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Something horrible happened. Mama...

No. If something had happened to Mama, Parker would’ve come right out and said it. Whatever the trouble, he was the one in

it. Again.

Only this time, it wasn’t her fault.

11

A couple of days after John ate the donut, Ruben was leaping into the Navigator and nodding at Wayne, the driver Hannah had

hired. Two paparazzi held their cameras close to the tinted windows, hoping for a decent enough image for the highest tabloid

bidder.

“Dude, I love when you pick me up from work. I forget I’m not a movie star. And hey, I brought you donuts and a coffee.”

Since taking that first bite, John had—away from public gaze—sampled Korean-fusion tacos, soul food, pizza, fettuccine, Coca-Cola,

crushed ices, cotton candy, pulled pork, Mexican street corn, kimchi, and chicken and waffles.

“And I’ve got our seats. Dead center.” Ruben grinned at his own joke.

“But I said I’d take care of that.”

“You can get the next one.” Ruben had been adamant about John not funding everything .

“Then I’ll get the popcorn,” John replied, though he wouldn’t risk sneaking a bite in a crowded theatre.

As they rode to Ruben’s house, John took a sip of coffee. Heaven. He texted Hannah: What’s the latest on my potential uncle?

There was a Ghanian-British expatriate who currently resided in India, claiming to be brother to John’s father.

So far he’d passed the first lie detector test. Persephone had run an internet search on him the night before and texted John to say she hadn’t discovered anything Hannah and the team at True Water hadn’t already.

He tried to keep them in check, but his hopes rode high.

They were only at Ruben’s house for a minute before Ruben asked, “Does Persephone feel a little... off to you?”

“Stressed, probably.” John watched Bean stroll the perimeter of the backyard.

“You think she knows, you know, about your connection?”

John shook his head. “She doesn’t know that she’s the reason I’m changing, either.” He added, pointedly, “And I don’t want

her to.”

“But you’ll tell her eventually, right?”

John said nothing.

“She should be riding high with the photo shoots and interviews, but doesn’t she feel a little, well, I don’t know, like something’s

bothering her?”

“I haven’t noticed, Ruben.” But John had noticed. Ever since the night he ate the donut—a bit earlier, even—she seemed distant.

“Don’t say a word.”

“You don’t think you should tell her about the death connection? I’ve been thinking. Fog vines, the fog in your house, the

fact that you can remember things and touch things and you’re able to eat for the first time when she’s around...” Ruben heaved a sigh. “Ultimately, that connection—what you guys have in common—is

death. You know, you’re dead, the fog is in the realm of the dead, now the fog is climbing all over her—”

“I get it,” John said sharply.

“Maybe she should know that.”

“Not a word.”

“There is the possibility that the connection could be a symbolic death rather than a literal one. Which still isn’t awesome,

but...”

“Not a word.”

Ruben stared back at him for a few moments before disappearing into the bathroom, after which the sound of running water echoed

down the hall.

Was it true? A death connection. Surely it was symbolic.

“Maybe she’s taken on too much,” John said loudly, over the rush of the shower. He told himself he was trying to reassure

Ruben, but wasn’t he trying to convince himself? “Everything’s changing and she’s under scrutiny. And she’s still coming to

the hotel most mornings.” It made sense, that this would be the source of her discontent and not the death thing.

His mobile chimed.

Hannah: Nothing yet. But there might be. Won’t speak too soon. I’ll let you know.

Ten minutes later, Ruben emerged, freshly showered and dressed. “Check this out.” He turned his mobile to face John.

A news report detailed an incident involving a flash-cult in Kansas that authorities had, at the last moment, thwarted in

their plans for mass suicide. A teenage child of two members discovered the plan and called the police.

“A few cults popped up since you got here,” said Ruben. “They seem to grow overnight, so that’s what the media’s calling them.”

According to the correspondent, this particular cult believed killing themselves would take them to another dimension, specifically

John’s own.

“It’s leveling up,” Ruben said, slipping the mobile into his pocket. “Like those girls in Philadelphia who wanted to kill

themselves so they could come back as ghosts and get their own reality show. And there’s that report linking your appearance

to the mad rise in extreme sports. You coming back...” Ruben searched for the right words. “Death is still a mystery, but

it isn’t as untouchable, isn’t as scary. You took death, the ultimate abstract painting, and turned it into a 3-D print.”

Cults, teen suicides—John couldn’t help thinking God, or the Universe or the Creator or whomever, hadn’t thought things through

before allowing him to exist on this Side.

“Here’s another—” Ruben fumbled his mobile and tripped forward, crossing planes with one of John’s shoulders nearly through

to his other side. With a cry, Ruben regained his balance and leapt away, but it was too late.

John felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. He gasped and bent forward.

“John! Sorry! You OK?”

John drew a few deep breaths and straightened. His body unclenched, but his limbs were slabs of concrete; when he attempted

to raise a hand, it took far too much effort. He closed his eyes, took another breath, and waited for it all to subside. “I’m

fine,” he said finally. “Let’s go.”

Ruben walked toward the front door but hesitated before opening it.

