1 Chapter 1 - HOW IT STARTED - Trinity

Heaven has never been something for humans to understand. Even they know that. They think about what they hope heaven will be, or if they believe in it, or whether they'll get in, like it's a cool new club and the bouncer is only letting you in if you're sexy enough or if you have a fifty dollar bill to bribe him with.

The sexiness and cash, Trinity thinks, must equal piety and general holiness in this analogy.

The thing about being one of the youngest angels around is that you get a lot of respect for being so fresh and ambitious and hardworking, but it's the kind of respect that means a lot of being patted on the head and talked to about the old days, and not a lot of actually being taken seriously.

It's what Trinity imagines being a human teenager would feel like. Lots of How's school going? and Appreciate your father while you have him, you can learn a lot from him. Less glory, more nodding politely and following orders. Orders to do lots of grunt work that nobody else wants to do.

Grunt work is important, though. In the end, someone needs to do it.

That's what Trinity tells herself as she sits down at her desk, careful not to lean her weight too hard on the side of the chair that's broken, and opens another folder of mind-numbingly detailed files on the life of some newly dead human. The folder contains info on everything from cause of death to greatest fear to favorite brand of soda to bra size. And she has to read all of it. It's what helps you understand and connect with your charge, her boss's voice says in her head. It's a condescending voice that makes Trinity feel like hitting something.

Instead, she looks through the file. Sitting at her slightly slanted desk they keep saying they'll come fix, which happens to be in the corner near the drip in the ceiling they keep saying they'll come fix, she looks into her next assignment. Name, Ayana Santiago. Age, 19.

Oh, jeez. The young ones are the worst. They take the most "guiding", the most explaining, the most energy. They're the ones who are in shock. Of course they are; They were invincible. Death is the last thing they were expecting. One second they're worried about their girlfriend or their job interview or their three-year-old, and the next they're walking through a blinding white light.

Maybe she died of a terminal illness, Trinity thinks hopefully. They at least have this sad and calm grief about them, because they saw it coming. It's usually much less work for her. She flips through a few pages and--

For God's sake. Cause of death, car crash. Traumatic injuries. Died on impact. This girl probably won't even know she's dead when Trinity gets to her.

Already thinking of all the paperwork she's going to have to fill out for Ayana, she keeps skimming through the folder. Officially, she's not "skimming," she's "carefully reading and absorbing every word." But that would take days, and patience that Trinity doesn't have.

Her first couple hundred trips, she read every detail down to the letter, committed them to memory just like she was told. It's what got her her reputation. Among her superiors she's known as a dutiful and responsible young worker; among the other Guides she's known as an annoying overachiever. The teacher's pet of the afterlife.

Eventually, though, she stopped reading word for word like that, because the more trips she made, the more she began to see that things like a person's first word, their total lifetime number of parking tickets, their mother's middle name, or that time they were 15 and drank too much lime-a-rita and threw up on their friend's couch, has no effect on how well Trinity is able to understand them and guide them into another place. If anyone else knew that she skipped past these parts, and some of the other red tape-y things she got through unofficial methods, she would probably lose that diligent-kid-who's-going-places thing she has going for her, but look. What they don't know won't hurt them.

Besides, she's not giving up that power. Being known to slack off is what gets you stuck here, making trips back and forth between lives, fetching and "guiding" and doing endless paperwork, for eternity. There are other guides that Trinity works with who've been doing this since literal biblical times. That won't be her. Whatever she does, she won't let that happen to her.

Ayana's photos are nothing unusual, lots of posed school pictures and unposed ones with friends and family. This girl is pretty. Big dark eyes, curly black hair, wide smile full of gleaming teeth. She looks excited in some of the photos, happy to be with her friends, happy to be alive. The other thing about being one of the youngest, Trinity thinks miserably, is that they keep giving you the hardest cases, because they think that it's easier to connect with someone if you're both fresh and full of hopes and dreams. Which makes no sense. Obviously. Trinity's not full of anything but cynicism and shaky self preservation.

She suspects it's really because nobody wants to deal with dead teenagers, and the youngest angels are the ones who have the least power to say no.

Sighing, Trinity stands up from her sad desk, shutting the folder with a final resentful slam. She walks past all the other desks, through the winding hallways and out into the lobby, which is infinitely nicer than the back rooms, with shiny marble floors and gold statues of angels with unrealistic body/wing proportions and approximately 10,000 % less drips in the ceiling.

At the elevator, she presses Down and waits. 1, 2, 5, 12... Floor 99. The doors light up and slide open. Trinity cracks her knuckles and neck as she steps in.

It's showtime.