She continues, “It says here that you left your living state behind with a multitude of regrets after spending the vast majority of your life profoundly unhappy. Does that sound right?”
“No,” I respond promptly, a hollow yet somehow weighty feeling in my chest. “No, thatdoesn’tsound right. I don’t have regrets, so you must have the wrong woman—”
“The file does not make mistakes.”
“Then why bother asking,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
“The file—”
I zero in on that manila folder. My file. A file of my life. Of my failures. Of my death. Of my darkest truths, evidently.
“You know what I think of your stupid file?”
I’m not proud of it, but I lean over the desk—hoist myself up over it, really; the thing is massive—and reach for the folder, but my caseworker grabs it and pulls it back.
“I want—to see it—” I gasp, still reaching.
“You can’t see it,” she says, sounding exasperated.
She stares at me like I’m a petulant child—Iamacting rather like a petulant child, aren’t I? But then, who could blame me?
According to her, I have so many regrets—what’s one more?
“What the hell does it say?” I ask. I sit down and slump in my seat, defeated.
“Everything I just told you.”
“What else?”
“Carmen Vasquez. Sierra Vasquez. Javier Vasquez. Elijah Aarons. Alexander Aquino. Helen Cohen. Madison James. Jacob Kent. Drew Lopez—”
“Why are you listing everyone I’ve ever known?”
“They’re all associated with your regrets.”
“That’s not true.” I laugh. Sure, maybe the first few, but—“I haven’t thought about Drew in years.”
“You spent”—she glances down—“eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds scrolling through his wife’s Instagram last February, wondering why you broke things off with him and thinking maybe you would have been happier if you had just settled.” I don’t respond to that, but I’m certainly not laughing anymore. “Would you find it helpful for me to walk you through the regrets you associate with each of these people? I would be happy to—”
“No.” I stop her, overwhelmed by sadness. “No, it would not be helpful. So I’m here to, what, have my life dragged through the mud by an angel? Is that it?”
“I’m not an angel. I’m your caseworker.”
“You’re not telling meanything.”
“Due to the extent of your regrets and unhappiness throughout your first life, you qualify for a second chance.”
“A second chance,” I repeat, as if repeating it will make it make sense.
“A second chance at life, if you so choose. An opportunity to get it right, insomuch as such a thing is possible.” I continue to stare at her blankly, and suddenly she rolls her eyes, the most human thing I’ve seen from her so far. “A do-over, if you will.”
“Like reincarnation?” I ask. In my head, I run through all of the religions I have any sort of basic understanding of. Reincarnation features in a few of them, but none of them mention a weird seventies-style office and grumpy not-angel angels. At least, I don’t think they do.
“Not reincarnation. You wouldn’t be born into another body. You would go back into your own body at an earlier point in time. It’s more akin to a concept humans refer to as time travel. Except minus all the paradoxes.”
I lean forward. “So if you’re not an angel, and you’re not human, what are you?”
The expression on her face tells me exactly what she’s about to say before she says it.
