Part 2: 1 - Outside of Time
Love, anger, and chocolate chip cookies
Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.
Last week: 12 - Bow and Arrow 1988, Lisa pulls Dani back
Part 2 | History is a Pile of Debris
1 - Outside of Time
Dani Marie Cartwright
Outside of time
Everyone thinks they know what happens after you die. If you die young, like me, it’s like Christmas and you get everything you always wanted, right? Or there are angels dressed in white, strumming harps and standing around on clouds, just like in the cartoons. You get to watch a super-fast slide show of your life in front of your eyes—after they’re no longer your eyes. Well, the slide show part is true. Mine was a short slide show, but it was good until that last part. You probably think you know what happens next. You don’t.
There are things about being dead that you will find surprising. I’d rather skip the getting dead part, because that was not a good surprise. I don’t recommend dying in general, not if you can avoid it. Unless you did your work while you were alive, there’s a lot of homework to do. That’s right. After you die, you still have work to do. It’s not boring like you thought.
You probably want to hear that I went off to a beautiful field of tall grass and shade trees, where the weather is always perfect, and children laugh and play tag forever. Sorry, but that’s just not what happens. Or, I should say, you could probably be in that field playing tag, but you’re also in many other places. Time is not what you think it is—that’s the hardest thing to explain. You may be surprised to find out you can be both entirely peaceful and thoroughly ticked-off at the same time in a bunch of different places.
When I left my body, I was floating above that lime green car. I knew things I didn’t know before. The man who killed me, he didn’t mean to kill me. He was going to take me somewhere and give me to someone. It wasn’t anything good, but killing me was not part of his plan. He was a greedy coward who had made bad choice after bad choice, each one worse than the last. There was no going back for him, but I did find one last weakening ember of remorse in his heart.
I was beyond angry while he drove around, stopping at random places, flipping through his Thomas Brothers map in a constant panic. My body was crumpled on the passenger side floor, hidden under his leather jacket, and he was looking desperately for somewhere to dump it without anyone seeing. He considered a city trashcan, then a dumpster behind the Pizza Hut. He went downtown for a while and stopped at a pay phone to make a call. He wasn’t going to make his delivery time.
When he started driving east again, all I could think of was getting to the Demo Day show. I whispered the address from the flyer into his subconscious, “Allen Haven Ranch on Blue Haven Lane. Take me there.” I know it sounds goofy, but haunting him came naturally. And eventually, it worked. But it was late at night and the horse show was long over. It didn’t turn out like I thought it would. I wasn’t really thinking anything through at that point. You’ll see what I mean later.
While all this was happening, I was also experiencing other things. Comforting, peaceful things. Beautiful things. I felt an overwhelming love, like chocolate chip cookies. Not eating chocolate chip cookies, or even smelling chocolate chip cookies. It was more like being chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookies so full of love they would take over the world. No, the universe. No. Much more than that.
At the same time, I was with Grammy, who died when I was seven. I saw her face and felt her smile. She was my grandma one hundred percent the way I remember her, but even more plump, and even more huggable. Like the cookies, she wasn’t just my grandma, she was more. I was little, maybe three, sitting on Grammy’s kitchen counter next to a bowl of, you guessed it, chocolate chip cookie dough. I was tasting my small fingers, still gooey from the mixing, while Grammy placed spoonfuls of dough onto a metal cookie sheet and slid it into the oven.
“You’re here so soon, little one,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, absorbed in the cool squish of the dough between my sticky fingers. “I’m glad I get to make cookies with you again.”
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” She smiled and kissed my forehead. I felt loved all the way through.
“Honey, things are going to be different for you now,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m dead.”
“That’s the way you would describe it, yes,” said Grammy.
“Why aren’t there any angels on clouds, or an old guy with a white beard, or . . . shouldn’t you at least be a nice man with brown eyes, wearing a robe and sandals?”
