My heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself, shattering into pieces so small I might never find them. I dropped to my knees and looked up into the heavens, screaming louder than I ever thought possible. “Why?”
It was Amma who answered. She was farther away now, stepping into the sliver of sky that opened just for her. “A woman’s only as good as her word.” Another one of Amma’s riddles.
The last one.
She touched her fingers to her lips and reached them out to me as the universe swallowed her up. Her words echoed across the sky, as if she had spoken them aloud.
“And everyone said I couldn’t change the cards….”
The cards.
She was talking about the spread that predicted my death so many months ago. The spread she had bargained with the bokor to change. The one she swore she’d do anything to change.
She’d done it.
Defied the universe and fate and everything she believed in. For me.
Amma was trading her life for mine, protecting the Order by offering one life for another. That was the deal she had made with the bokor. I understood now.
I watched the sky knit itself back together one stitch at a time.
But it didn’t look the same. I could still see the invisible seams where the world had torn itself in half to take her. And I would always know they were there, even if no one else could see them.
Like torn edges of my heart.
CHAPTER 36
Translation
As I sat on the cold metal in the darkness, part of me wondered if I imagined the whole thing. I knew I didn’t. I could still see those stitches in the sky, no matter how dark it was.
Still, I didn’t move.
If I left, it would be real.
If I left, she would be gone.
I don’t know how long I sat there trying to make sense of everything, but the sun came up, and I was still sitting in the same spot. No matter how many times I tried to work it out, I kept getting stuck.
I had this old Bible story in my head, playing over and over, like a bad song from the radio. I’m probably getting it wrong, but I remember it like this: There was this city of people who were so righteous, they got picked right up off the earth and taken to Heaven. Just like that.
They didn’t even die.
They got to skip dying, the way you pass Go and head directly to Jail if you pull the wrong card in Monopoly.
Translated—that’s the name for what happened to them. I remember because Link was in my Sunday school class, and he said teleported, then transported, and finally transportated.
We were supposed to act real jealous about it, like those people were so lucky to get plucked up and taken into the Lap o’ the Lord.
Like it was a place or something.
I remember coming home and asking my mom about it, because that’s how creeped out I was. I don’t remember what she said, but I decided right then and there that the goal wasn’t to be good. It was to be just good enough.
I didn’t want to risk getting translated, or even teleported.
I wasn’t looking to go live in the Lap o’ the Lord. I was more excited about Little League.
But it seemed like that’s what happened to Amma. She was lapped right up, transported, transportated—all of it.