Life According to the Dead

Amanda

The park, like most of the cooler parts of Meadford, was downtown. It was one of those bigger parks with no actual playground, but a few slender trees and a lot of open space for walking, picnicking, kite-flying and the like. There were two small lakes, almost closer to ponds, both spotted with groups of easily aggravated ducks and geese, and both glossy-looking under the sun, as though someone had painted them into the landscape and then gone over them again with a shiny, clear coating. There was an elderly man standing on the sidewalk that skirted the rim of the park, selling balloons from a stand the way he had been doing for as far back as Amanda Easter could remember.

The part of it all that had always meant the most to her was the grassy hill, more like a towering slope really, that overlooked the entire park. It was a royal pain in the neck to climb it, but once you got to the top, the view was astounding. Forget the park – a good chunk of Meadford was visible from the top of that hill.

As Amanda climbed, she heard the near-silent sounds of a girl weeping at the top. It was almost inaudible – the smallest gulp of air every few minutes, something choked and gargling occasionally escaping her throat.

Amanda knew who the girl was.

That was why she was there.

"That one looks like a cross," said Lisa.

"It does not."

"Sure it does!" Lisa reached up and traced the outline of the cloud with her pointer finger, pretending that she could touch it from so many miles away. "How do you not see it?"

Amanda sat up a little, propping herself up on her elbows and squinting her eyes as if that would help her grasp a better focus of the distant cloud. Then, giving up, she nestled back into the pillow of sun-warmed grass beneath her. "I just don't."

Lisa shook her head. She took Amanda's hand in her own light, gentle grasp, and raised it so that they were both pointing at the same cloud. "That one."

"I know!" Amanda giggled, playfully knocking her hand away.

Lisa Lepper had been Amanda's best friend ever since she had first moved to Meadford in kindergarten. In the ten years that had passed since then, it seemed that the time they hadn't known each other was almost too distant and vague in both of their memories to ever have been a reality. They did everything together. They'd had sleepovers, shared secrets, studied for tests and painted their nails together, gone to the mall – and pretty much covered the rest of the city, too. This wasn't the first afternoon they had spent cloud-watching on the hill overlooking the downtown park, sharing a packet of rainbow Skittles. The orange and red ones were Amanda's, while the purple and yellow were reserved exclusively for Lisa, and the greens were divided equally between the two of them.

"Do you believe in God?" Lisa asked idly, twirling a dandelion between two of her fingers.

Amanda paused for a moment before answering. It wasn't the first time she'd been asked that question. Usually she would mumble something pathetic about being "undecided" and steer the conversation into a different – and, in her opinion, smoother – topic. But this was Lisa, and she could – no, more than could, she wanted to talk to Lisa about it.

"I don't know," she said finally, gazing up at the cloud that Lisa was so convinced looked like a cross. "I want to believe in God, but I don't think that's the same thing."

Lisa was quiet for a moment. Then, just when Amanda was getting ready to change the subject, she asked, "Why do you want to believe in Him?"