Theme 7: Heaven
Allie's Point of View
"Where am I? Hello? Hey, is anyone here?" My voice escalates as panic sets in. I don't know where I am. I remember Haymitch carrying me into Ree's house, the apothecary, but after that I don't remember anything. It's very bright here, and everything is white. I look down and see that the jacket and skirt I had been wearing is gone, replaced by a flowing white dress.
"Hi, Allie! It's good to see you again." I whirl around and see Maysilee standing behind me. She waves; tentatively I wave back.
"Hi, Maysilee...Um, where are we?" She giggles.
"Haven't you guessed yet?"
"Well I've decided that I'm asleep but other than that, I have no idea."
"You're not asleep, silly, you're dead." She smiles. "Isn't it great?"
Dead.
"I'm WHAT?" I shriek. "No, no way, no way I'm dead, I can't be dead, that Peacekeeper just pricked me with something, I'm not dead, nope, I don't believe you." I clamp my hands over my ears and talk louder to drown out her explanation. "I'm not dead! I'll wake up soon because I'm not dead!"
Gently, Maysilee removes my hands from my ears. "Yes, you are. Want proof?" She points at a floating cloud and I look at it. I see everything that had happened in the square from a birds-eye view. There's Haymitch and I dancing, and then he spins me away and the Peacekeeper catches me. There's where he pricked me, and then I fall. I close my eyes.
"Is that why you're here?" I ask my friend, with my eyes still shut tight.
"Yup, and I'm supposed to get you 'acquainted' with being dead and how it works up here. We can do that later, we've got years and years!" She laughs again.
"Aren't you...upset about dying?"
"Well, of course I am! But the best thing to do is just move on. Besides, it sometimes seems like I'm not really dead. You can watch what's happening with the living and there's a rumor that you can even pop into a dream or two! Well, when you've been dead long enough. Not now." He smile falters or the first time. "We two have got a while before we can do a dream-visit. I wanted to tell Milana that I was okay, but I can't. I wanted to tell her to not be mad at anyone because it isn't anyone's fault, I shouldn't have tried to get eggs from that nest. It's my fault but there's people blaming themselves. It sucks."
"Mil was pretty upset for a while. She's still upset, actually, and she hasn't been talking to anyone." I hesitantly reach out to touch Maysilee's shoulder, unsure of whether she'll be solid or not. When I find that she feels as real as she ever has, I pat her back to make her feel better. She sighs, then brightens and looks at me.
"Anyway. Wanna see what I mean about watching life?" She leads me over to another floating cloud and we look down.
"Hey, look, it's the reaping!" She points and I focus on the square. It's filled with people penned off according to age group.
"Wait, this is next year! Haymitch just got home, how can it be the reaping already?"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you: Time up here doesn't run the same as it does down there. It goes a lot slower here than in real life. We could go back, if you want. It's pretty cool, you ask the cloud to go back however many years. Want to?" She starts to say the number of months, but I hold out a hand.
"Wait. Shush. Can we get closer?" She tilts the cloud and we zoom into the square. Maysilee's face lights up at the sight of Ree and Jack together, and of Hazelle and Calvin.
"Yes, they got together? I called that in seventh grade! Hey, is that Milana? With Tom Undersee?" She smiles hugely at the sight of her twin.
"Wow, that one's out of nowhere!" We laugh and look around the scene, pointing out people that we knew. We make faces at Mama and Daddy, and we both tear up at the sight of little Rylan mounting the stage. "He's so little. We used to babysit him, with Ree, remember?"
"Oh he was too cute!" I freeze. Absolutely freeze. My smile slides off my face and I forget how to speak for a moment. "Allie? You okay?"
"Zoom in, right there please." She zooms in on Haymitch's face and Maysilee stops laughing as well.
What happened to you, Mitchie?
His eyes are clouded, their usual bright gray vanished. He's slumped over in his seat with a crooked smirk. His hair is longer than I've ever seen it and it looks like he hasn't washed his clothes in a few days.
"What...what..." Maysilee's loss for words sums up my own speechlessness.
"He looks like a wreck! Go back, I need to see what happened to him." We slide backward through time, and in going to backward we see Haymitch go from the sunken man to the vibrant youth that I remember. The cause is clear.
"Liquor?" I can't believe this. I simply cannot believe this. We both agreed that people who depend on substances are pathetic.
"That's...I don't..."
"He's going to kill himself drinking like that," I whisper, pointing at the scene now playing before us. Haymitch lurches around the bar, a bottle clenched in each fist. He stops, sways, and vomits on the floor. "He's dead."
"Let's not watch this anymore." Maysilee pushes the cloud and it floats high, high out of reach. I'm rendered speechless. If I was alive, we'd be over. I love him dearly, but addicts have always been the turn-off for me.
"Wanna see where we live? Come on, I'll show you!" Maysilee tries to distract me by showing me the white building where we live. Heaven, apparently, isn't much different from Earth. We still feel hunger and exhaustion. Maysilee takes delight in my shock at the lack of bathrooms.
"Where do we go?" I ask incredulously.
"We don't!" Her eyes sparkle with mischief and informs me that we don't have any bodily functions down there anymore.
"That's...different." My enthusiasm is forced and half-hearted. I can't get over the fact that Mitchie's taken a bad turn but...
I'm dead.
We've been broken up unwillingly, but it's still happened.
I must force myself not to care.
I take a deep breath, and exhale slowly. I take every happy memory I have with my boy and shove them down, deep into a locked place in my heart. I must not think of him as what he is, but what I knew. I smile, genuinely.
"So May, give me a real tour! Show me everything you can. We've got plenty of time, right?" She looks relieved at my shift in moods but doesn't ask why.
I must not care.
I must not care.
"Okay! We'll go meet people. Everyone's so cool here, nobody dislikes each other because there isn't a point, right?" She laughs and tugs me along by my wrist. I follow obediently, feeling somewhat lighter now that I've locked Haymitch away in a special place in me.
Theme Seven! I wasn't sure how to write this...I did my best :)
