Two text-based documents. This is the sum of Penelope’s life.
“It’s the sum of most people’s lives, to be honest,” says Mr. Fergus.
He gives Mr. Montague and Mr. Capulet a sidelong look. They continue their chess game in silent contemplation, just as they have been doing for millennia, as Mr. Fergus explained when they first walked in. He loudly voiced his disappointment in their lack of surprise, adding quietly to Penelope that he was hoping their intrusion would have at least paused the game for a few minutes.
But alas, Penelope Church walked in with her perfect posture and her disgruntled expression, and Mr. Montague merely waved his hand at the dusty computer terminal in the corner.
It took some fiddling with the search options to find the right Penelope Church, and now there she is: two text-based documents and a slideshow.
“What’s that?” she asks, leaning over Mr. Fergus’s shoulder. She points to a paperclip icon. “There’s an attachment.”
He clicks on the link. “It’s a related incident. Something pertinent to your death.”
At first, the related incident seems to be another case file. It begins with some personal identifiable information and a brief bio, followed by an incident report and timeline breakdown. As they read, Penelope’s anger grows, heat rising up from her chest, coloring her cheeks and making her fingers tingle.
“Do you know this…uh, Francesca Hart?” Mr. Fergus asks.
“No. I mean, yes. Barely. We go to the same school. She lives a few doors down from my boyfriend.” Penelope straightens and takes a deep breath, stretching her fingers against the anxiety traveling up her arms. “I don’t get it. We barely speak to each other. What happened?”
“Well,” Mr. Fergus says as he clicks the scroll bar. “It seems that Francesca Hart is a witch. A Reaper-in-Training, technically. She was doing a bit of spell work, nothing crazy. A grounding ritual.” A few more clicks. “Ah, but her protection circle failed. It’s a small thing, really, but she must have had some anger pent up or maybe you were merely just close by. It—” He swallows and turns to look at her. “Your timeline file was corrupted; the root directory’s been altered. This is a clerical error. I must apologize, Miss Church. This wasn’t supposed to happen to you.”
“Well, obviously,” she says. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since I arrived here. I want to go home now.”
He closes the file and turns off the computer. The screen goes black with a zap, extinguished just like the tiny flare of hope in Penelope’s chest. She knows what he’s going to say before he even opens his mouth.
“Miss Church, there’s no way to restore you back to Life. Death is a one-way ticket.”
Penelope can feel her eyes getting watery, and her breath becoming thin and short. The tingling in her fingers gets worse, traveling up her arms and to her lips. Her mother’s voice admonishes her: You will not start crying. I forbid it.
“That is unacceptable,” she says quietly, though she isn’t sure if it’s her that’s talking or the figment of her mother, which seems to echo in her head with an infinite scowl.
The coldness of Death has started its descent into her limbs, as electric blue energy crackles around her fingers. She looks over at the two immortal beings who are so revered by the people here, though she cannot fathom why.
It’s just two men frowning at a chessboard. She hasn’t seen either of them make a move yet.
She’s always been good at games and at solving puzzles. There is satisfaction in working through a problem and finding the solutions, applying different scenarios to find the one that makes the equation complete.
Her grandfather taught her how to play chess when she was seven, but she hasn’t played a full game since he passed away. Thoughts of chess are never far from her mind, though. Her mother considers it a waste of energy. It’s childish. Penelope once tried to share her love of the game with Beau, but he was terrible at it. At the time, he suggested she join the Chess Club because he could see how much she enjoyed it. She balked at him. She does have her limitations.
Penelope moves closer to the chessboard, surveying the current arrangement of pieces. She makes a few imaginary moves, running through the variable consequences in her head until she’s confident that she’s found the most efficient and effective solution.
She reaches for Mr. Capulet’s white queen and moves it to the D8 square, checking Mr. Montague. She takes Mr. Capulet’s queen with Mr. Montague’s rook on H8. Then, Penelope brings Mr. Capulet’s rook home from D1 to D8, trapping Mr. Montague’s king on the back rank behind a phalanx of pawns.
“Checkmate,” she says, as two sets of fuzzy, blinking eyes look up at her. “Now, which one of you is going to fix this for me?”
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“How could you ask me that?”
For a moment, Beau is worried he’s offended her. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“I’m joking.” She bumps his arm with her elbow, and he wonders if she is actually leaning closer to him or if the nothing-clock ticking is making his head go a bit funny. “And anyway, I don’t know how it’ll happen. That’s up to my grandmother to decide.”
“I think I would want to die fighting.”
She rolls her eyes. “It’ll most likely be poison. That’s usually how we do it.”
