All of dead girl so far. ALL OF IT.

Some things don't check out because I'm mostly making this up as I go, some things don't on purpose. Yay. 8D

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I woke up face down in a river of sewage, and that is not a pleasant experience, let me tell you. The fact that I had my face submerged in murky water filled with God-knows-what, however, didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that I could smell it. Underwater.

I floundered around a bit before getting my feet on the slimy ground at standing, wiping the God-knows-what from my eyes. The water was about hip-deep and stagnant. Even though I had just been in the open air, a low cement ceiling was above and damp walls loomed over me. There were a few dim lights overhead and I waded over to a narrow walkway I could make out along the side of the putrid river.

The smell made me want to hurl, but I was extremely confused about where I was and how had I got there and why I could smell underwater, and I had this massive headache, and it felt like ants were gnawing circles in my temples. So I sat down. It was then I realized I was not wearing the paint-stained shorts and a band T I had thrown on that morning, but rather my lucky jeans and a teal button down shirt over a white tank top, which were all somehow dry. I pulled my collar away from my chest to confirm that, yes, my bra had also miraculously changed.

This was all very perplexing.

Playing with fireworks on a construction site had probably not been a good idea. But it was our favorite less-than-legal hangout place, and it was Independence Day at midnight, so we’d done it anyway. I could rationalize that perhaps the ground was unstable, and perhaps the one that went off dangerously close to me had made it collapse. It would make sense that I could then fall through into a sewer, but I couldn’t think of any excuses for the smelling where one should not be able to smell or that sudden wardrobe change. Or way there wasn’t a gaping hole in the ceiling with everyone else yelling down to me.

Mentally grasping for rational explanations for impossible things made my head throb even more, and it felt as though it was steadily getting heavier. I groaned and raised my hands to knead it with the base of my palms. Except my hands instead found something metal and tubular protruding about six inches from either side of my face. I pulled on it gently with one hand. The headache instantly went from bearable to dizzying and the ants gnawed harder. I choked back a scream and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for it to subside. It took a few agonizing moments but was back to normal before I lost it and started whimpering.

I had learned two things from that mistake. One, I had a pipe going through my head. Two, I shouldn’t touch it.

It occurred to me that it didn’t make very much sense that I was still alive, what with the pipe and all. But a lot of things right now didn’t make very much sense, and I decided it was best to push those questions aside until I figured out where I was. I started walking along the edge.

I didn’t know much about sanitary systems, but I assumed that I would eventually find a ladder up to a manhole or something like that. My footsteps made smacking noises as I went along at a casual pace. I wanted to hurry, to break into a run, but I forced my body to at least pretend it was still calm. I focused on my footsteps: right, left, smack, smack.

After about twenty minutes of walking, I was starting to shake with suppressed panic. I hadn’t encountered anything but barren walls, not even a connecting passage or a pipe bringing new waste. The sewer water was still stagnant, unmoving. No matter how hard the hopeful part of me was trying to stifle, the logical piece of my mind insisted that still water meant that there was a good chance there was no exist. There were no pipes moving the sewage along.

Just the one in your head, I thought in mild hysteria. I didn’t know what to make of the pipe. The panic at the idea that I was trapped in a sewer was overpowering the headache and overriding my worry for much else. I was caring less about the fatal injury in my head and more about the fantasy of throwing a super-powered punch at the wall and breaking through to daylight.

I bent over and brushed the knees of my lucky jeans, they way I did when I wore them bowling or to take an important test. Even if I was wearing them inexplicably, I might as well indulge in a calming superstition. Just brushing them didn’t help, though, and I starting manically beating at my knees with my knuckles. A few seconds of this made me feel better, and I continued walking, albeit at a much brisker pace.

After a very long time and two more goes at beating up my knees, I was reduced to trudging along the seemingly endless sewer, shouldering drooping pathetically. I wished I hadn’t asked Sophie to hold on to my cell phone and keys in her purse. Not that I would get reception down here, but I would have at least been able to figure out how long I’d been down here. I decided to take a break.

Careful not to hit my pipe against the wall, I leaned back into it. Dampness pushed through the back of my shirt, but I didn’t mind because, along with my feet, my back was growing sore from so much walking and I wanted to give it a rest. I sat idly wondering silly things, trying to cheer myself up. I wondered about if maybe I could get a deal with drainage company, being in advertisements and talking about how I could use the pipe in my head to clear my sinuses. I wondered if my lucky jeans were just my old shorts in disguise and that’s why they weren’t being so lucky today.

I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard voices. They were far enough away that I could make out the owners in the half-light the weak lights provided, and I scrambled to my feet and ran toward them.

“I’m not sure we can use this one…” As I approached them, I began to make out clear sentences, and four or five dark figures appeared ahead of me.

“Look, another one!” Someone called. It was a boy’s voice, cracking on “another.”

“I love when they just come to us,” a woman murmured, her lips turning up at the corners in a Cheshire cat smile.

I could make out her face then, covered in bold make up to hide newly forming wrinkles. She was wearing a fury stole and a grand, sequined purple dress. She stood in a loose circle with three other people, none of whom seemed to belong to each other. There was a gangly freckled boy who seemed around fourteen, dressed in a tuxedo and baseball cap. If that wasn’t strange enough, the huge, burly man next to him had a full sand-colored beard that went to his chest and appeared to be dressed as a Viking. The only normal looking person in the group was a young black woman, dressed in a fitted University of Georgia T-shirt and denim skirt. She fiddled absentmindedly with gold bangles on her wrist as the circle of strange people assessed me.

I noticed what they had circled around, and I screamed.

It was a little boy, a horrific little boy. He was standing there, blinking at me, confused as I was, but every inch of him seemed to be covered in blood. His right arm was missing from the elbow down, little strings of flesh dangled from it, a huge chunk from his left shoulder was missing, and the front of his thighs were shaved away so that pieces of were visible. A flap of partially removed scalp caused fuzzy black hairs to wave at me as he tilted his head to look me over, dark almond eyes fixating on the pipe through my head. His once-yellow shirt had a picture of a cheerful frog on it, with bubbly Korean script going across the bottom. He was probably six or seven.

