I knew instinctively the earth was far behind me and the heavens were opening up to take me in. This was it. The moment I’d been dreading since I first set foot on dry ground. I was going home.
28
They Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab
THINGS were all wrong from the moment I got back. Although I never expected I’d be happy to return, I never realized how much it would feel like exile.
When I finally opened my eyes, I was inside the gates of Heaven. They stretched up endlessly above my head disappearing into the swirling whiteness. I turned around and clung to the golden bars, looking down at the world I’d left behind. Earth was a long way away from here. From the vantage point where I stood, it resembled a dark blue, textured marble suspended in space and covered in a white veil. It looked so beautiful it was hard to imagine its continents ever being ravaged by war or famine or natural disaster. It looked peaceful and protected, like it fit snugly in Our Father’s spiderweb of life. Every part of me longed to go back. But there was no way back.
I turned again, this time to face the white wonderland before me, the air rippling with the color of opals, pale pinks, and the lightest shades of green like foam on the ocean. But I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. I could see other angels around me, appearing as globes of light in the mist, darting here and there as they guided souls and passed messages through the chain of communication in the Kingdom. Everybody seemed to have a purpose … except me. The only place I wanted to go was backward.
I wasn’t even sure if I was in trouble. I had expected some kind of reaction, fury or punishment or condemnation but everybody was acting as if I didn’t exist. So I stood there helplessly, dithering, unsure what to do until a voice spoke to me.
“Bethany,” it said. “There you are. Welcome home.”
I looked up to see a woman standing before me. She was wearing a crisp white suit and her hair had been wound into a neat French bun. Her fingers were manicured and she had gold-framed glasses resting on the tip of her nose.
“Who are you?” I asked without stopping to consider whether I might sound rude.
“I’m Eve,” said the woman, pulling out a clipboard and making notes as she peered at me over the rim of her glasses. “Come with me.”
I followed Eve because I had no other choice. I couldn’t stand there at the gates indefinitely and I didn’t know which division I belonged to. Was I still a transition angel? I doubted they’d credit me mentally stable enough to deal with the souls. So what was I supposed to do? That was the only life I’d ever known … and my life on earth. So I followed Eve into what looked surprisingly like an office. A very clinical office.
One moment I had been in Heaven’s marble foyer and the next I was sitting on a plump white couch with a white fur rug at my feet and a fat, purring cat in Eve’s lap. She was sitting opposite me in a leather-backed chair, still silently inspecting me.
“So…” she said with a small, knowing smile, like it was a prelude to a conversation we were supposed to have. Did she expect me to say something in reply?
“So,” I repeated stubbornly.
“It’s been a very interesting turn of events, hasn’t it?” Eve asked, nodding her head as if she could completely empathize with the situation. “Tell me, how do you feel about everything right now?”
“Is that a trick question?” I said. “How do you think I feel?”
“I see.” Eve smiled again and scribbled some notes on her pad. “Well, I think we have some issues to tackle!”
She sounded like a camp leader trying to motivate her students.
“I want to go home,” I said loudly, as if that might get through to her.
“Don’t be silly.” Eve tapped the end of her pencil against her clipboard. “You are home.”
“Who are you?” I asked again. “Why am I here, talking to you? If you’re going to excommunicate me, just do it already.”
“Excommunicate?” she repeated, writing it down on her pad for good measure. “Nobody’s being excommunicated today. I’m here to help you.”
“Really?” I asked skeptically. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”
“In our sessions,” Eve replied, opening a drawer that seemed invisible in the white wood of the coffee table and offering me a bowl of striped candy. “Would you like one?”
“Did you say sessions?” I asked, ignoring her offer and pushing the bowl away. “We’re going to be doing this regularly?”
“Oh, yes, everyday,” Eve replied. “Think of me as your mentor.”
“You’re a shrink, aren’t you?” I asked angrily. “Heaven’s version of a head doctor?”
“I prefer the term mentor,” Eve replied pleasantly.
It was clear they didn’t know quite what to do with me. There was no precedence for my case and no experience to draw upon. I was an anomaly and so they had decided to put me into therapy with Eve, who was growing more irritating every minute. She refused to answer any of my questions and expected that I’d answer all of hers. She claimed her job was to help me reacclimatize until I felt ready to resume my old responsibilities. She made it sound so clear and simple. Soon everything would go back to the way it was. Except for one major problem. I didn’t want to go back to the way things used to be. I wanted to go back to earth, back to Xavier. That was my sole focus and my sole ambition.
“I understand you were living with a seraph and an Arch, is that correct?” Eve asked.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t already know,” I snapped, and she raised her pencil-thin eyebrows at me.
“Try to answer the question, please.”
“Yes,” I replied sarcastically. “I lived with them and my husband. Remember him?”
“Hmmm,” Eve said thoughtfully, and conveyed the information to her trusty notepad.
“Will you stop that?” I demanded.
