Seven Weeks to Forever Page 2

  “Anna,” I reply, but then remember that he knows that. He’s already called me by name.

  I look around me and then back at Noah. “Do you live here?” I ask. It’s probably a dumb question. No one where I came from could transform from a dot of light into a person.

  “We all live here eventually. It’s different from what you expected, I’m sure.”

  He takes off his fedora, revealing a shock of dark brown hair. He doesn’t look like he could be more than forty years old. If he lives here, though, he must be older than that.

  “You can choose how you appear to others,” he says, apparently reading my thoughts again. “Appearance doesn’t matter here. Energy is what we are, and it’s your energy that’s recognized. This is just a shell.”

  “Got it,” I say. That’s a lie, because I’m not sure I get it at all. I don’t know what I expected, to tell the truth. Dying isn’t something I’ve thought about much, other than when I watched those movies and read those books. “It’s pretty here,” I add.

  “More than you know. You can’t see most of it.”

  I twist my body to look behind me. There are lights on that side, too. They’re in every direction I look, so I don’t know what it is this guy thinks I’m missing.

  “I can see tons of lights,” I inform him.

  “There’s a lot more to it than the lights.”

  I turn my head to the left and then to the right. Maybe he means the crystal-looking things.

  “More than what we’re sitting on, too.” Okay, seriously. I have to figure out how he does the thought-reading thing. This seems a little one-sided, if you ask me.

  “There are other things here?” I’m still not sure I believe him. If there’s something else around me, I’d have to be able to see it or I’d walk right into it. Wouldn’t I?

  He smiles. “Strange, I know. That’s how it always is, though. If you’d been ready, you could have seen a lot of what you’re seeing right now during your time in The Before.”

  “The Before?” I ask.

  “The place you came from that you thought was your life. We call it that because it’s really just the time that comes before all of this.” He motions to everything in front of us. “Well, this and everything you can’t see yet.”

  I wave my hand through the air in front of me, waiting to hit some object that’s supposedly visible to him but not me. There’s only empty space, and now I’m curious.

  “When will I be ready to see the rest of it? In a few days?”

  He studies me. I can’t say I’m crazy about the look on his face. I can tell he’s trying to decide if I’ll like what I’m about to hear.

  “You’re not really supposed to be here,” he finally says.

  “No kidding,” I answer. “I was in the middle of shooting a movie, you know. I wasn’t supposed to crash my car.”

  “The car crash was supposed to happen. We caused it.”

  I stare at him. “You just said I’m not supposed to be here. Why would you make me die?” There’d better be a good reason for this, because the movie I’m filming is supposed to skyrocket me to Hollywood’s A-list. I know I’d be ticked off beyond belief if I could just feel something other than complete calm.

  Noah folds his hands together, resting them on his lap. He looks me straight in the eyes. “There was a cosmic accident.”

  An accident. I should be seething. “The car crash, you mean?”

  “The car crash wasn’t the cosmic accident,” he replies. Okay then. I wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.

  “What was it?” I prompt.

  He’s not looking me in the eyes anymore. That’s not a good sign.

  “Meeting David Burns.”

  I wait for what usually happens when someone mentions David, that feeling like I can’t breathe and someone’s stabbing right through me with a thousand little knives. It doesn’t come.

  “You won’t feel pain here,” Noah says. Guess that explains it.

  “That would have helped a couple of months ago,” I mutter.

  The day David vanished just about destroyed me. I think about where I am right now and what I’m hearing. Correction. If I died, then David’s disappearance actually did destroy me.

  “The Before is different,” he continues. “The energy is different. While you’re here, you won’t feel the things you felt there.”

  While I’m here? I expect him to respond to that thought, too, but he doesn’t.

  “So what about David?” I ask.

  “You weren’t supposed to meet him.”

  I wait for a second, but I don’t feel any of the things I brace myself for. It seems Noah is right. Pain doesn’t happen here. Because if anything was going to hurt me, it would be hearing that I was never supposed to meet the person who I loved more than breathing.

  I want to ask why I wasn’t supposed to meet him, but Noah doesn’t give me a chance.

  “David was what we call a second-timer,” he explains. “He’d already had one turn in The Before as somebody else, and then he went back. He didn’t return to The Life-After when he was supposed to. If he had, your paths would never have crossed and you wouldn’t be here now.”

  I pretend not to hear that last part, since I know he has to be wrong. You can’t tell someone they were never supposed to meet the love of their life.

  “He was reincarnated?” I ask instead.

  “If that’s how you understand it.”

  “Is he here now?” I can’t help but feel a twinge of excitement. David vanished without a trace, which means he has to be here. And now I can see him again. That’s something I never believed possible.

  “No.”

  My excitement fades. “So he’s still there, then? In The Before?” That makes less sense, but none of what’s happening right now is what I’d call crystal clear.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.” I wait for Noah to say more, but he doesn’t.

