Have you ever thought about heaven?” Rachel asked as she stared up at the sky. She looked at me and swallowed. “You know, before your mother passed away.”
I, too, looked up at the sky as I lay on the soft green grass in the quiet park.
“A dog!” I shouted, pointing to one of the clouds that I thought looked like one.
Rachel frowned. “Jacob, you can talk to me, you know that right?”
I continued to stare at the sky, trying not to think about heaven or hell, or if they really existed, and whether my mom actually went to either of them.
Rachel sighed. “I see a bunny.”
“Of course you do,” I said, “you’re a girl.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean,” I answered. “Just like heaven is whatever you want it to be.”
Rachel fell silent.
“To one person heaven can be halos and harps, but to another it can be where you’re judged for all of your sins.”
I put my hand on my forehead to block out the sun and for the rest of the day Rachel and I called out what we thought the cloud’s looked like, forgetting whether heaven existed because we wouldn't know until we got there.