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deserves to be shot.
    Maybe she was supposed to apologize for all the bad stuff she’d done. Rachel remembered that was how a lot of people used to talk about dying—you had to unburden yourself and feel all this guilt, and then God would make it easy on you, both when you died, and after. Milton and the other people in their city hadn’t talked so much about that, but Rachel felt like trying to cover all her bases right now. She just didn’t have the hang of the guilt thing. Embarrassment, a little shame, but not guilt.
    She had felt ashamed around Will for how much she’d slept around before, back when they lived in the city, but she couldn’t really think the sex was bad, in itself. It felt more like stupid and inconsiderate—immature, if anything, and not the kind of thing she’d need to dredge up now. In fact, thinking about it now was making her miss it more and wish she’d done it even more than she had, now that it was going to be gone forever. Worse than that, it even got her thinking about how Will might meet some girl when she was gone, how he’d want to live with her, have sex with her, even have babies with her.
    Rachel had never been the jealous type, and knew in the abstract she had no right to be, considering her past, but it still made her seethe inside, to think of dying there in a wet, stinking mess of bodily fluids, then waking up as some zombie idiot just so Will could then bed down with a new girl—probably a taller, skinnier one, too. Guys always liked that, no matter how much they told you that you looked perfect. It made no sense to get worked up and jealous over it, but it convinced Rachel to stop trying to force herself to feel guilty, as it was only backfiring. No, better to think good thoughts, about being friends with Lucy, wanting Will to be safe, and wandering off to sit under a tree somewhere, all gentle and peaceful. Maybe God would like that. She didn’t seem to have a lot else to offer him right now.
    Okay, so much for the guilt. But Rachel still felt like you were supposed to say something to God at that final moment. She’d decided against asking for death, as that seemed too much like suicide. She had to be careful to ask for anything, in fact, like Will being kept safe, as it slid too easily into selfish thoughts of not wanting him to be with someone else. Telling God she loved him? She remembered that was another popular sentiment, way back when, but that was even harder for her to conceive of than guilt. No sense going out with a lie as your last thought. That couldn’t lead to anything good. Hell, people often sniffed out lies and usually got really mad about them: Rachel figured God would certainly be able to uncover any final deceit, and would be even madder when he found out. Oh, this whole dying thing was too hard when it happened slowly. Too much time to think and worry.
    All right. It was getting nearly impossible to concentrate. Just think of good stuff and thank God for it. How hard could that be, for just a minute? “Thanks,” Rachel said, trying not to focus too much on the sex parts, though now that she wasn’t making such an effort to feel bad about it, the sex seemed to fit much better into the pleasant jumble of memories. “It’s been good. I’m ready now. Ready. Ready.”
    Rachel kept repeating the word as she drifted further from consciousness, finally finding herself in another dream, where she heard the refrain, “It’s ready!”
    Turning toward the voice, she saw it was her mother. In the dream, Rachel was fully grown, but her mother was still a young woman, like when she’d last seen her a dozen years ago. All of it, of course, made perfect sense in the context of the dream. They were in their old house—a comfortable ranch in a nice neighborhood. Rachel’s mom was trying to hand her a small, plastic bowl of peas and carrots. “Dinner’s ready, honey,” she said again.
    Rachel took the bowl and looked at the contents: especially tiny