In one and a half seconds flat, I compare my in-brain Aza to the girl in front of me.
She looks healthy. Strangely so. I can’t see any veins under the surface of her skin, the way I’ve always seen them. I’ve made a career of watching her blood running through her body, but now it’s invisible. Her mouth is not only not blue, she’s wearing lipstick. Her cheeks are pink. I’ve never seen the clothes she’s wearing. They’re new. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her hair brushed before.
The last time I saw her, her strange ocean-depths eyes were shut. I was the one who shut them. Now, she’s—
Aza holds out her arms in exasperation.
“Aren’t you happy to see me at all?” she asks, and her voice is Aza’s voice, a little snarky, a little hurt. But not breathless. I can’t even process that.
“I thought you’d be happy. I can’t believe you haven’t even hugged me yet. I kissed you.”
My heart’s pounding so hard it should be rattling the window glass, and then I pick her up off the steps and hold her as tightly as I can, and she’s not gasping, not coughing. She’s in my arms. She’s in my—
How can she be well? The last time I saw her, she was dead. I hold her out from me and stare.
“Did I dream it?”
“No,” she says. “You didn’t dream it.”
“Am I crazy?”
“Maybe,” she says. “Tell me what you’ve been doing the last four weeks and I’ll tell you if you’re crazy.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m really here.”
“Aza Ray Was Her,” I say. She looks at me curiously.
“Aza Ray is me.” She smiles.
Which, as always, takes me down. Her smile is like no one else’s. Even though it’s weird to see her normally dark-purple mouth painted pink.
She drops out of my arms and walks past me into the house. I stand for a second looking out at my street, which seems to have become a street in heaven, and then I follow her into my living room.
“Where are your parents?” she asks.
“They went to the grocery store,” I say, oddly formal. I want to tell her everything. I want her to tell me everything.
She patrols the edges of the room, looks at everything closely, then goes into the kitchen, looking at the cupboards, into the fridge. Normally she’d just get whatever she wanted.
“Are you hungry?”
“No,” she says. “I ate.”
She perches weirdly on the edge of a chair. (Not-a-Ghost verification: the chair is dented by her weight.)
“Am I dreaming?” I ask again.
“You’re not dreaming,” she says. “You’re part of a secret. Can you keep a secret, Jason Kerwin? I need your help.”
Why does she keep saying my name that way?
What happened to her? Would I be strange, too, if I died or didn’t die, if I god-knows-what-ed? Yes. Obviously, I would.
I reach out and take her hand. Her skin’s warm. She’s never had warm skin before. There are calluses on her palm, new ones. Or at least, the last time I held her hand her skin was smooth. Now her hand feels as though she’s been doing work. Like, heavy labor, in coming back from the dead.
And wow, I’m focusing in too much on the details. The world’s shrinking down and all the things that should matter disappear into a blur when I’m this way. I try to breathe.
Is this shock? I think I’m in shock.
“Where’ve you been, Az?” I ask her in a pretty calm voice. Like it’s no big deal that she died. Like I haven’t been losing my mind. Like I am not losing my mind right now.
She’s looking around the room, her head moving oddly, tilting and then tilting again. She looks scared, the way she’s moving, but her face doesn’t show “scared,” and then it occurs to me that she’s looking for something. It’s a movement I’ve seen in birds hunting insects. She zeroes in on something, looking out the window. She smiles, and for just a second I’m scared.
Jason Kerwin: crazy.
I hold her hand tighter. I don’t need to be counting her freckles and comparing them to a tally in my brain.
I’m not scared of Aza.
I’ve only ever been scared of losing Aza.
She looks straight at me, and again I’m hit with adrenaline. I want to bolt out of the room. Why? What the hell?
“Where’ve you been?” I try it again.
“What do you know?” she asks. “I’ll tell you everything, but tell me what you know first.”
I’m about to start, but then again that movement of her head, tilting quickly, turning quickly.
I don’t know anything.
She moves closer, leans in, puts one of her hands on my knee, which is so unlike Aza that I’m completely at a loss. I look down at my knee, paralyzed.
“Okay. Basic things, Az. Do you happen to be dead?”
“Of course not,” she says. “Look at me. I’m alive.” She leans in toward me again. Her hand moves on my leg. I’m not even close to being able to deal with that. I grab her fingers and keep them from moving.
“But you died, Az,” I say. “You did. I was there. I saw it happen.”
I’m cursing myself even as these words are coming out of my mouth, because she’s more alive than she was when she was alive. She was always on the verge of suffocation, and now that’s not what’s happening.