Read Online Exit Point by Laura Langston - Free Book Online Page A

around. I feel him. And the others too. They are becoming more real to me thanmy own family. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Sad or glad. Maybe a bit of both.
    They tell me I have done good. I have done all I can do. They tug on me, urge me to leave, to come to the other side. Not yet, I say. Not yet.
    They give me a little more time. Just a little.
    Dad does not go to bed. After I fade, he goes into the kitchen and pours himself more scotch. A double. He checks on Amy, on Mom, lets the cat in, out and back in again.
    And he paces. I know he is trying to make sense of things, trying to rationalize away what he has seen. What I have told him.
    But he can’t. Because I am beside him, whispering in his ear. And I believe—I have to believe—that my words, my thoughts, my love for him, have power.
    Outside the living room window, the sky turns. Dawn is coming. Night is fading. I think again of being in a planetarium and watching the sky lighten when the show is over: black to indigo to gray to pearl. And pearl is so close to that milky white of theround place that it reminds me I am running out of time.
    Dad puts on the coffee, goes down the hall to shower.
    I go to Amy. She is curled up on her side, the covers up to her chin. I brush the hair out of her eyes, smell her baby powder smell, kiss her cheek. She wakes up with a start because she feels something. She feels me , only she doesn’t know it. Uneasily, she stares around her room. Then she pads down the hall and crawls into bed with Mom.
    When Mom pulls her close, I wish I were nine again. That I could do things differently, make better choices, hang on until exit point five.
    But I can’t.
    I drift into my room, sit on the edge of my bed, stare at the pictures on my dresser, the swimming trophies on my shelf, the ball caps I collected. All the details of my life mean so little now. I can hardly relate to them. To the person I was. Maybe because I’m not that person anymore.
    In the kitchen, Dad pours coffee, addssugar, then cream. I hear him slurp. I taste the hot liquid scalding the back of his throat. I smell the tang of his aftershave.
    My senses are hyped. I see and hear and feel everything. I hear the cat scratch at her dish, the drip of the faucet in the bathroom, the march of an ant on the sidewalk outside. I feel the steam in the shower stall, the clutch of Dad’s fingers around his cup, Mom’s arm around Amy.
    And even though I am going away, I know I will take a part of this—a part of them—with me.
    Dad goes into the bedroom, bends down, kisses Mom’s cheek. He whispers in her ear, “I’m going out for an hour. Coffee’s made.”
    I shoot up through my ceiling, out of my roof. I see my yard with the basketball hoop that Dad hung and the garden where Mom grows tomatoes. I see the shed where we store our bikes, our camping gear, our tools.
    I float higher. I see Garvin delivering the morning paper, the Christmas lights still on at the Turners’ one block over and Hannah’s house. She is still sleeping. I feel her breathas though I am breathing myself. I know that she and Tom will end up together. Once that would have angered me. Now I’m glad she’ll have someone good in her life.
    A slam draws my eyes back to our garden shed. Dad has come out and shut the door. In his hand is a shovel. He goes to his car, opens the trunk, tosses the shovel inside.
    He is going to Herb’s. He is going for Pookie.
    The thought frees me. I relax and drift up. Up.
    Below me the streets flow and connect, weaving and linking like the silk of a spider web. Only this web is never-ending.
    I see Paine Field and the Space Needle. Lake Washington and Pike Place Market. I see the Cascades, the Snohomish River valley. The Olympic Range and Vancouver Island. Portland, Oregon, and then Utah.
    I soar higher, and higher still.
    I am dead.
    And, yeah, I did die at the wrong time. But it doesn’t matter now.
    I am going home.