“I’ve been reading your books,” Allie said. “Not just the one you gave us, but other ones I found lying around.”
“Good-they will be very helpful for you.”
“-and I have some questions. Like, in one book, you say haunting is forbidden, but then somewhere else you say that we’re free spirits, and can do anything we want.”
“Well, we can,” said Mary, “but we really shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“And anyway-you say that we can have no effect on the living world-they can’t see us, they can’t hear us… so if that’s true, how could we ‘haunt,’ even if we wanted to?”
Mary’s smile spoke of infinite patience among imbeciles. It made Allie furious, and so she returned the same “you’re-an-idiot-and-I’m-oh-so-smart” smile right back at her.
“As I said, it’s complicated, and it’s nothing you need to worry about on your first day here.”
“Right,” said Allie. “So I haven’t read all the books yet, I mean you’ve written so many of them-but I haven’t been able to find anything about going home.”
Allie could see Mary bristle. Allie imagined if she had been a porcupine all her quills would be standing on end.
“You can’t go home,” Mary said. “We’ve already discussed that.”
“Sure I can,” Allie said. “I can walk up to my house, walk in my front door.
Well, okay, I mean walk through my front door, but either way, I’ll be home. Why don’t any of your books talk about that?”
“You don’t want to do that,” Mary said, her voice quiet, almost threatening.
“But I do.”
“No you don’t.” Mary walked to the window, and looked out over the city. Allie had chosen a view uptown: the Empire State Building, Central Park, and beyond.
“The world of the living doesn’t look the way you remembered, does it. It looks washed out. Less vibrant than it should.”
What Mary said was true. The living world had a fundamentally faded look about it. Even Freedom Tower, rising just beside their towers, seemed like they were seeing it through fog. It was so clearly a part of a different world. A world where time moves forward, instead of just standing still, keeping everything the way it is. Or, more accurately, the way it once was.
“Look out over the city,” Mary said. “Do some buildings look more…real…to you?”
Now that Mary had mentioned it, there were buildings that stood out in clearer focus. Brighter. Allie didn’t need to be told that these were buildings that had crossed into Everlost when they were torn down.
“Sometimes they build living-world things in places where Everlost buildings stand,” Mary said. “Do you know what happens when you step into those places?”
Allie shook her head.
“You don’t see the living world. You see Everlost. It takes a great effort to see both places at the same time. I call it ‘dominant reality.’”
“Why don’t you write a book about it,” snapped Allie.
“Actually, I have,” said Mary with a big old smirk that made it clear Mary’s was the dominant reality around here.
“So the living world isn’t that clear to us anymore. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means that Everlost is the more important of the two worlds.”
“That’s one opinion.”
She thought that Mary might lose her cool, and they’d get into a nice fight about it, but Mary’s patience was as eternal as Everlost itself. Keeping her tone gentle and kindly as it always was, Mary gestured at the city beyond the window, and said “You see all of this? A hundred years from now, all those people will be gone, and many of the buildings torn down to make room for something else – but we will still be here. This place will still be here.” She turned to Allie. “Only the things and places that are worthy of eternity cross into Everlost. We’re blessed to be here-don’t taint it by thoughts of going home. This will be your home far longer than the so-called ‘living world.’”
Allie looked to the furniture around the room. “Exactly what makes this folding table ‘worthy of eternity’? “
“It must have been special to someone.”
“Or,” said Allie, “it just fell through a random vortex.” She held up one of Mary’s books. “You said that happens yourself.”
Mary sighed. “So I did.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just contradict yourself? “
Still, Mary lost none of her poise. In fact, she rose to the challenge better than Allie expected.
“I see you’re smart enough to know there are no simple answers,” Mary said.
“It’s true that things sometimes do cross over by accident.”
“Right! And it’s not a blessing that we’re here, it’s an accident.”
“Even accidents have a divine purpose.”
“Then they wouldn’t be accidents, would they?”
“Believe what you want,” said Mary. “Eternity is what it is -you can’t change it. You’re here, and so you must make the best of it. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“All right-but just answer me one question. Is there a way out of Everlost? “
Mary didn’t answer right away. For a moment Allie thought she might tell her something she had never written in any of her books. But instead, all she said was, “No. And in time you’ll know the truth of it for yourself.”
In just a few days, Allie, Nick, and Lief came to know all there was to know about life in Mary’s world. The daily routine was simple. The little kids played ball, tag, and jumped rope all day long in the plaza, and when it got dark, everyone gathered on the seventy-eighth floor to listen to stories the older kids told, or to play video games, or to watch the single TV that Mary had acquired. According to Meadow, there were kids out there who traveled the world searching for items that had crossed over, and they would trade them to Mary.
These kids were called “Finders.” One Finder had brought a TV, but it only played TV shows that had aired on the day it crossed over. The same ancient episodes of The Love Boat and Happy Days played every single day during prime time, and presumably would continue to play until the end of time. Strangely, there were some kids who watched it. Every day. Like clockwork.
Nick watched the TV for a few days, amazed at the old commercials and the news more than anything. Watching it was like stepping into a time machine, but even time travel gets dull when you’re constantly traveling to April 8, 1978.
Allie chose not to watch the TV She was already sensing something profoundly wrong with Mary’s little Queendom, although she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. It had to do with the way the little girls jumped rope, and the way the same kids would watch that awful TV every single day.
If Nick felt that anything was wrong, it was lost beneath everything that was right about Mary. The way she always thought of others before herself, the way she made the little kids all feel loved. The way she took an interest in him.
Mary always made a point of coming over to Nick and asking what he was up to, how he was feeling, what new things he “was thinking about. She spoke with him about a book she was working on, all about theories on why there were no seventeen-year-olds in Everlost, when everyone knew eighteen was the official age of adulthood.
“That’s not actually true,” Nick offered. “That’s voting age, but drinking age is twenty-one. In the Jewish religion, adulthood is thirteen, and I know for a fact there are fourteen-year-old Jewish kids here.”
“That still doesn’t explain why kids older than us aren’t admitted into Everlost.”
Admitted to Everlost, thought Nick. That sounded a lot better than Lost on the way to heaven. Her way of thinking was such a welcome relief from his own propensity toward gloom and doom. “Maybe,” suggested Nick, “it’s a very personal thing. Maybe it’s the moment you stop thinking of yourself as a kid.”
