Leaving Time(19)

“I’m here,” I say.

Serenity’s nostrils flare.

“I know the last thing you want is to prove that your dream didn’t really mean anything at all,” I say. “But it’s kind of like winning the lottery, right? If you don’t buy a ticket, you never even have a chance.”

“I buy a goddamn ticket every week, and I’ve never won the Powerball,” Serenity mutters, but she steps over the chain and starts bushwhacking through the overgrown trail.

We walk in silence for a while, as insects zip past our heads and summer hums around us. Serenity walks with her hand brushing the browse; at one point she breaks off a leaf and sniffs it before moving on. “What are we looking for?” I whisper.

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

“It’s just that we’re practically off the grounds of the old sanctuary—”

“Do you or do you not want me to concentrate?” Serenity interrupts.

So I’m quiet for a few more minutes. But there’s something that’s been nagging at me for the whole car ride; it feels like a bone caught at the back of my throat. “Serenity?” I ask. “If my mother wasn’t alive and you knew that … would you lie to me and tell me she was?”

She stops and turns, hands on her hips. “Sugar, I don’t know you well enough to like you, much less protect your tender little teenage heart. I don’t know why your mother isn’t coming through to me. It could be because she’s alive, not dead. Or it could be, like I said, because I’m rusty. But I promise you … if I get any sense that your mother’s a spirit or even a ghost, I’ll tell you the truth.”

“A spirit or a ghost?”

“They’re two different things. You can thank Hollywood for making everyone think they’re one and the same.” She looks over her shoulder at me. “When the body expires, it’s over. Done. Elvis has left the building. But the soul is still intact. If you’ve led a decent life and you don’t have a lot of regrets, you may hang around for a bit, but sooner or later you’ll finish the transition.”

“Transition?”

“Cross over. Go to Heaven. Whatever you want to call it. If you go through that process, you become a spirit. But let’s say you’ve been a jerk in this lifetime and St. Peter or Jesus or Allah is going to judge your sorry ass and you’ll probably go to Hell or some other bad real estate in the afterlife. Or maybe you’re angry that you died young, or hell, maybe you don’t even realize you’re dead at all. For any one of those reasons, you might decide you aren’t quite ready to leave this world, or be dead yet. The problem is—you are dead. There’s no way around that. So you stay here, in limbo, as a ghost.”

We are walking again, side by side, through the thick brush. “So if my mother’s a spirit, she’s gone … somewhere else?”

“That’s right.”

“And if she’s a ghost, where is she?”

“Here. She’s part of this world, but not the same part you’re in.” Serenity shakes her head. “How do I explain this …” she mutters, then snaps her fingers. “I once saw a documentary about Disney animators. There are all these transparent layers with different lines and colors that stack on top of each other to make a single Donald Duck or Goofy. I think it’s like that, for ghosts. They’re another layer, laid over our own world.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask.

“It’s just what I’ve been told,” Serenity says. “It’s the tip of the iceberg, from what I can tell.”

I glance around, trying to see all these ghosts that must be hovering at the edges of my peripheral vision. Trying to feel my mother. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad, if she was dead but still somewhere close by. “Would I know it? If she was a ghost and she tried to talk to me?”

“You ever hear the phone ring, and pick it up, and just get dead air? That could be a spirit, trying to tell you something. They’re energy, so the easiest way for them to try to get your attention is by manipulating energy. Phone lines, computer glitches, turning lights on and off.”

“Is that how they communicate with you?”

She hesitates. “For me, it’s more like when I first tried contact lenses. I could never adjust, because I could tell there was something foreign in my eye that didn’t belong. It wasn’t uncomfortable—it just wasn’t part of me. That’s how it feels when I get information from the other side. Like an afterthought, except I’m not the one who’s thought it.”

“Kind of like you can’t help but hear it?” I ask. “Like a song you can’t stop humming?”

“I guess so.”

“I used to think I saw my mom all the time,” I say softly. “I’d be in a crowded place and I’d let go of my grandma’s hand and start running toward her, but I was never able to catch up.”

Serenity is staring at me with a strange look on her face. “Maybe you are psychic.”

“Or maybe missing someone and finding someone have the same symptoms,” I say.

Suddenly, she stops walking. “I’m feeling something,” she says dramatically.

I look around, but all I see is a small hummock of tall grass, a few trees, and a delicate mobile of monarch butterflies turning slowly overhead. “We’re nowhere near a sugar maple,” I point out.