Her voice faded away when I spotted Hector Salazar. Back when I was alive, Hector brought a gun to school and shot Cameron three times before Cameron could get to him and break his neck. He’d died badly, but they let him into heaven anyway? Clearly their review board was dropping the ball. I ogled him so long, Tabitha had to take my arm and steer me past a kid drinking from the water fountain.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked. “You’re so weird today. I know it’s your day and all, but really. You should have sympathy for the rest of us who have to muddle through life without—” She lifted her hands and added air quotes to her next statement. “—‘superpowers.’”
I stopped. “What superpowers?” Tabitha had never known about my visions, and I liked it that way. How could she know now? Did everybody know? And why the heck was she talking to me?
“Your superpowers,” she said. “Oh … my God. You’re going to drive me crazy. Your powers.” She waved her arms as though that would help me understand. “Your ability to accessorize in a single bound. Your talent for matching the right shirt with just the right shoes and then taking an old ugly scarf and turning it into the perfect complement to any ensemble. Wow. I don’t know what you had for breakfast,” she said, urging me forward, “but you need to back off the bagels. That many carbs is bound to be bad for the brain.”
“Hey, Lorelei,” a girl I didn’t know said to me. Now, that made sense. I could see everyone knowing everyone in heaven. Yet I didn’t know her. That blew that theory. “Did you study for the test?”
Test? There were tests in heaven? I deflated even more.
* * *
I sat in first hour, listening to the indelible Ms. Mullins and wondering about lots and lots of things. Wasn’t this heaven? What other explanation could there be?
I wrote a note and passed it back to Brooklyn. I didn’t look behind me, but she took it. Always a good sign. My note said simply, Are we in heaven?
A minute later, she swiped the note across my shoulder. I took it as nonchalantly as I could and opened it from under my desk.
I don’t understand. I always considered physical science more like hell, myself. LOL.
I rolled my eyes, feeling like I was in a world turned upside down. The second the bell rang, I grabbed my backpack.
“Lorelei,” Ms. Mullins said as I headed out the door. I’d wanted to catch up to Brooklyn, but she darted out before I could get her attention.
I headed back to the tiny teacher.
“I wanted to thank you for the invitation to your party tonight,” she said, and I wondered if everyone who was new got a party. Then again, everyone in this school was new. Unless that whole time theory was accurate. “I’d love to go,” she added.
“Oh, great. I’ll let my parents know.”
I thought about it all morning. My time theory. Remarkably, Brooke and I still had the same classes together, but we didn’t sit next to each other in any of them. Clearly, we were not best friends in this reality. Every cell in my body ached just thinking about it. But so many things were exactly the same.
The kids were pretty much the same. If I was in heaven—though that theory was losing its shine fast—everyone in my school was already dead. The war had truly destroyed humanity. Or, well, Riley’s Switch.
It broke my heart to know I’d failed. Just like I said I would. Just like I’d feared.
I decided to eat at the snack bar at lunch. I wasn’t really hungry, but I wasn’t not hungry.
“Three fifty,” Madison Espinosa said.
I needed money in heaven, too? I groaned and checked my pockets, worried I wouldn’t have anything in them. I pulled out two ones.
“Um,” I said, looking at my soda, bag of chips, and pastry, “can I put that back?”
She rolled her eyes. If this was heaven, they weren’t very nice. “Sure.” She grabbed the soda can. “Two twenty-five.”
I patted my pockets, humiliation burning within me.
“Lorelei!” Brooklyn said. I didn’t have to turn to recognize her voice. “Here’s your change.”
The surprised expression on my face made her laugh. “She’ll take the soda, too. I had her money, so you can stop rolling your eyes at her.”
“What’s going on?” Tabitha said behind me.
“We have to talk,” Brooklyn said to her. “If you don’t mind my joining you.”
Tabitha seemed at a loss, and it made me wonder where all her other friends were. Amber and Ashlee and Sydnee. Those were her crowd. Not me. Never me.
“I’m going home for lunch. I just thought Lor was going to join me, so I came to find her. But we can go alone. That’s okay.”
“We?” I asked her.
“Amber and me. Duh. Oh, and she wants to know what to wear, too.”
How, alternate reality or not, did I ever get the ability to accessorize? I could barely find a matching sock every morning.
“Um, we’ll have to go through her closet later.”
“Like you don’t know it backwards and forwards. But okay. After school, then. Don’t forget. You know how she gets.”
Tabitha bounced off as Brooklyn pointed to a table. Our table. The same one we’d been sitting at for two years.
“Is this okay?” she asked, putting her tray down.
“Sure. And, thanks. I forgot to get more money this morning,” I said, lying through my teeth. I’d figured I didn’t need any.