As Annie brushed away her tears, she saw an old man standing in the last row, wearing a linen cap and a jut-jawed grin. They walked down the aisle, arm in arm, a newly married couple with all the time in the world. There was nervous laughter as he struggled to get the ring on, before everyone yelled, “Congratulations!” Then she focused in on Paulo, his grin as wide as the horizon. As she turned to face her future husband, Annie glanced at a hot air balloon floating above the sunset. Annie wore white and Paulo wore black and their skin was tanned from hours in the sun. She came to believe she would never love a man again, and certainly never marry.īut here they were, together once more. They had lost touch as teenagers, and only recently had found each other. With fourteen hours left to live, Annie stood by Paulo beneath a canopy overlooking a blueberry lake.
“Hi, I’m Paulo,” he said, smiling, a forelock falling over his brow.Īnd suddenly, Annie wished for something else. Then a boy’s hands pushed down on her shoulders, and he landed in front of her like a dropped package. As she tucked her head, she repeated to herself, I wish I could disappear. Annie was a new student, shy and withdrawn. She had met him back in grade school, during a game of leapfrog on an asphalt playground. He had pale blue eyes, the color of shallow pool water, and a thick mop of raisin-black hair. If you knew you were about to die, how would you spend your final hours? Annie, who did not know, spent hers getting married. So perhaps she was already older than she was meant to be. But what is too young for a life? As a child, Annie had been spared from death once, in an accident at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. You might say that is “too young” to die. It was at that hospital where she would leave this world, one month shy of her thirty-first birthday. She had flashing eyes of a light olive shade, and a soft, oval face that coworkers described as “pretty once you get to know her.”Īs a nurse, Annie wore blue scrubs and gray running shoes to her job at a nearby hospital. But all endings are also beginnings.Īt the time of her death, Annie was tall and lean, with long curls of butterscotch hair, knobby elbows and shoulders, and skin that reddened around her neck when she was embarrassed. Because she was young, Annie never thought about endings. This is a story about a woman named Annie, and it begins at the end, with Annie falling from the sky.
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