There was so much that Charlotte still wanted to do, so much she wanted to accomplish. She wanted to see one more snow-fall, see Damen’s rosy cheeks after a pick-up game of football after school, get another report card. But then, everyone dies with a to-do list, she reckoned. It’s never enough.
One more snowfall wouldn’t be enough, and seeing Damen one more time, well, that would never suffice either. All this sadness and more was buzzing around in her mind as she followed Pam down the hall.
“Who are you—really?” Charlotte pressed.
Pam looked normal enough, but what if she were some kind of shape-shifting demon sent to escort her to the Netherworld. Then she might have to face an eternity of pushing a stone up a hill or something.
“I’m here to help you,” Pam clarified. “We all need help adjusting at first, and the transition, from ‘there’ to ‘here,’ is the most difficult time.”
“What or where is here?” Charlotte asked.
“You’ll find out everything you want to know at orientation,” Pam confided.
“Orientation?” Charlotte asked testily, throwing up her hands in frustration.
Before Charlotte could get a follow-up in, Pam stopped and motioned with her head, answering Charlotte with the gesture. She signaled toward a faint glow radiating from behind a classroom door, but said nothing.
Pam started toward it, but Charlotte was just frozen in place. She stared wide-eyed as Pam gradually disappeared into the aura, turning her head back toward Charlotte and smiling sympathetically just before she was swallowed entirely by the glare, leaving Charlotte completely alone.
“Pam!” she called nervously. “What do I do…?” Charlotte’s voice trembled, trailing off.
Face-to-face with insurmountable odds, Charlotte became, as she often did, entirely rational. Delaying the pain by keeping things in perspective. It was the instinctively self-protective math and science geek in her.
This is IT, Charlotte thought, staring down the hall.
THE moment had come. She was D-E-A-D for sure—still not quite able to let the word escape her lips. She’d seen the evidence on the slab in the office and through the window in the courtyard. She’d met Pam, her spirit guide or guardian angel or whatever you want to call it. And now the most telltale sign of all—the Bright Light. It was all pretty much as she’d been taught it would be, which was oddly comforting. She was scared, but no longer surprised, which helped tamp down the fear factor considerably.
In fact, she was even beginning to feel a little self-satisfied. Everyone always wants to know what happens after you die, and now she knew. Finally, a member of an exclusive, well, semi-exclusive club. Everyone dies, but rarely do they die this young, she rationalized, still trying to feel special. This was her time.
Unfortunately, though, there was nobody to tell. No way to exchange the information for hot gossip, a party invite, or even a fake ID. The secret would now be kept with her for all time, as it must have been with all who went before her. There was no one who faced what she was about to face and lived to tell about it, well, except for all those Near-Death Experience people who never shut up about “the Afterlife,” and whom she was suddenly more than a little pissed off at.
If it was so great being dead, why didn’t they just kill themselves and stop talking about it? she thought. What she wouldn’t give for a return ticket courtesy of some defibrillator paddles and an overzealous paramedic or ER doctor.
“Lightweights!” Charlotte laughed snidely to herself, figuring it was the last laugh she’d ever have.
“Thanks, folks,” Charlotte muttered. “I’ll be here… forever.”
And with that cheap attempt at a one-liner, more loneliness than she had ever felt rushed through her. Pam had been gone for just an instant, but it was more than enough time for Charlotte to relive every disappointment, every mistake, every failure, every missed opportunity, she’d ever experienced. Suddenly, all those cliché TV movie-of-the-week deathbed montages she’d laughed through appeared a little less cliché.
Of course the final frame was the biggest, hardest loss of all: Damen. “The End” might as well have superimposed itself on her consciousness. It was clear to her now how it could have all been different, but it was far too late to change what had been. One thing she wasn’t feeling was “peaceful.”
“Life is wasted on the Living,” she quoted, and started down the hallway, slowly, tentatively, her knees knocking, toward “the Light.”
