“Who are you?” he said.

“Flight Sergeant Josephine Bell of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.”

“I don’t think you know what that does,” he said. “You should be careful.”

“Oh, I think I know precisely what it does,” Jo said.

There was no hesitation in her movement—it was swift and even in a way that no living person could manage. In the next moment, she was in the corner with Newman. I remember the light. Something like a tornado formed in the middle of the bathroom, and the stall door flew open. The floor shook from the force. There was a noise too—a rushing sound that was soon drowned out by the shattering of the mirrors above me. They blew out powdered glass in one massive cloud. It seemed to hold itself in the air for a moment before falling. And the smell—that sweet, burning smell—it filled the room. Then the light faded, and they were gone. Both of them.

Chapter 36

36

AT HEALING ANGEL MINISTRY, COUSIN DIANE reads people’s auras. She says the auras are the angels who hover behind you, who protect you, and that you can tell the kind of angel it is by the color. She has a chart. Blue angels deal with strong emotions. Red angels deal with love. Yellow angels deal with health. Green angels deal with home and family.

The ones you want to watch out for are the white light angels. They’re at the top of the chart. The white light ones come when big stuff happens. If Cousin Diane sees a white light angel behind someone, she tends to check the newspaper for articles about accidents and obituaries.

“White light,” she’ll say, tapping the article. “I saw the white light, and you know what happens then.” And what happens then is that someone gets hit by a bus or falls into an old sewage ditch and dies.

I was seeing white light now, everywhere, soft and bright and complete.

“Crap,” I said.

In reply, the light faded just a bit. I wasn’t dead. I was pretty sure of that. Of course, it was possible that I was dead, and I just had no idea. I didn’t know what dead felt like.

“Am I dead?” I asked out loud.

There was no reply, except for the quiet beeping of some machine, and some voices. Things came into focus a little more sharply. There were edges now where wobbly blobs had previously been. I was in a bed, a bed with rails and white sheets with a light blue blanket on top. There was a television on a mounted arm that swung over to the side of the bed. There was a tube coming out of my arm. There was a window with a green curtain and a view of the gray sky.

The curtain next to me snapped back. A nurse with short blond hair came over to me.