Even If Saving You Sends Me to Heaven

“Why do you always look at me like that?” I asked Danny with clear annoyance icing my tone. Mara was telling Zane she would sleep on the couch in his hospital room because Zane was tired, and Danny had been staring at me for much too long.

Danny sighed, but he never did answer my question. Instead, he suggested, “Let’s play a game.”

“What kind of game?” I asked warily. I was definitely not in the mood to play around.

He shrugged. “It’s not a hard game. It’s not even really a game. All we do is take turns telling each other something about ourselves. The only rule is that you can’t ask questions about what the other person said.”

I snorted. “No way.”

“Come on, Arianna,” he urged. “I know you want to know more about me. Don’t you?”

“Of course,” I admitted, “but I don’t want you to know more about me. Besides, if I tell you my biggest secrets, then you could just tell me your mother’s name or something. There’s no way I’m risking that.”

Danny frowned and contemplated my response. “What if I go first?” he suggested. “Then if I say something stupid you don’t care about, you can do the same thing.”

I picked at my fingernail absentmindedly. There were a lot of things I was keeping from Danny, but I also knew there were a lot of things he was keeping from me. Was it worth telling my secrets to learn his?

“So?” he said, his expression challenging.

I groaned. This offer was too good to pass up. “Fine. You’re on.” He grinned. “But you’re going first,” I reminded him. He was silent for too long, and I sighed dramatically.

“Hold on,” he said in annoyance. “I’m thinking.” After another long pause, he started, “Okay. You know that scar I told you about on my stomach?”

I nodded, remembering how he’d pulled up his shirt and revealed his flat stomach with flawless skin.

“It came from a bullet,” he told me.

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I wondered why he’s been shot in the stomach.

“Is that a question?” Danny replied defensively.

“No, I guess not,” I assured him. “I believe you. I suppose it’s my turn.” I had the perfect counter to his statement, but it took me time to muster up the courage to say it. “You know the scar I told you about? Mine came from a bullet too.” I rubbed my face self consciously as if to make sure the scar wasn’t still there.

Danny looked as curious as I’m sure I looked, but he stuck to the rules and said, “I was a really bad kid. I got into worse stuff than what Zane and Mara get into. I did drugs, cut school a lot, and got involved with some really bad people.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. I found that hard to believe. He seemed fairly normal to me. It was my turn again, but I figured I would just elaborate on what I’d said before in hopes that he would tell me why he was shot. “I don’t like schools because I was shot in a school shooting at the end of my freshman year. I didn’t know the shooter. He was a senior.”

Danny looked over at me sympathetically. “I’m sorry,” he apologized and put his arm comfortingly around my shoulder.

“That’s not a confession,” I told him darkly.

He sighed. “If you say so. Well… I spent a lot of time in prison, but that can’t surprise you. I already told you I was bad.”

He was wrong. It shocked me. Sure, Danny was sarcastic and quite full of himself, but he also seemed somewhat sweet. “For the record, you don’t seem like a bad person to me.” He didn’t meet my gaze, so I told him, “The bullet barely hit me. It just grazed across the front of my face, but it went right across my eyes and destroyed my nose.” With my finger, I drew a line across one eye, over the bridge of my nose, and across my other eye. “It blinded me.”

Danny stared at the wall in front of us with an expression full of great pain. A long time had passed since our “game” had begun; Mara and Zane were asleep. “I was twenty-three when I died,” he declared.

“I was only twenty,” I informed him.

Minutes passed by, and Danny didn’t tell any more secrets.

“Did you run out of things to say?” I asked.

“No,” he said shortly. “I’m just trying to decide how to say them. Tell me something. Do you trust me?”

“That’s a question.”

“I just answered on of your questions,” he pointed out. “Answer mine.”

“You haven’t given me a reason not to trust you,” I said honestly.

He chuckled grimly, saying, “That’s not a good enough answer. This game is over for now.”

“No,” I begged. Now I was burning with curiosity. “I do trust you. You’ve helped me out a lot, and I’m glad you’re here.”

He met my gaze. “If I tell you this, you’ll have to tell me something equally as important.”

“I will,” I promised without thinking.

“I’ve learned a lot since I died,” he started, “but the most important thing I learned was that God is more forgiving than anyone if you want to be forgiven. Having said that, I’ll tell you how I died. I was locked up, and I got sick and died. But I got lucky, because I would’ve died in prison anyways. I was serving out my life sentence. I’d killed three people.”

I thought about what he’d said. I understood, but his arm around my shoulder didn’t feel any less comforting. “Maybe I should be scared of you, but I’m not,” I admitted.

“Probably because you’re already dead,” he mumbled.

“No, that’s not it,” I insisted. “It’s because I still don’t think you’re that bad. I did something worse than you.” I looked away. “My whole life changed after I was shot. People stared at me. Most of my friends avoided me, and even those who didn’t got bored of me. I couldn’t play soccer or run around or go bowling with them anymore.

“I’d forgotten what my friends’ faces looked like. I don’t even remember now.” I felt tears in my eyes. “Nothing made me happy anymore.” Suddenly I was back in my bedroom the night I’d ended things. I felt the cool metal on my fingers; I felt the warm liquid flowing down my arms; I felt the pain that hurt so bad, but it was so strong it was almost like seeing again. “I killed myself.”