The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand
I smiled and headed for Conference Room B. For the staff meeting, which was about to start. Without her. Which was exactly how I wanted it.
“Hey, did you see the new chick?” Marty asked before I even had a chance to say hello to everybody and get comfortable at my place at the head of the conference table. “Who’s she?”
I rubbed my hand over my face and exhaled sharply. “Don’t use the word chick in reference to women, Marty. It makes you sound like a jackass.”
“Yeah, jackass,” Grant added. He turned to me. “Who is she, though?”
I’d been hoping to skip over this whole topic, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. “She’s my new assistant.”
“You’ve never needed an assistant before,” Marty observed helpfully.
“That’s what I said.”
“Well, I say it’s awesome. Are the other Ghosts getting assistants, too?” Grant grinned. “Are we in for a wave of attractive new women in the near future?”
Come to think of it, Dave probably could use an assistant. He always seemed to have more to do than he had time in the day. I couldn’t even conceive of an assistant for Blackpool. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But knock it off, you guys. Can we get started, please?” I glanced around at the other members of my team, who’d been waiting quietly. “How was your break?”
They answered with a weak chorus of goods.
“Good.” I opened my debriefing folder on Scrooge 172. “So let’s talk about how it went this year. Fairly smoothly, I thought.”
“What’s her name?” Marty asked.
“Who?”
“Your new assistant? And why isn’t she here, anyway? Shouldn’t she be ‘assisting’ you?”
“I sent her on an errand.”
“And what’s her name?” Marty persisted. “You never told us her name.”
“Oh my God, Marty, enough with the questions!” I exclaimed. “Her name is Dorrit.”
There was a collective cringe around the table.
“Dorrit, as in Little?” Marty shook his head. “Somebody’s got to talk to Boz. Like an intervention. This naming thing is getting out of hand.”
I remembered that the name Boz had given Marty was Claypole. After some character in Oliver Twist.
“Her real name is Stephanie. Now that’s all I’m going to say about her, okay? Let’s move on.”
Right then the door to the conference room opened and Stephanie burst in. “I’m here!” she panted. She crossed around the table to hand me a slender white cup with a cardboard sleeve around it. “Large vanilla latte with skim milk. Extra hot.”
Whole milk, I’d asked for. Whole milk. But whatevs.
She glanced around the table at all the faces staring up at her. Her cheeks went pink. “Um, hi, everyone.”
“Hey, since when do you get fancy coffee?” Grant asked.
“Since I got an assistant to get it for me,” I said primly. “Sit down, Stephanie.” I gestured to an empty chair at the end of the table.
“But Boz said my name is supposed to be . . .”
“It doesn’t matter what Boz said. Sit.”
She sat. “Wow. It’s wonderful to meet you all,” she said breathlessly.
So, of course, now I had to waste my time making the formal introductions. “Okay. Welcome, Stephanie. This is my team at Project Scrooge. We each have a team, the other two Ghosts and I, and we each have a code name. I’m called the Lamp, the Ghost of Christmas Present is the Clock, and the Ghost of Christmas Future is the Hood. Don’t ask why. It’s a Boz thing.”
“Hi, there,” Marty said to her in a low voice I’d never heard him use before. “How are you doing? Can I get you anything?”
“This is Marty,” I explained. “He’s on quantum mechanics. He’s also great with all things IT, so if you ever have a computer problem, he’s your man.”
“Yes, I’m your man,” Marty said in the supposedly sexy voice. “I’d be glad to look over your hard drive any day.”
Mortifying. I kept going down the table before he had a chance to say anything else. “And this is Grant. He’s a mechanical engineer, and he and Kevin over there make sure that all the machinery is functioning properly.”
“My lady.” Grant pretended to tip an invisible hat at Stephanie, who smiled and nodded.
I rolled my eyes and went on down the line.
“This is Tomas, Larry, and Lin, who work in research and development”—they waved politely—“and Tox at the end there. She’s on OM. She’s also the handler for the Jacob Marley.”
“What’s OM?” Stephanie asked.
Marty leaned forward and lifted his eyebrows mysteriously. “Otherworldly matters,” he whispered. “It’s where all the magic happens.”
Her big eyes got even bigger. “Oh.”
“So that’s all of us,” I said. “Team Lamp.”
“Wow.” Stephanie looked slightly dazed. Or maybe that was just her normal expression. “I would just like to say that I’m honored to get to be part of this group—go Team Lamp!—and I will work hard for you guys. What you’re doing here is so important. You’re saving souls.” She smiled. “I like to think of you as angels.”
“Amen,” said Grant.
“That’s so true,” agreed Marty.
Someone had consumed a little too much of the company Kool-Aid, if you asked me.
“So what’s your clearance?” Tox asked, because she was probably suspicious, the way I was, that suddenly this new person without much in the way of credentials got to be part of our super-secret company. Tox had been around even longer than I had—she’d been transferred from downstairs a couple years ago. So she would know how strange this was—an intern at Project Scrooge.
“My clearance?” Stephanie asked.
“How much are you allowed to know about what goes on around here?”