When I screamed, the black woman giggled and the Viking rolled his eyes. The woman with the purple dress grinned excitedly.

“Oh, she must really be new!” she cried.

I thought about asking questions like Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital? and Who are you, why are you dressed like that, and why are you in a sewer? However, no one seemed concerned about the terrible injuries, not even the little boy, and the second one seemed awfully rude.

Instead, I asked, “Where am I?”

They all laughed then. All of them excepted the boy, who whined, “Everywhere is itchy,” and scratched the stub of his missing arm. I cringed.

“This girl’s kind of dumb, yeah?” the teenaged boy in the tuxedo said. He reminded me of my brother Mathew, but all rude little freshmen reminded me of Mathew, and anyway you’d never get Mathew in a tux, so I brushed the thought aside.

The black woman smiled and shook her head in the way you would at a kitten’s antics. “Honey, where do you think you are?” she asks.

“Uh… in a sewer?” I tried. Various degrees of condescending amusement appeared on their faces, except the Viking man, who just looked annoyed. So I tried again. “Am I dead?”

“Bingo,” the woman in the purple dress said, grinning manically at me. I smiled nervously back, wondering if she’s been sipping the crazy juice. Then she adds, “Just look at how perfect she is!”

“Hey,” the black woman interjected. “She’s too young for you. If anyone takes her, it’ll be me.”

“What about me?” the teenaged boy protested, scowling at them both. “You hardly ever let me go up.”

The continued arguing like this– I wasn’t really sure what they meant by “taking” me, maybe taking me up out of the sewer?– but I stopped paying attention. I was dead, according to that woman. And that made sense. Sort of. It explained the pipe, and could possibly explain everything else, although I wasn’t too familiar with being dead, so I couldn’t be sure. It certainly explained the poor little boy in front of me, scratching away at his itching wounds.

“Look, she’s the perfect match for me,” the black woman was saying. “Only a few years younger, she looks American–”

It all just seemed so surreal.

“Only a few years older than me, and I bet she’s Canadian–” the teenaged boy interrupted.

I knew I should feel sad, missing my family and friends, but I felt a dreamlike haze wash over me instead. I was dead. I had a pipe in my head. The afterlife was a sewer. It just made so little sense I couldn’t convince myself it wasn’t some kooky hallucination.

“She looks like a Toronto girl,” he continued. “Yeah, Toronto.” The black woman tapped her foot impatiently.

“And she’s a girl,” she finished. “You’re not nearly mature enough to go parading around as a sixteen year old girl.”

Wait, what?

“I’m seventeen,” I muttered. “And I’m from Pennsylvania.”

They ignored me. The woman with the purple dress pursed her lips.

“I speak English perfectly well, you know,” she said. “I lived in London for two years.”

The black woman rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but your accent is some weird, French-British hybrid. No one ever believes you.”

“And Tisha has a Southern accent,” the teenaged boy piped up, pointing at the black woman. None of them had an accent. I almost pointed this out, but then he said, “Even if she says it’s faint, some chick in Philly isn’t going to magically gain one, but me– me, my accent is neutral.” He smiled triumphantly at the two women, as if he had won whatever this argument was about. The Viking watched silently with a peeved scrunch about his thick eyebrows, and the little boy picked at his frayed ears.

“I’m not from Philly,” I said dumbly. Their conversation was making warning bells go off in my head, but they were probably my best bet for getting out of the sewer (If there’s a way out, I thought, panic prickling in my brain again. What if this sewer is the entire afterlife?), so I told myself I was just being paranoid.

They stopped arguing and stared at me, and the little boy suddenly asked, “When are you taking me to my mommy?”

The woman in the purple dress gives him a rueful sort of smile. “Right after we show this nice lady the way out of the sewer,” she said.

“So there’s more to the afterlife?” I asked, hopeful.

“Of course, sweetheart,” the black woman, Tisha, said, bangles jingling as she put her hands on her hips. “It’s just that, for some reason, lots of new arrivals end up down here. Like Min-jun here.” She waves at the little boy, who asks for his mother again.

“So… then how…” I motioned upwards. “How do I get out?”

“Just follow us,” the woman in the purple dress said, Cheshire cat smile back. I felt my feet taking a step back from her, only to have the Viking gripped my arm. His huge hand wrapped all the way around my elbow easily. I tugged away from him, but he held me effortlessly, that same perturbed look on his face. The teenaged boy grabbed my other arm.

“Don’t worry,” he said, smirking at me. “Being dead is great… you could even say, to die for.”

I couldn’t believe he’d tried for a pun that corny, but I also couldn’t believe I was being mugged in an otherworldly sewer. Or kidnapped. Or killed again somehow. How lame would that be?

I struggled against them as hard as I could. I kicked the teenaged boy in the knee. He yelled and I managed to yank my arm from his hands. But know matter how hard I kicked and pulled, the Viking just glared down at me, stoic and utterly unamused. The woman in the purple dress snorted.

“Don’t even try, Pennsylvania,” she advised. “You don’t have a chance against Asgrim here.”

My headache had exploded from the struggle, but I stood tall, glaring at the hateful woman. She just smiled back at me like a playful cat. The teenaged boy reattached himself to my other arm. Tisha was pointedly ignoring me, kneeling next to Min-jun and stroking his bloodstained hair. He seemed about to cry.

The two males frogmarched me down the sewer after the woman, who exaggerated the swing of her hip as she walked. Tisha followed, leading Min-jun by his remaining hand. The blood, which was still oozing out of various injuries, didn’t seem to bother her. Without warning, they stopped, and the Viking gripped both my arms and threw me into the wall.

I hadn’t been expecting it. I screamed and tried to cover my face with my arms before impact– but there was no impact, at least not with the wall. Instead I went right through it, right into blinding daylight. I fell to my hands and knees in grass that seemed too green to be real. I stared down at its unnatural vividness, hand and knees stinging and head begging to let me just lay it down and rest. The woman’s shiny black stilettos appeared in front of me and I forced myself to my feet, ignoring the headache.

“Stupid girl,” she said, clicking her tongue. “You ignored the arch.”