  “Is he an angel?” As much as I love him, that’s a little hard to imagine. David loves motorcycles and leather jackets, and singing in bands. There’s nothing to say an angel can’t like those things, I guess. That’s just not what I grew up picturing when I thought of angels.

  “He’s definitely not an angel,” Noah replies.

  “Are you an angel?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m an advisor.”

  That’s a new one. Angels and reincarnation I’ve at least heard of.

  “I don’t know what that is,” I admit.

  “There are different levels of energy you can achieve here in The Life-After,” he tells me. “Angels are the most evolved. The highest form of energy, you might say. They can see things that even I can’t see. Next are advisors like me, and then second-timers.”

  Advisors, angels, second-timers. And this whole world of lights and things I can’t see. It’s a lot to take in.

  “What does an advisor do?” I ask.

  “Advisors are assigned to second-timers. They watch over them and help them when they go back to The Before.”

  He keeps his eyes on me. I hear his words echo in my mind. They watch over them and help them when they go back to The Before. Go back. He can’t mean me.

  “Second-timers are people who choose to go back, right?” I ask.

  That look I don’t like appears on his face again. I know I’m in trouble when he presses his lips together and shifts his eyes away from me, staring out over the lights.

  “There are two types of people who become second-timers,” he says. “The first type are those who come here when they’re ready for The Life-After, but then volunteer to return to The Before and help the people there who need a hand.”

  “And the second type?” I have a feeling I don’t want to hear his answer.

  “They’re a little more rare. The second type are the people whose lives have gotten so far off track that we have to intervene. It’s usually beca
use something happened to them that we didn’t see coming, so we didn’t have a second-timer assigned to help them get through it. We call that a cosmic accident.”

  “Like with me,” I say.

  “Like with you,” he replies. Great.

  “So I go back to my life?” I ask. “I heal from my accident, go back to acting, and help someone?”

  He hesitates. “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly, then?”

  The silence lasts a moment too long. Whatever he’s getting ready to tell me, it can’t be good.

  “Your next turn in The Before won’t be as Anna,” he finally says. “Everyone there will know you as Cassidy Jordan.”

  “Cassidy,” I repeat. The name feels strange on my tongue, and I’m not sure I want to think about the rest of it.

  “Your parents will also be second-timers,” he continues. “They’ll help you with all you need to know for the first six years you’re there.”

  “What happens then?”

  “They come back here. A second-timer comes back to The Life-After once their mission is complete. It will look like your parents died in a rock climbing accident.”

  A new name, and I get to be an orphan. Fabulous. “What happens to me after that?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to hear his other selling points.

  “Your aunt and uncle will become your guardians,” he answers. “They’ll take you to Boston to live with them.”

  “Will they know what I am?”

  “No, and they can’t know. That’s the first rule of being a second-timer.”

  It seems like an awfully big secret to keep from your family. “What if I slip up and tell someone?” I ask.

  “You won’t be able to. If you try to say it, you won’t be able to speak. If you try to write it down, your fingers won’t be able to move.”

  “Why don’t you want people to know what’s next?” It seems to me that people would be spared a whole lot of grief if they knew about The Life-After.

  “If they did, the purpose of The Before would be gone,” he says. “The Before is a phase of working through lower levels of energy, preparing for everything that’s here. If people knew what life in The Before really is and what comes next, they’d never experience everything required to get here and stay here.”

  I consider this. I should probably feel overwhelmed, but I still just feel calm. Well, that and creeped out about the new name, new life, and new body thing.

  “Are there other rules?” I ask.

  He nods. “The second rule is that you have to keep your connection to The Life-After. It will keep your energy up, and you need to have a higher level of energy to stay steady while you’re back in The Before.”

  Energy. This whole thing is like some freaky new age stuff, so far out there that it doesn’t seem possible.

  “We’re all just energy,” he says, his voice sounding gentler now. There he goes, reading my thoughts again. This is all a little too out there for me.

  “Okay.” I pause, looking around me again. I swear the light show is getting brighter. “How do I do that?”

  “You have to connect to The Life-After once a day,” he replies. “It’s kind of like meditating.”

  Meditation. That answer does nothing to make this seem any less like new-age-hippie stuff. I turn my head back to Noah. “When do I go back?”

  “Soon.”

  “What happens if I break one of the rules while I’m there?”

  “You won’t be able to come back.”

  “I’ll stay in The Before?” I ask. That seems odd. I mean, I know there are books and stuff where fictional people live forever and move around a lot so no one notices, but those books conveniently forget about awesome things like birth certificates and Social Security numbers and all that stuff that governments do keep track of you and make sure you don’t escape to some other country in the middle of the night. It’s totally unrealistic. Someone would catch on.

  It seems like a long time before he answers. “You won’t be in The Before, either.”

  If I’m not in The Before, and I’m not in The Life-After, then that means there’s somewhere else. There are more levels to this living stuff than a video game.

  “Where will I be?”

  “You won’t be anywhere,” he says. “You won’t exist.”

  I pause. That’s not what I expected. It takes me about a minute to decide if that means what I think it does. I have to ask, though. Knowing has to be better than not knowing.

