I Woke Up Dead at the Mall Read online

  “I’ll always be with you,” she promised. “One way or another.”

  “But I bet you won’t be here when I wake up,” I thought. But I still wasn’t speaking. I dreamed about her the next night, and the next, and the next. She was my secret, private Dream Mom, cradling me in her arms and singing to me. I looked forward to sleep every night, just so that I could hear her sing “Blackbird” one more time. I had her all to myself. So I let myself speak at long last.

  “Will you come back every night and visit me?” I asked her, fully expecting her to promise that she would.

  “No, sweetheart.” She kissed my forehead and smoothed my hair. “I have to stop this. I have to move on.”

  I went silent once more, locking my arms around her as if I could keep her there forever.

  And then I woke up.

  Everyone we ever knew was at her funeral. Everyone loved my mom. I stood in a corner, mute and miserable. I clutched a folded piece of paper against my heart. Eventually Dad stooped down and spoke softly. “Sarah? What have you got there? Is it something you want to say or maybe sing for your mom? You could do that if you want.”

  Had he been spying on me? The paper held a song that I had written for her. I couldn’t write my own music, but I rewrote the words to a Beatles song. Mom had loved them, and now their music sort of belonged to her. The whole room went silent except for a few quiet sobs. I walked over to the coffin, where a plastic-looking version of my mom was laid out in a pale pink dress. I placed the poem next to her hands, turned, and broke my silence with him.

  “This is your fault. You should have taken better care of her. She shouldn’t have been in that taxi. And now I’m stuck with you.”

  I watched my words pierce him and slice him in two. And I still hate myself for doing that to him.

  He cried and hugged me and said, “You’re right.”

  That night she didn’t appear in my dreams. She never came back again. The Mom part of my life was over. We were disconnected.

  Losing her the second time was even more painful than losing her just once. And I got to have that second round of pain because of the Knowing.

  And just like that, I hated the Knowing. If it couldn’t save Mom, what good was it? All it ever gave me was a stomachache and a broken heart. Was it going to torture me again and again until my own unexpected death came along?

  No.

  It needed to end along with my mother’s life. If it started to rise up, I shook it off, thought of a song, thought of something else, anything else. I was like a left-handed kid learning to write with the right hand. It was hard, but I hung in there and sent it far, far away.

  Okay, so. Fast-forward a bunch of years. Why, there’s Sarah. Doing schoolwork, being polite, watching from the sidelines, and being blurry. Does she have any close friends? A boyfriend? Does she ever play her music in front of anyone? (Don’t waste your life on such stupid questions.)

  She doesn’t magically know things, save lives, have fun, or sing Beatles songs in her dreams with her mom. If she thinks she starts to know something, she pushes it out of her brain and throws it as far as she can. And you know what? That works. That feeling inside her goes quiet. She becomes someone else. It isn’t easy, but she does it. Done.

  All that time, Dad was working, working, working, working, working, working, working.

  Enter Karen. Dad met her at a work conference last year. She was a bit of a Midwestern dork with questionable fashion sense. But very nice. Warm. And a fantastic cook. Her family had made a pile of money in health supplements. She was kinda sorta melting the polite frost that was our father-daughter relationship. Global Warming Karen even invited me to be her bridesmaid after Dad proposed. And I was sort of honored, not to mention happy about the way life was getting better for us.

  Okay, so. Fast-forward to the last day of my life. (If only I had known that it would be the last one.) Dad wore a penguin-friendly tuxedo. Karen wore a traditional wedding gown, which was bright, bright white with pearls, lace, sparkles, and puffs. It looked like the dress that would be chosen by a child who eats too much sugar.

  At the reception everyone talked about new beginnings, and I felt this amazing flame of hope light up in my solar plexus. Maybe this was that Knowing thing—but in a good way. I even contemplated singing at the reception (thanks to an illicit glass of champagne that I’d swiped from the dais). But I restrained myself.

  I danced. Me. Dancing. Wow. Who knew? Everyone was having fun. I thought about Mom, and it felt like she was maybe nearby. And she was happy for us all, I think. So I was happy too.

