Dead!

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"Hey Ivy," Maya grumbled as she saw me. Her headphones were in, as usual, and she was wearing a black Fall Out Boy hoodie, black skinny jeans, and black sneakers.

"Oh, you two know each other?" Grandma said as she brushed her thin, white hair away from her face. "That's nice." She smiled and said, "It's so good to see you again, Ivy."

"It's good to see you again too, Grandma," I said as I gave her a hug. I hadn't seen Grandma since I was eight years old, and although I was ecstatic to see her again, it was a little bit awkward too.

"Look at you! You've grown so much!" Grandma exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes. "I think it would be more concerning if I didn't grow over the past eight years," I said. However, it was a bit odd that I was now taller than Grandma. The last time I saw her, I was half of her height.

"Come on Ivy," Grandma said. "Don't talk to your grandmother like that."

"Sorry Grandma," I said.

"So are we ready to go?" Grandma asked.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said.

"I definitely am," Maya said. Grandma led the way, and Maya and I followed her out of the train station.

"How did you end up here?" I asked Maya. "I mean, couldn't you have lived with someone else?"

"Couldn't you?" Maya said. "I was here first. It's not my fault that the Celestial Bureaucracy took forever to decide where you were going."

"It was a unanimous decision to put me in Heaven," I bragged.

"You idiot," Maya said. "It has to be a unanimous decision. That's how the Bureaucracy works."

"Well, I don't have any other relatives that are here," I said. "You could move in with anyone."

"Is it wrong to complain that Pete Wentz isn't dead?" Maya said. "Because if he was dead, then I would move in with him, but he's not, and I don't know anyone who's dead, so I'm stuck with your grandmother. She's nice enough, so I'm not complaining, but now that you're here..."

"You could have gone somewhere else," I said. "Maybe you could have gone closer to your friends."

"I don't think I can get much closer," Maya said. "Jack and Henri live next door to us, and Raj lives across the street."

"We also live very close to the train station," Grandma added. "That's one of the nice parts about Heaven. Almost everything is within walking distance."

We stepped out of the train station, and I noticed that the air was warm and fresh in a way that it usually wasn't in late February. There were even flowers popping out of the ground, and the grass was a brilliant, bright green. I looked around, seeing rows of picture-perfect houses. It was just like Cedar Creek, only better somehow. I wondered if the rest of Heaven was like this: a weird, improved version of life.

It would have taken us about ten minutes to get back to Grandma's house, but Grandma and Maya felt the need to take every single detour possible on the way. We stopped at the grocery store, a flower shop, and a bakery, and even after all of that, we just had to stop one last time so Maya could go to Hot Topic.

Once Maya spotted the Hot Topic, she screamed, "Mrs. Livingston! We have to go in there!"

"Don't let her go in there," I said. "If you do, then I don't think she'll ever come back out."

"There's no harm in letting Maya look around in there," Grandma said. "I just won't let her buy anything."

"Yeah right," I said. Grandma was notorious for spoiling her children, biological or not, and I would be very surprised if Maya walked out without a giant bag full of stuff from Hot Topic.

We entered the Hot Topic, and I immediately felt out of place. Everyone else there was wearing dark clothing, sometimes coupled with tattoos or piercings, while I was standing there in a bright purple sweatshirt and yoga pants. I didn't recognize the music, but it was strange and loud in a way that I wasn't used to.

Maya, on the other hand, seemed right at home. "YES! MY HOLY EMO TEMPLE!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. Oddly enough, nobody else seemed to pay attention to her. She just blended in amongst the emos.

Grandma and I waited as Maya raced around the store. By the time she was finished, she had found a Panic! At The Disco T-shirt, a Fall Out Boy T-shirt, three My Chemical Romance bracelets, another Fall Out Boy T-shirt, a Twenty One Pilots hoodie, some album that she was way too excited about, and yet another Fall Out Boy T-shirt. "Can I buy all of this?" she asked my grandmother.

"Go ahead sweetheart," Grandma said as she went up to buy Maya all of that stuff.

"Wait, why does she get to buy stuff and I don't?" I asked.

"Did you see anything that you liked?" Grandma asked.

"No," I said. "Can we go shopping some other time though? There are other stores that I'd like to go to."

"Yes, of course," Grandma said.

"Alright," I said. "Can we please go home?"

"As soon as Maya finishes checking out," Grandma said. Maya finished up a few minutes later, and we walked back to Grandma's house. It was a fairly large house, and it sort of reminded me of the one that she and Grandpa had before she died and Grandpa moved to Florida.

I stepped inside the house, knowing that this so-called Heaven definitely wasn't going to be as wonderful as promised if Maya was around.