As Charlotte approached, she was bathed in the brilliance of the Light, its pureness. She felt like an envelope held up to sunlight on a bright summer’s day. Translucent. She was completely blinded, and she could swear she heard a choir of heavenly voices singing just for her. The bitterness faded.
It’s so beautiful… so peaceful, she thought, luxuriating in the nirvana moment.
She could see dust particles sparkling like tiny specs of glitter, floating softly in the rays. As she continued to move closer, she was able to see more clearly. She could discern the outline of a door, slightly ajar. She closed one eye tight but left the other partially open, squinting as if she were watching a horror movie, and walked through, afraid, but curious nevertheless.
Her Zen moment was suddenly interrupted when she tripped over a cord of some kind and hit the floor, flat on her back. As she fell, the Light that was so magically beckoning her was knocked to the ground as well. It was shining on the ceiling, no longer blinding her.
There she was again, lying on the floor looking up, taking it all in. She slowly opened her eyes and blinked a few times, trying to focus.
Turning her head sideways, she could now see that the Light was emanating from an old 16mm film projector bolted to a steel cart. Charlotte had seen such a relic only once before, when she was assigned to help Sam Wolfe clean out the old A/V Club storage room in the Hawthorne basement.
She tilted her head up slightly above ground level to a most unexpected sight: a sea of feet adorned with toe tags. Charlotte’s eyes widened as she noticed that the tag she got in the office, the one she force-fitted around her wrist, was actually her “toe tag.” She was in a classroom filled with fellow dead students.
Before she could officially freak, an adult male voice distracted her.
“Mike, hit the lights,” it requested.
A guy near the door turned on the lights, not that it mattered much because she could see pretty decently without the light, but now she could focus on other things. The classroom, for example. With the lights up, she could see it in all its… obsolescence.
It was old-fashioned—literally—drab and outdated, like a cross between a thrift shop and a VFW hall. The white-oak desks and chairs looked hand-carved and rock solid but were mismatched. Maps of ancient lands long since redrawn hung above the blackboard. Bookshelves, partially concealed by threadbare velvet drapes, lined the back wall from floor to ceiling, teeming with outmoded texts and incomplete sets of encyclopedias. Fossil fragments and extinct creatures preserved in formaldehyde were displayed on long black marble countertops.
Fountain pens, inkwells, sealing wax, and parchment littered the scuffed maple wood floors. A glass-sided typewriter with cloth ribbon, slide rule, letter scale, compass, and abacus lay on a counter next to a wind-up Victrola and stacks of scratched 78 speed records.
She looked behind her, above the doorway, where a clock should be, but saw none. The only instrument she could see that measured time was the hourglass on the front desk, but the sand did not run through it. Charlotte recalled Pam say-ing that time had no meaning “here” and she wasn’t kidding. It seemed that nothing in the room had any meaning—anymore. This classroom was decorated as if the past century or so had never happened.
What, no sundial? Charlotte thought.
It wasn’t just that the décor was old—which it was—but that it was… defunct, that struck her. All of the items she’d taken note of, including the projector, were state-of-the-art at one time or another, vital even, but
had long since been upgraded, replaced, or just plain forgotten. She’d only seen such things on PBS or at some dead grandma’s garage sale.
It all made a weird kind of horrible sense. All the detritus of daily living that had been discarded seemed to be on display here. The poetic way to describe the place was probably “timeless,” but everything and everyone could more accurately be described as “out of time,” painfully, obviously, totally “out of time.” Including her.
“Thank you, Mike,” the male voice said sincerely, only this time, Charlotte turned around to see who it was. A pale hand extended to greet her and help her to her feet. She reached out tentatively and grabbed it.
“Ah, the new student,” he said, gently grasping her fingers with his as she stood up, transfixed. “Welcome. I am Mr. Brain,” he articulated with considerable pride. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Before “student” could register in her mind, Charlotte became completely distracted by Brain’s appearance. As with the classroom, there was a timelessness about Brain too that was both disorienting and comforting. He was tall, thin, polite, and meticulously turned out, as if he were about to be off to a dinner party rather than to teach school. In fact, there seemed a touch of funeral director in him, dressed as he was in a tailored black suit, crisp white shirt, and burgundy necktie.
