Chapter Four: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul
The trucks pull away from us and then I watch them drive
away from the school property. Vera waits politely for us to stop talking and
then she says, “Please follow me.”
She turns to walk away, and we follow her.
Vera points to the entrance of the G.A. Academy, “That is
the front office, where we will come tomorrow after you have settled in. Those
of you, who will remain with us, will register here and your class schedules
will be given to you.”
Those of us who remain here? Is she taking us for yet
another selection and division? Panic grips my heart and that hollow place in
the pit of my stomach.
Vera carries on walking up a slight incline in the road,
with twenty kids walking behind her, following her like ducklings.
A distance away from the red-brick building, we get to a
large circular building, painted brilliant white. It has a sharp needle spire,
reaching up into the sky and I am unable to see the top of it, no matter how
far I crane my head backwards. The sun reflects off it brightly and it hurts my
eyes to look at it.
She leads us into its bright interior and the ceiling above
us is cathedral high.
We crowd into a small area and I see a huge double door
ahead of us. It has elaborate gold-leaf lettering, and the gold is almost too
difficult to read in this otherwise brilliant white room. It says, Hall of
Judgement.
Vera turns away from us to the door and then with a hand on
each handle, she pushes them down simultaneously.
The doors swing open, away from her and silently we follow
her into the room. It looks like a waiting room without any chairs, a large
white hall with a thick white carpet on the ground. Unsure my hand searches for
Charlene again and then when I find her hand, we clutch desperately onto each
other. I feel trepidation build up in me, slowly, little by little.
Vera turns to us, and she says friendly, “Make yourselves
comfortable until it is your turn to be tested.”
Tested! I cannot sing, I cannot dance, and I cannot perform
any tricks. I am not very athletic, or academically brilliant. I am just me.
Lionel and Mark walk to the opposite side of the large area
while Carly, Charlene and I follow them. We sit down in a circle and our knees
touch. Mark sits across from me, and Lionel and Charlene sit on either side of
me.
Charlene laughs softly. “Why would they have auditions in a
Hall of Judgement?”
Lionel looks equally confused. “Maybe Vera meant to say
interview.”
I look at each of them nervously. Carly is chewing her nails
and Mark looks a little anxious. “Well, it might sound daft now, but I think we
can accept it for a fact we are dead, and this is definitely the afterlife.”
Lionel looks at me amused. “You only realise this now?”
“Maybe
I realised it long ago, but my brain would not accept it,” I reply indignantly.
Charlene adds, “So… We know we are dead. We probably all
died on the bus.”
Carly sobs loudly and this makes me feel sad.
I wipe a tear from my cheek stubbornly and say softly, “My
mum must be so sad.”
The excitement of being in a strange place, which can
possibly be, probably is, Heaven, is starting to evaporate amazingly fast and I
start to feel miserable. The life I left behind is gone, my mum and dad are
gone, my brother, everybody. I am alone.
I glance up and see Mark looking at me sympathetically.
Lionel takes my hand into his. “You’ll be fine, Sunel. There is nothing you can
do about this now. Your mum and dad will be fine.”
I look at him angrily, pulling my hand from his. “No. They
won’t!”
Letting my head drop into my open palms while resting my
elbows on my knees, I sigh long and deeply. Closing my eyes, my mind drifts
back to my mum, my dad, and my brother.
Hours ago, this morning, I woke up in a sullen mood. I was
tired because I stayed up all night reading, and then tossing and turning. My
mind was so busy planning what to wear on the outing to the Museum of Natural
Science. It seemed to be such an important decision at the time. I wanted to
also be popular, although Charlene and Lionel never had this same wish; at
least they never said it out loud. How could I not have wanted to be a part of
the Populars? They had everything. They had a healthy social life, they had
awesome clothes, and even though most of the times my outfits matched theirs in
design, they still looked better in theirs.
I tried everything with my hair. My hair is short, cut in a
style to hang in straight bangs past my ears, but there seem to be several
cow-licks in inappropriate places, making my hair stick up away from my head as
each day dragged on. Even if I spent hours each morning with a multitude of
little bottles to straighten and force my hair to stay in the perfectly shaped
style, it never did.
I have a huge number of freckles across the bridge of my
nose and across my cheeks, and no matter how many times my mum told me lovingly
they were sun-kisses, I hate them. Why did the sun have to adorn me with so
many kisses in a world where perfect, pale, unblemished skin is one of the many
things I wanted?
My eyes. What could be said about boring green eyes with
flecks of hazel? Nothing. There would not be a poet or a songwriter out there
in the world getting lyrical, who would write a sonnet or a harmonious duet to
describe my eyes.
All these problems prevented me from falling into a deep
dreamless sleep, and so when I dragged myself out of bed, I had a
sleep-deprived headache.
After I got dressed and forcefully pulled myself away from
the mirror and one last look to make sure I looked okay, I went down to
breakfast.
My younger brother, Adrian, was his usual irritating self.
Now I am sorry I was never nicer to him. He is only twelve years old and I
should have been a better bigger sister.
I should have talked to him more often instead of always
snubbing him, always imagining him turning into a toad. I wonder when the
sadness of the sudden loss of my departure from the living had eased a bit if
he would start missing me, although he did not really have a lot to miss about
me. In the long run, I suppose he would be a little relieved I am gone.
I would not be there any more to pull silly pranks on him,
to tell him scary stories which had him running to my mum in tears of panic.
My parents are not what you would call wealthy, but we lived
in an average suburban house, and my mum and dad worked all day to maintain our
average suburban lifestyle. I did love my mum and dad, very much, but when I
died, I was at that stage in my life where I knew everything, and nobody could
tell me otherwise.
At forty, my parents are old and could not possibly, in a
hundred years, know the way I feel about anything, what I have to go through
each and every day. They could never understand the problems I faced daily.
They used to embarrass me when a song came on the radio and they smiled at each
other lovingly and sang along with the artist. When they had their fights and
said things they would later declare they did not mean, they did not come to me
and explain the hurtful things I had overheard. Things I never should have
heard, but the volume of their voices from behind the closed doors of their
room could never escape my ears.
Although their fights started anywhere in the house, by the
time it escalated into a screaming match, they were always in their room, the
door banged shut tightly. In a way, I suppose this was to protect me and my
brother and to defend them I suppose they did not realise the walls of our
suburban house is not all that thick.
Even though they embarrassed me, and sometimes I wondered
why they were still married after saying all those awful things to each other
in a blinding rage of anger, I could now see them clearly in my mind.
My mum would be frantic. She would be standing on the side
of that bridge and her eyes would be rimmed in red. My dad would try to hold on
to her consolingly, but she would push him away at first, rejecting his
embrace, because to accept his pity would mean to accept defeat. My dad would
have that faraway look in his eyes, which he always got when he got sad or
angry as if he is switching off some kind of button in his mind.
When the rescue team at the bottom of the cliff fishes my
lifeless body from the freezing cold water, they will go home to a house
without me.
They will close my bedroom door and leave it like that for
years while dust gathers on everything. Years from now they would maybe decide
to clean out the room. I wish with all my heart, they do not because then they
might find my diary hidden behind the bed.
They might read the things I wrote in moments of anger,
especially when they were having their fights and when the little man on my
shoulder would not stop saying things which made me even angrier. A little man,
I thought was my friend, until he caused my death.
Now I just wanted his voice to stop whispering things in my ear.
Continue reading Chapter Five
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