A Different Kind of Brave

We were in the grey area again.

I called it purgatory.

The grey around us kind of looked like you were looking outside during a rainy day.

"What happened for your day?" Grace voiced.

No one spoke at first.

And then Derrick did. "I saw a guy in a hospital. He lost his son."

"Why were you in the hospital?" I frowned.

Everyone was thinking the same thing.

If you had one day on earth, where you could be anywhere you wanted to be in the world, where you could do anything you'd ever wanted, would you spend it in a hospital?

"My mom died there," he said. "It's kind of been a thinking place for me."

"What were you going to think about?"

"What I did."

No one needed to ask what he had done.

We all knew.

Grace spoke next, "I heard some girls making fun of a girl who went to a mental hospital because she tried to kill herself."

Grace blinked. "I remember her name. Kay Martin."

"What'd you do about it?" James asked.

"I told them that they were idiots," she said, quietly. "But when I was walking away I knew that I was the idiot."

"I went to a store," James said. "You know, one of those ones where you can buy over-the-counter corn dogs. I wanted one."

He exhaled. "I saw a donation box. It was for a little boy. A 3 year old. He got kidnapped. And then the guy next to me says that if a kid's kidnapped, after three days they're most likely dead."

James shuddered, "The kid's been gone for three weeks. He's dead."

We didn't say anything.

There wasn't anything to say.

"And you?" Derrick said to me.

"I saw my headstone," I said. "It was right next to my uncle's."

We were sitting aorund later, like we had before, talking.

Just like last time.

"Do you think that these things are happening on purpose?" Grace asked quietly.

"What?" James frowned.

"I mean, how many times did you hear about death on a regular day when you were alive?" Grace asked us.

I realized.

She was right.

I shook my head. "Not that much."

"And then," she continued, "On each of the two days that we get on earth, death is stalking us!"

We were quiet.

Derrick spoke. "Do you guys realize that... we're dead?"

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

All four of us.

We're dead.

Dead.

We're like ghosts.

Like those people from horror movies.

Then how come everyone that we've met hasn't run away screaming like they do in the movies?

How come we aren't chasing a group of college kids through an abandoned house?

Because the dead don't do that.

What do the dead do?

I licked my lips. "I'm dead."

I told this to myself.

It shocked me.

It hit me.

Everyone else just stared.

Dead.

I'm dead.

Grace has another question. "Do you think that we're going to save the people who are thinking about killing themselves the same way that we did?"

James stared at her hard, "What?"

Grace looked at him, "You shot yourself in the head. That was what Jeremy Grey was going to do." She faced me. "You hung yourself. That's what Cynthia Bales had in mind. And both of you were the ones who helped those people the most!"

Derrick answered her quickly enough, "No. I don't think so. There are more than four ways to kill yourself. Maybe James and Jeremy and Sarah and Cynthia were just a coincidence."

I shrugged, "There's only one way to find out."

And then we waited.

We waited for that third name.

We got it.

The next name on our list.

It was Karrie Maine.