“Have a seat.” He motioned hospitably to Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Brain quizzically and perused the room for someplace to sit. The sole empty chair and desk was at the back of the room. And, unlike the cheerleader sign-up sheet, this space seemed reserved for her alone.
“Sure,” Charlotte said excitedly, remembering that only the most popular people sat in the back. She walked to the back proudly and took her seat.
“Now, class, permit me to introduce Charlotte Usher. Please welcome her to Dead Ed, or as I like to call it, Special Ed for the Dead,” he joked.
“Welcome, Charlotte,” the class recited a bit mechanically.
Brain laughed so hard at his own joke, even through the class’s greeting, that his “toupee”—make that a large portion of his scalp and cranium—detached and flopped down from his head, dangling by the most fragile piece of skin and exposing the spongy outer ridges of his brain to the entire class. Embarrassed, he quickly stifled his giggle and flipped it back into place (sort of), pressed down his suit jacket nervously, straightened his tie, and cleared his throat as if nothing had happened. And judging from the non-reaction by the other kids, Brain’s head-toss was not uncommon.
“Of course… Mr. Brain…,” Charlotte whispered to herself, having solved at least one piece of this postmortem puzzle.
Brain walked over to the chalkboard like a praying mantis, light-footed but slightly hunched—around his C-5 and 6 vertebrae, Charlotte noted specifically—and began his lecture, manically writing a phrase on the chalkboard.
Non sum qualis eram. (I am not what I once was.)
Completing the phrase, Mr. Brain underscored it with the chalk and then motioned to the class like a symphony conductor at the start of a piece. On command, once again, all of the students chanted in unison:
“Non sum qualis eram.”
Charlotte had never taken Latin, and, though she couldn’t explain how, she knew it. Horace again.
“Dead teacher. Dead kids. Dead poet. Dead language,” she mumbled. “Makes sense.”
She tried to make eye contact with her fellow classmates, but almost all the students remained focused on Brain—even Pam. All except one: an angry-looking girl who sported a black bob and perfectly poker-straight bangs, faded lipstick, a rumpled and stained red dress, seated right in front of her. Charlotte could have sworn she heard the girl say “Loser,” but everyone was still facing forward, lips sealed.
Who, me? Charlotte thought silently, looking around for the source of the diss.
“Yes, YOU,” a reply echoed thunderously in Charlotte’s head. To make the point even clearer, the girl spun her head completely around and shot Charlotte the nastiest look she’d ever seen, and she had seen some nasty ones.
Charlotte, petrified, looked down at the girl’s feet to check her toe tag for her name, which read prudence, but much more noticeable was that she was wearing just one shoe. She gazed at the worn-out Mary Jane and recalled all the horrible news stories she’d seen in her short life. When, in the aftermath of any fatal hit-and-run, the only image shown would be one solitary shoe lying in the street while a reporter relayed the horrific details of the accident. That shoe—“the shoe”—was the visual that haunted people. That brought it all home. That shoe belonged to someone. They chose that shoe to wear for the day. They put it on themselves that morning. They were going somewhere in that shoe, that shoe was going to get them to where they needed to go, and now, now it was orphaned in the middle of the road. A temporary tombstone.
“Well, as you can see, I was preparing the film projector for your arrival—a little “orientation” film for your edification, shall we say?” Mr. Brain explained.
As he walked toward the projector to lift it from the floor and finish threading the film, the school fire alarm went off.
The piercing buzzer prompted Charlotte to instinctively run for the door, but everyone else just stayed in their seats, unaffected. Mike, who was randomly playing rapid-fire air guitar, reached out and grabbed Charlotte’s wrist before she could split. She was startled, but immediately sensed it was more to protect than to restrain her. Ear buds were jammed deep in his ears, but they weren’t attached to anything.
“You’ve already left the building,” Mike said, bouncing his legs in time as if he were manning double kick drums.
