REAP WHAT YOU SOW

The last time I ever saw Camila, I’d officially been dead for as long as I’d been alive: twenty-eight years. But that day, I was a two-hundred-and-seventy-pound man. Very much breathing. Standing in the middle of a bedroom in a tiny Seattle apartment. I knew the man had died of a heart attack at forty because my supervisor slipped me his file that morning and said, “This one croaks at eight AM. Don’t be late.” 

I was never late. I reaped his soul on time—and borrowed his vessel. Without it, I couldn’t leave the apartment. Reaper souls are anchored to their assigned sites. Something about preventing us from going rogue. Except once I discovered the loophole, I couldn’t help myself. I had to explore.

I patted my smooth head and pale face. Frowned at the oversized sweats the man had worn to sleep. Death couldn’t fix a woman’s vanity. Or maybe it bothered me to know that Camila wouldn’t give me a second glance in this vessel. But would it matter if he were handsome? Would she stop and stare if I were a beautiful woman instead? I wish I’d known the answer when I was alive, then maybe I wouldn’t have died. I wouldn’t have crossed the street that day, calling after her. I wouldn’t have paused in the middle of it. Uncertain.

After everything went black—after I kicked the bucket—I found myself in a room with purple walls and pink floors, decorated with colorful abstract paintings that looked as if a drunk clown had thrown up all over them. A fluffy green carpet led to a pastel-blue desk, behind which sat a lanky brown guy in a polka-dot dress. His aquamarine hair was gelled into a mohawk, and he chewed a giant wad of gum as he watched me approach. Hesitant.

He—Amari, his nametag said—let out a long sigh and picked up the kissy-lip-shaped phone beside his computer. After a few rings, he said, “Lisa, I thought we’d hit our quota for the day. I was just about to go home.” He rolled his eyes, then glanced at me, then at his computer. “You’re joking. Fucking Craig.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “How did I get here?”

Amari looked me up and down and popped his gum. “Mmm, no. I’m not dealing with another freak-out at my desk after the day I’ve had. All you need to know is that Craig broke the law and left us short-staffed. You’re his replacement.”

“Replacement? For what?”

“Ugh. Guess there's no way around it,” he muttered. “You get to work for Lisa Padilla at the Western Reaper Division. You get that instead of getting recycled back to Earth’s miseries. Lucky duck. Come on.”

I tried not to think about Lisa as I picked out a hoodie and jeans to change into. The entire thing was clumsy and awkward, as if my limbs were giant bags of sand I had to lug around. That’s what lack of practice will do to you, I guess. I hadn’t possessed a body in five years, not since I almost got caught and swore I wouldn’t do it again. But once I saw where this man lived—near the place I’d died, and on the anniversary of my death, no less—I had to scratch the itch. Even if it meant Lisa would shove me into Purgatory if she found out I was breaking the law. Like poor Craig.

Changed, I raced through dingy apartment halls and pounded down flights of stairs, footfalls thudding as loud as my heart. A heart sparked back to life by an immortal soul, disease be damned.

A few people stopped and stared at the large man barrelling past. I wasn’t concerned. Not when she was near, in the hotel downtown—the one she booked every year for this trip. The one that was much too dilapidated for how expensive it was. But Camila had always cared more about convenience than practicality. Something we used to bump heads over when I was alive, back when we were still PhD students sharing late nights in the lab.

“If we skip that step, the entire experiment could go wrong,” I would say. “We’ll have to repeat the whole thing.” 

“Or—things turn out fine, and we’ll know we can shave three hours off this protocol,” she’d insist. “Our future selves will thank us.” Then she’d flick a loose curl away from her heart-shaped face and smile, revealing her crooked incisors, her sharp eyes turning soft. And I’d cave.

Infuriatingly, she was correct almost every single time. Even more infuriating was her unwillingness to gloat.

“You’re allowed to say ‘I was right,’” I’d grumble.

“Who do you take me for?” she’d reply before turning to the clunky lab espresso machine.

She always made two coffees without me needing to ask. I never had to ask Camila for anything. Every time large experiments came up, everyone else grimaced, shook their heads, and said, “Sucks to suck, Kathy.” But not Camila. Camila would show up, matching my erratic hours, armed with a playlist and a speaker and plenty of jokes. 

Maybe that’s why, a year after my death, I began possessing bodies whenever Lisa was on vacation. Or whenever Amari was in the mood to let things slide.

“It’s wrong to violate the dead,” he liked to remind me. “You already lived your life.” And yet he always wiped evidence of my extended stays through the portal. 

I was a tall, burly man with prostate cancer when Camila became Dr. Juarez and crossed the stage. A tiny janitor with kidney failure when she became a postdoc at her dream lab. A sixteen-year-old girl who’d choked on steak when Camila opened her lab in Cali. An old man who’d caught the flu when I learned she liked to fly into Seattle on my death anniversary. A homeless woman who’d suffered a stroke in San Francisco when Camila became tenured. I didn’t expect her to drop a twenty in the woman’s cup—to acknowledge my existence. So when I felt my chest tighten, I immediately opened a portal and returned to the Otherrealm, where those sensations don’t exist.

Skyscrapers and concrete buildings blurred past as I hurried down the Seattle block, still struggling to adjust to the two-hundred-and-seventy-pound vessel. I stumbled every few steps, and the crisp fall air, mixed with trash and urine, needled my lungs. Pedestrians, dressed in colors as drab as the city, moved out of my way when I turned the corner and finally stopped in front of the hotel. Winded. 