I looked around shakily. I was in a field dotted with small trees and bright pink flowers– unnaturally pink, just like the grass. A high stone wall snaked through the field nearby, identical circular archways present every few hundred feet. While the two men expertly flanked me again, I watched Tisha and Min-jun come through an arch directly behind me, through which I had surely been thrown. But there was no sewer on the other side, just more of the too-vibrant field.

I gaped at the stone arch. The teenaged boy, who wasn’t holding my arm nearly as tightly or uncomfortably as the Viking, chuckled.

“Really? You can’t see it at all?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Even the kid can see it. But I guess he’s too young to know any better, yeah?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept gaping. I knew I should work on getting away from these people, but to where? Could I get the pipe treated at a hospital? Was there any point in having hospitals in the afterlife?

I really wanted to brush the knees of my lucky jeans, but I supposed it wouldn’t matter. And the boy and the Viking had my arms, anyway.

“Come on, we need to hurry,” the woman said, suddenly on alert. Her eyes darted around the field. “There will be more guards around here.”

She lead the way along the wall, her arrogant stride not in the least bothered by her impractical footwear on the soft ground. I was forced to follow, but the teenaged boy paid little attention to me as he and the Viking dragged me along. He was staring at the arches as we passed.

“Are we going to my mommy?” I heard Min-jun ask.

“Of course we are, sweetie,” Tisha answered softly.

The teenaged boy seemed too fascinated by the field on the other side of the wall. It was pretty, and reminded me of some digitally enhanced field a gleeful couple might frolic through, but it wasn’t that interesting.

So I said, “They remind me of Chinese moon gates.”

“What’s that?” the boy asked, not looking at me.

“They’re used in gardens, I think,” I said. I’d done a project on them years ago in middle school. I thought they were pretty. “I think they’re symbolic, or the architecture of them is, or something like that. I don’t really remember details, sorry.”

“Hmm,” he said, not paying attention.

“I’m Juniper,” I said conversationally.

“Yeah, I’m Kevin,” he mumbled, still staring at the wall. After a couple moments, he realized what I was getting at. “Oh! Yeah, I’m Kevin, he’s Asgrim, she’s Madame Lefevre…” He pointed to the Viking on the other side of me and the woman, who was sauntering along in front of us, in turn.

Before he could go on, Madame Lefevre cut in, turning her face to frown disapprovingly at us. “It doesn’t really matter who were are, does it?”

“I guess not,” Kevin answered, looking doubtful as he turned his head back to the wall.

Unfortunately, Who are you, exactly? was going to be my next question. So I asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“Also doesn’t matter,” Madame Lefevre called over her shoulder. “At least not to you.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked quietly, not sure if I wanted to know. I thought of being beaten for someone’s sick pleasure and being used as a guinea pig for freakish science experiments.

Madame Lefevre just laughed harshly and Kevin looked away, guilt written all over his face. I thought of girls kidnapped and sold as slaves and people getting knocked out and waking with missing kidneys. I shuddered and refocused on escape.

It seemed that direct questions weren’t going to get me anywhere. I spent a few silent minutes trying to see what Kevin was seeing and failing. Behind me, Min-jun was chattering happily to Tisha. I wondered if he was in as much danger as I appeared to be. Tisha seemed to be genuinely trying to comfort him, but she was also obviously lying about taking him to his mother, if we were really all dead. I decided to include him in my escape plan.

My escape plan involved going out on a lot of limbs, since I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I thought I had a good idea though, if I went by the logic of a world where a pipe through the head only caused headaches, missing limbs only caused itchiness, and one could walk through walls that were really moon gate arches in a field.

I suddenly dug my heels into the ground and bugged my eyes at the arch we were passing. “What is that?” I cried. I, of course, didn’t see anything but grass and flowers and a tree, but I reasoned everyone else must be seeing something, otherwise Kevin wouldn’t stare. At my shriek, Kevin was startled enough to drop my arm, and Asgrim grunted and pulled me along, trying to keep up with Madame Lefevre, though she just laughed at me.

“Finally starting to see the world, Pennsylvania?” she said. Min-jun commented on my outburst to Tisha, who giggled.

“I don’t understand,” I said because I wasn’t really sure what else to say. I twisted my neck to stare back at the arch as we moved on, hoping I wasn’t being too dramatic.

“It’s just a grocery store, jeez,” Kevin said, reaching for my arm again. I jerked it away and pointed at another arch as we approached. I could still only see the field.

“Where’d the field go?” I asked, my voice pitched high not because I’m freaked out by a grocery store or a sewer or whatever was there (and I hoped it wasn’t the field, otherwise I’d just revealed my folly), but because I was nervous about what I was about to do. Kevin frowned in irritation.

“A canal. They’re probably trying to copy Venice or Amsterdam or something,” he said.

“Control her,” Madame Lefevre hissed. Asgrim tightened his grip on my arm and Kevin tried to take my other one again, but I was sick of this game. I wrenched it away from him.

“Why is there a canal there?” I demanded, half-shouting. I had managed to stop the whole party right in front of the gate with my little show. Min-jun started whimpering at all the racket I was making. “This doesn’t make sense!” I steeled myself for what I was about to do. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

And as Kevin was raising his hands in front of him as if to defend himself from my yelling, I rammed the side of my head into Asgrim’s arm as hard as I could. The pipe dug into his skin, and he bellowed and let go of me. My head was searing, and I was seeing black dots, but an adrenaline rush kept me afloat enough to spin around and for my foot to meet the Viking’s crotch. He bellowed again and dropped to his knees.

Madame Lefevre was screaming for everyone to control me, standing several feet away from us and shaking her fists. Min-jun started crying. Asgrim stretched an arm toward me, his other one bleeding from the pipe and cradling his injured privates. I stumbled away from him and tried to make a leap for Min-jun, but Kevin tackled me from behind. I wrestled with him for a few moments, Madame Lefevre still screaming in the background and not moving herself. Asgrim huddled over himself several yards away, looking epically pissed.

Kevin let go of my hair when I jammed my elbow in his neck. He spluttered, momentarily unable to breathe, and I jumped up, grass stained and panting. My head throbbed and my peripheral vision was blurry, but I spotted Min-jun cowering behind Tisha. She was glowering at me, gaze hard.

