Free Exit Point by Laura Langston

Chapter One
    He says I died at the wrong time.
    I’m not sure I’m dead to begin with.
    I’m lying on a bed in a round, white room and I can’t move. There are people around me, dressed in gray robes. They hold me down. Not with their hands, but with something.
    I stare up to where the ceiling is supposed to be. There is no ceiling, only sky. A pale, bleached-out sky vibrating with an eerieglow. Like a planetarium ceiling before the show starts. There are colors around me too. Moving colors. They quiver and ping and make a wind chime kind of music.
    “I’m dreaming, right?”
    No one answers out loud. Instead I hear his voice in my head and this is what he says: There are five exit points in any one life. Five points when a person can die and not mess with the Big Plan.
    “You should have waited for exit point five.” Now he speaks into my ear. His breath is hot on my skin. “Instead you took an easier option. You took exit point two.”
    If I had waited, I would have died on June 9, 2066, at the age of seventy-seven, by choking on a grape.
    Instead I died October 28, 2004, in a car that crashed and exploded on Houser Way.
    I was sixteen years old and afraid to face my future.
    So I didn’t.
    At least this is what he says .
    Fear thuds in my chest. For a minute, I wonder if he’s right.
    Nah.
    I’m dreaming.
    The robed ones take colors and put them into my body. Red gives me a jolt, like diving into a cold pool on a hot day. Green is what it feels like when you come out of the water and wrap yourself in a towel: comfortable and warm. Blue makes me sleepy. Sleeping is something I’m good at. I drift off.
    It’s either a dream or I’m coming down. Except I haven’t touched a thing in almost two weeks. Except the beer. I had four cans of Bud before I took the keys to my dad’s car. And six more, that I remember, before Tom and I had the race. And that’s all that I do remember.
    Then...nothing.
    The nothing part scares me awake. I struggle to sit up. “Where am I? What’s going on?”
    Hands hold me down. A wind touches my face; I can’t hear what the people around me say. Then I hear a voice I haven’t heard in three years. “Keep yer shirt on, Logan. You’ll know everything soon enough.”
    “Gran?” I can’t move to turn my head, so Gran appears above me, but she doesn’t look sick or wrinkled. She looks way too young to be Gran, except the beady eyes are the same. And so is the large, bumpy nose.
    “It’s me, Logan. Damn, your timing’s bad.” Frowning, she puffs on a cigarette. “I’ve got five hundred on Devil’s Pride in the seventh. You could have waited for the race to end before getting antsy.”
    Gran fades in a buzz of gold light. Someone talks to her. I hear words, but they are all garbled and muffled like someone speaking under water.
    If I were dead and in heaven, Gran wouldn’t be gambling. She wouldn’t be cranky. And she wouldn’t still be smoking cigarettes. Or maybe Gran went down instead of up. And I followed her.
    Gran is back. Her frown is gone. She smiles. This is a dream all right. The only time Gran smiled was when she won at the track. Gran had been a cranky old bitch. Even before getting lung cancer.
    “Excuse me, young man.” Her smileslips. “I was never a cranky old bitch. And this is no dream, Logan. You’re deader than a doornail.”
    There’s more gold buzzing. Gran fades again, but she returns in three blinks. “Let me try that again. Taking your father’s car was a stupid move. Not to mention drinking all that beer and trying to impress Hannah by driving like a lunatic. You are dead, Logan. You are not going to wake up in your own bed, late, like you always do. You will never again rush out the door half-dressed. You will never again use your charm to get a good mark, avoid your chores or impress the girls.”
    Gran turns, speaks to someone I can’t see. “He’s my grandson. I’ll speak to him however I want.” She turns back to me. “Face it.