  And then this happened: someone was watching me. I could feel it, like heat on my skin. I turned to look in the direction of the heat, but all I saw was some guy in black and white, disappearing into the kitchen. Probably some waiter. So what? I just wanted to dance.

  Oh, but I couldn’t. A heavy shadow fell over the day. I started to feel this pain, a sharp-knife, sick-to-my-stomach kind of pain. And I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s good time, so I slipped out of the reception and upstairs to my hotel room. I got a whole lot sicker. It was torture, and I was a prisoner in my own body. So you’ll understand that I felt almost relieved when an oppressive sleep began pushing me down, like I was at the bottom of the ocean. I fell asleep on the bathroom floor.

  And I woke up dead at the mall.

  chapter five

  you’ll never walk alone

  So it turns out that when dead people sleep, they sleep reeeeeeeeeeally deep. That first night at the mall I slept like someone had drugged me, then clubbed me, then made me watch golf on TV.

  It was all great until something ridiculous happened. I had a dream. About Mom. I was breathless with joy. In the dream I was back in my room, at home, just like a living person. Mom was the magic (Dad was right about that), so I felt her presence before I saw or heard her.

  Seeing her made me feel safe and complete. She smiled and I melted a little. She took a breath, ready to speak. I recognized her voice as easily as if we had just spoken yesterday. Mom. Right there, right next to me. Mom. And I kind of stopped breathing. She smiled so sweetly, it tore a hole in my chest. I think I gasped when I tried to start breathing again. I held my arms out to her, just like when I was a little kid, because right then I was. She folded me into her arms. She smelled like soap and honey. I hugged her tight enough to crack some ribs.

  “Sarah,” she said gently. “My little girl. Why did you have to die so young?”

  “I didn’t want to die,” I answered as I started to cry, and it felt as if my face were sparking with fire. “Somebody killed me. Do you know who it was?”

  She smiled at me with the wisdom of the world in her eyes. “I’m much too young to know such things,” she said, rubbing my back like she used to when I was little. “I’m sorry I had to leave you like I did. I’ve missed you so.”

  She hugged me tight, wrapping me in the scent, the feel, the world of her. If only I could stay there.

  “How can I be dreaming?” I sniffled, and she rose and backed away. “Wait,” I called to her. “I’m not supposed to dream. That’s what Alice said.”

  “Who’s Alice?” Mom asked. “Is she dead too?” She kept backing away, sort of fading around the edges.

  “Mom, where are you going? Please don’t leave me! Not again!” I cried. “Please, Mom. Stay? For me?”

  “Do you want to move on?” she asked. I nodded a vigorous yesyesyes, unable to speak.

  “Then don’t tell them you dream.” She faded a little bit more. “Dreams like this one keep you attached to your old life. After I died, I dreamed that I came to see you and sang Beatles songs to you.”

  “Mom, that actually happened. You did come see me. I remember it!” I was shouting now; she was barely visible.

  “The living are always in danger, Sarah. So just let go and…” She was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. Her voice was muffled, hazy.

  “Mom? Come back? Please? I miss you!” I said to
the empty space before me.

  “Hey! Dead girls! Wake up!” A booming voice interrupted my dream.

  Mom was gone. Or the dream of Mom was gone. Wow. The dead aren’t supposed to dream. But I did. Had I just done something wrong? Something illegal? And did it show? Should I hide it? Or was it too late, and I was already busted?

  Now here I was, squinting in the bright lights of the mall at a curvy girl with streaks of orangey blond in her long dark hair. She had to be the roomie Bertha had mentioned.

  “Hiya, stupid new girls. I’m starvin’, and I’m going to the food court without you!” she announced.

  Eyes fully open now, I saw that the main event with her, really, was her outfit. She was dressed like she was going to the Trashy Oscars. She wore diamonds in her ears, on her neck, and on both wrists, and she looked like she meant it. Her dress was a turquoise pastel floral thing with layers of fabric that danced in the air around her. She wobbled on perilously high heels.