Our eyes locked, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get by her. Even if I did, Min-jun would refuse to go with me, and in the time I’d lost getting around Tisha, someone else would have gotten up to stop me.

Feeling terrible, I turned on my heel and sprinted toward the arch. Asgrim managed to get to his feet and lumber after me, and I dove through. I couldn’t run anymore– either I’d land in the canal and float to safety, or there’d be people to help me, or I’d be caught and dragged away.

But as I gracelessly thudded to the ground, I saw nothing like what Kevin had described. I was still in the field, looking up at the tree I’d seen through the arch. I sat up and turned, expecting to see Asgrim lunging toward me, Madame Lefevre urging him on and Kevin close behind. But there was no Asgrim chasing after me, just the other four staring at the arch.

I gulped and scooted back, knowing Madame Lefevre would send Kevin or Tisha after me. They didn’t seem to notice me.

“Where’d she go?” Kevin asked, gawking at me, or at least the general area I was occupying. I sat there, staring back, but he didn’t seem to see me.

Madame Lefevre tugged at her dark curly hair in frustration, saying, “How could she have learned to manipulate the gates so adeptly? She’s new!”

I had no idea what this meant, but evidently no one could see me. I held my breath, wondering if they’d notice if me if I moved. Then Asgrim reappeared under the arch, his back toward me and heading toward Madame Lefevre as if he’d just walked through from my side.

“Did you see any sign of her?” Madame Lefevre asked, her eyes narrow and her painted lips in a neat little frown. Asgrim shook his head.

“We all saw her disappear,” Tisha spoke up. “She must have switched it right at the last moment, and we didn’t catch it. Classic escape strategy.”

“She couldn’t even see them at first, though,” Kevin said, kicking at the grass.

“She must be cleverer than we thought,” Madame Lefevre said, glaring intently at the arch. Even though I knew she couldn’t see me, her eyes seemed to be searching for me, and I kept as still as I possibly could. I was still holding my breath and my lungs weren’t complaining at all. Apparently dead people don’t need things like oxygen or brain matter displaced by pipes.

“I guess that whole dumb blonde routine was just an act, huh?” Kevin said.

I couldn’t help but feel pleased that they all thought I had outwitted them so brilliantly. In actuality, I thought for sure that I’d end up in plain view of them, but at least in a different place. My plan had been just to get through an arch and to pray that something on the other side could help me– a place to hide, some people to scare them off. By sheer dumb luck I had ended up exactly where they couldn’t see me. Mentally, I thanked my lucky jeans.

They spent a few moments discussing where to go next, an argument I couldn’t follow because I was unfamiliar with all the places they were rapidly listing off. I slowly curled my hands into fists, not wanting to move too much until they had gone.

“What about my mommy?” Min-jun asked, loud and clear.

“We’re taking you to her, it’ll just take some time,” Tisha replied kindly.

“Oh, shut up,” Madame Lefevre snapped. “We obviously can’t use him. He’s too far gone and too young.”

Tisha shoved the boy behind her protectively. “We should find him a mom,” she said. “Or at least someone to take care of him.”

Kevin groaned and muttered something about soft spots and little kids. Madame Lefevre took a threatening step toward Tisha and Min-jun.

“This is about that little Paraguayan girl, isn’t it,” she said, her face twisting up in a cruel smirk. “I left her in the desert and you couldn’t find her. She was useless, and so is that like brat.” She pointed a bony finger and him, and Min-jun winced.

Tisha held her ground and stared coolly back at the older woman. “I didn’t agree with you then and I don’t agree with you now,” she said. “Asgrim will back me up. He helped me look for little Rosita.”

Madame Lefevre’s smirk shrank, and she looked over at the looming Viking. He just shrugged, neither confirming or denying Tisha’s words.

“Why don’t we just take him to an orphanage?” Kevin asked impatiently. “There’s one in that town near the swamp. The swamp’s full of newbies– we might as well go over there and–”

“That place is for German kids,” Tisha said, squaring her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest. “He should be somewhere where he can get familiar food and hear familiar stories, not schnitzel and the Brothers Grim. And I’d rather him go straight to a real family.”

“Fine,” said Madame Lefevre, crossing her own arms. “You go find him a family, and we’ll stake out the swamp. We’ll give you three days. And if we find anyone while you’re gone, we’re not saving them for you.”

Tisha nodded and took up Min-jun’s hand. “C’mon, sweetie, I’m going to take you to your mommy.” She lead him away, out of my line of vision. Madame Lefevre said some very rude things after her and marched away in the opposite direction. Kevin and Asgrim followed.

I finally took a gulp of air. I didn’t need it, but not breathing for several minutes felt very strange, stranger than smelling sewage underwater. I very slowly got to my feet and, when no one jumped out at me, I starting walking.

At first I followed the wall. I went back and forth through the arches, hoping I’d end up on a street or that grocery store. But I could only see the field, and that’s where I ended up whenever I passed through. So I walked away from the wall, heading toward some pleasant looking hills on the horizon. I figured if there was nothing interesting over there, I could always get back to the wall by walking with the hills to my back.

After what seemed to me to be about an hour of walking, the hills didn’t seem closer at all, and I took a break by laying down in the shade of one of the trees dotted sporadically throughout the field. They all looked almost exactly the same: not too tall, dark ovular leaves, and rough pinstripe bark. The only difference was that they had different types of fruit growing from them and littering the ground around them. This one had pears, and the scent was heavy around me.

I wondered why there were no animals around if there was so much food. Was this place only for dead humans? Why no ghostly insects swarming around me and the rotting fruit in the grass?

I was glad that Min-jun would be okay. I was glad I hadn’t taken him with me, too. Unlike Tisha, I wouldn’t have known where to take him. I would have just had him follow me around and block out his whining for his mother, the way I did with my youngest brother Chris.

I felt stab of guilt in my chest. Up and until now, I hadn’t even considered my family, what it would do to them when they found out I was dead, when they found out I had died messing around with fireworks smuggled in from another county. I had been so stupid and selfish, especially since setting them off in partially constructed minimall had been my idea. I also worried about my friends, particularly the ones who had been with me. I didn’t want them to blame themselves.