“Let’s go,” John repeated, and it felt like someone else speaking, someone who looked and sounded like himself but wasn’t

actually him, for he felt as if he were watching himself go through these motions while the thinking and feeling part of himself

was preoccupied with whatever the hell he was feeling.

Ruben reached for the doorknob. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yes,” John said. “No. I—I don’t want to go.”

“We can totally see the movie later,” Ruben agreed. “I can get a refund on the tickets.”

“No. I mean, I don’t... I don’t want to go. ” John moved toward the door, feeling his body every step of the way, as if he were trudging waist deep through a marsh, and how did the living stand feeling so much?

“Um, ever?”

“Ruben, I’ve got a long week ahead and I just... I can’t, Ruben. You go on without me.”

“But—”

“You’ll be fine,” John said brusquely before giving a tired nod to Bean, who opened the door.

“But I thought the CPS—are you OK?”

John, still feeling the residual effects of Ruben falling into him, trailed Bean as he barreled through the barrage of lights

and shouting of the paparazzi. John tried to convince himself he hadn’t glimpsed Ruben’s crestfallen expression, tried to

convince himself he didn’t care.

But he had, and he did. And he wasn’t OK.

He was scared to death.

Because now he understood exactly what had so shaken him before, when he’d crossed planes with Riley Ray. It wasn’t the nausea, the dizziness—those were the least of it. It was the heaviness, more specifically the fact that John’s body had, in those moments and in the one just a minute ago, become

a literal anchor, weighting him to this world, this world of burdens. And on an instinctive level, he’d known even then in

the arena why he hadn’t felt the same way when he crossed planes with things —tables and walls and vehicles—with those that were not living. And as glorious as they were, fried kimchi rice and empanadas

and donuts would not ensnare him. It was people —Ruben and Persephone included—that would tether John’s body to this world, that would trap him here.

People were the danger. Always had been.

the ocean of memories

i lived in kemet , SERVING as an apprentice to a priest-embalmer. This was ages before Kemet had been conquered by the Greeks and known thereafter as

Egypt, ages before it had shared its secrets and birthed whole disciplines. I’d seen enough death firsthand not to be squeamish

about the embalming process, and I found solace in my apprenticeship, because it was my chance to touch death, if only secondhand.

We were in Master Kahotep’s embalming workshop, which had been in his family for three generations. The other embalmers—his

sons and another elderly man he’d taken on—were there as well, but he asked them to leave us alone.

“Something troubles you greatly, son,” Master Kahotep said from behind his Anubis mask. He knew I was a woman but three years

before had agreed to let me apprentice if I disguised myself as a man. “Will you tell me?”

“I dreamt I fell into the ocean,” I said.

“But it was unlike any body of water I’ve ever seen.

Beautiful but frightening and somehow deeper than any earthly one.

” I didn't tell him that when I awakened, I was scared but thrilled because after all these years, finally something new and unexpected had happened to me. “The ocean held strange things, boats and bones and oil lamps with flames that still burned... old papyri that weren’t at all damaged by the water... chariots that looked oddly built, unusual contraptions, as if they were from some other place wholly unknown to us... It was like entire kingdoms had emptied their possessions into the sea.” I thought of the haunting beauty of it all and, despite myself, I shivered.

“And the sky... well, there was no sky at all.”

He brought his dark, reddish-brown hands to his jackal mask and removed it. “Tell me more of this sky.”

“It was a space devoid of sky, as if the heavens were missing. Apologies, Master Kahotep, but I can’t quite articulate it.”

“You, daughter,” he said solemnly, forgetting to call me son , “were in the Ocean of Memories.”

“You know this place?”

“Only by oral accounts of the most venerated sages. You will not find it within any papyrus.” And then Master Kahotep explained

to me what it was and how I might’ve gotten there, which was rare, indeed.

I didn’t tell him what disturbed me most about it, didn’t mention at all the uncanny sense of familiarity about things that

were not at all familiar. I kept this to myself, and did so for thousands of years.

I didn't tell him about the house. In the dream, I didn't thrash in the water, but simply floated with my eyes closed, because

the void above was so disconcerting. I didn’t swim to the house because I hadn’t done anything for it to appear in the distance,

and so I understood it to be a gift from the Ocean. Swimming to it in desperation would be greedy, a person tearing through

wrapping to get to a present.

So I waited, and when I was close enough, I saw that there was someone in the window.

I knew that window.

And yet I couldn’t know that window. Still, I knew immediately who stood there, felt a distant thrumming in the air so similar to the humming vibration I felt when I’d first met that sweet little boy.

I sensed then that something inside of him hummed differently.

I knew this vibration. I had felt it so long ago but also what felt like yesterday, and also right now.

I got the sense that time was not linear but all at once, and that he wasn’t like me at all, yet he wasn’t like everyone else, either. And somehow, we would know each other.

Him. That window.

Our gazes locked and love and concern and heartbreak washed over me with all the sharp sting of salty waves against a cut

that never healed.

Because some wounds never do, and he had wounds of his own.

It was the past and yet it was the future. And so I remembered that at the orphanage, three thousand years from this moment,

I would bend to his level, look into his soft, frightened eyes, and say in a voice so quietly only he could hear:

“Hello, John.”