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“Or,” said Allie, “it just fell through a random vortex.” She held up one of Mary’s books. “You said that happens yourself.”
Mary sighed. “So I did.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just contradict yourself? “
Still, Mary lost none of her poise. In fact, she rose to the challenge better than Allie expected.
“I see you’re smart enough to know there are no simple answers,” Mary said.
“It’s true that things sometimes do cross over by accident.”
“Right! And it’s not a blessing that we’re here, it’s an accident.”
“Even accidents have a divine purpose.”
“Then they wouldn’t be accidents, would they?”
“Believe what you want,” said Mary. “Eternity is what it is —you can’t change it. You’re here, and so you must make the best of it. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“All right—but just answer me one question. Is there a way out of Everlost? “
Mary didn’t answer right away. For a moment Allie thought she might tell her something she had never written in any of her books. But instead, all she said was, “No. And in time you’ll know the truth of it for yourself.”
In just a few days, Allie, Nick, and Lief came to know all there was to know about life in Mary’s world. The daily routine was simple. The little kids played ball, tag, and jumped rope all day long in the plaza, and when it got dark, everyone gathered on the seventy-eighth floor to listen to stories the older kids told, or to play video games, or to watch the single TV that Mary had acquired. According to Meadow, there were kids out there who traveled the world searching for items that had crossed over, and they would trade them to Mary.
These kids were called “Finders.” One Finder had brought a TV, but it only played TV shows that had aired on the day it crossed over. The same ancient episodes of The Love Boat and Happy Days played every single day during prime time, and presumably would continue to play until the end of time. Strangely, there were some kids who watched it. Every day. Like clockwork.
Nick watched the TV for a few days, amazed at the old commercials and the news more than anything. Watching it was like stepping into a time machine, but even time travel gets dull when you’re constantly traveling to April 8, 1978.
Allie chose not to watch the TV She was already sensing something profoundly wrong with Mary’s little Queendom, although she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. It had to do with the way the little girls jumped rope, and the way the same kids would watch that awful TV every single day.
If Nick felt that anything was wrong, it was lost beneath everything that was right about Mary. The way she always thought of others before herself, the way she made the little kids all feel loved. The way she took an interest in him.
Mary always made a point of coming over to Nick and asking what he was up to, how he was feeling, what new things he “was thinking about. She spoke with him about a book she was working on, all about theories on why there were no seventeen-year-olds in Everlost, when everyone knew eighteen was the official age of adulthood.
“That’s not actually true,” Nick offered. “That’s voting age, but drinking age is twenty-one. In the Jewish religion, adulthood is thirteen, and I know for a fact there are fourteen-year-old Jewish kids here.”
“That still doesn’t explain why kids older than us aren’t admitted into Everlost.”
Admitted to Everlost, thought Nick. That sounded a lot better than Lost on the way to heaven. Her way of thinking was such a welcome relief from his own propensity toward gloom and doom. “Maybe,” suggested Nick, “it’s a very personal thing. Maybe it’s the moment you stop thinking of yourself as a kid.”
Vari, who was lingering at the door, snickered. He had snickered at every single comment Nick made.
“Vari, please,” Mary told him. “We value a free flow of ideas here.”
“Even the stupid ones?” Vari said.
Nick couldn’t really see why she kept Vari around. Sure, he had musical talent, but it didn’t make up for his attitude.
Mary took Nick to show him how her books were made. The sixty-seventh floor was the publishing room. There were thirty kids there, all sitting at school desks.
It looked like a classroom with kids practicing their penmanship.
“We’ve yet to find a printing press that’s crossed over,” she told him. “But that’s all right. They enjoy copying by hand.”
And sure enough, the kids in the publishing room seemed thrilled to do their work, like ancient scribes copying scriptures on parchment.
“They find comfort in the routine,” Mary said, and Nick accepted it, without giving it much thought.
