Free The Afterlife by Gary Soto Page A

whipped around her, and her long hair flowed. Her skirt also flapped like wings.
    A dude,
I figured. A dude was involved. Why else would she kill herself? I pried and asked, "What was his name?"
    She turned and started walking up the street. She intended to get back home.
    I was torn whether to go back to my family or go with Crystal. She began running without a good-bye. Pitifully, I swallowed my loneliness. I couldn't stand losing her, and, nearly crying because I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it back to Fresno before disappearing altogether, I chased after her.
    "Crystal," I yelled, and joked, "Let's do breakfast in Selma!" The town had no more than ten thousand people, and maybe two thousand cows and an equal number of chickens and pigs. In fact, in Selma there was every chance that your best friend was a fly-speckled pig that you fed daily from a dented pail.
    I was soon running at her side, me, a perennial third-place long-distance runner. We galloped in time, left leg and then right, twin gazelles leaping in the darkness of night. I was keeping up, stride for stride, and observing the quiet street where I imagined poor families sawing logs of sleep. I imagined the warm beds and the blankets rising on each snore. I imagined a mother stumbling from bed as her baby began to kick and cry.

    Crystal smiled at me, and I had to smile, though there was no happiness in my heart. I was no longer thinking of myself but of Crystal—her body lay somewhere in Fresno, maybe unclaimed because it had yet to be discovered. Right then, I poked her shoulder with the stump of my arm and got her to slow to a walk.
    "Crystal," I said. "I've got to ask something."
    She pulled her hair from her eyes, which were luminous in the night.
    "Where did you die?"
    "Don't ask," she whimpered. When her eyes narrowed, some of their brightness disappeared.
    "I got to," I answered. I had to know whether her body was found, or if some stray dog was circling it. She could be in a ditch, the passenger side of a parked car, or half-clothed in a shallow grave. She was dead, I realized, but I wanted to protect her body. Maybe I could be the first to show my respect, like I'd seen on TV People will put teddy bears, flowers, and balloons where a friend got killed.
    "Why?" she asked, rocking on her heels because I was close enough to kiss her. I thought of making that kind of move, but my question was serious. Just where was she—her body? We stood like that,
eyes level on each others. Just then a car turned onto the street and both of us watched it approach, picking up speed. Crystal took my arm, squeezed her eyes shut, and we let the car pass through us.

    "That's a funny feeling," she commented as she turned and watched the car continue down the street, its brake lights a sinful red as the car turned another corner. The tires squealed, but just barely.
    I continued to probe. "Come on, girl, where?" I repeated. "Where did it happen?"
    She pointed vaguely. "In my car."
    "And where's your car?" I had to brace myself because the wind was picking up. Crystal, however, a new ghost, blew halfway down the street. I flew to her and asked again.
    "At Roeding Park," she confided. She faced southward, her hair blowing and her skirt flapping, revealing thighs that were muscled from running.
    Of course, I knew the park. Teenagers like us shared our loneliness in that park, where at night peacocks howled like witches. I had been one of those teenagers, me and my
carnal
Angel, both of us sitting on top of benches as we took turns complaining about life, which, for us, was mainly school, maybe parents if they were jacking us up about our laziness. I recalled the rush of wind through the eucalyptus and how that mighty tree dropped leaves.
We tore those leaves like movie tickets, leaf after leaf that kept our hands busy. We went there to talk about school and about our parents and how they didn't know us because they were always working. What was Dad anyhow