I imagined waking up and finding out this was all a dream. I imagined telling Logan, who had always been bigger than me even if he was a year younger and liked to wrestle me for stupid things like taking the first shower or the last piece of cake, that I had beat up a Viking. I imagined telling Mathew about having a pipe through my head and listen to him snicker about it over dinner. I imagined telling Chris about Min-jun, then I imagined Chris as Min-jun, and I sat bolt upright.

I told myself I should just be happy they weren’t dead and covered in horrible injuries. I knew they would be devastated, but that would be because they loved me, even when I was gone. They were strong; they could learn to live without me. I was strong too, and I couldn’t just sit around moping.

I got up and, on the tips of my toes, I picked a pear. I took a bite and savored the taste. It was the sweetest, most savory pear I had ever had. I finished it quickly, dropping the core and picked another one. I ate this one more slowly as I continued toward the distant hills.

As I chewed, I realized my headache was fading. It had gone from painful to an annoyance I could easily ignore.

I wondered if, as a dead person, I would get properly tired. I had gotten sore feet from walking, but I had yet to feel real weariness– no sleepy yawns, no shutting down of the mind, no heavy limbs commanding me to lay down and take a break. I wondered if there was even a night here. The sun hadn’t moved through the sky at all.

My last question was quickly answered a few minutes later, when the sun disappeared just as if someone had flicked a light switch. I blinked, and suddenly there was a full moon and thousands of twinkling stars overhead.

I decided to keep going, since I still wasn’t feeling tired and the sky was definitely bright enough that I took see well enough. But the moon and the stars were so spectacular I quickly changed my mind and laid down right where I stood to stargaze. I had lived in a crowded little subdivision all my life, and light pollution had never allowed so many stars to shine through as here.

The stars were so numerous and packed together, I imagined the black sky choking on them. But I knew that even though they seemed to close together to me, they were all impossibly far apart. Yet they burned so strongly their light could reach each other, light-years away.

“Burn so strongly,” I murmured to myself. I would be strong, and I would burn brightly, and even if it took years to reach them, everyone would be able to feel my love a universe away.

My moment of serenity was ruined when someone answered, “You don’t look burned.”

I started and rolled away from the voice, pushing myself up onto my knees as quickly as I could. I wasn’t going to let myself get captured again.

It was a boy, probably about my age. He was squatted near were I had been lying, head inclined as he too looked up at the stars. Unlike the group I had met earlier, he looked completely normal. A T-shirt, dark jeans, and a digital watch that was obviously wrong, because it said 3:00 p.m. He had lightly tanned skin and light brown hair that did an interesting series of waves and flips against his scalp.

“I’m sorry, did I frighten you?” He asked softly, carefully, as if I might bolt away like a spooked horse. I narrowed my eyes at him, sizing him up. I would be less riled by his condescending tone if he didn’t happen to have a very nice face and pretty hazel eyes, because the stupid teenaged girl in me cared about his opinion of me just that much more.

“A ‘Why hello there, my name is so-and-so,’ would have been nicer,” I told him snidely, “but no, you didn’t frighten me.”

He chuckled. “So you just jumped out of your skin because you wanted to, then?”

I repressed a sneer and instead coolly raised my eyebrows. Well, I hoped it was coolly. “Just surprised,” I said. “I haven’t seen a hint of anyone around here. Except for of course the Viking I had to fight off.” I decided not to mention that I had done so completely underhandedly.

The boy blinked at me, startled. “You did what?”

I ran my hand through my hair, which was difficult because there was a pipe in the way. “Some shady people were trying to drag me off to God-knows-where, and I had to escape.” I raised my chin and let my lower jaw jut out, an expression that all my brothers knew meant “I can and will kick your scrawny little butt.”

Instead of being intimidated and backing off, the boy just looked horrified. He reached for me, saying, “Oh, Juniper, I’m so sorry, I should have gotten here earlier–”

I smacked his hand away and stood, glaring down at him. “Who are you and how do you know my name?” I demanded.

He stood too, but he kept his distance. “Do you want the official spiel, or just a summary?” he asked.

I scowled. I was so sick of this, of having people yammer on in front of me while I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.

“Whatever will explain this better,” I said, louder than I had intended. “And you better have a good explanation.” Because this complete stranger just appearing and knowing my name was pretty creepy.

“Hm,” he said, putting his fingers to his chin in a thoughtful manner. “The official spiel is pretty good, but my version might have more information, though a bit unorganized…”

I felt a tick go in my eye. “Look, I’m new at being dead, I’m apparently not seeing what I’m supposed to be seeing, some weird people tried to capture me, and I have a freaking pipe in my head! I’d like it if you just hurried up and told me who you are.”

“My name is Mariano,” he said flatly. I glared at him, waiting for more. “I’m your peer advisor.”

Well, that was about the last thing I expected. “What?” I said blankly.

“Your peer advisor,” he repeated brightly, as if that might clear it up.

“So, you…” my mind reeled and I forgot I was angry with him. “I’m dead,” I said. He nodded. “You’re dead.” He nodded again. “You’re going to advise me on how to be dead?”

He laughed good naturedly. “Yeah, pretty much. Too many newbies go wondering around getting into trouble, so the higher ups implemented a program to help them out.”

So, so many questions. “The underworld has a system of management? Is there like, a Hades running the place?”

He laughed again. Apparently my ignorance was hilarious.

“No, no Hades. Although the official name of this place is Elysian Fields Four– every once in a while someone thinks it’s clever to make one. I think there are twenty-six up and running right now.”

I blinked, digesting this. “So I suppose there’s also six or seven Valhallas?” I asked, thinking of Asgrim.

Mariano actually groaned, though still managing to keep a grin on his face. “Try seven hundred and forty two.” I stared and he laughed yet again. “Yeah, they’re much easier to maintain. Elysian Fields keep getting built over.”

This actually made sense in the context of everything else, so I decided to move on. “Then who are the higher ups?” I asked.

Mariano looked back up at the stars as he answered. “There’s no official government, but there are several huge organizations that people pretty much respect as authorities. They help set up orphanages for kids who die without their parents, help set up places like this one, replica cities, new cities. They also train guards to keep peace.”

His face turned grave and looked back at me. “Your friends from earlier are an excellent example of why people support the guards.”

