Page 52 of If Anything Happens To Me

“Hello, Oli,” he said, that familiar voice ringing in my ears as I felt the sting on my neck, as I felt the cold rush through my veins, freezing me, turning me into ice that cracked and splintered and sent me collapsing to the floor.

That was the moment I died.

I’d always wondered how death would feel. To be awake and alive one moment, and then to die. Would everything stop all at once? Would it be like stepping from sunlight into darkness? Would it be like falling asleep?

I used to think, yes, it would be like sleep. Like drifting into a dream that would go on forever. Never waking up again, but still having a presence. Being able to see the world as I used to know it, to keep watch over the people I loved, the way I felt Eloise did for me after she died.

And I thought I would see the people I’d lost—my parents and my sister. I thought they would be waiting for me. They would be there to walk me from one life into the next. We would hug and they would hold me, and I would tell them how much I had missed them. I was sure of that.

But this death was different.

It was more like stepping into the fog. If you’ve ever spent time by the ocean, you know the kind—thick, gray billows of mist that sweep in from the sea, blanket the beach and docks and town, so heavy you can’t see through it. But then it starts to roll out, just a little at first, letting some light in, allowing you to see the contours of houses, and people, and trees, and the tall masts of boats. In and out goes the fog.

And that’s how it was for me. Everything was obliterated—I was lost in a cloudy muddle—but then I began to see the things around me. Slowly at first, just a shadow here, a shape there. At first I heard only a buzzing, like static in my ears, but then sounds became more distinct. I could hear voices, one in particular calling my name.

Eloise, I thought, because who else would it be?

“Wake up!” a girl—not my sister—said.

I could barely hear her. The voice drifted in and out of my mind. Or maybe it was me, coming and going like waves on the beach. Would I stay, or would I wash away, out to sea?

“Are you there?” the girl asked. “Did he give you too much?”

“Am I dead?” I tried to ask, but my mouth wouldn’t move, and the words caught in my throat.

“I don’t know!” the girl’s voice said, so she must have heard me.

When Gram, Eloise, and I would go to the cemetery and straighten up my parents’ graves, my grandmother would call it “a thin place.” She said that at times, in certain locations, the wall between the living and the dead was so fragile, we could pass in and out, almost without knowing it, to be with one another. Eloise and I would always exchange looks. It sounded weirdly funny, but also comforting—to think our parents could be right there with us.

I felt as if just then, hearing that strange girl’s voice, I was in a thin place.

That meant that Eloise was near—she had to be.

I called her name.

“Oli,” my sister said back. “Oli Oli Oli Oli.”

“I love you, I missed you,” I said.

“I missed you.”

“But we’re together now.”

“Only for a minute in this way,” she said.

“What way?”

“Well, that you’re dead like me. But not for long . . .”

“I’m on the other side?” I asked. “Of the wall? In the thin place?”

“Yes. And it will stay thin, Oli. I’ll be with you through what you are about to face. But you’ll go back to being alive, and I’ll still be dead. Believe that, Oli. Let me give every bit of what I know, what I’ve learned. Listen hard. You’ll hear me, Oli. I love you . . . I have to go now . . .”

I couldn’t bear losing my sister again, so I drifted deeper into a dream of night, and when I came back into the reality of day, Eloise was gone. I felt small hands on my shoulders, shaking me hard, and I heard the strange girl’s voice again: “Open your eyes! You have to, come on!”

She was holding my wrist, pushing the rope bracelet out of the way, fingertips searching for my pulse. “I’ve got you, hold on to my voice, wake up, you can do it!”

The mental haze began to clear, and I saw a familiar face peering down at me. Just seeing her made me choke up because I saw the resemblance to Iris. They had the same dark hair and brown eyes.

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