Grammy’s laugh was a sunshine hug in an endless rolling field of flowers and butterflies. “I thought you might like to make cookies with me, instead,” she said.
“Is this heaven?” I asked.
Grammy wiped my face and fingers with a warm washcloth. “It can be,” she said.
“Grammy, I feel like I’m here with you, but I’m also in a lot of other places and a lot of other times.”
Grammy said, “Time is not what you used to think it was.”
“I can see everything. It’s like I’m floating everywhere, like bubbles in a breeze. I can see people close to me, like Mom and Daddy, but also Barb, and even some people I never met. I see a little bit in the past and also what might be the future? . . . almost. It’s more blurry.”
“You will see something of the past within your short lifetime, and some of the possible future for as long as there are people who remember you in the world, but no, you probably won’t be able to focus on the future. It changes, and . . . It doesn’t belong to you anymore,” said Grammy, as gently as she could.
Yet rage, like a fever, suddenly overtook me. I felt everything that was wrong about being taken from my life. I balled my tiny fists and shouted, “NO! I made a promise! Where are the horses?!”
I slammed the bowl of dough onto the floor where it shattered into splinters of sparkling glass. Then it was gone, or it was never there at all.
Grammy hugged me tight and I gradually calmed. “Oh Dani, sweetheart. I know it’s hard to take, especially so young. It will be a big challenge for you, but you and everyone else are going to be okay, more than okay. Don’t let your anger separate you. Belong, and everything you promised will come.”
Belong? I belong at the Demo Day show. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What about Mom and Daddy? They are so worried, and so sad.”
“I see them too.” Grammy’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s going to be hard for all of you.”
“Why did this happen, Grammy?”
She glanced around, shuffling her feet, and let out a big sigh. “There are people in this world who can think only of themselves. They make choices that hurt other people. They don’t understand that they are also hurting themselves.”
“But why?”
Grammy handed me a cookie and I was aware only of that comfortable cookie-ness for another everlasting moment. She and I were face to face at the same level. She held my small hands in front of her. The way she looked at me made me feel grown and responsible, like the time I held my newborn baby cousin. At the same time, I was still very angry about being dead.
She said, “Dani, you will find your way. I don’t know any girl who ever had a stronger spirit. You will know when you’re ready. Then you will let go of being Dani Cartwright. Your spirit will bring strength to everything you love in the world.”
None of this made sense to me. “I don’t want to bring strength to everything. I want to win the contest and get into the Allen Horsemanship Program, like Barb! I’m going to make sure there are always horses. I made a promise and I’m going to keep it!”
Grammy held me in her arms forever.
I sobbed, “Why did I have to die?”
“Shhh… Sweet girl,” she said. “It’s okay that you feel angry. But please remember that if you focus too hard for too long on your anger and what happened, you can get trapped—as a ghost.”
“A ghost?” I pictured Slimer from Ghostbusters. My spirit nose crinkled in disgust.
She said, “Some souls try so hard to be seen by the living, they get stuck. More often than not, they are not only stuck, they are angry or sad forever. Haunting living people can be cruel, and you, Miss Dani, are not a cruel person. I’ve seen how gentle you were with Jelly and George. No matter how angry you are, remember to be gentle.
Explore what you need to explore, Dani. You can go anywhere you want. Go in love. Be with the people you love, be with the horses if you want. If you practice building up love, you will become one with everything that matters to you.”
A vivid memory of Daddy at a baseball game hot dog stand flooded my mind. One with everything. Oh. I get it. He was being silly, looking up to the sky with his arms outstretched, saying, “Make me one with everything!” He looked at me and Mom like it was so funny. We all laughed. But I didn’t understand. He knew I only wanted mustard—yuck, onions and pickle relish.
I still don’t want one with everything. I am Dani Marie Cartwright. I made a promise. Take me to the horses!
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Part 2 | History is a Pile of Debris
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This chapter was so beautiful and sad and heartwarming 🤍