I swallowed. So I really had been in peril. “What did they want?” I asked, remembering all my horrible theories about them. Mariano’s face set into a deep frown.

“You’ve noticed you’re not too badly banged up, right?” he said. I reached up and very gingerly touched my pipe. Little tendrils of pain went across my temples.

“I don’t see how this isn’t serious, but okay,” I said. Mariano shook his head.

“No, it’s really not,” he replied. “No brains and blood oozing out, the rest of your head is fine– it’s a perfectly tame wound. Your living head is probably salvageable.”

“Uh, alright,” I said. “I don’t think I’m following you. I don’t understand how a pipe through the head is ‘salvageable.’”

“I mean your actual body probably doesn’t really have a pipe through its head,” he explained. “Whatever you have down here is just your mind’s explanation of what happened. Sometimes you know how you died, and so whatever you’re like down here is spot on. And other times you’re not really sure, so you get something ridiculous like a pipe through the head.”

I chew my lip as I processed this. Kind of weird, but I thought I understood it. I suddenly thought of my lucky jeans. “Is that why my clothes changed?” I asked, looking down at myself.

He smiled, the cloud lifting from his face. “You catch on quick. Yes, when you get down here, your mind has to put you back together. When it asks for clothes, you don’t always respond with what you were wearing beforehand. For whatever reason, you mind decided on the outfit you’re wearing now.” After a beat he added, “Just be glad you grew up with mirrors– you know pretty well what you look like. Some people get down here and mess their entire face up.”

I almost laughed, but then I realized how sad that actually was. “You still haven’t told me what those people wanted,” I said.

The dark look on his face was back. “If the body’s still in tact, there’s still a way to get back to it,” he said in such an ominous tone that it sent chills up my spine.

“They wanted to…” Suddenly their conversations made much more sense. “They wanted to come back. As me.”

He nodded.

I still had what seemed like hundreds of more questions. “But why–”

“I think we should find somewhere better to have a nice, looong conversation,” he interrupted, a cheery grin back on his face, obviously trying to change the subject. I mashed my lips into a thin line.

“Why not here?” I asked.

“Oh, you know,” he said vaguely, eyes darting to the side like he was worried about something.

“No,” I said. “If your job is to explain things, explain them now.”

“Do you want to get rid of that pipe?” It was a good distraction technique. The train of questions parading through my mind came to a halt.

“You can do that?”

He smirked, arrogant. “Of course. I’ll just pull it out–”

He reached for it and I backed away defensively. He cocked his head in question.

“That’s going to hurt like nobody’s business,” I explained. He shrugged.

“Then keep it,” he said. I frowned. The pipe was annoying, and even a slight touch boosted my headache, which was still there, though subsided.

“Will my headache go away?” I asked, wondering if I could stay conscious while he yanked the pipe out. He eyed the pipe in a calculating manner.

“Most likely,” he said finally. “I’ll do it fast, like ripping a band aid off.”

I took a deep breath and weighed my options. I wasn’t sure I could trust this boy, but he was being infinitely more helpful than Madame Lefevre and her crowd. And I certainly didn’t want to put up with a headache for the rest of eternity.

“Let’s get to a town or something first,” I said decisively. If he turned out to be a creep and tried to take advantage of me while I was blinded with pain, at least there would be people nearby. And if we went by a hospital or clinic, well, I’d just get my head checked out there. “And I’d like to see some proof you are who you say you are,” I added as an afterthought.

“Fair enough,” he said. He produced a wallet from his back pocket and handed me a laminated card. It a picture of him smiling closed mouth at the camera, and confirmed that he was a peer advisor working for something called “COMPANY NAME GOES HERE.” It had a fancy, semi translucent logo printed across the text and part of his face. If he was a conartist, he was pretty good.

“Okay,” I said, returning the card. I would play along with him for now. “How do we get out of here?” I hoped he wouldn’t take me back to the wall of arches because I didn’t think I could use them as an exit.

“Follow me,” he said, turning and heading toward the hills I had been aiming for in the first place. As we walked, he explained that the hills had doors in them going to all sorts of places. I guessed it worked just like the arches, and I filled with dread that these too would not walk for me.

It should have been romantic, walking under the starlight with a cute boy. The field was pretty, he was pretty, and apparently having a pipe in my head wasn’t nearly as terrible as I thought it was. But I could barely pay attention to him as he blabbered on about his last advisee, some college guy form Cairo who wouldn’t take Mariano seriously because he was younger.

“Although he kept saying he was so impressed with my Arabic,” he was saying, doing an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Wouldn’t listen when I said he was just perceiving it as Arabic. That’s how it works here, you have to listen really hard to hear what anyone’s really saying– I could switch to Spanish right now and you wouldn’t even notice.”

I nodded to show I was listening, but I was worrying about my “advisor.” If this had been home, I would probably have trusted him in a heartbeat. But I had just been attacked by the strangest people, and I had no idea how to even tell who I could trust. At the same time, he seemed friendly.

“Before him, though, I had this Russian girl who drowned in her swimsuit, and she wouldn’t take the charity clothes we offered…”

I smiled weakly at him. “You couldn’t just take her to a store?”

He chuckled. “Well, you have to learn how to barter, not much in the way of money here…” And he launched into a tirade of exchange rates, what you could get for a nice shirt, what you could get for jewelry, for fruit.

Then he started telling me a Chinese man he once knew, who started with a peach and ended with the largest house in a famous Shang Hai replica city, right between the palaces of two old emperors.

“He was great at talking down prices, that Mr. Wu. Did a fairly good job of ripping me off.”

I pretended to care about Mr. Wu and asked if he shared his huge house with anyone. Mariano beamed a started listing off all sorts of people who had rented rooms from Mr. Wu, even given me biographies of most of them. I was getting the impression Mariano talked too much. Perhaps he was one of those people who couldn’t stand silence and so his rambling was an attempt to make up for my lack of conversational prowess.

“You know what, Mariano?” I said.

“What?” he asked, turning to me and flashing me a dazzling smile, looking truly happy to be talking to me. My inner thirteen year old squealed, and I kindly told her to shut her face.

“You’ve told me about so many interesting people,” I replied, “but you haven’t said one thing about yourself.”