  She smiled, sorta kinda posing for us. Obviously she felt pretty. Oh so pretty.

  “Wow,” I said wearily, then pointed to her outfit to add, “That’s a lot of look.”

  She lost her smile, turned on her heels, stumbled a bit, and left.

  “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” she shouted over her shoulder. Her walk in those heels was unstable, and I was worried about her. A little.

  “Food,” said Alice. “The dead have their own food court. We can eat whatever we want. We don’t have to pay, and we can never get fat.”

  That was all she needed to say. We made a mad dash for the food court and a mountain of food that might have killed us, if only we were alive.

  Bertha actually squealed with delight when she saw Alice enter Staples.

  “Ooooh! This is going to be fun!” Bertha exclaimed, hugging Alice, then speaking, then hugging again. “Alice is awake, everyone! Oh, Alice!”

  Alice’s face was tomato red with embarrassment. The curvy girl was still posing and now smiling in the direction of two boys who had just entered the store. One was a lanky guy who was totally and completely bald. He had large, pale-blue moon eyes, set in a sort of pale-pink complexion. He was smiling and carrying a king-size Snickers bar. His face beamed as bright as the sun.

  “Another Snickers bar? You’re so crazy!” The curvy girl giggled in what may have been an attempt to flirt with the bald boy.

  The other guy was pretty tall, with chocolate-brown hair that fell over hazel eyes. He pushed it back. It fell. He pushed it back. It fell. He had a crooked grin, angular features, and sort of amazing shoulders.

  I actually may have flinched when I first saw him. He looked me in the eye for a couple of long moments. And then we both looked away. Sparks. I know.

  This was not like me. At all. When I was alive, I may have found the occasional boy or TV vampire good-looking, but none of them made me flinch or gasp or lose my train of thought. I’d never had this reaction to any guy—and I went to a private school where some of the boys worked as underwear models. They came from serious money, where the families spent generations perfecting the gene pool so that nobody ever got a zit and everybody had amazing abs. They strode the world like Photoshopped colossi with spray tans.

  But this guy looked completely normal. So why was I ridiculously and painfully aware of how much I was blinking?

  “School is in session,” he said in a low voice that only I could hear. He was a side commenter. Just like me. Wow.

  Bertha gestured for us to settle into the hard plastic chairs that she had arranged in a semicircle. So yes. I sat next to him. And he sat next to me. And I managed not to make a fool of myself. Yet.

  “Some of you have been here for a little while, so you know one another. But a few new arrivals have joined us, so let’s all go around and introduce ourselves.” Bertha didn’t wait for an answer but gestured to Alice, who waved shyly.

  “Hello. I’m Alice. I lived in Hell’s Kitchen. Many years ago. I died at my job, I was…” She gulped, flushing red once again. “I was thrown to the ground. I died from a head injury.” She touched the back of her head gently. “I have unfinished business with my murderer…and my parents….” I thought she was going to say more. But the curvy girl spoke next.

  “I’m Lacey. I lived on the Bowery on the Lower East Side. And you wanna know how I died? I got pushed from the top of a building. I flew through the air and landed on the ground. My neck snapped right in two. I died like that!” She snapped her fingers, and I wondered if her snapping neck had sounded like that too. “And I don’t have a ton of unfinished business. I just wanna see the guy who killed me get what’s coming to him.”

  “No guarantees on that,” Alice said, so quietly that she seemed to be talking to herself.

  The bald guy went next. “Harry.” He smiled at us all. He looked young, but his voice was deep, making him sound older. “Upper West Side.” He pointed to his bald head. “Cancer.” He shrugged, as if it were all too obvious.

  Bertha gave him a sideways look. “But, Harry, did you die of cancer?” she asked pointedly.

  Harry nodded, caving in on something. “Right. No. I got killed, just like everybody else,” he conceded. “I spent way too much of my life being sick. It wasn’t fair and it kind of sucked. And that’s my unfinished business.”

  I should have been next, but Bertha skipped over me and called on the guy to my right. The one I was trying not to pay too much attention to.

