Page 22 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
“This isn’t how I pictured heaven,” she said.
“Well,” Sameer said, “you get to pick your eternal setting. On earth, trains haunted me. I never rode one again. But there’s nothing to fear here. So I chose to flip my human existence. Now I ride this train wherever I please.”
Annie looked at him blankly.
“Do you understand?” he said. “This isn’t your heaven, it’s mine.”
The train arrived. Its doors slid open.
“Time to go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Not ‘we,’ Annie. This stage of heaven, for me, is finished. But you have more to learn.”
He rapped the exterior and put a foot on the step.
“Good luck.”
“Wait!” Annie said. “My death. I was trying to save my husband. His name is Paulo. Did he live? Just tell me. Please. Tell me if I saved him.”
The engine roared.
“I can’t,” Sameer said.
Annie looked down.
“But others are coming.”
“Whatothers?” Annie said.
Before he could answer, the train whisked off. The sky turned maroon. Then everything that surrounded Annie was sucked up into the air and spilled back down in a storm of grainy sand.
A vast brown desert surrounded her.
And she was alone.
Annie Makes a Mistake
Her hand is still bandaged from the accident three weeks ago, and her arm is in a sling to keep it elevated. She sits on her bed. There is little else to do. She is not allowed outside, and her mother, for some reason, has disconnected the TV set and cut its cord with scissors.
Annie walks to the window and sees Lorraine in the backyard, smoking. She has papers in her lap, but is staring at the laundry lines of neighboring houses. Sometimes, Annie notices, her mother has a hard time looking at her. Maybe parents want their children to be perfect. Annie studies her left hand, swollen and grotesque. She is not perfect anymore.
She hears something from downstairs. A knocking at the door. Strange. People usually ring the bell. Annie walks down the steps and hears the knocking again, soft, tentative. She turns the knob.
A woman is standing on the porch. She wears a bright red blazer, lip gloss, and thick pancake makeup that makes her skin a single shade.
“Oh, wow,” the woman says. “You’re Annie, right?”
Annie nods.
“How’re you doing, sweetheart?”
“OK,” Annie mumbles.
“We’ve been worried about you.”
“Why?”
