Page 10 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
“You’re reading a newspaper.”
“That’s right.”
Annie bounces.
“She wants your attention.”
“I’ve seen her drink.”
“She can use a straw.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Please, Jerry? It’ll only take a—”
“That’s it. I gotta go.” He slaps down his newspaper. Annie hears the big noise he makes pushing his chair from the table.
“Well,” her mother says, unwrapping the straw, “let’s practice so we can show him next time, OK?”
She touches Annie’s soft cheek, and Annie, happy with the attention, swings her hand and knocks over the juice. It spills everywhere. She starts to cry.
“What’d you do to her?” Jerry yells from the hallway.
“Nothing!”
“Don’t sound like nothing.”
Her mother grabs a paper towel and wipes up the juice.
“It’s all right, sweetie,” she whispers to Annie. “Just an accident.”
She kisses Annie on the cheek. As the front door slams, she looks down. “Just an accident,” she repeats. “All gone now.”
The Journey
Normally, when we come out of sleep, we open our eyes and everything resets. The dream world vanishes; the real world takes its place.
But this was not sleep, and what happened next to Annie was unlike any of her previous awakenings. Her eyes never opened, yet she could see quite clearly.
And she was moving.
The ground beneath her feet seemed to carve loose and zoom at tremendous speed, but with no friction, like a glass-enclosed elevator catapulted into space. She sped through colors of every shade, lavender and lemon and avocado green.
She felt no wind, but sheheardwind. It seemed to come towards her in a rising squall, then pull away as if sucked through a tunnel, like a massive inhale and exhale. Oddly,this did not concern her. In fact, Annie felt no worry at all. She felt almost airy, and as pain-free as a child.
Then something shot through her, something so alien she would not have had the words for it. Every piece of her was ill-fitting, as if her arms and legs had lengthened, and her head was on a new neck, and images flashed through her mind that had never been there before: the inside of a home, faces in a classroom, glimpses of the Italian countryside.
Then, just as quickly, she was back in her own consciousness and the colors were shooting by again, turquoise and yellow and salmon and wine red. She tried to find her way back to an idea, something about Paulo—Paulo is hurt? Paulo needs me?—but it felt as if she were swimming upstream against her memories. A balloon. A fire. A crash. A hospital.
“It could be good luck.”
Is Paulo alive?
“We just got married.”
Did I save him?
“See you in a little bit...”
