Page 14 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

Annie nods.

“Can’t you talk, girl?”

Annie swallows. “I wanted presents.”

The old woman scowls.

“You shouldn’t bother people.”

Annie can’t break her gaze from the woman’s face, her long, slanted nose, her thin, cracked lips, the purplish circles under her eyes.

“Are you really a witch?” Annie asks.

The woman squints. “No,” she says. “Are you?”

Annie shakes her head.

“I’m just sick, that’s all,” the woman says. “Now go away.”

She shuts the door. Annie exhales. She turns and runs to the others down the block. When she reaches them, she repeats what the woman said.

“Deal’s off,” Warren says. “She isn’t a real witch.”

Annie’s shoulders slump.

She never gets the money.

The First Person Annie Meets in Heaven

“Am I going too fast?”

Annie stared at the boy in the striped shirt.

Where am I?

“Can’t hear you.”

Where am I—

“Can’t heaaaaarr you!”

I said—

He broke into a grin. “I can’t hear you, stupid, because you’re not talking.”

He was right. Annie had no mouth. The words she was hearing were in her mind.

“Nobody can talk when they first arrive,” the boy said. “It makes you listen better. That’s what they told me, anyhow.”

Who?

“The first people I met.”

So youcanhear me?

“What you’re thinking, yeah.”

Who are you?