Page 13 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

“Lots of presents,” Devon says.

“Really?” Annie says.

“I got a bike,” Warren says.

Annie feels jealous. She likes presents. She only gets them on Christmas and her birthday now. Her mother says they have to “tighten up” since her father left.

“Can I do a communum?”

“A Communion, stupid.”

“You have to be Catholic. Are you Catholic?”

Annie shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You’d know if you were Catholic,” Warren says.

“How?”

“You just would.”

Annie taps the sidewalk with her shoe. She feels the limits of being too young, a feeling she has often with the Helms kids, who walk her home every day. Most of her classmates are picked up by their mothers. But Annie’s mother has to work, so Annie waits at the neighbors’ until she gets home.

“Witch’s house coming up,” Warren says.

They look ahead to a small, brown, single-level home, with sagging gutters and a neglected front porch. Its paint is peeling. Its wood is rotted. The rumor is an old witch lives there and once, years ago, a kid went inside and never came out.

“Give you five dollars if you knock on her door,” Warren says.

“Not me,” Devon says.

“I don’t need it,” Lisa says. “I’m getting presents Sunday.”

“Up to you, Annie.”

Warren pulls a five-dollar bill from his pocket.

“You can buy a lot of stuff.”

Annie stops. She thinks about presents. She stares at the door.

“She’s probably not even home,” Warren says. He waves the bill. “Fiiiive bucks.”

“How many toys can I get for that?” Annie asks.

“A lot,” Devon says.

Annie pulls on her curly hair and looks down, as if deciding. Then she lets go and marches up the path until she reaches the porch. She looks back at the others. Warren makes a knocking motion.

Annie inhales. Her heart is racing. She thinks again about presents. She lifts her fist to the screen door.

Before she can make contact, it swings open and a white-haired woman in a bathrobe is staring down at her.

“What do you want?” the woman croaks.

Annie can’t move. She shakes her head as if to say, Nothing, she wants nothing. The woman looks past her to the other kids running away.

“They put you up to this?”