Free Exit Point by Laura Langston Page B

Wade in the back pew. Organ music plays. Pale October sun shines through the stained glass windows. My school picture is up front, by the altar. It’s extra large, like they’ve blown it up or something. There are flowers all over the place and people too. I might know them, but I might not. It’s like my memory is on pause. Only bits and pieces are getting through.
    “Why’s my picture up there?”
    Wade doesn’t answer. Feeling stoned, I don’t ask a second time. I don’t even try to figure it out. It hurts to think. Besides, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.
    Until I see Mrs. Shields pushing a wheel-chair down the aisle.
    “That’s Tom.” Suddenly I am more awake. “My buddy.” Tom’s legs are in casts. Cuts crisscross his face. Was he in the accident too? I try to remember, but the lead in my head won’t go away. “Hey, Tom, what happened? Tom! I’m over here.” But he doesn’tlook at me. He stares at his hands instead. And then his mother wheels him past. “Tom, I’m back here,” I call. “Tom!”
    “He can’t hear you,” Wade says.
    Wade’s full of shit. I open my mouth to argue, but then I see Hannah coming down the aisle between her mother and father. My Hannah. Her long, blond hair is messy straight, not curled and fluffed up like normal. Her face is puffed, her eyes red. She weeps into a tissue.
    “Hannah!” I reach out. But she walks too fast. She’s gone before I can grab her.
    “Everybody’s ignoring me!”
    “They’re not ignoring you,” Wade says. “They can’t see you.”
    His words don’t make sense. But I don’t have time to try and figure them out, because then I see my parents and my sister, Amy. They come out a side door at the front of the church. Dad’s bent over like an old man. He’s on one side of Mom, Amy’s on the other. Mom looks like she can’t walk on her own.
    I jump up and run down the aisle toward them. Moving sharpens my senses. I recognizepeople now: Mr. Levesque, my French teacher. The principal, Mrs. Edwards. Casual friends from the swim club. Aunt Susan and Uncle Herb. Plus Tom and Hannah. Brian and Seth. Even their parents. I know everybody here.
    Everybody.
    My family sits in the front row, just the three of them. “Mom? Mom , it’s me! Logan.” I am so close I can see the purple smudges under her eyes, the wet tips of her eyelashes. Her lower lip trembles. She stares at me, says nothing.
    I look at Dad. He whispers in Mom’s ear. I smell coffee on his breath. I see a cut on his cheek. I know it’s from shaving.
    I turn to my sister. “Amy, what’s with these two? Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” But Amy’s clear gray eyes are shadowed; her face is pale. She fidgets nervously. Typical nine-year-old. I remember she will be ten soon. Her present is in the car.
    Why does the thought of the car leave me shaking?
    At the front of the church, a man begins to speak. “We are gathered here today to honorthe life of Logan Alexander Freemont.” I turn. A minister in white holds a small black book. “Let us pray.”
    People stand. Voices rise.
    So does my panic. It crawls up from my feet and takes over, bit by bit, until the fog in my brain is gone. Until I remember everything.
    I am dead.
    No way.
    I look down. I see my gray sweatshirt. I touch my jeans. The denim is rough under my fingers. I run up and down the aisles, reaching for people. People I know. They slide. Or I slide. Or we both do. Either way, I can’t connect.
    So I yell. I yell at my parents. At Amy. At Hannah and Tom. “I’m not dead! Look at me, guys, I’m alive. I’m here. It’s all a joke. Look!”
    The only person who looks at me is Wade. “It’s no joke, Logan.” He’s halfway across the church and his voice is soft and quiet, but I hear him like he’s whispering in my ear. “It’s real.”
    “I’m not dead. I’m still me. I still have a body and everything.”
    “You are still you, but you don’t have a body. What you’re seeing is