I were really there.
I moved forward slowly, dreading what I’d see, even as the understanding sank in. The cake would be chocolate, with cream cheese frosting between the layers. The same every year, because it was my favorite. And there it was, printed in blue letters, in my mother’s own curly cake script.
Happy Birthday Tod.
Today I would have turned eighteen.
I waited for the last bus of the evening with three other people, then stepped up through the folding doors when they closed behind the woman in front of me. The bus swayed beneath me as it rolled forward, but I wasn’t jostled, like the other passengers. As if the rules of physics that bound me were a little less precise than they should have been. I was only kind of there, thus only kind of on the bus, and I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was only one deep breath away from falling through the seat and onto the road, where the highway traffic would barrel right through me.
The bus stopped down the street from the hospital, and I didn’t fully relax until my feet kind of hit the concrete and the bus rolled away. Two blocks later, I passed two EMTs unloading a man on a stretcher on my way into the waiting room, wishing like hell I could feel the air-conditioning or smell the antiseptic and bleach.
Levi sat facing the entrance. Waiting for me. “Well?” He stood as I approached, forced to project determination in my bearing, since he couldn’t hear my bold, confident footsteps.
“I’m in.” And I would talk to my mother, even if it got me fired. I hadn’t expected an afterlife, so I wouldn’t be losing much if I died again—for real this time. At least this way she would know the truth.
“I thought you would be.” But Levi’s smile was slow, his thin brows slightly furrowed, and I understood that he was connecting more dots in his head, and he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the picture they formed. “Let’s go make it official.”
I still couldn’t feel the wind.
Levi swore that when I got better at dialing up and down my corporeality, I’d be able to feel and smell things without becoming visible or audible. But that level of competence was obviously going to take more than two days’ worth of practice.
For the moment, I was stuck with an all-or-nothing physicality, and since “nothing” had been deemed good enough for last night’s shift on the nursing home circuit—hopefully my first of many—I figured “all” would work for what I had planned for the morning.
The house looked brighter in the daylight. A little nicer, but no bigger. There were still only two bedrooms and still only two occupants. I was still both dead and homeless, and the previous day spent wandering through town and watching Nash unpack between video games did nothing to make those facts of the afterlife more appealing. But the chance to talk to my mom and set things right made everything else worth it.
Assuming I didn’t give my mother a heart attack.
In the shadow of the front porch roof, out of sight of most of the neighbors, I closed my eyes. I focused on what I should be hearing and feeling. The porch beneath me. The sweltering July heat. The buzz of bees hovering over a flowering vine climbing the porch post.
I thought about what I wanted. Day-to-day interaction in the afterlife is all about intent, Levi had said. Once you’ve gained some control, if you intend to be seen or heard by someone, you will be.
And I damn well intended to be both seen and heard.
Then, suddenly, I could feel it. All of it. Even the sun baking the backs of my calves, the only part of me not shielded by the porch roof. My smile was equal parts relief and triumph as I jogged down the steps, my own footsteps echoing in my ears. I nearly laughed out loud when my finally fully corporeal body cast a long shadow on the grass.
But both my laughter and my confidence died a moment later, when I stood at the door again. No matter how I approached the issue—and I’d thought of nothing else for the past two days—I came up empty. There was just no good way for a dead son to greet his mother almost two weeks after his funeral.
However, when the moment came, my lack of a plan ceased to matter. Fools may rush in, but only cowards run away.
So I knocked. Then I waited, the nervous pounding in my chest a steady reassurance that I’d actually achieved corporeality. That she’d be able to see me. If she ever answered the door.
And finally, the doorknob turned. I swallowed as the door creaked open, and there stood my mother, a sweating glass of soda in one hand. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and a smear of dirt streaked her forehead. Behind her, I saw dozens of moving boxes, most open and half-unpacked.
She blinked up at me, looking just like she had the day I’d died, except for the dark circles under her eyes.
Then she blinked again, and her mouth opened for an unspoken, probably unformed question. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the metal threshold, splattering us both with cold soda and ice cubes I was relieved to be able to feel.
I grinned, trying to hide my nerves. “At this rate, you’re not going to have any good glasses left.”
Her mouth closed, then opened again. “Tod?” she whispered, her voice unsteady. She thought she was seeing things.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me,” I said, ready to catch her if she collapsed. “Please don’t freak out.” But I should have known better—my mom wasn’t the freaking out type.
She reached for me with one trembling hand and cupped my jaw. Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re really here.”
“As of about five minutes ago, yeah.” I shrugged and couldn’t resist a real smile.
Heedless of the broken glass, she threw her arms around me and squeezed me so tight that I’d have been in trouble, if I’d actually needed to breathe. I hugged her back, reassuring her with my hard-won physicality until she finally let go and pulled me over the collateral damage and into the living room.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, the blues in her eyes swirling with a dizzying combination of confusion and wonder. “Is this real? Tell me this is real. Tell me you’re back, somehow, and I haven’t lost what’s left of my mind.”
“It’s real, Mom.” I wanted to stop there, without saying the part that would kill the new light in her eyes. “But I’m not back.”
She frowned, and that light dimmed, but wasn’t truly extinguished. “I don’t understand. You’re alive.”
“Not in the traditional sense of the word.” I sat on the arm of the couch, pleased when the cushion sank beneath my weight. “But I think I’m pulling off a reasonable imitation. Check it out.” I spread my arms, inviting her to test my corporeality. “Pretty solid, right?”
She reached out hesitantly and laid one hand on the center of my chest. “But…your heart’s beating.”
“Nice trick, huh? I’m proud of that one.”
She pushed the front door closed with one hand, unwilling to break eye contact, and I could see her warring with denial and confusion. If she were a human mother, clueless about the non-human and post-death elements of the world until her dead son showed up on her doorstep, she’d probably already be in a straitjacket. “What’s going on, Tod? How are you here? I know of a few possibilities, but none of them are…” She dropped her gaze, and when she met mine again, the blues in her eyes had darkened with fear, or something close to that. “What happened?”
“You might want to sit down.”
“No, I think I’ll stand.”
I almost laughed. She always was stubborn. That’s where Nash got it.
“Fine.” I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face, my initial excitement wilting along with hers. “This would be so much easier if they actually issued black hoods,” I mumbled, still struggling for an