  “Is that what happened to David?” My voice is quiet.

  “Yes.”

  That’s a little harsh, especially for a place that’s all about energy and love. Noah looks at me. Oh right. He heard that.

  “Breaking the rules means interfering in someone’s fate,” he says. “It’s what happened to you. The course of your life was changed forever, and David knew it would be. Now you have to go back to The Before because of something he did. There are consequences for that.”

  I want to argue that it’s still harsh, and that it doesn’t make sense. I may not have liked my high school science classes all that much, but I paid enough attention to learn that energy can’t be created or destroyed. It can only change form. If what he’s telling me is true, everything I think I know is wrong.

  I’m sure he can hear that thought, too, but he doesn’t comment on it. “Why don’t I show you around while you’re here?” he asks instead. “What you can see of it, anyway.”

  “Sure.”

  He gets to his feet and extends a hand to help me up. I let him lead me down a path of shimmering light, deeper into a place I could never have imagined.

  * * *

  The golden light fades until there’s only darkness. I open my eyes and blink a few times before reaching over to my bedside table to turn the reading lamp on.

  Once my eyes adjust, I grab the newspaper from the table and scan over the articles. There was a time, back when I was Anna, that I read the entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times religiously, along with any other Hollywood news I could get my hands on. Now I usually try to avoid it. I don’t recognize many of the names sprinkled across the headlines, and really, I don’t care what celebrities are at war with one another this week. I left all of that behind a long time ago.

  I do recognize one name on the page, though — Lazy Monday. There’s a photo of the band beside the article, which is an announcement for the show they played tonight. The last couple of paragraphs are about band news and an upcoming new album. I yawn, moving my finger to turn the page. Then I see something at the end of the article that makes me stop.

  All you fans out there, make sure you get down to the Roxy Theater on Sunset tomorrow night. For the first time in five years, these guys are playing their favorite old haunt — a special all-ages acoustic show you won’t want to miss. If you think that sounds good, it gets even better. Admission is free, but you have to be one of the first 500 people through the door.

  I sit up in bed, letting the newspaper fall off my lap and down to the floor. If Riley was at the show tonight, standing that close to the stage, there’s a chance he’ll be at tomorrow’s show, too.

  “Watch for the signs,” I mutter. Maybe there’s a reason Noah left the entertainment section open.

  “You’ll be there, right?” I ask out loud to an imaginary Riley. There’s only silence.

  I reach over to turn the off the reading lamp and then settle back against my pillows, pulling the covers over me. I don’t want to think about what happens if Riley doesn’t show up at the Roxy tomorrow night.

  Chapter Three

  Countdown to The Life-After: seven weeks.

  I’ve never been so thankful for earplugs.

  Scratch that. It’s intermission I’m thankful for, and it’s Riley Davis I’m cursing. As far as I can tell, Mr. Davis didn’t have to suffer through the two excruciating warm-up bands that just assaulted my ears. There was no
sign of him as I weaved in and out of the crowd during those sets, searching for a glimpse of his too-perfect face.

  There wasn’t any sign of him in the VIP section, either. Not that I got a good long look at the people sitting there or anything. The beefed up rent-a-cop in the black T-shirt pounced before I could do more than a quick scan of faces. Standing in the aisle for more than five seconds is a fire hazard, it seems, and he kindly directed me back to the other side of the dividing line. Whatever.

  I’m silently cursing Noah, too, for leaving his newspaper open and not bothering to tell me that my hunch was all wrong. The Life-After might not be too happy about me cursing him and Riley in my mind, but then, I’m not too happy about the advisor they gave me and all the things he isn’t telling me. And let’s not even get me started on my feelings about the elusive guy with zero concert etiquette they assigned me to. They can deal with it. Just like I have to deal with being 0-for-2 now, with a few more wasted hours to show for it. Time to bail.

  My heels echo against the sidewalk as I walk back in the direction of my car. I study the black cigarette and gum spots that stain the concrete beneath my feet. I don’t remember all these spots being here the last time I walked along this part of Sunset Boulevard, years ago. I probably didn’t notice then, though, because I was too busy noticing David. This sidewalk is where we met, and that night changed everything.

  Hooooooooonnnnnnnnnk.

  I jump, trying not to fall off the edge of the sidewalk. Some guy in a Prius leans on his horn and hollers out his open window at me, but I can’t make out what he says over the noise of the other cars whizzing by. I forgot about this part of walking down Sunset Boulevard at night. Good times.

  I cross the street at the next intersection and go down another block, then round the corner onto a side street. It’s not as lit up here as it is on Sunset, but it’s quieter and that’s good enough for me. Or it is until I’m halfway down the street and a wolf whistle pierces the air.

  “Hey, pretty lady,” a voice calls out. Fantastic.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a few burly-looking men standing in front of an apartment building. So much for leaving the admirers on Sunset. At least these guys don’t have a horn to lean on and aren’t yelling at the top of their lungs.