Abandon - Meg Cabot [78]
“But then how did I get sent to this Underworld, in Isla Huesos, when I died in Connecticut?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense for me to go to one in, say, Bridgeport?” I’d been to Bridgeport. If there was an Underworld in the tristate area, it definitely seemed to me it would be located under Bridgeport.
He looked thoughtful. “You said you met him before, when you were seven. Maybe that’s why.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t that everything Mr. Smith was saying didn’t make sense.…It was just that I couldn’t believe I’d been so blind for so long. And I still had so many questions.
“And there’s nothing anyone can do?” I asked the cemetery sexton. “About the Furies? To help John?”
He smiled at me a little sadly. “What do you propose we do about them, Miss Oliviera? You’re talking about a region where people’s souls go after they’re departed. Are we to storm it with lighted torches and pitchforks? How are we even to get there without dying first?”
I wanted to cry. Furies seemed like an even worse disaster than the one Dad’s company had helped cause.
“How did John get chosen for such a crummy job anyway?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem fair. What did he do to deserve it?”
“That,” Mr. Smith said firmly, closing the book, “is something you’re just going to have to ask him yourself.”
I flushed.
“I can’t talk to him,” I said flatly. “He hates me.”
“Oh.” Mr. Smith stood up. He was clearly preparing to leave. “I’m certain that’s not true.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I’ve tried talking to him. It’s all I can do just to get him to listen. I tried apologizing to him for what happened — well, when we met. About the tea. And do you know what he did? He threw this necklace across the cemetery.”
“Finally,” Mr. Smith said, looking vaguely amused, “an explanation for why I found it next to the Wolkowsky family plot this morning.”
“He’s a nightmare,” I said. It felt good finally to have someone to vent to about this stuff. Someone who would actually listen, who knew what I was talking about. It was just too bad it was an old man who clearly didn’t know about anything except death deities. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. If I’d known about any of this — that Isla Huesos was sitting on top of some kind of Underworld — do you think I’d have agreed to move here? And all I ever did was die. Then, just because I recognized John from meeting him in this cemetery when I was seven, I thought he might be able to help me, and I casually made a few suggestions as to how he could run the place a little better —”
The cemetery sexton, who’d started shuffling papers into his briefcase, winced. “Oh, dear. I’m sure he didn’t like that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know, right? And then the next thing I knew, he had me in this room with a bed, saying we were going to be spending forever there or something because I missed the boat, which I happen to think he made me do on purpose, by the way, and what was I supposed to do? I was freaking out. You would have been, too.”
“Well,” Mr. Smith said. “Yes. I’m sure I would have been, er, freaking out.”
Suddenly, I was up and pacing the little office again, clenching the necklace. Outside, the rain streamed down as hard as if all of the angels in heaven were weeping for me at the same time. Except, of course, they weren’t, because I was pretty sure all of the angels in heaven had turned their backs on me, or none of this would be happening.
“Do you realize that ever since I’ve gotten back from that place, every time I turn around,” I informed him, “he’s either giving someone a heart attack, or pulverizing their hand, or smashing a gate right in front of me, and I’m the one who gets blamed for it? Every time!”
He looked troubled. “I hardly think you can hold John responsible for all of those