“I’m just making observations,” she replied pleasantly.
And our conversation went on like that, round and round in circles, with Eve divulging nothing and me having periodic outbursts. After what seemed like hours she finally dismissed me and said she’d collect me for our next session tomorrow. If there had been a cliff in Heaven for me to jump off of, I would have headed straight for it. But I was back in my true form now and of course, I couldn’t die. I couldn’t sleep either, so there was literally no form of escape. I didn’t eat. I didn’t do anything. I just existed. And being an angel in Heaven with nothing to occupy your time was a pretty good way to lose your mind. Our existence was to serve and protect the Kingdom and Our Father’s creations. We were always busy because there was always another human in need. But I was barred from interaction with anybody other than my mentor until I was deemed in a fit condition to work.
And so there was nothing to fill the endless space of time that stretched before me. I wanted to scratch at the walls of my mind. The tedium was insufferable. I wanted to scream, to run, to cry, or to fight, but I couldn’t do any of those things. I wanted to stop existing. Besides the gaping chasm in my chest that ached for Xavier, I missed everything about earth: the smell of coffee or freshly cut grass, the romantic flush of light between dusk and sunset, the touch of another body or the sensation of water on my skin. I sensed other angels around me, going about their business, but none approached or made any effort to speak to me. Were they afraid of me? Or had they been instructed to stay away? I knew I came across as a loose cannon, drifting around, talking to myself or completely zoned out, remembering my past life. They all thought I was falling apart and it was true, I was. Only I didn’t care. There was nothing and no one I needed to stay together for now. And so I was Heaven’s resident screwball. I was pretty sure that if Eve got her way (and she struck me as the persistent type) in successfully rehabilitating me there would be no trace of the human me left. But in my mind I was still the girl from Venus Cove. I wasn’t ready to let go of her and I didn’t think I ever would be.
“I wonder if Xavier’s been to se
e his parents,” I said one day in a session with Eve. I’d quickly learned to throw out random thoughts because I knew they bothered her.
She had asked me a question that I hadn’t even heard. She was irritating me without even doing anything. I hated how groomed she always looked with her caramel hair, slick as glass, coiled in a swoop at the nape of her neck. Her white suit was always perfectly pressed and her face was bland with flat planes and level benevolent eyes. Of course, Eve wasn’t her angelic name, it was what they wanted me to call her so we might establish a “connection.” In human years she looked around forty, with the kind of face you’d expect to see on a headmistress.
“There’s no point discussing your time on earth,” Eve said firmly. “It’s all in the past now.”
I looked at her, sitting there with her cool Nordic beauty. To her credit Eve did seem to have an answer for everything and I imagined I could ask the same question twenty times over and still get the same, calm, collected response. But there was a schoolmarm air about her that made me not trust her. I didn’t believe she was really on my side and I didn’t like her unblinking little eyes. She was on the side of order and I represented chaos in her book.
“Your memories are millstones. You must let go of them.”
“Shut up,” I told her, and she pursed her lips together and wrote something decisively down in her little book. “I almost think Hell was better,” I said to myself.
“What’s that?” Eve asked. “What did you say?”
“I said I think I miss Hell,” I replied chattily. “At least there was always something to do there.”
“I don’t think you know quite what you’re saying.”
“I don’t think you know quite how boring you are,” I shot back.
“It isn’t boring to be at peace,” Eve informed me. “To be at one with a collective cosmic energy that is greater than anything you can understand.”
“Whatever,” I muttered. “I don’t want to be part of your cosmic mosh-pit. Haven’t you seen Lord of the Rings? I choose a mortal life.”
“Who’s offering you a choice?” Eve asked and changed her tactic when I glared daggers at her. “Sometimes you must trust that others know what’s best for you. We’re trying to help.”
“Why do I still have a body?” I asked. “And why do you? That’s not how I remember Heaven.”
“We’re making allowances,” Eve replied. “Trying to ease you slowly back into this life. We thought giving you a body for years and then taking it away might be damaging.”
“How considerate,” I said. “Are you married?”
Eve furrowed her brow, trying to keep up as I jumped from topic to topic. “Of course not. We’re not permitted to marry. You know that.”
“You can’t hold me forever,” I told her. “I’m going to find a way out of here. Even if I have to blow myself up with cosmic kryptonite.”
“Is that so?” Eve asked, puzzled.
“Yep,” I said. “And if I can’t get out, I’ll stir up so much trouble you’ll wish you never dragged my ass back up here.”
“I can see we still have a fair bit of work to do.” Her use of the royal pronoun annoyed me; it just made her sound condescending.
“Until what?” I asked in a snarky tone.
“Until you understand that earthly pleasures are nothing compared to the eternal riches of Heaven.”
“Well, you better up your game in that case,” I said. “Because earthly pleasures are winning right now.”
