What Comes After

AFTER

I died on a Saturday in early October, four weeks before my seventeenth birthday, thirteen minutes after I was scheduled to begin the SATs.

Cause of death: trauma to the head.

Further details: unknown.

I’ve been told that some memory loss is normal. I’ve also been told that, contrary to what I’d always understood (perhaps even hoped), death does not equal The End.

The last thing I remember clearly was sitting in my guidance counselor’s office—a full sixteen hours before I bit the dust, according to the sequence of events I’ve been given. I can still see the soft twist of Ms. Crawford’s mouth as she told me there was nothing more she could do. I remember, too, the sinking sense that despite months of valiant effort, I’d hit a dead end. (No pun intended.) As I left the guidance suite and traced my way through Brookline High School’s empty hallways to its inner courtyard’s crush and clamor, I felt more alone than I’d ever been. More helpless. For once, I saw no path out.

I didn’t kill myself, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’ve assured me my wounds—most notably, a massive blow to the back of the head—weren’t self-inflicted. It was most likely an accident. Possibly, an attack.

The rest—the how, the why now, the why me of it—is a bit of a black hole.

I do recall one bit, though. I’m not sure what you’d call it. A memory? Feeling? There’s no sense of time or location. Just a rush of adrenaline, the itch of a shout. Then, a stampede of emotions. First, shock. Then, terror. Now, disappointment, confusion, rage, regret. And finally, joy.

Yup. The last one surprised me too. I thought dying was supposed to be the saddest thing imaginable, but in my final moment—if that’s what this was—I felt all my burdens lift, and for a tiny sliver of a second, I was the happiest human alive.

Or, you know, dead. As it were.

The feeling was extremely fleeting. I opened my eyes and discovered: A ceiling. Spotless, white. Not regulation hospital tile, but far from heavenly. The mattress I lay on was decidedly thin. I blinked a bit, trying to make sense of it. Where was I?

Then, I saw her.

My mother looked like she did the last time I’d seen her, six months ago, April, but makeup-less and more subdued. Her blue eyes widened, setting off an unpleasant stirring in my limbs. (One, two, three, four. Yes, all four still intact.)

“Mari.” Two pale hands reached for me, and the machine beside me let out an unsubtle screech.

Fun fact: Faye Novak, aka “my mother,” kicked the bucket six weeks before me. Walked out in front of a bus, no explanation. I got the news on a swamp-thick morning in late August. My aunt Jenny delivered her ashes a few days later, then sat on the tiny sofa in my one-room apartment, waiting politely for me to cry. She was too late for that. I took the box, tucked it in a dark corner below the sink, offered to make us some coffee.

My mother was gone. Life carried on. For a while anyway.

Except now here she was, my dead mother, sitting on a simple chair pulled tight against my bed, machines bleeping all around, those baby-doll eyes brimming with regret. I felt a sudden, urgent need to flee.

At this point I became aware of the others. Their cries rose from the beds around us, some squeaky, confused, others low with anguish. Faye, meanwhile, just sat there, staring at me, expecting me to do something, say something. When her heart-shaped lips began to quiver, I understood: I might be dead, but my troubles weren’t over, not even close.

“Where the hell are we?” I finally found the courage to ask. “Is this . . . ?”

“No.” She shook her head.

She quickly brought me up to speed on a few details about death that had surprised her too. “Death isn’t the end of things like we thought, baby. It’s not exactly upstairs-downstairs, either, like other folks believed. Or maybe it is for them.” The majority of souls have gone elsewhere, she explained, or perhaps to multiple elsewheres, sorted according to their deeds and beliefs, leaving the rest of us—the nonbelievers and agnostics, the spiritually muddled and decisively secular, plus all those who (like me) never once took seriously the concept of an after—in this in-between place. For us, this next phase is where the real work begins.

“It’s our last chance to get things right,” Faye said, “here, in Paradise Gate.”