His smiled stayed in place, but it gained the feeling of being forced, fake. My inner thirteen year old pouted.

“Oh look, we’re almost there,” he said, pointing ahead. “I swear, whoever designed this place had no depth perception…”

I grinned at that. He was right; the hills hadn’t seemed that far away at all before, but it had taken us a ridiculous amount of time to get this far. Now we could see the doors he had told me about– they were wood, painted blue, and had gold Roman numerals pinned to them. The hills looked manmade, all neat humps in the ground and evenly spaced. Each one had four doors ringing it.

“Welcome to Four Door Hills, where the names are even less creative than Elysian Fields,” Mariano joked.

“Okay,” I said. “Which one?”

“I think you’ll like number ten…” Mariano answered, leading me around hill after hill, examining the doors. Apparently we had come in on the wrong side of them, because the closest one read XXXVII.

I imagined that when we got to door ten, we would open it up to find a whole other world inside, liking going through a wardrobe and coming out in Narnia. Or I would find a dismal, tiny cave in the hill or a wall of packed dirt while Mariano walked through into his own little world and I was stuck. I focused on Narnia: a friendly forest with trees that could spy on you, talking animals everywhere. That’s what I would see, I told myself.

Mariano stopped so quickly I almost bumped into him.

“Would you like to do the honors, milady?” He asked, half bowing and gesturing grandly at a door marked with an X. “Or shall I be a proper gentleman and hold the door for you?”

A placed my hand over my heart and mocked offensive. “I dare say I can open a door myself, good sir.” He grinned teasingly at me and took a step back so I could open the door. I turned to gold a knob and flung it open to find the exact forest I’d been imagining as Narnia on the other side. It was daylight there, and suddenly the moonlight hills seemed much darker.

“Huh,” Mariano said, furrowing his eyebrows. He looked as bewildered as I felt. “You did something,” he said. I glared at him– how was this my fault? “I don’t think you meant to, but you did.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and I started preparing myself to tell him off. But then he said, “What were you thinking about when you opened the door?”

Oh.

“Narnia,” I admitted. “Specifically, Narnian forests.”

He looked completely dismayed for a moment, but then a smile crept back onto his face and he let out a single laugh. “You try to take a girl to Paris, and she switches it out for children’s story.”

I shrugged and said, “Paris is overrated anyway.” Not that I had ever been.

“Try this one, then,” Mariano said, motioning to door XII. “Victorian London with indoor plumbing and tropical beaches.”

I opened it, and there was the forest.

“Oh, you’re stubborn,” Mariano said, slightly amused. “Maybe you should let me try.” Smirking, he went around to door IX and threw it open. “Tada!” He announced, proud of himself and looking over to me, expecting something more that my annoyed face.

“It’s just the same forest,” I said. His face fell.

“It’s El Dorado,” he said faintly. “You know, legendary city of gold?”

“I still see Narnia.” It was the arches all over again.

Mariano groaned. “Juniper, you locked all the hills on Narnia for yourself.”

I felt extremely disappointed that I could not go visit Victorian London with indoor plumbing and tropical beaches. “Am I broken?” I asked, staring dejectedly at what should have been an ancient, golden city.

The teasing look returned to Mariano’s face, his eyes twinkling at me like the stars above, but much more mischievous.

“Yep, this has never absolutely happened before,” he said, waltzing around me back to door X. “No one has ever died before with quite this problem.”

I knew he was trying to be funny, but it wasn’t helping. “No, really,” I said. “This happened before. What’s going on?”

“Weeell,” Mariano said, staring through door X as if trees were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Any gate– those are doors like this, that don’t quite make sense– any gate can be switched. They’re automatically set on one place, like Paris, so that navigation isn’t too much of a hassle, but if you really concentrate you can switch where it goes, since the construction of anything here relies on people’s mental abilities.”

I was beginning to think I should ditch the normal way I thought about anything and switch to that state of mind you have to use to understand a fantasy or sci-fi movie.

“So, like…” My mind grasped for a good analogy. “A train switching tracks.”

“Hmm, I guess.” Mariano shrugged, then went on. “Some people– usually newly deads– are so set on seeing everything the way they think it should be, their mind sets them on whatever they think should logically be on the other side of the gate.” He frowned thoughtfully at the forest. “Usually here, they’d just see the inside of the hill… I don’t know what you did.” He put the emphasis on you as if I were doing this on purpose.

I laughed nervously. “Actually, that’s pretty much what just happened.”

He raised his eyebrows incredulously at me. “You think Narnia is located inside hills?”

“Shut up,” I mumbled, blushing. He turned back toward the door.

“Well, might as well,” he said and grabbed my hand. Laughing at my startled expression, he ran through the door, dragging me along. “Maybe we’ll met Aslan!” he called.

After running and dodging around trees for a few minutes, I discovered that while I didn’t strictly need to breathe, when I did bother with my lungs, they worked exactly like they had when I was alive.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I managed to get out between heavy pants.

“Nope!” he answered, grinning like a lunatic. I stopped running, tugging at his arm so he stopped too. “What?” he asked, dropping my hand. He was breathing just as heavily as I was, but aside from that he seemed utterly affected by our run through the forest. I contrast, I was sure I had several leaves in my hair and a rather frazzled expression.

“Running makes my headache worse,” I explained, rubbing a spot right in front of the pipe.

“Oh,” he said, concern filling his eyes. “I can take the pipe out; that should help.”

I stared him in the eyes for a few seconds, and he looked genuinely worried.

“Okay,” I consented. “Don’t freak out when I scream.” I smiled but didn’t mean it. I was terrified.

“Alright, how should me do this?” Mariano said more to himself than to me. He spotted a moss covered boulder nearby at wave toward it. “Sit there,” he commanded.

I did. I sat primly, right of the edge and with my hands clasping my knees so I could rub them for good luck. If Mariano noticed me massaging my knees, he didn’t say anything. He came around to stand a little behind and to the right of me.

“I’m going to hold your head and then pull this way, okay?” he said. “Try not to move.”

I heard the crunch of his boot as he put his leg up on the boulder behind me. His warm, firm arm wrapped around the top of my head, his hand against my forehead in a rather uncomfortable hold. He pulled my head back into his shoulder.