“Hey, Frankie,” he says suddenly, his voice rough with emotion. “I’m sorry for all the mean things I’ve said about you. I didn’t mean them, not really.”
She turns to him, her eyes narrowing. “So, if you don’t think my glasses make me look like a frog, why did you say it? And don’t give me some nonsense about how you’ve always liked me, but you didn’t know how to show it. Boys are not as emotionally stunted as the media leads us to believe.”
He shakes his head and turns in his chair, reaching for her arm, as if his words will be made stronger by physical contact. “I missed you, that’s all. I missed having you as a friend. I was angry that we stopped talking. I was angry about a lot of things that had nothing to do with you. I lashed out.”
He is overwhelmed with uncertainty. With fear. With gratitude. With longing. He feels them all like equal slices of his heart. He tries to remind himself of Penelope’s lips, the way she places a hand on his arm when she’s talking to him, and the way she looks up at him through her eyelashes and presses her thigh against his. He tries to remember that he loves Penelope, and he’s planning on asking his mother for his grandmother’s ring any day now.
He tries, and yet he forgets.
The chill of the room has sunk into his bones, despite the heavy coat he wears. He wonders what it would be like to be here, in this room, for an eternity. Lifetimes spent with Frankie, waiting around but doing so much more than that—waiting around, yes, but talking, laughing, and dreaming.
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He thinks of Penelope and the last conversation they had. He thinks of her certainty that they will be married one day. She takes comfort in the assumption that they will live happily ever after. She’s made no secret of the fact that she expects to build a future with Beau.
The future isn’t here, though. The ticking of the clock is hollow, meaningless without arms to count the seconds.
What is here is this:
Frankie.
The overwhelming breadth of loss when their friendship ended.
The twisting feeling in his gut as he thinks of those silent moments on the pier with her, the moments his chest felt open and his laugh as bright as the summer sun.
Everything between then and now feels like a dream. How long have they been in this room? He feels a bit mad, a bit off-kilter. Who knew Death could make him feel more alive than he’s felt in years?
He parts his lips as he touches her cheek the same way he had earlier. But this isn’t the same, and he can feel it.
She can feel it too.
“Beau, don’t.”
His face is close to hers. He can see her freckles and a small scar right below her eye. She presses her hand against his chest, gathering his shirt in between her fingers. He can’t tell if it’s to pull him closer or push him away.
Maybe both.
He thinks of her imminent death and how indignant he felt on her behalf. She grew up knowing her role in her family and has long since accepted her fate. Beau hasn’t had the luxury of time to come to terms with the fact that Frankie’s life will end at eighteen. Only a few months away, if he remembers correctly.
What if they had more time? What if he hadn’t squandered away that precious slice of life with his own insecurities? What if—?
“What about Penelope?” she whispers. Their faces are so close, her words brush against his lips.
“I think accidentally killing her might put a damper on the relationship,” he whispers back, tasting cotton candy and sea salt. Is that the ocean roaring in his ears or is it just his heartbeat? “I think that means we’ve broken up.”
Slowly, she leans back, pulling her hand away from his chest. “We’re here to find her. We shouldn’t lose focus.”
The ticking of the clock fills the space between them.
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The hallway to Room 349 is dreary and damp. Penelope almost misses the shimmering energy of the top floor because here, on the third floor, the energy is heavy, an oppressive weight of time lost to the peculiarities of a formal document.
Plus, the buzzy glow lights have made their triumphant return, and Penelope wipes at her cheeks, wishing she had thought to slip a compact mirror into her pocket before she died.
“Explain this to me again,” she says to Mr. Fergus as he leads her down the hallway, past Room 310: Identity Crisis Prevention and Rooms 323-348: Tax Office.
“We will be giving you a special issuance passport. While some of our residents are eligible for passports, almost all of them have certain limitations on where they can visit and for how long. Due to your unique circumstances, our Esteemed Managers agree that you should be eligible for the maximum time of travel allowed. That is—” He pauses outside of Room 349, the pebbled glass of the door revealing nothing of its inhabitants, “—one month. You will be able to travel into Life for one month at a time. At the end of the month, you must return here, to Death, to get your passport stamped and your visa renewed for another month.”
Penelope opens her mouth, but Mr. Fergus is already speaking again. “I know this isn’t ideal, Miss Church. And I sincerely apologize.”
“Thank you.” She smiles softly. “I appreciate your honesty and your assistance.”
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Mr. Fergus blushes as he watches Penelope Church turn swiftly on her heel and push open the door.
He clears his throat, trying to dislodge a dreadful feeling that has been growing steadily since Miss Church waltzed into his afterlife. Maxwell Fergus is often considered an optimist—a cauldron-half-full kind of man—but even he felt Penelope’s bravado was futile.
