Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin Page B

says. "How's the afterlife treating you?" He pours Liz a cup of coffee from a red thermos. He indicates that she should sit next to him on the dock.
    "I wanted to ask you a question," Liz says.
    "That sounds serious." Curtis sits up straighter. "I shall do my best to answer you, Lizzie."
    "You were honest with me before, back on the boat," Liz says.
    "They say a man should always be as honest as he can."
    Liz lowers her voice. "I need to make Contact with someone. Can you help me?"
    "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
    Liz is prepared for this question and is armed with several appropriate lies. "I'm not obsessed or anything. I like it here, Curtis. I just have one thing back on Earth that needs taking care of."
    "What is it?" Curtis asks.
    "It's something about my death." Liz hesitates a moment before telling Curtis the whole story of the hit-and-run cabbie.
    After she finishes, Curtis is silent for a moment. Then he says, "I don't know why you thought I would know about this."
    "You seem like a person who knows things," says Liz. "Besides, there's no one else I can ask."
    Curtis smiles. "I have heard that there are two ways to communicate with the living. One, you can try to find a ship back to Earth, although I doubt this would be a very practical solution for you. It takes a long time to get there and, from what I hear, tends to pervert the reverse-aging process.
    Plus, you don't exactly want to be a ghost, now, do you?"
    Liz shakes her head, remembering how she contemplated that very thing on the day she arrived in Elsewhere. "What's the second way?"
    "I have heard of a place, about a mile out to sea and several miles deep. Apparently, this is the deepest place in the ocean. People call it the Well."
    Liz remembers Aldous Ghent mentioning the Well on her first day in Elsewhere. She also remembers him saying that going there was forbidden. "I think I've heard of it," she says.
    "Supposedly, if you can reach the bottom of this place, a difficult task indeed, you will find a window where you can penetrate to Earth."
    "How is that different from the ODs?" Liz asks.
    "The binoculars only go one way. At the Well, they say the living can sense you, see you, hear you."
    "Then I can talk to them?"
    "Yes, that's what I've heard," says Curtis, "but it will be difficult for them to understand you. Your voice is obscured from being underwater. You need good equipment to make the dive, and even then you should be a good swimmer."
    Liz sips her coffee, contemplating what Curtis has told her. She is a strong swimmer. Last summer she and her mother had even gotten scuba certification together on Cape Cod. Could that have only been a year ago? Liz wonders.
    "I'm not sure that I've done the right thing in telling you this information, but you probably would have found out from someone else anyway. I'm afraid I've never been very good at knowing the right thing to do. Or at least knowing it and doing it."
    "Thank you," Liz says.
    "Be careful," Curtis says. He surprises Liz by hugging her. "I must ask you, are you sure you should be doing this? Maybe it would be best to leave well enough alone."
    "I have to do this, Curtis. I don't have any choice."
    "Lizzie, my love, there's always a choice."
    Liz doesn't want to argue with Curtis, especially after he's been so nice to her, but she can't help herself. "I didn't choose to die," she says, "so in that instance, there was no choice."
    "No, of course you didn't," Curtis says. "I suppose I meant there's always a choice in situations where one has a choice, if that makes any sense."
    "Not really," Liz says.
    "Well, I shall have to work on my philosophy and get back to you, Lizzie. I find there's much time for philosophizing when one fishes for a living."
    Liz nods. As she walks away from the dock, she realizes she forgot to ask Curtis why he had become a fisherman in the first place.

The Big Dive
    Liz throws herself into preparations for the big dive. Although she hadn't noticed at the