Stephanie frowned. “I don’t know. Boz just gave me this.” She pulled out a laminated badge. It had a red-and-green stripe along the top.
We were all surprised. Why would an assistant need full security clearance? Even I didn’t have privileges that high. My badge would only grant me access to the areas I specifically needed: my office, the conference rooms, the Transport Room, and the Go Room. Her badge would, in theory, let her go anywhere in the building. It didn’t make any sense.
“Is there something wrong with my badge?” Stephanie asked.
“It’s nothing. Let’s move on.” I flipped through the notes in my file. “On Christmas Eve I noticed that there was a bit of a lag between scenes two and three.”
“It was a power surge in the mainframe,” Grant explained. “I’m all over it. Shouldn’t be a problem this year.”
I went on for a few more minutes, pointing out the high and low points of our performance for Scrooge 172. Then Marty decided we were done being productive and leaned over to talk to Stephanie again. “After this I could totally show you around the office,” he practically drawled.
“That’d be super,” she said.
“Moving on,” I said more loudly. “I think this year we should—”
“Does Boz know you’re getting fancy coffee?” Grant asked, frowning.
“And, hey, if you ever want to go out to dinner sometime,” Marty continued.
“I want fancy coffee,” Grant said.
I knew when I was beaten. The meeting was just a formality, really, a welcome-back type deal, and I’d said what I needed to say. I closed my folder and forced a smile. “All right, go do your jobs, people. I’ll see you all at three o’clock in the Go Room.”
“Wow, that was so exciting,” Stephanie exclaimed as the team began to rapidly disperse. “What’s next?”
“Uh . . . Marty will show you around,” I said.
Marty stepped forward and actually offered Stephanie his scrawny arm with which to parade her around the office. She giggled. They wandered off down the hall together.
Then the room was empty except for Tox and me. I took a deep breath and l
“Steph seems nice,” Tox observed. Tox was the jaded one of our group, the one who didn’t take crap from anybody. So it seemed odd that she’d appreciate the new girl. Especially this particularly annoying new girl.
“Oh, she’s nice, all right. A little vague, maybe.” I gathered up my stuff.
“You know, she’d make a good GCP,” Tox said thoughtfully.
I froze. “I’m sorry—what?”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t mean instead of you. You’re a good Lamp, Holly. Decent, anyway. I just meant that she has that look, you know? That agelessness. That purity thing. Put her in a white dress and light her up, and maybe she could pull it off.”
Well, then I couldn’t help but picture Stephanie in my dress and my robes with my shining wreath on her naturally blond little head. I immediately felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
Because Tox was right.
That girl could totally pull off my job.
And maybe, I realized, that was exactly what she’d been brought on board to do.
“So you’re replacing me?” I didn’t bother knocking on Boz’s office door. I just charged in. “’Fess up, Boz. Is that what this is all about? A new girl all ready to step into my shoes? Am I supposed to be training her to replace me? Because I won’t do it, Boz. I won’t.”
“Nice to see you, too, Havisham,” he replied calmly. “Did you have a good holiday?”
“I can’t believe you would replace me!” Sure, I hated this job—I’d always hated it—but deep down I knew that it was a lot better than the alternative.
“That would bother you, if you were replaced?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m good at my job. Don’t tell me that I’m not good at my job, Boz. I’ve always done everything you’ve asked.”
For some reason I was about to start crying.
“Sit down, Holly,” Boz said.
Oh God. He almost never called me Holly. I sank into the red leather armchair near his desk.
“I can do better,” I whispered. “Please. Don’t send me . . . wherever it is that you’d send me.”
He looked at me with solemn eyes. “Are you finally afraid of hell, then?”
Well . . . yes. Of course I was. I felt that darkness every day. I’d seen Yvonne and her strings of pearls, and since then I’d interacted with five more Jacob Marleys, each equally miserable in their eternal punishments. “Doomed to wander through the world and witness what they cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.” Something like that.
“Relax,” Boz said. “Dorrit is not your replacement, Holly. That’s not how it works here.”
“It isn’t?”
He handed me a tissue.
“Traditionally, the roles of the Ghosts are filled by former players,” Boz explained as I twisted the tissue into pieces between my hands. “People who are already deceased, I mean. Like you. So it’s the truth when you say I am the Ghost of Christmas Past, because you are, indeed, a ghost.”
“Yeah, except I’m technically like a zombie,” I said.
His mouth twitched. “Yes, technically.”
“So Dave and Blackpool were failed Scrooges, too?” I could believe it with Blackpool, but not Dave. I didn’t think Dave would be capable of a genuine Bah, humbug if he tried for a million years.
“Blackpool was Scrooge 130,” Boz said. “He’s been an employee of the company ever since.”
I did some quick math. That meant forty-three years in the Project. Forty-three years. Like a prison sentence. “And Dave?” I was almost scared to ask.
“Copperfield’s only been with us for seven years.” Boz cleared his throat. “I’m afraid he’s leaving us after this year, moving on to his final destination. Which means we’ll need to find a new Ghost of Christmas Present.”
My mouth opened and then closed without me getting any words out.
