Present

10.1

Gwen

I sat in the middle of the street for an eternity. The sun and moon appeared and vanished in a never-ending loop. Cars drove up and down the road outside the funeral home, never stopping to notice the little dead girl sitting as if she had all the time in the world. Then again, maybe I did have all the time in the world.

Moments after the sun rose after who knows how many days, a figure the size of a child was walking down the sidewalk. As it waddled closer, I could see it was an old woman, shrunken from all of her years. I leaned back onto the asphalt, spreading my body out as far as I could and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the woman was hovering over me. Only, her body wasn't blocking the sun. She was translucent, the morning rays of the sun peeking through the wrinkles of her ancient face. Her eyes were silvery and matched her hair. To my surprise, her eyes weren't looking at the asphalt behind me. They were looking right at my face, studying each freckle.

"Can you see me?" My voice shook with surprise.

"See you? Why wouldn't I be able to see you?" The woman squawked.

"It seems like no one can see me nowadays," I muttered. I sat up and smoothed my curly hair. The old woman eased herself into sitting in front of me.

"Well, I'm not just anyone," she advised.

"And who exactly are you?" Days without true human contact had whittled away at my patience.

"You don't remember me," she huffed. "Well, I'm not surprised. I haven't seen you since you were a baby."

"What, so you're some old family friend or something? Someone who knew me as a baby, maybe someone from the church. I'm not in the mood for being cryptic." I said curtly.

The woman tapped my mouth with her hand as if she were a parent disciplining a toddler. "And I'm not in the mood for a spoiled child who does not know how to respect her elders."

I stared at her, eyes wide in shock.

"If you must know, I'm your grandmother. On your mother's side," the woman said. "You looked a little lost so I figured I'd pay you a visit, give you a bit of direction."

"Direction?" I questioned.

"You're dead. You've been sitting in the middle of the road, outside of the funeral home where your lifeless body was laid out a week ago. Not to mention, you've found yourself stuck here rather than moving on like most normal people do."

Okay, that was fair. I had no idea what was going on. I wasn't even entirely sure what happened. One second I was in the car with Audrey and the next everything was white and then I found myself looking at myself lying in a casket.

"If I'm really dead then why am I still here? Why am I not getting judged or something? Or spending eternity in darkness if there's no afterlife. Wait. Is there an afterlife?" I was rambling, but I didn't care. Wise, old women always had the answers.

"Can't tell you that." Of course.

"Can you at least tell me why, of all things, I stuck around? Because I have no idea what's going on," I said. I would have given anything for things to go back to normal; but what was normal when your body was six feet underground?

"You aren't ready," my grandmother shrugged. "You are the only thing stopping yourself from moving on, and you seem to have some unfinished business."

"Of course I'm not ready, I'm twenty-one years old? Who is ready to die before their life even starts? I've never even had a real job or a place of my own!"

"We don't get to choose when we go, but we can choose to make peace with it," my grandmother advised. "Find your peace."

My peace. What brought me peace? Home? School? Reading? No. Audrey did.