“You won’t always feel that way,” Eve replied.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why don’t you just punish me? Throw me into the pit with Lucifer? It’d be easier.”
“We’re trying to fix you,” Eve answered. “I doubt Lucifer would be much help.”
“What if I don’t want to be fixed?”
“You can’t live like this forever.”
“No,” I agreed. “And I don’t plan to.”
Eve and I clearly had different solutions in mind. But I had one thing over them—complete indifference to what happened to me. There was nothing they could use to scare me anymore. I’d heard the Sevens; Xavier’s life was valuable, they couldn’t hurt him. And so I could afford to be as difficult as I wanted. And I planned to give them hell. I just hadn’t figured out how.
I thought I’d start with a few mind games.
“The demons told me things, you know,” I said to Eve, leaning back and letting myself sink into the embroidered silk cushions. “All sorts of things.”
“Like what?” she asked, twitching her nose like she had an itch. Her look told me that if in Heaven everyone had been assigned a cross to bear then I was hers.
“Like how to let them into Heaven.” I gave her my most angelic smile. “How to open a portal for them.”
“That’s preposterous,” Eve snorted. “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.”
“How would you know?” I asked her. “I was in Hell. I lived there for months. Do you think I didn’t learn a thing or two? They really have it in for you guys. All they need is someone on the inside.”
“Don’t tell lies,” Eve said. “Demons can’t get into Heaven.”
“I was an angel and I got into Hell,” I replied, casually inspecting my fingernails. I saw Eve shift in her seat and tug at her collar. Of course I was completely bluffing. I’d never stoop so low as to call on demons for help, to put my Father’s Kingdom at risk. Even if I didn’t belong there anymore, it was still the sacred Promised Land. But if I could convince Eve I was crazy enough to do it, she might start taking me seriously.
“Well…” Eve said. “Then you really would be exiled to Hell.”
“Do it,” I said. “Gabriel will find a way to get me out. He might not be able to question Heaven, but Hell’s got no hold over him.”
“This is all very disappointing, Beth,” said Eve, like she was scolding a naughty child. “Very disappointing indeed.”
Who was she to judge me? How dare she sit there in her pristine suit and presume to understand anything about my life. Before I knew what was happening, I was on my feet, screaming at her, every profanity I could think of, cursing her to Hell and making up all sorts of wild threats. All I could think about was the red-hot anger surging through me. The rage could literally not be contained. My life had been so messed up by these people. We’d fought so hard only to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and torn apart.
Eve stood up and walked over to me. She didn’t even seem alarmed. I had to admit she was pretty unflappable since I was throwing a major tantrum. But when she reached out to touch me, something happened. Upon making contact with my skin, blue sparks seemed to fly and the tips of her hair sizzled. She made a strange yelping noise and jerked away. I was so surprised that I stopped shouting midsentence. Before I could say anything in my defense, two men who looked like bodyguards appeared in the room and sandwiched me between their muscled arms. Seconds later I found myself alone and imprisoned in a white room.
There was nothing to do but lie down on the floor and wait. The whiteness felt like a physical weight, suffocating me. This was not the Heaven I remembered. I remembered a glittering pyramid of colors, space, freedom, and the feeling that earth, sky, and water were all coming together in perfect synchronization. But now I only felt like someone had tried to cram me into a box that was too small. For all the vastness of Heaven, I might as well have been in a prison cell.
I heard Eve’s voice speaking to me through the walls, like Big Brother.
“I thought we were getting along so well. It isn’t nice to electrocute people who are trying to help you.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said flatly, without lifting my cheek from the floor.
“Well, I’m not angry,” Eve said. “I’m just giving you some time to cool off.”
“Super. Thanks.”
“You don’t have to punish yourself, you know?” she said.
“Actually, I think I was trying to punish
you.”
I heard Eve give a sigh, before her demeanor returned to her subzero cheer.
“We’ll get you on track soon enough.”
“What are you, a motivational speaker? Go away.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be back later.”
“Save us both the trouble,” I replied.
I heard Eve’s shoes clack on the floor outside as she walked away. Then suddenly, they stopped. “What are you doing here?” her voice demanded of an imposter I couldn’t see. “You’re not supposed to be here. Do you have clearance?”
“Where is she?” The mellow voice belonged to my brother, Gabriel.
29
I See Dead People
I sat up so fast it made my head spin. Could Gabriel really be here? Had he come to get me out? I heard Eve’s voice again, sounding flustered now.
“You’re not authorized! Stop, you can’t go in there!”
There were no doors in my isolation room. Gabriel materialized through the wall, more luminous than in his earthly form. I’d never been happier to see anyone. I scrambled to my feet and clung to him, drinking in his presence. I was scared he might disappear if I let go.
“They really have you in lockdown,” he observed.
“It’s awful,” I said into his chest. “There’s just nothingness. I’m going out of my mind. You have to get me out of here.”
“I can’t,” Gabriel said.