Replay

Chapter 3

3

The game was already going when I arrived. I dropped in like I’d been there all along. No one even looked up. They just accepted that I wasn’t there a second ago and now I was, deal me in, carry on. No, “Oh, hi, Cara, you’re dead, nice to see you.” Just flip me a card and expect me to know what to do with it.

It melted. A regular playing card—ten of clubs—and it melted right into me like the card was made of my own skin. Which, it turns out, it was.

All the cards in that round were made of skin. The jack of diamonds—brown. Three of hearts—black. Eight of spades—white. Nine of clubs—tan. The four people playing with me all drew cards and all got skin to go with the bodies they were about to win in the next round, but mine wouldn’t take. My card melted right away and left me what I was, just a glowing mass of light, no body to me at all, no face, no hair, no nothing.

“Because you’re not dead,” one of them told me—the pale one who had drawn the eight of spades. “Your body’s still down there—you’re not done with it yet.” She drew another card and grew a torso and legs and breasts and all the rest, and long brown hair and brown eyes.

It was gray where we were—overcast and colorless, no wind, no warmth, just gray. No light except what was coming from us—even after they had their bodies on, I could still see light seeping through. We sat around a table made of mottled gray marble that was too cold to the touch. I shivered every time I reached for a card.

New deal. The man on my left read out his—two of hearts. “Musician,” they all agreed as a patch of blue appeared where his heart should have been.

The next one drew Mathematician. Next one, Healer. And the woman picked Teacher, which seemed to make her happy.

I drew three cards in a row, but none of them mattered. They all melted away.

“You already drew before,” the woman explained. “You’re already set.”

Another round of play. This one was for place of birth. Darfur, New Delhi, Washington, D.C. The minute they read out their cards, the three men were gone, leaving just her and me.

“Aren’t you going to draw?” I asked.

“No, I think I’ll stay with you,” she said. “Until it’s time for you go back.”

Meanwhile, someone in the operating room had just figured it out. I heard him off in the distance. “We lost the heartbeat!”

Good, I thought. This might take a while.