And yet, she succeeded where so many others have failed. Her ability to manipulate Death is astounding, and quite frankly, terrifying. The lightning. The sparks of energy. The way the walls leaned in.
His sense of self-preservation kicked in quite quickly, and he escalated her issue right up to the tippy-top of the organization chart, something he hasn’t done in at least a millenia.
For a moment, he tries to fool himself into believing that it is merely that sense of self-preservation that led him to help her. But who is he kidding? This choked feeling against his sternum is empathy. He’s sure of it.
It feels like something has died in his chest.
He utterly hates it.
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“All done!” says Crawfield.
Frankie pulls her coat tighter around herself as she exits the room, with Beau following right behind her. He can still feel where her hand touched his chest—five burning tendrils of memory that connect him to her—and he rubs his chest in an unconscious attempt to keep the feeling from dissipating.
He’s sad to leave the waiting room and return to the crushing dreariness of the Passport Services office; a yawn is already forming at the back of his throat. But the room they enter is different, as if, in the three hours and twenty-four minutes they’ve been gone, the space, the desks, and the employees have been uprooted, replaced by an entirely different office providing an entirely different service. The energy is palpable. Beau’s yawn is immediately forgotten.
“What’s going on?” he asks, looking at an excited group gathered around a desk in the corner.
“Oh, that,” answers Crawfield, “is for a special issuance passport. And of course, I was already mid-appointment when the application came in, meaning Barbara gets to execute it.”
“I’ve never heard of a special issuance passport,” says Frankie.
Crawfield scoffs. “Of course not, they don’t just hand them out. But some girl got herself accidentally killed and complained so much, they decided to make an exception.”
Frankie begins walking toward the group before Crawfield even finishes speaking. She elbows her way to the center, with Beau only a few steps behind. He reaches for her, worried that the group will swallow her up, but she’s too quick, her hand slipping from his instantly, as a tall purple-skinned passport agent fills the space in front of him. He politely squeezes past, bumping into a mermaid in a wheeled tank
He hears Penelope’s voice ringing out above the crowd. “You! Get away from me!”
He elbows past a yellow-eyed woman with a snake familiar draped around her neck. The snake hisses briefly, assesses Beau as a non-threat, and then returns to the excitement in the middle of the crowd. Squeezing in between a large crow wearing a monocle and a powdery-skinned vampire with long, graying hair, Beau finally finds himself at the front.
With mouths agape and eyes darting between the two young humans excitedly, the crowd watches as Penelope, an inch taller than Frankie due to her choice in footwear, leans forward, expertly aiming a scathing expression at the source of her ire, Frankie.
Penelope looks just as Beau last saw her. Despite being dead, Penelope’s makeup is flawless. Her dress is unwrinkled and hugs her tiny waist. Yet, he can’t help but conjure up the memory of her sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath, her spilled drink staining her dress. The stain is still there, splashed across her torso. He wonders vaguely if they have dry cleaners in Death.
“That’s no way to treat someone who came all this way to help you,” Frankie is saying.
“I don’t care if you’re here to help me or not. You’re the reason I’m here in the first place, Frankie Hart.”
The words hit Frankie like a slap across her face. Her arms drop to her sides, and she frowns, giving Beau a lost look that makes his chest tighten.
“What do you mean? It was my fault,” he says, taking a step closer.
Penelope looks at Beau for the first time, a smile brightening her features. She wrinkles her nose at the tattered army coat, plucking an invisible bit of fluff from the shoulder before flinging her arms around his neck.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I came to get you. Frankie helped me get here and then—”
Her eyes harden, and she breaks away from Beau’s embrace to face Frankie. “It was a stupid spell she was casting. Only she did it wrong and now I’m here.”
Beau looks at Frankie, whose expression is caught somewhere between bewilderment and regret. Her glasses do make her look like a frog, though he wouldn’t make the mistake of telling her again.
“All that matters is that I’ve found you,” he says, giving Penelope a lopsided smirk that makes her lean closer to him. He feels a little guilty diffusing the tension with that smirk. He knew it would work, as it always does, but it somehow feels cheap to employ it in this situation, especially since he had been thinking about kissing Frankie only a few moments ago.
Penelope places a hand on his chest, and Beau can’t help but recall that Frankie’s hand had been there, in the same place, not even ten minutes ago. He glances up at Frankie, whose mouth is set in a firm line.
“And now we can go home,” he adds, eyes darting back to Penelope for a moment before returning to Frankie. “Right?”
Frankie nods and looks away with a sniff.