Hey Nostradamus! Part 2

I've never told anyone about the moment of my conversion in eleventh grade. I was by myself, out in the backyard in fall, sitting between two huckleberry shrubs that had survived the mountainside's suburban development. I closed my eyes and faced the sun and that was that - ping! - the sensation of warmth on my eyelids and the smell of dry cedar and fir branches in my nose. I never expected angels and trumpets, nor did any appear. The moment made me feel special, and yet, of course, nothing makes a person less special than conversion - it ...

universalizes you.

But then how special can any person really be? I mean, you have a name and some ancestors.

You have medical, educational and work histories, as well as immediate living family and friends. And after that there's not much more. At least in my case. At the time of my death, my life's resume consisted of school, sports, a few summer jobs and my Youth Alive! involvement.

My death was the only remarkable aspect of my life. I'm rummaging through my memories trying to find even a few things to distinguish me from all others. And yet ... and yet I was me - n.o.body saw the world as I did, nor did they feel the things I felt. I was Cheryl Anway: that has to count for something.

And I did have questions and uneasy moments after my conversion. I wondered why it is that going to heaven is the only goal of religion, because it's such a selfish thing. The Out to Lunch Bunch talked about going to heaven in the same breath as they discussed hair color. Leading a holy life inside a burgundy-colored VW Cabrio seems like a spiritual contradiction. Jason once joked that if you read Revelations closely, you could see where it says that Dee Carswell counting the calories in a packet of Italian dressing is a sign of imminent apocalypse. And yet we all possessed the capacity for slipping at any moment into great sin and eternal darkness. I suppose it's what made me a bit withdrawn from the world - maybe I just didn't trust anybody fully, knowing how close we all were to the edge. That's not true: I trusted Jason.

Whenever I felt doubts I overcompensated by trying to witness to whoever was nearby, usually my family. And when they even remotely sensed religion coming up, they either nodded politely or they bolted. I can't imagine what they said about me when I wasn't there. In any event, I think in the end it's maybe best to keep your doubts private. Saying them aloud cheapens them - makes them a bunch of words just like everybody else's bunch of words.

I don't think I fully understood sleaze until Jason and I entered the chilled lobby of Caesars Palace on that day of burning winds and X-ray sunlight. It stank of American cigarettes, smoky blue and tarlike, and of liquor. A woman dressed up like a centurion with balloon b.o.o.bs and stage makeup asked us for our drink order. She reminded me of a novelty c.o.c.ktail shaker. The thing is, we said yes, and Jason ordered two gin fizzes - where did that come from? They arrived within moments and there we stood, dumb as planks, while the most desperate sort of gamblers - I mean, this was August in the middle of the desert - slunk past us, serenaded by the endless rattling and dinging of the slot machines. I don't think I'd ever seen so many souls teetering so precariously on the brink of colossal sin. Hypocritical me. We're all equally on the brink of all sins.

We went up to our room: shabby and yellowing. I couldn't figure out why such a splashy place would have such dumpy rooms, but Jason said it was to drive people down into the casinos.

Once the door was closed, it was a bit awkward. Until then, it had all felt like a field trip. We sat on the edge of the bed and Jason asked if I still wanted to get married, and I said yes - I'd caught a sliver of his naked behind through the bathroom door's hinge crack as he changed into his other pair of pants.

As we sat there, we realized our clothes, even in the air-conditioned room, were far too hot for the climate. Jason shed his tie, and I replaced my all-concealing "skin is sin" dress with a jacket and skirt, the only other garments I'd brought - something like you'd wear to work on a Wednesday morning.

Sooner than I'd have liked we were out the door, appearing to the world as if we were headed to a $2.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet or to lose ourselves for a few hours in front of the dime slots with the pensioners. We were alone in the elevator and kissed briefly, and then we staggered through the lobby bombarded again by a wash of noise and sleaze.

Outside it was nearing sunset. An ashtray on wheels picked us up. The cabbie was a fat guy with an East Coast accent and exactly one hair on his forehead, just like Charlie Brown. He slapped the steering wheel when we asked him to take us to a chapel. He told us his name, Evan, and we asked him if he'd be our witness. He said sure, he'd stand up for us, and for the first time that day I felt not just as if I was getting married, but also like a bride.

The chapels were itty-bitty things, and we tried to find one in which celebrities had never been married, as if a celebrity aura could somehow crush the holy dimension of a Las Vegas wedding.

I don't know what we were thinking. Evan ended up choosing a chapel for us, mostly because it included a snack platter and sparkling wine in the price of the service.

There was paperwork; our fake IDs aroused no suspicion. Out the little stained-gla.s.s window up front the sun was like a juicy tangerine on the horizon. Quickly, a dramatically tanned man in white rayon, who might just as easily have been offering us a deal on a condominium time-share, declared us legally wed.

