I felt a softness, a warmth, being dragged off me. As though I were covered in a blanket. Then my feet were being tickled. My legs jerked in response.
“I knew that’d work,” a male voice said. One I didn’t recognize.
“We have a big day ahead of us. It’s your day, remember? You’ve been harping about this day since you were six.” The world around me shook as though I were on a trampoline and someone was bouncing beside me. “You can have anything you want for breakfast, so you’d best be deciding. This is a limited-time offer.”
I pried my eyes open, squinting against the barrage of rain and debris that would soon assault them until I realized the wind had died down. Completely. I didn’t even hear a soft breeze. My hair didn’t fly about my face nor did my skin sting with droplets of ice. I relaxed my lids and let them slide open farther. But I saw nothing. Just white. White all around me. White and bright and airy.
Someone brushed a lock of hair off my face. A man. A man was sitting beside me. Adrenaline shot through me as I screeched and scrambled off the bed.
The bed.
I’d been on a bed.
My brows snapped together as I tried to gain my bearings. Where was the tree? Where were Glitch and Brooklyn and Cameron and Jared?
The man stood, startled by my reaction, then kneeled on the other side of the large bed, his expression soft, knowing. “You were having a bad dream,” he said, offering me a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. None of it was real.”
I tried to focus on his words, but I couldn’t quite get past the part that he looked alarmingly like my dad. I stared at him in awe as he placed his chin on the mattress and gave me a moment to recover.
“You okay, Pix?” he asked.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I shrank back, cowering in the corner.
“Heavens, sweetheart,” a woman said. “That must have been a bad one. But today’s the big day. Maybe—” She looked across the mattress at the man, her expression full of sorrow. “—maybe it’ll be better after today, just like you said.”
This woman, with her gentle smile and her large blue eyes, looked so much like my mother, my chest tightened around my heart.
And then it hit me. I’d died. Thank God, I’d died and gone to heaven to be with my parents. And I hadn’t even felt any pain. This was wonderful.
But just to make sure, I said hesitantly, “Mom?”
She fixed a patient smile on me.
“Are you my mom?”
Once again, she glanced across the bed before returning her attention to me. “No,” she said, her face turning sorrowful. “I’m your aunt Edna.” Then she laughed softly. “Of course I’m your mom, silly. Do you want to talk about your dream?”
“And, and you’re my dad?” I asked the man.
“Sorry, Pix,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m your great-uncle Ferdinand. We haven’t met yet, but I’m from Spain. I don’t really know any English, so we’ll have to learn sign language or something to communicate.” When I frowned at him, he continued. “That was a really bad one, right?”
Everything hit me at once. My friends were gone. My grandparents were gone. Jared was gone. Had they gone to heaven like me? Would I see them all again? Jared once told me he didn’t get to heaven much. Would he come visit?
Their loss crashed into me. Seized my lungs. I was here with my parents, something I’d wanted for so long, I could hardly remember a time when I didn’t, and yet everyone I’d ever known, everything I’d ever known was gone.
I looked up at my mother with her beautiful smile and flung myself into her arms. I didn’t know if it was okay to cry in heaven, but I was doing it. Sobs racked my body so hard, I couldn’t catch my breath. I cried out loud as my mother rocked me in her arms. Dad had come around and pulled us both into his warm embrace, and still I cried. I cried for the loss of the most wonderful grandparents in existence. The most amazing friends, who stuck by me through everything, even a supernatural war. The most beautiful boy I’d ever met, who’d liked me—me!—and told me I was pretty and smart and talented.
I cried so hard, my throat hurt and my eyes burned. Dad went to get a washcloth. Mom held it to my head as he lifted me up and placed me back on the bed. A white bed with a white comforter that looked like clouds. This was definitely heaven.
“I’m sorry,” I said to them between sobs. “I’ll miss everyone so much.”
“Who, Pix?” Dad asked me.
I focused on him. On his red hair and scruffy jaw. His dark gray eyes. He was so handsome and he looked exactly as I remembered him. As did my mother.
“Do you want to stay home from school today?” Mom asked.
“School?” I asked, rather horrified. “I still have to go to school?”
“According to the law,” Dad said. “And if you don’t, I honestly think Mr. Davis would enjoy nothing more than hunting you down and throwing you in detention. You remember the last time you and Tabitha skipped.”
Tabitha? Tabitha Sind? Why on earth would I skip school in heaven with Tabitha Sind? And how the heck did she get through the pearly gates? Didn’t they have some kind of checklist? A set of standards? Morals one had to meet before you could pass?
“I just didn’t think … I’m just surprised there’s school in heaven.”
It was odd that Ms. Mullins would still be my teacher even here and Mr. Davis would still be the principal. Surely there were others more qualified for an authoritative position in a celestial institution of higher learning. Literally.