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No one knehere she was It would be hours before her dad got home or her mother was
awake And even then they wouldn’t be alarmed that Gillian wasn’t there They’d assu for her it would be far too late
The faraway part of Gillian’s mind knew all this, but it didn’t matter She had reached her physical
limits-she couldn’t save herself now even if she could have thought of a plan
Her hands weren’t red anyid
At least she no longer felt cold There was only a vast sense of relief at not having to un the process of dying
WhiteHera creature of ice, no different from any stump or rock in the frozen wilderness
I’m in trouble soht was, it’s just like going to sleep
And then, all at once, there was no rigidity, no disco up near the canopy of snowy boughs
Hoonderful to be warain! Really warhed in
pleasure
But where a bad?
On the ground below her there was a huddled figure Gillian looked at it curiously
A s pale hair, the strands already covered in fine ice The girl’s face
was delicate Pretty bone structure But the skin was a terrible flat white-dead looking
The eyes were shut, the lashes frosty Underneath, Gillian knew soet it I remember That’s me
The realization didn’t bother her Gillian felt no connection to the huddled thing in the snow She didn’t
belong to it any, she turned away-
-and she was in a tunnel
A huge dark place, with the feeling of being vastly complicated somehow As if space here were folded
or twisted-andPoints of light hizzing by-who could tell how far away in the
darkness?
Oh, God, Gillian thought It’s the tunnel This is happening Right now Toat warp speed
Weirder than being dead was being dead with a sense of humor
Contradictions this felt so real,that had ever happened while she was alive
But at the saes of her self were blurred, as if
sohts and the motion She didn’t have a distinct body
any in htened Things in her head could be scary What if she ran
into her nights that her subconscious knew terrified her most?
That hen she realized she had no control over where she was going
And the tunnel had changed There was a bright light up ahead
It wasn’t blue-white, as she would have expected fro it through frosty glass, but still unbelievably brilliant
Isn’t it supposed to feel like love or so?
What it felt like-what it , so powerful and so Just Plain
Bright It was like looking at the beginning of the universe And she was rushing toward it so fast-it was
filling her vision She was in it
The light encoh her She was flying upward
through radiance like a swiht was getting less bright-orto it
Shapes solidified around her
She was in a reen, but a sort of ireen As if
lit up from inside The sky was the sa a thin summer dress
that billowed around her
The false color made it see at intervals fro
So this is what happens when you die And now now, somebody should co again
But no one came The landscape was beautiful, peaceful, unearthly-and utterly deserted
Gillian felt anxiety twisting again inside her Wait, what if this place wasn’t-the good place? After all, she
hadn’t been particularly good in her life What if this were actually hell?
Orlimbo?
Like the place all those spirits who talked to mediums must be fros
What if she were left here, alone, forever?
As soon as she finished the thought, she wished she hadn’t This seehts-or fears-could influence reality
Wasn’t that so rancid she sments of sentences that seemed to come from the air around her? The
kind of nonsense said by people in dreams
"So white you can’t see"
"A tiirl"
Gillian turned around and around, trying to catch ure out whether or not she was really
hearing the words She had the sudden gut-tre that the beauty around her could easily cohts Please I wish I hadn’t watched soterrible-like the ground splitting and hands reaching forlike so with bones exposed-after all
She was in trouble Even thinking about not thinking brought up pictures And now fear was galloping
inside her, and in her ht ht see a change-
And then she did see one Sorass, was a
sort of o But now it seehter as she
watched, and to stretch fro toward her