Page 2 of Where Are You Now
Ava climbed into the car and set her laptop bag beside her as she got on the West Side Highway. “I should be there in a little over an hour, but we can chat while I drive.” She put the phone on hands-free, then maneuvered through the jammedstreets, filling in Rachel on the latest before entering Interstate 95.
She merged onto the highway and checked her rearview mirror. She’d managed to pull into the only clog of cars.So much for the highway being decent.
“If I hadn’t been so efficient getting out of the gym, I might have actually had an easier drive,” she said to Rachel.
The lanes behind her were more open. Except… She squinted, her gaze darting from the car ahead of her back to her rearview.
On the other end of the line, Rachel began telling her about getting behind a cement truck this morning that delayed her trip into work. But Ava wasn’t listening anymore. The confusion had already set in, and Ava was busy trying to make sense of her surroundings.
It took a minute for the scene to register: A car weaved in and out of traffic, and then headed straight for her at incredible speed. She put on her blinker to get out of the way, but another car was at her bumper to the left, blocked in, so she couldn’t get over. The entrance ramp was full of cars merging onto the highway, pinning her in her lane.
The speeding vehicle closed in.
He’s not going to slow down. Does he see me?
Rachel was still talking, but Ava’s entire attention was in her rearview mirror as the bolt of blue lightning zoomed right up behind her.
“Holy…”
As if she’d gotten stuck in quicksand, her foot tried and failed to floor it so she could attempt to get out of the way—besides, there was traffic ahead of her as well. Everything moved at both a hundred miles an hour and at a snail’s pace. Through the manic silence, Rachel asked if she was okay, but Ava couldn’t answer, her mind completely clouded with terror.
The car was going to hit her, and if it did, at that speed, she’d never survive.
And then, everything went black.
She had no idea how long she’d been out, but the next thing she experienced was a floating sensation. There was no pain, though, given the impact, she should be in agony. She was separated from the horrifying collision, peacefully gliding.
In the movies, people could look down and see their bodies, but she couldn’t see anything—just darkness. It wasn’t terrifying, though. It was almost like someone lovingly covering her eyes for a surprise. She moved her limbs and sensed they were intact, yet she felt nothing—no car, no shards of glass, not even air. Had she been killed in the crash?
She’d certainly died.
If the car had been going, say, one hundred miles per hour, undoubtedly, she had. And there was no way she’d feel this comfortable and relaxed if she was still in the car.
She widened her eyes, but she couldn’t make them work.
Ava had always assumed she’d arrive in heaven after she took her last breath. She’d imagined it over the years. She’d even marked a verse describing the new heaven in her Bible after her father died: Revelation 21:11–12, where it explained the twelve gleaming gates and the city as pure as transparent glass and wondered if her dad was in a place like that.
Her father had been blue-collar, hardworking, a farmer. While she adored the sound of heaven, she’d wondered what he’d think of such a place. Maybe he’d find a little pond in the corner of that glittering world where he could sit and fish all day the way he used to with Ava.
But there were no streets of gold or family members cheering and welcoming her home the way she’d thought there would be. With the absence of the beauty she’d expected to encounter, she worried that she’d ended up somewhereelse. Especially when she didn’t see her father. They’d been inseparable, and he’d be there waiting.
“Dad?” she called out, but there was no answer.
Instead of the stereotypical light at the end of the tunnel, she was in complete emptiness. But not exactly. Emptiness would imply a place without things inside it. This was more like nothingness. Absence. Not good. Not bad. Was she stuck in some cosmic abyss?
Despite the confusion, she was oddly calm, just sort of walking around aimlessly. It was only her, alone, yet she could almost swear she felt the presence of someone else. But perhaps she was mistaken. Ava was comfortable with being alone. She’d actually come to enjoy the freedom of it over the last eight years, since she and her husband David had split. She never really felt alone. She had her goals and aspirations to keep her company. But here, she didn’t even have that.
Where am I?she wondered again. Stuck somewhere between earth and the afterlife? Had her dad made it to heaven, and she wasn’t good enough to be admitted?
Ava combed back through her life, trying to find the places she could’ve improved. She wasn’tthatbad of a person. While she could’ve spent more of her adult life focusing on her faith, reading the Bible, and she definitely should’ve attended church more, she believed in God and everything she’d been taught in Sunday school about Jesus’s sacrifice for humanity, even though she hadn’t made any of it a priority. Was that what she’d done wrong?
Was her dad so busy enjoying himself he’d decided not to come get her? He’d always been her protector. Why wasn’t he there to greet her? A shot of worry darted through her chest. Had he forgotten her on the other side? She pushed the question out of her mind.
“Hello?” she called.
Was this nothingness her fate? Would she have to hangaround there for eternity? She’d go crazy in the silence. She considered that perhaps she’d blacked out in the accident, and she wasn’t anywhere but her broken car. But she patted herself and felt her body, even though she couldn’t see it. It was there, but it wasn’t. She was fully aware and thinking. Her thought process wasn’t clouded at all. She was completely confident like she always was, apart from the strange feeling that someone else was lurking in the nothingness.
“Jesus? God? Anyone there?”