Nearing the front door, Jason said, "Well, it's not quite two hundred and fifty of our nearest and dearest, is it?"

I was so giddy: "A civil wedding. What would your dad say?"

We went outside, leaving Evan to his snack platter - out into the hot air scented by exhaust fumes, snapdragons and litter, just the two of us, dwarfed by the casinos and dreaming of the future, of the lights, both natural and false, appearing in the sky, and of s.e.x.

I hoped that both the shooting of the windows and the flooding sprinklers would distract the three boys, but this didn't happen. Instead, they began to fight among themselves. Mitch.e.l.l was furious with Jeremy for wasting ammunition that could be more effectively used "killing those stuck-up pigs who feed on taunting anybody who doesn't have a numbered sweater." To this end, Mitch.e.l.l fired across the room, into a huddled ma.s.s of younger students - the junior jocks, I think, but I can't be very sure, because the tabletops and chairs blocked my view. I also didn't know whether the gunshots scattered or formed a concentrated beam, but I clearly remember blood from the huddle mixing with the streams of sprinkler water that trickled along the linoleum's slight slant, down to behind the bank of vending machines. The machines made a quick electrical fizz noise and went dead. From the huddle came a few screams, some moans and then silence. Mitch.e.l.l shouted, "We know that most of you aren't dead or even wounded, so don't think we're stupid.

Duncan, should we go over and see who's fibbing and who isn't?"

"I don't know - I could get a bit more pumped about all of this if saggy-a.s.sed Jeremy would start pulling his weight."

The two turned to Jeremy, the least talkative of the three. Mitch.e.l.l said, "What's the matter - deciding to convert into a jock all of a sudden? Gee, won't that make the Out to Lunch Bunch hot for you. A killer with a heart of gold."

Jeremy said, "Mitch.e.l.l, shut up. Like we haven't noticed that all your shots are missing their mark? The only reason you shot out the windows was because it's impossible to miss them."

Mitch.e.l.l got angrier. "You know what? I think you're jamming out, and you're jamming out a little bit too late into the game, I think."

"What if I was to jam out?"

Mitch.e.l.l said, "Watch this," and fired across the room, killing a boy named Clay, whose locker was four down from mine. "There, see? Killing is fun. Jam out now, and you're next."

"I quit."

"No, Jeremy, it's too late for that. Duncan, what would you guess Jeremy's tally up to this moment has been?"

Duncan calculated. "Four definite hits and five maybes."

Mitch.e.l.l turned to Jeremy: "Ha! And you expect mercy from the world?"

"I quit."

Mitch.e.l.l said, "What do we have here - a Hitler-in-the-bunker scenario?"

"Call it what you will." Jeremy dropped his weapons.

Mitch.e.l.l said, "Execution time."Being married was wild. It was worth all the delays and pleas and postponement of pleasure, and you know, this isn't some guidance-cla.s.s hygiene film speaking to you - it's me. I was me. We were us. It was all real, and wild, and it is my most cherished memory of having been alive - a night of abandon on the sixteenth floor of Caesars Palace.

I doubt we said even three words to each other all night; Jason's dewy antler-soft skin made words feel stupid. By six in the morning we were in a cab headed back to the airport. On the flight north, we didn't speak much, either. And I felt married. I loved the sensation, and it's why I remained silent - trying to pinpoint the exact nature of this new buzz: s.e.x, certainly, but more than that, too.

Of course, the Out to Lunch Bunch and all of the Alive! crew could tell right away that something was up. We simply didn't care as much for the group as before, and it showed. The corny little lunchtime confessions over french fries were so dull as to be unlistenable; Pastor Fields's team sports metaphors and chast.i.ty pleas seemed equally juvenile to Jason. We knew what we had, and we knew what we wanted, and we knew that we wanted more. Then there was the issue of how we were going to go about telling our families. Jason imagined a formal dinner at a good restaurant during which to break the news - between the main course and the dessert - but I said I didn't want our marriage to be treated like a chorus girl jumping out of a cake. I'm not clear if Jason's desire for a formal dinner was his concept of maturity, or if he wanted to shock a crowd like an evil criminal mastermind. He did have his exhibitionist streak: I mean, in Las Vegas he'd refused to close the curtains and he was always trying to sneak me into the change room at the Bootlegger jeans store. No go.

So yes, we'd had a fight on the phone about this matter the night before my pregnancy test. Jason was angry with me for dragging my heels about announcing the marriage, and I was angry with him for wanting to be a - I don't know - a show-off.