“Don’t squeeze so tight,” I said with a grimace.

He didn’t loosen up. He placed his free hand on the pipe, and I hissed in pain. He whispered, “Like a band aid.”

The world went black and I could hear horribly, deafening screaming in my ears. I wanted some nice, poetic words for the intensity of the pain ripping through my skull, but all I could think was It’s like childbirth, but from my head.

“What?” A voice asked.

Colors blurred around me as my vision gradually returned. Belatedly, I realized the screaming I’d heard had been my own. Mariano’s face appeared; his hands were on my shoulders, holding me up, and his hazel eyes were searching my face with a peculiar look in them.

“Childbirth from your head?” He asked in that teasing tone that was steadily becoming quite infuriating.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, leaning away from him and scooting back on the boulder. I spied a rusty pipe abandoned on the ground a foot or two away. Mariano bent over and picked it up.

“I guess it makes sense,” he mused. He tossed the pipe high in the air, and it twirled a few times before he caught it with his other hand. “Childbirth is supposed to be one of the most painful things a woman can go through.”

“My mom had four kids and never complained,” I said, my fingers roaming the sides of my head. “What the hell?”

I’m not big on swearing, but those were the only words to express my befuddlement. On either side of my head was a huge, gaping hole. It didn’t hurt to touch, so I prodded at the insides. The walls of the hole were squishy and full of bumps, but not slimy or in any danger of falling apart. The texture reminded me the rubber arch supports I had to use. Interesting.

The teasing look on Mariano’s face quickly turned to horrified disgust. “Don’t do that!” he yelled, recoiling from me as if the very thought of being near me while I explored the hole in my head was too repulsive to stand.

“What do I do about this?” I asked, sticking my whole hand in to confirm the hole went all the way through and that it was as huge as I feared. “I can’t just go around with a hole in my head!” Although, I realized, the headache was gone.

Mariano shuddered and turned away, dropping the pipe. “There’s nothing you really can do,” he said. “Look, apples!”

He scampered over to a tree as if hoping I’d drop the entire subject. I removed my hands from my head and pushed myself off the boulder.

“But I don’t want a hole in my head!” I called after him.

“The best thing about the afterlife,” Mariano said, ignoring me, “is that the fruit’s always ripe.”

“Can I go to a hospital or– or something like that?” I asked desperately. I didn’t want to look like I’d been sloppily lobotomized for all of eternity.

Mariano continued ignoring me. He jumped and caught hold of a sturdy branch, pulling himself upward into the full canopy. I stormed over to the tree.

“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” I said, pointing accusingly at him. He looked down at me from his position on the tree branch.

“Well, we won’t starve,” he said, picking an apple and tossing it to me. I caught it with both hands. It was yellow with little flecks of green, and it had a squishy bruise right where my left thumb was.

“That’s not the most pressing issue,” I fumed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have a hole through my head.” I stuck my arm through it to prove my point. My hand waved up at him from the right side of my head.

“Stop that,” he said, wincing. “Don’t play with yourself in public.” And he dropped a few more apples to the ground. He then did an impressive leap from the branch and landed smartly next to me. I leaned over to whap his shoulder with the hand through my head, which was quite difficult and I only managed to graze his sleeve. My point got across though, and his face did an interesting grimace where one side went up and the other side went down.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “So you bring new meaning to ‘in one ear and out the other.’” I quirked an eyebrow at him and removed the offending arm. I didn’t even have most of my ears left. At least he’d pulled the pipe out.

I took a bite of the apple and chewed with noisy defiance at him. He watched me imploringly. When I swallowed, I started on my rant.

“First of all,” I said. “We’re not in public; you’re just squeamish.” His eyes darted over the right side of my head and he flinched as if reliving terrible memories. “Second, both you and I know starving isn’t an issue. We’re not going to get an deader than we already are. And finally, I really do think treating a ginormous hole in the head is important– what if something got stuck in there? What if I got it all cut up and got an infection? Then it’d have pus and blood all over the place.”

I paused to take a breath.

“Wait,” I said, realizing something. “Is starving an issue?”

Mariano didn’t answer though, as at the word “pus” he’d turned a pale shade of green and looked as if he was trying very hard not to vomit. Satisfied I’d made my point, I went over to the pipe and picked it up, thinking it would be a souvenir. Or a weapon, in case I ran into Asgrim again.

I swung it over my shoulder and asked, “Where to?”

It took Mariano a few moments to clear the sick look off his face. He cleared his throat with a tad too much drama. “The hole will heal by itself eventually, just keep it clean.” His eyes did a wobbly sort of thing, probably imagining me cleaning out the hole. “Everyone goes back to normal eventually. You’ll notice only newbies have missing legs and things.”

“Okay,” I said. “No hospital, then. So where to?”

He flashed his teeth at me. “This is Narnia, right? We just have to find the wardrobe.”

Mariano gathered up the apples and shoved them in his pockets. They all fit without leaving a lump, so I guessed he had some sort of magical dead people pants. He then led me confidently around trees, though I was sure he didn’t know where we were going anymore than I did. He told me about all sorts of strange natural parks that existed in the afterlife.

“I don’t understand the appeal of flowers that smell like sugar cookies,” I said when he’d told me about Baker’s Park, made by someone named John Baker.

“It’s about the same as scented candles,” he answered.

“Could you eat the flowers?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, but that’s a good idea. If you ever learn how to build, you should look into that.”

“Build?” I asked. He nodded.

“Creating things from scratch. I told you you recreated yourself with your mind, right? It’s the same concept, but infinitely more difficult. Some people have been practicing for centuries and still can’t get it.”

I considered all the silly fantasies I could bring to life: I WILL COME BACK TO THEE, EXAMPLES REQUIRING IMAGINATION.

“Do you know how to build?” I asked.

“You should name your pipe,” he said. I bit my lip; he was avoiding talking about himself again. “I like ‘Sisyphus.’”

I made a face. It sounded like a disease. “Are you serious? That’s a terrible name,” I said. I looked down at my pipe. Despite being lodged in my head for the better part of the day, it was free of blood or brain goo. “Pipe,” I announced, holding it regally before me. “I christen thee Minerva.”