The Reason

        Before I almost died, I always felt agitated, like there was something jittery in my chest and head. I used to let it out by talking, making jokes, tearing people down. But after, I got that feeling replaced by this calm that’s nice, but only for me. No one else can handle it. My friends call me “Surfer Brian” now, even though I play baseball. I can’t go a day without my mom or stepdad or my sister saying “What’s with you?” My sister literally booed me the other day, after she came downstairs in this low-cut outfit and way too much makeup and mom started giving her hell and they all looked at me to say something, but all I said was, “What? If you feel good that’s what matters.”

        I thought Paige liked this me, Surfer Brian or whatever you want to call the me that almost died. But now I’m worried she only likes me because of my near-death experience.

Paige is in my English class, so she knew about it. Our teacher singled me out one day and made me read my personal essay aloud, which was about dying and what I saw after. That huge room, from above. The tunnel and the light. And then Miss let the class debate whether my brain made it up. They were like my family—more people wanted to question it than believed me. I got arguments like, “You took pills, right? You drank and took pills? How do you know you weren’t hallucinating?” and “Did you know brains hallucinate when they’re deprived of oxygen?” I tried to tell them how clear it was, not like drugs at all. Paige didn’t say anything.

But wasn’t it just a few days later that she hit on me? The way she walked clear across the room and asked me if I wanted her candy bar because it had hazelnuts and she was allergic—like there was no one near her own desk.

Paige had a reputation for being intense. Following her online confirmed it—her posts were all paranormal this and hauntings that. Past Me would’ve run the other way.

But I liked that she signaled at me so clear, that she knew what she wanted. I think people pass her over because she talks about invisible stuff while staring right into their eyes. But I think, or I thought, that with my jitteriness gone, I could see too much of everyone else. I could tell what they were trying for when they talked, which is usually so different from what they say, and it’s a lot—like two songs playing at the same time. Paige’s needs pretty much matched how she talked.

I thought. But she was holding something back, at first. Because it took a couple weeks of texting before she mentioned my death. It made sense with our conversation—I was talking about my family, about how I’d been so much more chill after that night, nicer, yet they seemed more mad at me than ever. She’d messaged, “You know, it’s actually really common for people who had NDEs to have trouble with their loved ones.” She said NDEs meant near-death experiences, that she’d heard a podcast about them. I was moved by that.

But then she kept bringing it up. She said, “Tell me what you saw after you died” right after we hooked up the first time. We were lying together in my sister’s car.

I told her. Even though she’d already heard my paper. I told her because she was fearless and at the same time, soft.

I told her things I’d never written, too, like how the light wasn’t just visual—it was a feeling. It moved through me. I felt it filling my body, dissolving the jitteriness, opening me up to more.

She asked, “Did you see anything else?”

I should’ve known then. Or when she texted me questions after. Did I see any other people who died? Was I given a message?

It happened again this morning, on a real date that I set up and everything. I’d heard it was going to weirdly warm for February, so I searched for a pretty place and found a trail in Fairview. She met me there in a cute sweater instead of her normal hoodie, sitting on the grass all prepared with a backpack full of bottled water and snacks.

But we hadn’t gone five minutes down the path before she said, “Don’t you think there’s a reason why you came back to life?”

I must’ve got a look on my face because she stopped and said, “What? Why don’t you want to tell me?”

We fought. I told her to stop trying to be my therapist. I called her jealous. I felt like I used to, like something was buzzing around inside me.

She stood blocking the path like a security guard, like a wronged TV girlfriend, and yelled that I had to be keeping something from her—that I couldn’t travel so far out of this life and bring back nothing. Hadn’t I seen anybody, like a grandparent who passed, or Becks from elementary school? “Remember?” she said. “The girl who died of esophageal cancer in fifth grade?” The need was rocketing off her, and I was so thrown that she had an agenda, a name. That she hadn’t really heard me. She thought the biggest thing that had ever happened to me wasn’t enough.

I pushed past her, walked deeper down the trail. I don’t know if she tried to follow. She claimed there had to be a reason I was here, but she wanted it to be her reason. She was missing the point. I had found a pretty place. Green and flowers were budding on trees. Baseball season hadn’t started yet and it was Saturday morning. We had a whole open day ahead of us. The reason was right here.

Val Howlett is a folktale lover, curious researcher, and bookish florist. Their fiction has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Hunger Mountain, and two anthologies: Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes and We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures.