Happily Ever Never

2. Brooke

2

brOOKE

Everything goes black for a minute, and I know I’m dead. I’ll never see my parents again. I’ll never fall in love, never get married, never finish my freaking book...

And Lucas. Lucas is dead. He’ll never get the chance to really live life. He’ll never be happy. He’ll never take a full week off, he’ll never...

I sway in the darkness. I stumble. How is it that I can feel a cool breeze on my face when I’m dead? How am I still standing?

Lucas clears his throat loudly. Yes, I’m blind, but I’d know that impatient throat-clearing sound anywhere. “You’re standing on my foot.”

I flail my arms around and my hand hits his arm. I grab ahold of it tightly, feeling the swell of his biceps under my fingers.

“I can’t see!” I cry in panic.

“That’s because your eyes are shut,” he says dryly.

“Oh. I knew that.” I open my eyes and blink. Everything glows whitish for a moment, and then my vision starts to clear.

There’s a ringing in my ears, and my mouth tastes of metal. I reach up and feel my hair, running my hand down my locks. I’m expecting it to be frizzy and fried where the lightning hit it. No, it’s still smooth and un-fried.

“Are you seriously worried about how you look right now?” Lucas demands. “You’ve never looked lovelier. Happy? Please focus on what the heck just happened to us. We’ve got a situation here.”

I glare up at him. I’ve never looked lovelier?

Sarcasm, right after I got hit by lightning?

“And to think I felt sorry for you!” I spit the words out.

He looks at me in bafflement. “Why would you feel sorry for me?”

I huff an outraged breath. “The list is too long to even get into right now. Okay, number one, you’re a workaholic with no life. Number two—”

Lucas clears his throat. “I thought you said the list was too long.”

“You know, I just felt a sudden burst of inspiration. Number twooo...” I trail off.

A minute ago we were in midtown Manhattan.

We are now... I don’t know where we are right now. It looks like we’re in the downtown of a small town.

We’re standing in a park, with wrought iron park benches and old-fashioned triple-globe streetlights, from which fresh baskets of flowers dangle. Lining the street across from us are one- and two-story shops with pastel storefronts, stretching away into the distance. I glance in the other direction and see houses, mostly in Victorian and Queen Anne styles.

It’s so pretty it’s begging to be put on a postcard. My fingers are twitching for my sketchpad and pencils.

And Manhattan is nowhere to be seen.

I twist around to make sure, searching for the familiar skyline. I see a church with a New England–style steeple, people strolling down the street, cars gliding by at an unhurried pace... But there’s no Manhattan looming in the distance .

“We... how long have we been here? How did we get here? This is impossible.” I reach out and touch the oak tree I’m standing next to. My fingers run over the rough bark. It feels real, scraping under my fingertips.

“I know. There’s a possibility we’re dead.” Lucas shakes his head in bewilderment. “This doesn’t make any sense, though. We can’t be in heaven. I’ve got a headache. I wouldn’t have a headache in heaven, would I? And I’m not feeling anything like complete peace and joy; I’m stressed because I’m missing my meeting. But we can’t be in hell—it’s not miserable enough.”

“Well, you’re here,” I mutter.

He frowns. “What did you say?”

I blink innocently and shrug. “Nothing. Point taken. This isn’t heaven or hell, but we also were in Manhattan mere minutes ago, and we got hit by lightning and...” I’m clenching something. It’s my Serena Lovelace book. Except... the cover’s changed? Now it has a different picture on it, and the title says Unhappily Ever After , which is not a book that she’s written. Not yet, anyway. I would know; I own all twenty-two of her books.

A wave of dizziness flows over me, and I shove the book in my jacket pocket.

Something’s bothering me—something other than the fact that we’ve appeared in this strange and lovely downtown—but I’m too frazzled to put my finger on it.

A twist of anxiety squeezes my insides. How far are we from Manhattan? Do they have buses here? How am I going to get home tonight? Tara will freak if I never come home.

“Purgatory?” Lucas suggests. “Could we be in purgatory?”

I look around, frowning. “It’s awfully nice for purgatory. They have an ice cream shop and everything.”

“But they’re spelling it ‘The I Scream S-h-o-p-p-e,’ so it might be purgatory.” My boss has a pathological hatred of misspellings .

“Hmmph. I think it’s cute.” And oddly familiar sounding. Where have I heard that store name before?

A woman pushing a baby stroller catches my eye, breaks into a smile, and waves at me. I wave back. Weird. She almost looks as if she recognized me, and I definitely don’t know her.

A breeze whips through the air, blowing a paper flyer past my feet. I bend down and grab it. I pick up litter all the time. Lucas hates that. He thinks litter is germy and I’ll get sick and then I’d miss work.

Yeah, right. I’d have to call in dead to even get half a day off.

I glance down at the flyer as I trot over to a garbage can. It’s advertising a meeting at the town hall tomorrow night, to protest “the destruction of our downtown.” Interesting. There are lots of people here, especially for a weekday, and the buildings all look like they’re in good shape. What could be wrong?

He pulls out his phone and dials, then shakes his head. “I’ve got no signal. Damn it! I’ve got to call Jerry McRawlins back.”

“Oh, for the love...” I am so sick of hearing about the McRawlins account. I just lost my job—well, admittedly I quit—because of McRawlins. “How can you possibly think about work at a time like this? We got hit by lightning and woke up in Wheretheheckistan.”

“How can I think about it? Because I actually have a work ethic!” he snaps.

Oh, he did not.

Is he saying that to the woman who has watched the last years of her twenties slide by without so much as night off? I turned thirty a month ago, and celebrated my birthday by reorganizing his filing cabinet.

I have had enough of him today. And forever. “Good luck with your phone. And your life.” I turn on my heel and stalk off.

“Where are you going? Wait!” he yells.

I break into a run.

He starts chasing me. There's a sudden burst of traffic and a row of cars are streaming down the road. I run past one of them, almost getting hit. Lucas gets cut off, and when I glance back at him, he’s yelling and waving at the cars as if that will make them move faster.

I put on a burst of speed. I used to run track. I’ve got long legs and I’m motivated. If I have to spend another minute with Lucas, I may find out what jail food tastes like, because he is making me feel especially stabby today.

He’s shouting my name as I run.

Well, tough titty. Since I’ve quit, he no longer gets to tell me what to do.

I dodge down an alley between two buildings and burst through an open door. Immediately the smells of fried food hit me in a hot wave.

I shut the door behind me. I’m standing in a restaurant kitchen, and several cooks turn to stare at me.

“Sorry!” I call out. “Pardon the intrusion.”

One of the chefs looks at me in puzzlement. “Susie? Wow, how long has it been? You’re back from LA?”

I flash him a polite smile. “I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” I make my way through the kitchen and into the restaurant.