“Force of habit,” Charlotte responded. “You can hear me with those things blasting in your ears?”
“Yeah,” Mike answered, just a little too loudly.
Mike held Charlotte back, but nothing could keep the painful memories suddenly flooding through her mind at bay. Maybe it was the fire alarm, the reminiscence of a tiny part of her daily life, but the twinges of hurt, like the phantom pain of an amputee, remained.
Piccolo Pam walked over and introduced her formally to Mike.
“That’s Metal Mike. He had his stereo up way too loud while taking his driver’s test,” Pam explained. “He got… distracted. It didn’t end well.”
“Oh, so he got his dead name from listening to heavy metal music?” Charlotte asked.
“No,” Pam corrected her, “he got his name because listening to it killed him… and the fact that he also has actual metal shards in his head from the accident,” she added.
“Did I pass?” Mike asked Piccolo Pam, pretend-fingering his imaginary double neck electric bass.
“He asks that all the time. He’s stuck there, so I just tell him that he did,” Piccolo Pam whispered to Charlotte.
“Yes, Mike, you passed,” Piccolo Pam said in her most sympathetic voice, which seemed to have the desired effect on Mike and Charlotte as well.
Mike released Charlotte’s wrist and Piccolo Pam escorted her back to her desk. As she walked, she looked down at the kid’s feet for names and learned more than she cared to about them from their footwear.
“Mike” wore worn work boots, of course—with his big toes peeking out. “Jerry” wore hippie-style Birkenstocks. “Abigail,” dripping murky water, wore flip-flops—the bluish-green veins emerging from the tops of her feet and her naked, pale legs; Charlotte couldn’t help but look up slightly to see that the girl was wearing a school-issued swimsuit. “Suzy” was barefoot and covered in deep scratches from head to toe; she checked nervously to see if any of the other kids were looking before plunging a sharpened fingernail into her scars. Charlotte pretended not to see.
Each one was creepier than the next, but in that classroom setting, each fit in. How do I look to them? she wondered. Do I “fit in” too?
She didn’t feel any different, really, since she “arrived,” except for the “frog” in her throat. Was she still the same tall, thin, awkward geek she’d be
en all her life? With the same unruly mop of hair she’d only been able to tame with an entire drugstore shelf of conditioners, detanglers, and spray-holds?
“As I was saying, you must have a lot of questions…,” Mr. Brain said, seeming to have read her mind, as he turned the projector light back on.
“Yeah, I have one,” Jerry interrupted before Charlotte could get hers out. “Do we have to watch this movie again?”
“Yes, you do, burnout,” Prudence snapped. “Have you got something better to do? We are going to watch it over and over until it sinks in to your—and everyone else’s—brain-dead heads.”
Prudence, or Prue as she seemed to be known by her classmates, pretty much put an end to the subject, not just for Jerry but for the entire class. Except Charlotte, of course. Charlotte had a specific question on her one-track mind, and before she could edit herself, it spilled out.
“Do you know how this will affect my Physics class?” she asked. “I just got my lab partner today, and I’d hate to leave him hangin’.”
The whole class busted out into unbridled laughter at Charlotte’s naiveté—all except Prue, who could barely contain her disgust.
“Oh God… we got a ‘live’ one here,” Prue quipped, rolling her eyes.
Charlotte sank down in her seat, realizing that what she just said must have sounded ignorant to everyone. But so what? They didn’t know her. They didn’t know her situation. She still wanted to know about Damen. Strangely, that’s all she wanted to know.
“I tell you what, let’s get this film going and whatever cremains”—he stopped to giggle and acknowledge his wit yet again—“I mean, ‘remains’ unclear, we can discuss afterward….”
Mr. Brain passed a book back to her. It was titled Deadiquette.
“This one is for you, Charlotte,” Brain said helpfully. “To catch up on your studies.”
“Studies?” she asked.
Charlotte opened her book and began to peruse the Contents page. She read the chapter titles out loud to herself as Mr. Brain started the projector.