“I figured I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore.”

Dad laughed. “Nice try, Pixie Stick, but you’re not getting off that easily. If you hurry, you can still make the first bell.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t push her,” Mom said to him. “Her dreams have never been this bad.”

Dad shrugged. “It’s up to you, Pix. Do you feel up to going to school?”

With a reluctant shrug, I said, “I guess.” May as well jump in with both feet.

After showering in a bathroom made of Tuscan tile and marble and dressing in a closet bigger than my old room, I went down a gorgeous set of wood stairs until I landed on a stunning terra-cotta floor with a huge skylight above it. It was the stuff of my dreams, this living in heaven. I figured it would have streets of gold and clouds of ionized silver, but this would definitely do.

Even with the fact that I was with my parents once more, I felt dizzy, unstable. I didn’t quite trust this version of heaven. What if I really were only dreaming?

“Okay,” my dad said to me, a beautiful smile lighting his face. “Since you never gave a preference, I made your favorite, chocolate pancakes.”

I looked over at the chocolate pancakes and almost seized, my pleasure was so strong. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never had chocolate pancakes. Clearly I’d been missing out. I’d have to confront my grandmother about this.

“And,” Mom said, “two percent milk.” She poured me a glass of ice-cold 2 percent.

“Because God forbid we have whole milk,” Dad said.

I didn’t like whole milk? Okay, good to know.

“A girl’s gotta watch her figure,” he continued, teasing me.

I looked down. Same straight skinny figure I’d always had. No idea why I was watching it now, but I’d go along with it. I’d go along with anything as long as my parents were with me.

I couldn’t stop staring at them. Could hardly take my eyes off Dad when he placed a brown pancake on my plate followed by a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on one’s perspective—helping of syrup.

“Just so you know,” Mom said, giving Dad a warning shake of her finger, “when she ends up in the nurse’s office, passed out from a sugar crash, you are going to pick her up and explain to the nurse what happened.”

I dug in, taking a huge bite and moaning aloud when the sweet flavors danced across my taste buds. This really was heaven, and it had chocolate. But I still didn’t take my eyes off them. Was this what they would have been like had they lived? Or maybe these were simply my memories, ones I’d suppressed, rising to the surface before I died completely.

Morbid but worth consideration.

I watched them as they teased each other, Mom dancing around Dad’s threat to pinch an inch when she said she weighed no more than she had ten years earlier. “I like weight on a girl,” he said, chasing her around the kitchen, “now eat these pancakes or I’ll tie you down and force-feed you.”

Mom giggled. Giggled like a schoolgirl, and my heart soared.

I looked down, not wanting to worry them when tears came to my eyes again. I’d cried for a solid twenty minutes earlier. I couldn’t start again now. They’d send me to the loony bin. The one with padded walls and crazy nurses who make you swallow pills, then check under your tongue to make sure you didn’t stash it. I’d never stashed anything under my tongue, and I had no intentions of starting now.

“Pix?” Dad asked. He frowned at me. “You can’t be sad for your party tonight. Everyone will wonder about you. You know, more than they already do.”

“Lucas!” Mom said, scolding him with a look. “No one wonders about our daughter.”

“Oh, right,” he said, nodding as he cleaned up his cooking area. “They don’t have to wonder. They already know she’s a bit off kilter.”

Mom took his spatula and beat him with it as he blocked her blows with a dish towel.

This was not from my memories. This was new. This was heaven.

HEAVEN AND OTHER ODDITIES

Our house sat about half a mile back from my grandparents’ health food store, the Wild ’n Wonderful. It was a beautiful white two-story with lots of wood and glass and plants. I wanted to explore it, to search out every nook and cranny, but according to the parental units, I had to get to school.

I smiled. I’d always wanted to say parental units. By the time I’d learned that phrase, mine were gone and it didn’t seem right to call them such after the fact. It wouldn’t have the same impact. The same implication.

Dad drove me to school. He played the radio too loud and sang along to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.” Despite his joy, it had an ominous feel to it. I shook it off and just tried to accept. To enjoy. This was what I’d dreamed of for ten years. Why question it? Why stir the pot?

“I would’ve made a great hippie,” Dad said, a forlorn kind of longing in his voice. “If I’d been born just a few years earlier, but noooooo. My parents wanted to wait until they could afford a child. What kind of nonsense is that? I totally missed the flower power generation.”

He rambled on and on like that all the way to school, which sadly was only a few blocks. I could listen to him forever. I was certain he wasn’t always that cheerful—everybody had a bad day here and there—but this was heaven after all.

“So, we still on for tonight?”