Elsewhere(59)

And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.

And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.

And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.

Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls.

But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.

In the year Liz will turn thirteen again, she whispers in Betty's ear, "Happiness is a choice."

"So, what's your choice?" Betty asks.

Liz closes her eyes, and in a split second she chooses.

Five years pass.

When one is happy, time passes quickly. Liz feels as if one evening she went to bed fourteen and the next morning she woke up nine.

Two Weddings

Someone from Earth's been trying to Contact you," Owen announces one evening after work.

Now the head of the Bureau of Supernatural Crime and Contact, he is usually one of the first people on Elsewhere to know about these matters.

"What?" Liz barely looks up from her book. Recently, she has taken to rereading her favorite books from when she first learned to read on Earth.

"What are you reading?" Owen asks.

"Charlotte's Web" Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."

"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending."

"That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Liz rolls her eyes and returns to her reading.

"Aren't you at all interested in who's trying to Contact you?" Owen asks. From his coat pocket, he removes a green recorked wine bottle with a sticky palimpsest where the label had once been.

Inside the bottle is a rolled-up ecru envelope. (The envelope is really more pleated than rolled, because of the thickness of the paper.) "It washed up on the wharf today," Owen says, handing the bottle to Liz. "The boys over in Earth Artifacts had to uncork it to see who it was for, but the contents of the envelope haven't been touched. When we get an MIB, we try as much as possible to preserve the person's privacy."

"What's an MIB?" Liz asks, setting her book aside to examine the bottle.

"Message in a bottle," Owen answers. "It's one of the few ways to get mail from Earth'to Elsewhere. No one knows exactly why it works, but it does."

"I've never gotten one before," Liz says.

"They're not as common as they used to be."

"Why's that?" Liz asks.

"People on Earth don't write letters so much anymore. Messages in bottles probably don't occur to them. And it's not always a sure thing."

Liz uncorks the bottle. She removes the thick envelope, which is remarkably well preserved considering its watery voyage. On the front is an address in elegant calligraphy done with a rich, black-green ink:

"Very thorough," Owen says, "but they never write Elsewhere."

"No one on Earth calls it that," Liz reminds him. She turns the envelope over. The return address is in the same calligraphy:

"That's Zooey's address," Liz says as she lifts the flap. Inside, she finds a three-paneled ecru wedding invitation and a long handwritten note. Liz slips the note into her pocket.

" 'You are invited to the wedding of Zooey Anne Brandon and Paul Scott Spencer,' " Liz reads aloud. "My best friend's getting married?"

"You mean your best friend before you met me, right?" Owen teases her.

Liz ignores him. "The wedding's the first weekend in June. That's in less than two weeks." Liz tosses the invitation aside. "She certainly took her time inviting me," Liz huffs.

"You should probably forgive her. It's pretty hard to send things here, you know? She probably sent this months ago." Owen picks up the invitation. "Good-quality paper stock."

"Isn't she too young to get married?" Liz asks. "She's my age." Liz corrects herself, "I mean, she was my age. Actually, she was a month older than me, so I guess that makes her almost twentytwo."

Owen takes out a pen and begins filling out the response card. "Will madam be bringing a guest?"

"No," Liz replies.

"What about me?" asks Owen, his eyes wide with mock offense.

"Sorry to disappoint, O," Liz says, taking the response card from him, "but I think we'd have a little trouble making travel arrangements." She carefully slips the response card and the invitation back into the envelope.

"We could watch from the OD," Owen suggests.

"I don't want to watch," Liz says.

"Then we could dive," Owen says. "From the Well, you could congratulate her and everything."

"I can't believe you're even suggesting that." Liz shakes her head. "In your line of work."

"Oh come on, Liz! Where's your sense of adventure? One last hurrah before we're too young for any more hurrahs! What do you say?"