***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof*** Copyright © 2015 Brooke Davis millie bird Millie''s dog, Rambo, was her Very First Dead Thing. She found him by the sideof the road on a morning when the sky seemed to be falling, fog circling hisbroken shape like a ghost. His jaw and eyes were wide open, as if mid-bark. Hisleft hind leg pointed in a direction it normally didn''t. The fog lifted aroundthem, the clouds gathered in the sky, and she wondered if he was turning intorain. It was only when she dragged Rambo up to the house in herschoolbag that her mother thought to tell her how the world worked. He''s gone to a better place, her mother shouted at herwhile vacuuming the lounge room. A better place? What? Yes, heaven, love,haven''t you heard of it? Don''t they teach you anything in that bloody school?Lift your legs! It''s doggy heaven, where there''s eternal dog biscuits and theycan poop wherever they please.
Okay, legs down. I said, legs down! And theypoop, I don''t know, dog biscuits, so all they do is poop and eat dog biscuits,and run around and eat the other dogs'' poop. Which are actually dog biscuits. Millie took a moment.Why would they waste time here, then? What? Well, they, um, have toearn it. They have to stay here until they get voted over to a better place.Like doggySurvivor. So, is Rambo on anotherplanet? Well, yes.
Sort of. Imean--you really haven''t heard of heaven? How God sits up in the clouds andSatan''s all underground and everything? Can I get to Rambo''s newplanet? Her mother switched off the vacuum cleaner and lookedsquarely at Millie. Only if you have aspaceship. Do you have a spaceship? Millie looked at her feet. No. Well, you can''t get toRambo''s new planet then. Days later, Millie discovered that Rambo was most definitelynot on a new planet and was, in fact, in their backyard, buried halfheartedlyunder the Sunday Times. Milliecarefully lifted the newspaper and saw Rambo but not-Rambo; a Rambo shrunkenand eaten and wasting away.
She snuck out every night from then on, to be withhim while his body went from something into nothing. The old man crossing the road had been her Second DeadThing. After the car hit him, she watched him fly through the air and thoughtshe saw him smile. His hat landed on top of the yield sign and his walkingstick danced around the lamppost. And then it had been his body, crackingagainst the curb. She pushed her way through all the legs and exclamation marksto kneel beside his face. She looked deeply into his eyes. He looked back ather like he was only a drawing.
She ran her fingers over his wrinkles andwondered what he''d used each one for. She was then lifted away from him and told to cover hereyes, because she was just a child.And as she wandered home the long way, she thought it might be time to ask herdad about people heaven. You see, Squirt, there''sheaven, and then there''s hell. Hell is where they send all the bad people, likecriminals and con artists and parking inspectors. And heaven is where they sendall the good people, like you and me and that nice blonde from MasterChef. What happens when you get there? In heaven, you hang out withGod and Jimi Hendrix, and you get to eat doughnuts whenever you want. In hell,you have to, uh .
do the Macarena. Forever. To that "Grease Megamix." Where do you go if you''regood and bad? What? I don''t know. IKEA? Will you help me make aspaceship? Hang on, Squirt. Can wefinish this next ad break? She soon noticed that everything was dying around her. Bugsand oranges and Christmas trees and houses and mailboxes and train rides andmarkers and candles and old people and young people and people in between. Shewasn''t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures inher Book Of Dead Things--Spider, The Bird, Grandma, next door''s cat Gertrude,among others--her dad would be a Dead Thing too.
That she''d write it next to thenumber twenty-eight in letters so big they took up two pages: MY DAD. That, fora while, it was hard to know what to do other than stare at the letters untilshe couldn''t remember what they meant. That she would do this, by flashlight,sitting in the hallway outside her parents'' bedroom, listening to her mumpretending she was asleep. thefirst day of waiting When playing connect the dots, Millie was always Dot One, her mum Dot Two, andher dad Dot Three. The line came from deep inside Dot One''s belly, wrappeditself around Dot Two and Dot Three--usually watching the telly-- and back again,to make a triangle. Millie would run around the house, her red hair bouncingabout her head, the triangle between them spiraling around the furniture. Whenher mum said, Would you stop that,Millicent?, the triangle roared into an enormous dinosaur. When her dadsaid, Come sit beside me, Squirt, thetriangle curled into a big, beating heart.
