I Died Once - by Halden

Written in the view of 12 yr old Halden Emerson.

I died once.  But practically everyone has, right?  I mean, my old friend Sara died because she was purposely hit by a train.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like she's suicidal or anything. She just wanted to know what death feels like.  So Sara stood in front of the railroad tracks, waited for the train, and then in a few seconds it was over.  She didn't even scream.  As promised, I dragged her body over to the RESPAWN Center by the closest hospital, and a few seconds later, she was perfectly healthy.   After a few questions from the police, I was finally even allowed to walk her home.  Of course, after that we were banned from the train station, because even though people can't die from injuries in our city doesn't mean they don't want you intentionally killing yourself.

They say that once you die and come back, you're not going to be the same as you were before your "accident."  Sometimes this is a good thing.  Sometimes a bad thing.  Sara used to be a goody-goody before the day she got daring and stood in front of that train.  When she RESPAWNed, she became a brat.  That's one of the reasons I'm not quite her friend anymore, you see.  Actually, she's one of my worst enemies now, which is disappointing because once, I had a crush on her.

The effects through respawning vary from person to person.  Sara, it affected her drastically.  Not so much me. When I first died, I was five.  I was cliff diving (yeah, with RESPAWN little kids can do that now.)  Last thing I remember was screaming at the top of my lungs and hitting the brick hard water.  It didn't hurt that bad.  I hardly even remember it.  My dad's co-worker, Teddy, told me that the only thing that really happened to me was that I went from being a total pessimist to a happy-go-lucky optimist.  My dad told me that I went from being in my right mind to just plain crazy.  I think it is a mixture of both.

"Stop daydreaming in the halls, Halden," my Algebra teacher whispers, tapping me on the shoulder.  "You want to be late to class again?"

I give a short laugh.  "Oh, right."  I move from my post on the door to my desk three feet away, and then fall backwards into my chair.  I misjudge and end up sitting on the floor instead.

"Clumsy loser," Roland chuckles behind me.  

"At least I didn't fall and kill you," I shrug, and pull out my homework.  "Though maybe that would be preferred..?"  This I mean innocently.

"Well it would be my very first death.  Ever," Roland brags from behind me.  "Unlike you freaks who look the devil in the eyes."

"Shut.  Up!" Sara complains from the far side of the classroom.  "Nobody wants to hear you speak!  My gosh, you two are acting like fifth graders!"

"I wish I was a fifth grader, because then I'd still live in Texas and I wouldn't have Halden the loser tripping backward onto my feet every day."

"It's the last day of school, so lucky for you, you don't have to see me anyway!"

"Quiet!" the Algebra teacher demands.  "Please pull out page 357 of your..."

It's not like I don't pretend to not hear the whispers in the halls about the kid who RESPAWNed a loser.  It's not my fault I'm a crazy and happy these days, when everybody else are just boring pessimists or people nobody wants to mess with, like Sara.  I don't mind it that much, but the least the RESPAWN could have done was give me an extra toe like Garth or two inexplicably sharp canine teeth like Aaron.  Dad, who's a RESPAWNer, keeps telling me that genetic blips like those are rare.  But just because someone tells me that doesn't mean I will believe them.  

On the way home from school, Adrian meets up with me like he always does.  He's two grades ahead of me, in ninth grade, but he's sixteen years old.  Adrian and I are trying to write a book about what it is like to live and die.  We started yesterday, by putting all of our daily experiences in it.  The purpose for this is, if we die and come back, we'll be able to gauge how much our attitudes have changed by looking back at previous writings.  Pretty simple, yeah?  And if we forget anything, which happens quite frequently at one person per one hundred, we'll at least have yesterday and beyond to remember.  It's like a backup plan to overcome the RESPAWN's glitches.  

In "Home Base," the treehouse Dad built for me, Adrian and I will be going over the format that we want our book to be in.  If all goes well, we might just publish it.

Author's Note

Writing is unpolished on purpose