See You at Seven [Shayne Topp]

2. Of Friends and Plans

Hey, guys! How are you all doing?

I hope many of you guys are safe from the pandemic. It's really crazy, but I'm also glad that many people have recovered from it. Let's hope to keep that going and hopefully, it will soon be over before we know it.

Anyway, I've decided to keep writing in Shayne's point of view for the rest of the story to get it more in-depth from his perspective. See ya!

-/-/-

Los Angeles is pretty---pretty freaking hot when you're hiding from everyone you know using hoodies and sunglasses and pants and shoes. It's hard to be dead, and it's even harder to be alive after dying.

"Thank God nobody knows me here in Los Angeles," Alex says as she walks around casually wearing sunglasses and a simple face mask. "And thank God as well that I'm not known in many parts of the world."

"Is there even a God?" I mumble. "Like, we've just been to the Middle and there doesn't seem to be a God."

"That's because the Middle is like a purgatory," she answers.

"Good point. I like that point. Too bad I'm not in that point right now, where I could have been in One resting with scented candles and I don't know, balloon animals?"

She nods. "And if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be back here."

She was right. When we ended up in that desert, we had to just keep walking until we realized we have our important stuff back with us, such as our wallets, our keys, and the most important: our phones, even though they were out of juice. Since Alex is, in my words a while ago, a hot-shot human rights lawyer in the middle of the Big Apple, I learned that she is stinking rich! When we discovered we were in Africa, we just had to take a plane ride back to Los Angeles, which was easy to do. Now that we're here in LA, all we had to do first was to go to my house and formulate on how to tell Damien, Courtney, and Ian.

Now, my apartment is nowhere near LAX, but we managed to get a cab to the closest place possible. Dropping off in front of the apartment would be a little too suspicious, so we decided to pose as house cleaners. We're only two blocks away from the apartment when we notice that it's getting darker. "Don't take your sunglasses off," she mumbles. "I can take mine off. I'm freaking blind."

"You're blind?"

"Yeah, I wear contacts," she says. "But I'd rather wear glasses. It's just really bothersome to have something constantly in your eyes."

"Yes, it is certainly bothersome, I say as I walk behind you."

"Screw you," she replies before stopping in her footsteps. "This is it, right?"

"Yup."

When we enter my apartment, and I'm thankful I have my keys because I can't pick a lock, I open the door to the scent of lavender. My stuff hasn't been packed; it's how I left them but slightly cleaner. They probably didn't want to move my stuff out yet, maybe busy grieving. The Uncharted game's still loaded into my Xbox. Some of my clothes are neatly folded, just the way I left them. The only things missing here would be... well, nothing. It's like they just swept the floor.

I enter the bedroom, and my bed's perfectly normal. I look at my fridge, everything's only probably gone a week. I throw out everything expired, which sucks because my yogurt got expired too, but when it's done, everything left seems to be okay. My shower's perfectly fine too. Everything in my house is normal, untouched, and maybe a little bit sad because now that I know I died, no one really looked after my house for me.

"This is some awesome cheese," Alex says, sitting on the couch and munching on some of the brie. "Another thing to thank not the Afterlife Committee but another otherworldly figure: I'm not lactose intolerant."