Ba-boom.Ba-boom, she whispered, skipping awkwardly to its rhythm. She nestled inbetween Dots Two and Three on the couch. Dot Three grabbed Dot One''s hand andwinked. The flashing pictures from the telly lit up his face in the dark. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
--- On The First Day Of Waiting, Millie stands exactly where her mum points to.Right near the Ginormous Women''s Underwear and across from the mannequinwearing the Hawaiian shirt. I''ll be rightback, her mum says, and Millie believes her. Dot Two wears her gold shoes,the ones that make her footsteps like explosions. She walks toward theperfumes--Kaboom!--past the menswear--Kablammo!--and out of sight: Kapow! The line between Dot One and DotTwo tugs and pulls, and Millie watches it getting thinner and thinner, until itis just a tiny scratch on the air. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
Millie will carry this around with her from now on, thispicture of her mum getting smaller and smaller and smaller. It will reappearbehind her eyes at different times throughout the course of her life. Whenmovie characters say, I''ll be right back.When, in her forties, she looks at her hands and doesn''t recognize them as herown. When she has a stupid question and can''t think of anyone in the world toask. When she cries. When she laughs. When she hopes for something.
Every timeshe watches the sun disappear into the water she will feel a little panickedand not know why. The automatic doors of shopping centers will always make heranxious. When a boy touches her properly for the first time, she will imaginehim shrinking into the horizon, far, far, far out of her reach. But she doesn''t know any of this yet. What she does know, right now, is that her legs ache fromstanding. She takes off her backpack and crawls underneath the GinormousWomen''s Underwear clothing rack. Her mum said there are women who can''t seetheir privates because they eat entire buckets of chicken. Maybe these undiesare for them.
Millie has never seen chicken come in a bucket. But I hope to, she says out loud,touching the undies softly. One day. It''s nice in there, under the giant undies. They hang lowaround her head, so close to her face that she breathes on them. She unzips her backpack and pulls out one of the frozenjuice boxes her mum has packed for her. She sucks at it through the straw. Inthe cracks between the undies, she watches feet going for walks.
Some goingsomewhere, others going nowhere, some dancing, others skipping, shuffling,squeaking. Tiny feet, big feet, in-between feet. Sneakers, high heels, sandals.Red shoes, black shoes, green shoes. But no gold shoes. No explosion footsteps. A pair of bright-blue gumboots plods past. She looks down athers.
I know you''re jealous, she saysto them. But we need to stay here. Mum said. She cranes her neck to watchthe gumboots jump down the aisle and off into the toy section. Well, she says. She pulls out her BookOf Dead Things from her backpack, rips out a sheet of paper, writes on it To Mum, I''ll Be Right Back, folds it inhalf, and props it up on the ground exactly where her mum had pointed to. She takes her gumboots for a walk. Up and down theescalators, walking at first, then jumping, hopping, and waving like the queen.
She sits at the top and watches the steps swallow themselves. What happens if the stairs don''t flattenthemselves in time? she asks her gumboots. She imagines the stairs spillingout over the escalator and into the aisles. She tries to connect eyes withevery single person who walks past her, and each time she does, the air jumpsin front of her like the old movies her mum watches. She plays hide-and-seekwith a boy who doesn''t know he''s playing. When Millie informs him that he is found, he responds by asking her why herhair is like that, and makes spiralswith his index finger. They''re ballerinas, she says. They jump off my head at night and do showsfor me.
Pff, he says, and smashes a Barbieheadlong into a Transformer, making a spitty blowing-up sound with his mouth atthe same time. They do not. Millie sits on the floor of the women''s change room. I know where you can get some undies,she says to one woman who''s turning around and around in front of a mirror likeshe''s trying to drill herself into the ground. Sorry, who are you? the woman says. Millie shrugs. Two ladies talkbehind the door of one of the cubicles. Millie can see their feet in the gapbetween the door and the floor.
Bare feet and sparkly UGG boots. Don''t take this the wrong way, the UGGboots seem to say. But do you reallythink coral is your color? The toes on the bare feet curl under themselves. I thought this was pink, they seem tosay back. Millie waits with the waiting men, who wait in chairsoutside the change rooms, waiting for women, peering from.