“Well,” said Allie. “This sucks.”

Nick let loose an unexpected guffaw, which made Allie giggle. How could they be laughing at a time like this?

“We have some decisions to make,” said Allie.

Nick didn’t exactly feel in a decision-making frame of mind. “You think it’s possible to have post-traumatic stress disorder if you’re dead?” he asked. Allie had no answer.

Nick looked at his hands, which were smudged with everlasting chocolate, like his face. He rubbed his arm. If he had no fleshly body, why could he still feel his skin? Or maybe it was just a memory of skin. And what about all the things people told him in life, about what happened to you when you died? Not that he was certain about any of it. His father had been an alcoholic who found God, and it changed his life. His mother was into new age stuff, and believed in reincarnation and crystals. Nick always found himself caught in some uncomfortable in-between. He had faith in faith, though—that is to say, he deeply believed that someday he’d find something to deeply believe. That “someday” never came for Nick. Instead, he wound up here—and this place didn’t fit with either of his parents’ versions of the afterlife. And then, of course, there was his friend, Ralphy Sherman, who claimed to have had a near-death experience. (According to Ralphy, we’re all briefly reincarnated as insects, and the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a bug-zapper.) Well, this place was not purgatory, Nirvana, or any sort of rebirth, and it occurred to Nick that regardless of what people believed, the universe had its own ideas.

“At least now we know there’s an afterlife,” Allie said, but Nick shook his head.

“This isn’t the afterlife,” he said. “We never made it to the afterlife. This is kind of an interlife. A space between life and death.” Nick thought back to that light he had seen at the end of the tunnel, before he had crashed into Allie on the way. That light had been his destination. He still didn’t know what was in that light—Jesus, or Buddha, or the light of a hospital delivery room where he would be reborn. Would he ever know?

“What if we’re lost here forever?” he asked.

Allie scowled at him. “Are you always so full of gloom and doom?”

“Usually.”

Nick looked at the forest around them. Was this such a bad place to spend eternity? It wasn’t exactly paradise, but it was kind of pretty. The trees were full and lush. They’d never lose their leaves. He wondered if the weather of the living world could still affect him. If not, then it wouldn’t be so bad staying here. Certainly the boy they called Lief had adjusted, so couldn’t they? But then, that wasn’t the real question. The question was, did they want to?

Lief waited in his tree house, and soon they climbed up to him, as he knew they would. He quickly hid his special things as Nick and Allie reached the platform, both of them huffing and puffing, as if they were out of breath.