From Ant to Eagle(52)

“What do you mean when you ‘used to’ dream?” I asked. “What about your miracle?”

Oliver laughed. “Between you and me, I stopped waiting for a miracle a long time ago.”

We sat in silence watching a man and a little girl walking hand-in-hand in the park while a white dog trotted beside them. They were heading to the playground.

Far in the distance where the horizon met the blue sky it created a sense of infinity—everything carrying on and on and on. The world was beautiful—no doubt—and I thought about bringing Sammy up to see it.

“Do you think there really is a heaven?” I asked, looking up at the sky.

Oliver shrugged and shifted a little on the edge of the roof. “Between you and me, I hope not.”

Aleta and I laughed awkwardly.

I thought he must have been joking. Of course he was joking. But when I turned to face him there wasn’t the slightest hint of a smile. He was just staring into the distance with a far-off look in his eyes.

“You can’t be serious?” I said, repeating my thoughts out loud.

He turned and looked at me. “Why not?”

I glanced past Oliver at Aleta. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having in front of her. Not after what I’d just learned earlier.

“Because, if there’s no heaven then where do we go after we die?”

“We get eaten by worms.”

I rolled my eyes—he was definitely joking.

“No, I’m serious. What’s so bad about that? What’s so bad about getting eaten by worms then being recycled into the rest of the earth? Maybe my body will become part of those maple trees down there and another part will become those clouds and another part will lay hidden underground until spring when I pop out as a flower that everyone stops to look at. Or maybe I’d just be a dandelion, or a drop of water in the ocean, or a spot of dirt on someone’s shoe, but you know what, I’m fine with that. I’ve been actively dying for a long time and the closer I get, the more I realize that this place isn’t so bad—I’m fine staying.”

“So then you don’t believe in God?” Aleta asked.

Oliver’s eyes had the same glassy look he’d had when I’d seen him with his sister. “Which god? I’ve been away from the colony long enough to know that there are supposedly lots of gods out there. Everyone in this hospital believes something different so why can’t I? If I believed my colony’s religion, then I’d be saying billions of other people were wrong. And if I believed someone else’s, the same thing goes. So I’ve come up with my own idea for an after-life and that’s just worms.”

I was shocked. I’d never heard anyone say they didn’t believe in God. I’d just assumed the reverend and Mom and Dad and everyone else at church knew what they were talking about.

“So what about your family? Wouldn’t you miss them if you just became…dirt?” Aleta asked.

“No. They’ll be right there with me when they die. Maybe they’ll be a cloud next to my cloud and we’ll float over Africa and see the Sahara, or we’ll be swaying pines in a forest along a coast somewhere, or maybe one atom of me will get joined to one atom from each of them and we’ll become a drop of water in a river that rushes down a mountain only to get evaporated at the bottom and to do it all over again.”

The idea made me think about our Secret Spot and when I looked at Aleta I thought she must have been thinking the same thing because she wasn’t scowling or questioning Oliver’s crazy idea but actually nodding with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” she said.

“I’m just not convinced that there’s some unfathomably wonderful place up there that’s so much better than here,” Oliver continued. “I like it here. I like everything about here. I just don’t like everything about my health here. But if I were just atoms there would be no more cancer, no more pain, no more dying, just me travelling the world, changing from one form to another, seeing everything I never got to see because I haven’t left this hospital in 675 days.”

We sat in silence watching our shadows slowly creep across the road, listening to the wind and thinking about Oliver’s version of heaven, when we were pulled from our thoughts by the staticy voice of Sammy on the walkie-talkie.

“Cal? Cal, are you there?” it crackled.

I picked up my walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Roger that. I’m here. I’ll come down right away.”

“Okay,” he said. Then after a few seconds, “Oh, I meant robber that.”

I stood up carefully and hopped off the ledge.

“I have to head back downstairs. You coming?”

Aleta stood up and followed but Oliver didn’t.

“I’m going to stay out a little longer,” Oliver said. “Feel free to tell Jenny I fell off the edge.”

I laughed. “We won’t.”

“Bye, Oliver,” Aleta said. “It was nice to meet you.”

“And, you,” Oliver said, putting his hand to his head and pretending to tip an invisible hat.

That night when we dropped Aleta off at her house she told me she would come back. We hugged outside the car but it was awkward and short—Dad was sitting in the car watching. Still, it felt nice to have Aleta back. It felt like things were finally looking up.