And that's as far as I got in my life, my baby as well. I don't think I've concealed anything here, and there's not much left to explain. G.o.d owns everything. I was not replaceable, but nor was I indispensable. It was my time.

Dear G.o.d, I am so full of hate that I'm scaring myself. Is there a word to describe wanting to kill people who are already dead? Because that's what's in my heart. I remember last year being in the backyard with my father. We lifted up this sheet of plywood that had been lying on the gra.s.s all winter. Underneath were thousands of worms, millipedes, beetles and a snake, all either eating or being eaten, and that is my heart, and the hate and the insects grow and grow blacker by the hour. I want to kill the killers, and I just can't believe that this would be a sin.

Lord, My son described the blood and water pooling on the cafeteria floor, coating it like Varathane. He told me about the track marks left in blood by running shoes, by bare feet and by bodies either dragging themselves or being dragged away by friends. There's something else he's not telling me - a father knows that - but what could be more horrible than - Oh G.o.d, this is not a prayer.

I can't help but wonder if the other girls thought I used G.o.d as an excuse to hook up with Jason, or that I confused one with the other. Maybe I wasn't truly in love with Jason; maybe it was just an infatuation, or maybe it was only some sort of animal need like any teenager feels.

Listen to me, practical Cheryl, covering my bases, even after death. But I know that when I was alive I did face these questions: I loved Jason, but what I felt for G.o.d was different altogether. I kept them separate.

As Mitch.e.l.l was aiming at me, there were sirens outside, helicopters, alarm bells throughout the school and water splas.h.i.+ng down from the shattered pipe. As well, Duncan was egging Mitch.e.l.l on to kill Jeremy, too, and my hopes had flip-flopped - now I thought I might survive. Then Jeremy said, "Go ahead, Mitch.e.l.l, shoot me - like I care."

Mitch.e.l.l seemed to be short-circuiting. He hadn't antic.i.p.ated this scenario. He turned a bit to his left, looked down at me and the Bunch, then took his rifle and shot me on my left side. He really wasn't a good shot, because he was five paces away, and I should have been dead instantly. And quite honestly, it didn't hurt, the shooting, and I didn't die immediately, either. Lauren, bless her, lunged away from me, leaving me there on the floor on top of my binder, which the water had sloshed off the tabletop. At my new angle, I could see much better what was transpiring. Mitch.e.l.l said, "Well, Jeremy, you stud, that's one less girl for you to impress," and Jeremy said, "Dear G.o.d, I repent for my sins. Forgive me for all I have done."

In unison, Mitch.e.l.l and Duncan shrieked, "What?" and turned to Jeremy, blasted him enough to kill him a dozen times over. Then I heard Jason's voice from the cafeteria doors - something along the lines of "Put those guns down now."

Mitch.e.l.l said, "You have got to be kidding."

"I'm not kidding."

Mitch.e.l.l shot at Jason and missed, and then I saw something that looked like a lump of gray art- cla.s.s clay fly through the air and crack Mitch.e.l.l on the side of his head, so fiercely that I could see his skull implode.

At this point, the boys in the camera club lifted up their table and used it as a s.h.i.+eld as they charged against the sole surviving gunman, Duncan Boyle. It was covered with paper bags and some cookies that had been glued in place by blood. They charged into Duncan, pressing him against a blank spot of cinder-block wall. I saw the rifle fall to the ground, and then I saw the boys from the camera club laying the table flat on the ground on top of Duncan and begin jumping up and down on it like a grape press. They were making hooting noises, and people from the other tables came and joined in and the table became a killing game as all of these children, boys and girls, who fifteen minutes earlier had been peacefully eating peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches and oranges, became savages, killing without pause. Duncan's blood dribbled out from under the table.

Lauren called out, and Jason came over and lifted the table off me like a hurricane lifting off a roof. I know he said something to me, but my hearing was gone. He tried holding me up, but my neck was limp, and all I could see was across the room, children crus.h.i.+ng other children. And that was that.

To acknowledge G.o.d is to fully accept the sorrow of the human condition. And I believe I accepted G.o.d, and I fully accepted this sorrow, even though until the events in the cafeteria, there hadn't been too much of it in my life. I may have looked like just another stupid teenage girl, but it was all in there - G.o.d, and sorrow and its acceptance.

And now I'm neither dead nor alive, neither awake nor asleep, and soon I'm headed off to the Next Place, but my Jason will continue amid the living.

Oh, Jason. In his heart, he knows I'll at least be trying to watch him from beyond, whatever beyond may be. And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will always be darkness in this world.

