Truth or Dare

Ten Years of Waiting in the Resting Place

Lydia

The resting place was different for everyone. For me, it looked like a beach. I stayed in a house on the water that was bright when I was happy and dimly light when I wasn’t. I still did the things I that I that I had in life in death, but I did them on my terms. I slept as much or as little as I wanted, I ate anything I wanted when I was hungry. I shot archery, just now on the beach. I took a lot of walks, you think a lot when you have forever to think.

For the longest time I was by myself. I didn’t want my mother's company, do I didn’t have it. Even after I had come to terms with what had happened, I stayed by myself. She wasn’t hurt by my choice of solitude, she understood. I was grieving as much as the people I left behind. Grieving the loss of my friends, the loss of my future. What people don't understand is it's just as painful for the dead to leave behind those they love as it is for the living to lose someone they love. After a year or so, I began to see her again, but I remained existing by myself on my own little beach. We visited, but I didn’t stay with her. Maybe it was because I grew up mostly without her, or maybe it was that small part of my heart that hurt every time I saw her because she reminded me of everything I had lost. Whatever the reason, I was better by myself so that was how I spent my existence in the resting place.

I spent most of my time watching the living. I never understood completely how it worked, but when I felt like seeing what my friends were up to all I had to was walk to the end of the pier and look in the water. Through it, I could see whatever I wanted. So I watched them, the heads, Nicole, Charlie, my father, everyone I loved. I watched them every chance I got. After awhile, it hurt less to see them live without me and I'd like to believe that it hurt them less and less to live without me. Nicole stopped crying herself to sleep at night around six months after I died. Wes started talking to people again after four. Hayley threw herself into training and Charlie threw himself into his work and his relationship with Nicole.

Time passed differently for me then it did for them. Years went by for them when what felt like a week went by for me. I saw the day Dominic and Dani were sentenced to life in prison for my murder, and I saw the day Dani killed herself three months after. She hung herself, leaving a note for my friends that read: I'm sorry. I saw her once, when she first entered the resting place. She looked like she had the first day we met, but she was crying. She asked for forgiveness, said she was so sorry for everything that had happened. And I forgave her, because there was no point in holding a grudge when you're dead. That was the last I ever heard of or saw her.

Dominic tried to kill himself three times before he succeeded. When asked about it, he said she's telling me to do it. Because I killed her. I guess killing me was a waste to him, because it didn’t stop him from seeing me or hearing my voice in his head. After he died, I never saw or heard of him again. I don't even know if he made it to the resting place, if anyone had gone to get him. I like to believe he's still trapped on earth in his jail cell, rotting for the rest of his existence.

I knew that eventually, my friends would join me in the resting place. The first was Keith. He had stayed in Hawaii, becoming a professional surfer and a father at the age of twenty. He drowned in surfing accident when he was twenty six, he fell off his board on a big wave and hit his head on his board. I saw him fall and I screamed, jumping into the water I was watching them in. I landed on the beach, where they were dragging his body onto the shore. Like with when I had died, Keith stood over his own body looking horrified.

"Keith," I called out to him. I hadn't spoken to any of my in almost ten years their time. His name sounded strange when I said it out loud, like a word from a foreign language that I used to know.

"Lydia?" he looked at me and walked away from his body.

"You got old."

"You didn’t." he smiled.