Behind You by Jacqueline Woodson

SPEAK
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    Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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    First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2004
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
    Copyright © Jacqueline Woodson, 2004
    All rights reserved
Poem on page vii from All of Us: The Collected Poems by Raymond Carver,
copyright © 1996 by Tess Gallagher. Introduction copyright © 1996 by Tess
Gallagher. Editor’s preface, commentary, and notes copyright © 1996 by William L.
Stull. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
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    THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Woodson, Jacqueline.
Behind you / Jacqueline Woodson.
p. cm.
Summary: After fifteen-year-old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by police, the people
who love him struggle to cope with their loss as they recall his life and death,
unaware that Miah is watching over them.
    eISBN : 978-1-101-15727-5

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For my family

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
    Â 
    I did.
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    And what did you want?
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    To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
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    â€”Raymond Carver

The Ending

Jeremiah
    YOU DO NOT DIE. YOUR SOUL STEPS OUT OF YOUR BODY, shakes itself hard because it’s been carrying the weight of your heavy skin for fifteen years. Then your soul lifts up and looks down on your body lying there—looks down on the blood running onto concrete, your eyes snapped open like the pages in some kid’s forgotten picture book, your chest not moving. Your soul sees this and feels something beyond sadness—feels its whole self whispering further away. Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh— past the trees in Central Park, past the statues and runners and children playing on swings. Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh. Over yellow taxicabs and late-afternoon flickering streetlights. Shhhh away from the dusting of snow, the white tips of trees, the darkening sky. Already you hear your mother screaming. Already you see your father dropping his head into his hands. Helpless. Already you see your friends—walking through the halls of Percy Academy. Stunned. But you do not die. Each breath your soul takes is cool and reminds you of a taste you loved a long time ago. Licorice. Peppermint. Rain. Then your soul is you all over again, only lighter and freer and able to be a thousand and one places at once. Your new soul eyes look around. See two cops standing there with their mouths hanging open. One cop curses and kicks a tree. Slowly your soul realizes it’s in a park. There are trees all around you. And both cops look scared.
    He’s dead, one cop says.
    And the other curses again. Your soul doesn’t like the way the curse word sounds. Too hard. Too heavy in the new soul-light air.
    The cops can’t see you. They see a dead body