True to You

So Out of Place

It was hard enough to be faced with the reality of what had happened to her without the added pressure of having to face it in an environment that was the image of her teenaged dreams for her future. Damn, the number of times she'd pictured that stupid loft in her head was insane. It was exactly as she'd imagined it, even down to Jimmy's drum kit in the corner by the window.

Elliot had wanted to duck her head in shame when they'd walked in the door and she'd taken in her surroundings. She knew that he'd seen it and it could have killed her – if she wasn't already dead – to know that he could see how much she'd hoped for a future with him when their relationship hadn't really meant to him what it had meant to her.

She'd always known that Jimmy had been filled with various fleeting and eclectic enthusiasms but she'd thought, hoped, that his feelings for her had been stronger, more long term. Her self-delusion had been made perfectly clear though when Brian had told her about the pretty and fun friend of their mutual friends the Berrys that Jimmy had taken up with soon after her departure for Europe.

Even with their mutual betrayals – Jimmy's of her and hers of Jimmy – sitting like an unspoken wedge between them it was good to see him. And it was even better to know that the actions he'd taken that had led to his presence in the strange rock-n-roll version of the afterlife in which she'd found herself hadn't been deliberate. The idea that he'd wanted to leave the world, that his death hadn't been an accident, had weighed heavy on her for years.

It had been so easy for her to hang on to her anger for those first few years after they'd parted. To think that she was well rid of him - especially when she heard reports of how hard he was partying and then eventually, his relationship with Leana - that when she heard of his death she'd been surprised by how overwhelmed with grief and guilt she'd felt. She'd wanted to curl into a ball and cry for days over the boy she'd once known but that had been impossible, she was a single mother, Laine had needed her.

And now she'd left Laine alone without a father or the mother who'd fulfilled both of those roles for so many years.

Although her feelings toward Jimmy were conflicted she was pleased to see him, and Val too. Her friendship with both Val and Michelle had been a strange one down the years, they'd spoken on the phone and written first by email and then more recently via social media regularly but the times they'd seen each other face to face had been rare. And had never occurred when any of the other guys had been around. It was good to spend time with her friend in person.

A few days into her new life she had begun to grow more accustomed to the weird way things worked. Everything was definitely 'bigger on the inside' as Jimmy had explained it and she'd come to realise that the majority of people that she saw were people that had left before their time.

Val, Jimmy and King were all sprawled across the sofa in her loft one – Evening? Afternoon? Morning? Place in time? – when she asked, "Why are we all here? Where are all the old people? Do they all just look young?"

"You don't have to be here. You can take the lift to a higher floor," King said, "That's what most of the old people do. They go find the people that are waiting for them. Usually they skip this floor altogether."

Elliot's mouth dropped open. This was some kind of purgatory? "Are we waiting? Are we not allowed to go to a higher floor?"

Val leaned forward and patted her knee. "You can go to a higher floor if you want to. No one's keeping you here. Most of us that you've run into prefer to stay down here for a while though because it's all reunited families up there. For some of us it'll be a long wait and we'd prefer to spend time with friends."

"Are you waiting?" Elliot asked tilting her head with curiosity. After all when Matt finally showed up would he be waiting for Caitie or would he be glad to be reunited with Val?