  “Nick?” she prompted.

  He smiled. “Well, that gives away half my story: I’m Nick.” I let out a little laugh at that. “Are you ready for this?” He looked me in the eye. “Gunshot wound. To the chest.” He held his hands over his heart. “I didn’t stand a chance.”

  He looked at me, through me, and I held my breath.

  “What about you?” he asked me. “How did you end up dead before your time?”

  I answered him. What I mean is, I didn’t answer the group, I just answered him. Nick. With the hazel eyes and the hair that fell over them. And the shoulders.

  “I’m Sarah. I lived in the West Village, and I died from food poisoning.” Ew. As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back. Was everyone (Nick?) picturing me in full-on food poisoning mode? Ew.

  “Sarah,” Bertha spoke softly. “Try again, please.”

  I had no idea what to say. Nick did a comically fake cough as he said the word “murdered.” Bertha scowled at him, which made me like him even more.

  “Okay. Sure. Let me start over. I’m Sarah. Someone must have poisoned me, but I really can’t believe that because, honestly, nobody knew me well enough to want to kill me.”

  That last statement cut too close to my heart and left a catch in my throat. My face was hot. But Bertha kept her smug beam aimed at me.

  Lacey let out a slow whistle. “Maybe you should go to the Comfortable Shoe Shop. I’m betting there’s going to be a lot of walking in your future.”

  Lacey was hard to like.

  chapter six

  get back to where you once belonged

  “You must move on,” Bertha (Captain Obvious) said for the billionth time. “And if you all manage to do so together, you’ll start a whole new life, and you’ll have the chance to meet and maybe even grow up together next time around. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

  Actually that got mixed reviews from me. Just being honest.

  “In a few days you’ll be attending your funerals.” Alice let out a long sigh. Her funeral must have been ages ago. “Except, of course, for you, Alice. Your funeral was…well, it was what it was.” Bertha’s face turned crimson. “I—well—I don’t know what more to say about that.”

  “And how often does that happen?” Nick whispered to me. We smiled at each other, then looked at the floor. Still, I wondered: what had happened at Alice’s funeral?

  “Nick?” Bertha spoke sharply. “Did you have a question?”

  “No. I have a million questions,” Nick replied. “Who made all the food we just at
e? Where did the stuff in the stores come from?”

  Ha. I hadn’t even thought to question any of that. Nick’s mind was so different and intriguing. “Are we ghosts? Are you the one in charge here?” He started to ask more, but Bertha cut him off.

  “Nick. I appreciate your intellectual curiosity,” she said, oh so insincerely. “You only just died today, so I suggest that you pace yourself. There is much to learn, and I’m sorry, but there are some things you simply can’t know. But I can answer this one: no, I’m not in charge. The Boy is.” Nick tried to ask, “What boy? Who’s that?” but Bertha steamrolled over him with words, words, words.

  “Each of you will revisit a day from your life,” she chirpy-chirped. “Take your time making this choice, as this is a big decision! Pick a nice day, but not a day that’s too heartbreakingly wonderful. Remember, you must”—Nick and I looked at each other and mouthed the words with her here—“move on!” (Oops. She saw us and scowled, which made Nick laugh.)

  “This event is known as your Thornton Wilder Day!” Bertha waited to see if we could make the connection. I did. I remembered that scene because I played Townsperson Number Seven when our school did Our Town last year. I did a lot of walking and nodding. Great part. I was brilliant in it.

  Once again Nick was bursting with questions. “Can we change stuff? Can I go back to the day I died and end up not dead?”

  “No! You can’t change anything about the day,” Bertha explained. “You’ll watch yourself, but you won’t be able to interact with yourself or anyone else. You only do this once, so choose well.”

  “I already know what day I’ll choose,” Harry said with a wide grin.

  “Give it some thought anyway!” Bertha urged. I think we were getting on her nerves. “Sarah, you’ll go on your Thornton Wilder Day while the others are at their funerals, so consider your choice. Your final arrangements were a bit delayed due to the autopsy.”