He didn’t need to read Mary Hightower’s Tips for Taps to know that you only need to breathe when you’re talking, or that the only pain you can still feel is pain of the heart, or that memories you don’t hold tightly on to are soon lost. He knew all too well about the memory part. The worst part about it was that no matter how much time passed, you always remembered how many things you’d forgotten.
Today, however, he had learned something new. Today, Lief learned how long Greensouls slept before awaking to their new afterlife. He had started a count on the day they arrived, and as of this morning, it “was 272 days. Nine months.
“Nine months!” Allie yelled. “Are you kidding „,.
“I don’t think he’s the kidding type,” said Nick, who appeared to be actually shivering from the chilliness of the news.
“I was surprised, too,” Lief told them. “I thought you’d never wake up.” He didn’t tell them how every day for nine months he kicked and prodded them, and hit them with sticks hoping it would jar them awake. That was best kept to himself. “Think of it this way,” he said. “It took nine months to get you born, so doesn’t it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?”
“I don’t even remember dreaming,” Nick said, trying hopelessly to loosen his tie.
Now Allie was shaking a bit, too, at this news of her own death.
“We don’t dream,” Lief informed them. “So you never have to worry about nightmares.”
“Why have nightmares,” said Allie, “when you’re in one?” Could all this be true?
Could she really be dead? No. She wasn’t. If she was dead she would have made it to the light at the end of the tunnel. Both of them would have. They were only half-dead.
Nick kept rubbing his face. “This chocolate — I can’t get it off my face. It’s like it’s tattooed there.”
“It is,” Lief said. “It’s how you died.”
“What?”
“It’s just like your clothes,” Lief explained. “It’s a part of you now.”
Nick looked at him like he had just pronounced a life sentence. “You mean to tell me that I’m stuck with a chocolate face, and my father’s ugly necktie until the end of time?”
Lief nodded, but Nick wasn’t ready to believe him. He reached for his tie, and tried to undo it with all his strength. Of course, the knot didn’t give at all.
Then he tried to undo the buttons on his shirt. No luck there, either. Lief laughed, and Nick threw him an unamused gaze.
The more frustrated Nick and Allie became, the harder Lief worked to please them. He brought them to his tree house, hoping it might bring them out their sour mood. Lief had built it himself out of the ghost branches that littered the ground of the dead forest. He showed them how to climb up to the highest platform, and when they got there, he pushed them both off, laughing as they bounced off tree limbs and hit the ground. Then he jumped and did the same, thinking they’d both be laughing hysterically when he got there, but they were not.
began to pace, losing himself in morbid thoughts of doom. “This is bad.
This is really, really bad.”
“I’m sure they’re all okay,” Allie said, and repeated it, as if that would make it so. “I’m sure they are.”
And the freckled boy laughed at them. “The only survivors!” he said. “That’s a good one!” This was no laughing matter. It made both Nick and Allie furious.
“Who are you?” Allie demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Did you see the accident?” Nick added.
“No,” he said, choosing to answer Nick’s question only. “But I heard it. I went up to look.”
“What did you see?”
The kid shrugged. “Lots of stuff.”
“Were the other people in the cars all right?”
The kid turned and kicked a stone, angrily. “Why does it matter? Either they got better, or they got where they were going, and anyway there’s nothing you can do about it, so just forget about it, okay?”
Nick threw his hands up. “This is nuts! Why are we even talking to this kid? We have to get up there and find out what happened!”