The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

something neat, something
     that could explain death to a four-year-old. He placed his hand on the small of Buckley’s back.
    “Susie is dead,” he said now, unable to make it fit in the rules of any game. “Do you know what that means?”
    Buckley reached over with his hand and covered the shoe. He looked up to see if his answer was right.
    My father nodded. “You won’t see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will.” My father cried. Buckley looked up into the eyes
     of our father and did not fully understand.
    Buckley kept the shoe on his dresser, until one day it wasn’t there anymore and no amount of looking for it could turn it
     up.
    In the kitchen my mother finished her eggnog and excused herself. She went into the dining room and counted silverware, methodically
     laying out the three kinds of forks, the knives, and the spoons, making them “climb the stairs” as she’d been taught when
     she worked in Wanamaker’s bridal shop before I was born. She wanted a cigarette and for her children who were living to disappear
     for a little while.
    “Are you going to open your gift?” Samuel Heckler asked my sister.
    They stood at the counter, leaning against the dishwasher and the drawers that held napkins and towels. In the room to their
     right sat my father and brother; on the other side of the kitchen, my mother was thinking Wedgwood Florentine, Cobalt Blue;
     Royal Worcester, Mountbatten; Lenox, Eternal.
    Lindsey smiled and pulled at the white ribbon on top of the box.
    “My mom did the ribbon for me,” Samuel Heckler said.
    She tore the blue paper away from the black velvet box. Carefully she held it in her palm once the paper was off. In heaven
     I was excited. When Lindsey and I played Barbies, Barbie and Ken got married at sixteen. To us there was only one true love
     in everyone’s life; we had no concept of compromise, or retrys.
    “Open it,” Samuel Heckler said.
    “I’m scared.”
    “Don’t be.”
    He put his hand on her forearm and—Wow!—what I felt when he did that. Lindsey had a cute boy in the kitchen, vampire or no!
     This was news, this was a bulletin—I was suddenly privy to everything. She never would have told me any of this stuff.
    What the box held was typical or disappointing or miraculous depending on the eye. It was typical because he was a thirteen-year-old
     boy, or it was disappointing because it was not a wedding ring, or it was miraculous. He’d given her a half a heart. It was
     gold and from inside his Hukapoo shirt, he pulled out the other side. It hung around his neck on a rawhide cord.
    Lindsey’s face flushed; mine flushed up in heaven.
    I forgot my father in the family room and my mother counting silver. I saw Lindsey move toward Samuel Heckler. She kissed
     him; it was glorious. I was almost alive again.

SIX
    T wo weeks before my death, I left the house later than usual, and by the time I reached the school, the blacktop circle where
     the school buses usually hovered was empty.
    A hall monitor from the discipline office would write down your name if you tried to get in the front doors after the first
     bell rang, and I didn’t want to be paged during class to come and sit on the hard bench outside Mr. Peterford’s room, where,
     it was widely known, he would bend you over and paddle your behind with a board. He’d asked the shop teacher to drill holes
     into it for less wind resistance on the downstroke and more pain when it landed against your jeans.
    I had never been late enough or done anything bad enough to meet the board, but in my mind as in every other kid’s I could
     visualize it so well my butt would sting. Clarissa had told me that the baby stoners, as they were called in junior high,
     used the back door to the stage, which was always left open by Cleo, the janitor, who had dropped out of high school as a
     full-blown stoner.
    So that day I crept into the backstage area, watching my step, careful not to trip over the various cords and wires. I