“Your job is safe for now, Havisham.” Boz chuckled and patted my arm. “Good gracious, child. You should see the look on your face.”
I tried to glare at him and failed. I was still too completely freaked out. “So you’re saying I’m not fired.”
“You’re not going anywhere anytime soon.” He smiled. “But it’s true that I did hire Dorrit because your performance has been slipping.”
He angled his computer screen so that I could see it, and then clicked at his mouse a few times. A video began to play—footage from this past Christmas Eve. There I was, standing in all my shining glory in front of a terrified Elizabeth Charles. Boz turned up the volume.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded, clutching her duvet to her chest. “Are you . . . one of the ghosts I’ve been warned about?”
“I am,” I answered on the tape, my voice almost a monotone. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Your past. And I’m here to help you.”
Boz paused the video and turned to me.
“What? I said my lines,” I pointed out.
“You sound bored. Your heart just wasn’t in it this year,” Boz said.
What did he expect? It wasn’t like I was working here voluntarily. My heart was never going to be in it.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Boz cleared his throat and said, “Anyhow, we’re going to try harder this year, aren’t we? I trust that you had a restful vacation. And I hope you were pleased with your gift.”
It took me a second to get what he was talking about, but then I remembered the watch he’d given me for Christmas. I’d stuck it in my pocket this morning in case he’d meant me to use it for something, but I hadn’t been able to figure out how to set it to the right time. I took it out. “Yeah, it’s neat. Thanks.”
“I thought you’d like to have it,” he explained. “It was—or is, I should say—your father’s.”
I froze. “Wait. What?”
He reached over the desk with his hand held out, and I put the watch in it. He opened it carefully, then turned it to show me an inscription I hadn’t noticed before. To G, it read, I love you more every second. Love, A.
Gideon and Ariana. My parents. I gulped in a breath. “Oh. Thank you.”
He put the watch back into my hand. “You’re quite welcome.”
I blinked a few times and stared down at it, resolving to never, ever go anywhere without it. I didn’t have anything else from my old life. Nothing to remember my dad by but his movies. Nothing of my mom’s, not even an old photo. This watch was suddenly kind of everything. I closed my fingers around it and swallowed down the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry about my performance, Boz. I just—”
“No need to apologize,” he said. “People get burned out. It happens to us all from time to time.”
“Even you?” I joked. “The Great and Powerful Boz?”
“Even me, Holly.” He laughed and rubbed his hand across his goatee-covered chin. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
For the rest of the day I pondered the meaning of the words final destination, and the fact that Dave was “moving on.” As in, going somewhere else. As in, leaving Project Scrooge. Dave was like a fixture in this place. Losing him seemed . . . intense. I would never have guessed he’d only been here two years longer than I had. And now he was going somewhere else. What did Boz mean, his “final destination”? What was that? I was still getting my head around it when we all gathered in the Go Room for the 3:00 p.m. meeting.
Little Dorrit had been by my side since after lunch, like a blond leech. Marty and Grant of course beelined right for her the minute they entered the Go Room. It was pathetic, really, the way they were fawning all over her. She wasn’t even that good-looking.
“How’s your first day going?” Marty asked her, bumping her shoulder the way goofy guys do to try to get a girl’s attention. He lowered his voice. “The Lamp’s not being mean to you, is she?”
“No,” Stephanie murmured back. “She’s been quiet all afternoon. Is she always so quiet?”
I put my hands on my hips and
They didn’t speak again for all of two minutes. Then Stephanie said, “So what’s going to happen at this meeting?”
“It’s like the opening ceremony,” Grant replied. “Boz comes in and introduces the Big Three. Then he’ll give a shout-out to the teams. And then they’ll bring out the Board.”
“The board?”
“The Board,” explained Marty like it was the coolest thing ever, “is where they pin up the information on the new Scrooge.”
“Wow—how do you find the new Scrooge? How do you decide?”
“That’s up to Blackpool,” Grant said. “He chooses the Scrooge. He can see into the future.”
“It’s all very otherworldly,” said Marty.
“Wow,” said Stephanie. “So what happens then?”
Marty waggled his eyebrows at her. “Then the real fun begins.”
I may have thrown up in my mouth a little.
Thankfully, Boz appeared at the front of the room and everybody stopped talking.
“Welcome back,” he boomed. “Are you ready for another Scrooge?”
The crowd cheered. Everyone, it seemed, but me.
“Good,” Boz said. “Then let’s get started.”
The next half hour played out almost exactly the way Grant and Marty had described. I had to go up to be recognized as the current GCP, which to me always felt like being singled out as the leader of the school marching band—not exactly something you want to own up to in front of a crowd. It was awkward.
“The Ghost of Christmas Past: Havisham!” Boz shouted.
Clap clap clap.
Of course it’d been a huge relief when Boz told me he wasn’t replacing me.
But the way he’d said it. You’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
“The Ghost of Christmas Present: Copperfield!”
Dave stepped forward, smiling as if he wasn’t going anywhere. Like the words final destination didn’t even exist.
“This is going to be Copperfield’s last year with us,” Boz continued smoothly, “so let’s make sure it’s the best one yet.”