into the lobby of Tower Two, where several other kids had gathered with a deck of cards to play go-fish.
Allie and Nick hid behind a pillar, but it didn’t seem to matter-these kids didn’t notice, or care that they were being watched.
“He’s going to ask for threes,” Allie said.
“Got any threes?” the kid asked the girl next to him.
“Go fish,” Allie whispered to Nick. “Got any sevens?”
“Go fish,” said the girl. “Got any sevens?”
Now Nick was a little bit freaked. “How do you know thus?”
“Because it’s the same. Every day. The same score in kickball, the same game of cards.”
“No way!”
“Watch,” said Allie. “In a second the kid we followed here is going to throw down his cards and accuse the little girl of cheating. Then he’s going to run out the third revolving door from the left.”
It happened just as Allie said.
It was the first time since arriving in Mary’s world that Nick felt uneasy.
“It’s like… it’s like…”
Allie finished the thought for him. “It’s like they’re ghosts.” Which, of course, they were. “You know how there are those ghost sightings – people say they see a ghost doing the same thing, in the same place, every day?”
Nick wasn’t willing to let it sit at that. He ran toward the boy before he reached the revolving door. “Hey!” Nick said to him. “Why did you leave the card game?”
“They were cheating!” he said.
“I dare you to go back.”
The boy looked at him with mild fear in his eyes. “No. I don’t want to.”
“But didn’t you play the same game yesterday?” Nick said. “Didn’t they cheat in the same way yesterday?”
“Yeah,” said the boy, like it was nothing. “So?”
The boy pushed through the revolving door and hurried off.
Allie came up beside Nick. “I joined their card game a few days ago. It threw them off, but the next day, they were back to the same old routine.”
“But it doesn’t make sense…”
“Yes it does,” said Allie. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You know when you’re listening to music, and the CD starts to skip? Well it’s like our lives are CDs that started to skip on the very last note. We never got to the end, we’re just sort of stuck. And if we’re not careful, we start to fall into ruts, doing the same things over and over and over.”
“…Because there’s comfort in the routine,…” said Nick, echoing Mary’s words.
“Is that what’s going to happen to us?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“We are not like the living,” Mary writes in her book The First Hundred Years.
“We are beyond life. We are better than life. We don’t need to complicate our existence with a thousand meaningless activities, when one will do fine. Just as the world’s great artists learn the value of simplicity, so do we Afterlights learn to simplify. As time goes on, we fall into our perfect routine; our Niche in space and time, as consistent as the rising and falling of the sun.
This is normal and natural. Routine gives us comfort. It gives us purpose. It connects us to the rhythm of all things. One must feel a certain pity for Afterlights who never do find their niche.”