Part Two

1999: Jason

You won't see me in any of the photographs after the ma.s.sacre - you know the ones I mean: the wire service shots of the funerals, students felt-penning teenage poetry on Cheryl's casket; teenage prayer groups in sweats and scrun-chies huddled on the school's slippery gym floor; 6:30 A.M. prayer breakfasts in the highway off-ramp chain restaurants, with all the men wearing ties while dreaming of hash browns. I'm in none of them, and if you had seen me, I sure wouldn't have been praying.

I want to say that right from the start.

Just one hour ago, I was a good little citizen in a Toronto-Dominion bank branch over in North Van, standing in line, and none of this was even on my mind. I was there to deposit a check from my potbellied contractor boss, Les, and I was wondering if I should blow off the afternoon's work. My hand reached down into my pocket, and instead of a check, my sunburnt fingers removed the invitation to my brother's memorial service. I felt as if I'd just opened all the windows of a hot muggy car.

I folded it away and wrote down today's date on the deposit slip. I checked the wall calendar - August 19,1999 -and What the heck, I wrote a whole row of zeroes before the year, so that the date read: August 19, 00000001999. Even if you hated math, which I certainly do, you'd know that this is still mathematically the same thing as 1999.

When I gave the slip and the check to the teller, Dean, his eyes widened, and he looked up at me as if I'd handed him a holdup note. "Sir," he said, "this isn't a proper date."

I said, "Yes, it is. What makes you think it isn't?"

"The extra zeroes."

Dean was wearing a deep blue s.h.i.+rt, which annoyed me. "What is your point?" I asked.

"Sir, the year is nineteen ninety-nine, not zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one nine nine nine."

"It's the same thing."

"No, it's not."

"I'd like to speak with the branch manager."

Dean called over Casey, a woman who was maybe about my age, and who had the pursed hardness of someone who spends her days delivering bad news to people and knows she'll be doing it until her hips shatter. Casey and Dean had a hushed talk, and then she spoke to me. "Mr.

Klaasen, may I ask you why you've written this on your slip?"

I stood my ground: "Putting more zeroes in front of '1999' doesn't make the year any different."

"Technically, no."

"Look, I hated math as much as you probably did - "

"I didn't hate math, Mr. Klaasen."

Casey was on the spot, but then so was I. It's not as if I'd walked into the bank planning all those extra zeroes. They just happened, and now I had to defend them. "Okay. But maybe what the zeroes do point out is that in a billion years - and there will be a billion years - we'll all be dust.

Not even dust: we'll be molecules.'"

Silence.

I said, "Just think, there are still a few billion years of time out there, just waiting to happen.

Billions of years, and we're not going to be here to see them."

Silence. Casey said, "Mr. Klaasen, if this is some sort of joke, I can try to understand its abstract humor, but I don't think this slip meets the requirements of a legal banking doc.u.ment."

Silence.

I said, "But doesn't it make you think? Or want to think?"

"About what?"

"About what happens to us after we die."

This was my real mistake. Dean telegraphed Casey a savvy little glance, and in a flash I knew that they knew about me, about Cheryl, about 1988 and about my reputation as a borderline nutcase - He never really got over it, you know. I'm used to this. I was furious but kept my cool. I said, "I think I'd like to close my account - convert to cash, if I could."

The request was treated with the casualness I might have received if I'd asked them to change a twenty. "Of course. Dean, could you help Mr. Klaasen close out his account?"

I asked, "That's it? 'Dean, could you help Mr. Klaasen close out his account?' No debate? No questions?"

Casey looked at me. "Mr. Klaasen, I have two daughters and I can barely think past next month's mortgage, let alone the year two billion one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. My hunch is that you'd be happier elsewhere. I'm not trying to get rid of you, but I think you know where I'm coming from."

She wasn't wearing a wedding band. "Can I take you out to lunch?" I asked.

"What?"

"Dinner, then."

"No!" The snaking line was eavesdropping big time. "Dean, there should be no complications in closing Mr. Klaasen's account." She looked at me. "Mr. Klaasen, I have to go."

My anger became gray emotional fuzz, and I just wanted to leave. Inside of five minutes, Dean had severed my connection to his bank, and I stood on the curb smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, my s.h.i.+rt untucked and $5,210.00 stuffed into the pockets of my green dungarees. I decided to leave the serene, heavily bylawed streets of North Vancouver and drive to West Vancouver, down near the ocean. At the Seventeenth and Bellevue CIBC I opened a checking account, and when I looked behind the tellers I saw an open vault. I asked if it was possible to rent a safety deposit box, which took all of three minutes to do. That box is where I'm going to place all of this, once it's finished. And here's the deal: if I get walloped by a bus next year, this letter is going to be placed in storage until May 30, 2019, when you, my two nephews, turn twenty-one. If I hang around long enough, I might hand it to you in person. But for now, that's where this letter is headed.