I paced up and down the sidewalk for another ten minutes before I saw her come out. Her curly salt-and-pepper hair was scraped into a low bun, loose strands framing her face—her tan face, bearing the weight of sun, laughter, and worry that hadn’t been there five years ago. I watched her hug a bouquet of flowers close to her chest, then do something else: hold out her hand at the bottom of the hotel steps. A woman took it. A Southeast Asian woman with pin-straight hair around our—her—age, dressed in a black overcoat.

The woman joined Camila on the street, a mere six feet away from me, and kissed her. Murmured something soothing in her ear. 

I blinked hard and matched the pace of their footsteps, marching toward the place I died. 

A bicycle bell chimed nearby. Camila whirled around at the sound, glossed over my existence, and pulled herself closer to the stranger. The stranger keeping her bed warm. How long had she been doing so? One month? Five, ten, twenty years?

Camila stroked the back of the woman's hand with her thumb, just as she did the day I died, when we left the lab late, the city still awake despite the pitch-black sky.

That night, she insisted I come over for dinner. That night, I insisted I wasn’t feeling well. Which wasn’t a lie. A pit opened in my stomach whenever I thought of us doing anything that might get my hopes up. But Camila held my hand, stroked it with her thumb, and stared at me. Hard.

“Kathy, is that really it?” she whispered, my name like tinkling wind chimes coming from her. “Because I swear you avoid me outside of lab.”

“It’s nothing personal,” I said, yanking my hand back. Cold rushed in to replace the heat of her palm. “I, um, I just don’t want to be distracted while I’m getting my doctorate.”

“It’s just dinner—” 

“I like to read articles before bed.” 

“You’re going to read while sick?” 

“No. Tonight, I’m going straight to bed.” 

She sighed and nodded, then crossed 4th and Pine, hunched against the wind and rain. I watched the pedestrian signal count down from five, hesitating at the edge of the sidewalk. Afraid. So goddamn afraid after learning she’d dated men. Like I had. But I didn’t want to be wrong. Couldn’t bear to lose her. 

The red hand blinked.

Four. Three. Two.

“Wait!” I'd called, stepping into the street. “Camila!” 

She turned, eyes wide, brows raised. Silent. Waiting. But I froze. And the hand blinked one. Then stilled. 

Camila opened her mouth. Wet pavement crunched beneath racing car wheels. 

The man’s heart squeezed, like it must have squeezed when he died of a heart attack. The city blurred. I touched my eyes. My fingertips came back wet. When I glanced back up, Camila stood at the same intersection we’d last seen each other, her arm linked through the stranger’s as they waited to cross.

Camila’s phone rang, and her left hand dipped into her coat. When it withdrew, something flat and rectangular fell onto the sidewalk. Neither woman noticed as they crossed. I moved to where they’d just been and picked up what she dropped: her work badge.

The pedestrian signal flashed a red hand. Counted down. 

Ten. Nine. Eight. 

Camila knelt on the other side and left the flowers on the floor. 

Seven. Six. Five.

I could keep it. Keep her with me in the Otherrealm. Forever. And I almost did. Except I watched Camila stand after a minute, ready to leave with the stranger—ready to leave me—while I remained on the opposite side, my soul unraveling inside the man like a knitted sweater caught on a nail. I gripped the badge tighter. I knew I couldn't keep it. I couldn't keep Camila as she used to be, while her partner got to keep her whole. Her past, present, future.

“Wait!” I called, stepping into the street. “Camila!” 

She turned, eyes wide, brows raised. Silent. Waiting. That made me freeze. 

The hand blinked four. Three. Then two. 

Her partner tugged at her sleeve. Worried. 

I sucked air into borrowed lungs and crossed. All the way. Until I stood right in front of her, close enough to catch the familiar scent of the citrus perfume she wore back then. 

The red hand stilled. 

When I said nothing, both women took a step back.

“Uh, sorry,” I said, shaking my head and holding up the badge. “Your name’s on this. Looked important. You work at UCSF?”

Camila smiled. Her crooked incisors made my heart kick. She reached out and took the card. Her fingers brushed mine.

“Thanks! Yes. Getting back into work would have been a hassle. They charge twenty-five dollars for a replacement. Can you believe that?” 

“I can’t,” I said, trying to tuck nonexistent hair behind my ears. Habits don’t die with you, I guess. “UCSF should count their blessings to have such a brilliant scientist on their team.” 

Camila’s eyebrows furrowed. 

Her partner gave a nervous chuckle. “Are you also in the microbio field?” she asked. 

“Something like that,” I said, not looking away from Camila. “I… uh—your name sounded familiar. Easy to recognize when it’s right next to UCSF. Even though I never finished my own PhD, I like keeping up with work published by the top dogs in the field.” 

Camila’s brown eyes crinkled when her smile returned. “Well, I’m flattered. What did you study before… before you stepped away?” 

Her question left me breathless, as if I were still running.

“I studied host-pathogen interactions in different infection models,” I said. “Wanted to find out why some vaccines aren’t as effective as they should be.”

“My… I had—well, an old colleague of mine studied something similar,” Camila replied, glancing at the flowers she’d left near the crosswalk. “You should pursue your studies again. It’s never too late. You seem young. Younger than me, at least.”

“Nah. I’ve already made my choices. Dedicated this life to something else. Anyway”—I stuck out my right hand—“very nice to meet one of my favorite scientists.”

She took it, her grip firm. Soft. Warm. Alive. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

I watched her go, her arm linked through the woman’s again.

“See? Your hard work paid off,” her partner said, chuckling. “Complete strangers recognize your name.”

Camila glanced over her shoulder. Looked at me. I raised a hand to my forehead and saluted her, the way we used to when we’d part ways at the end of a long shift, never questioning whether we’d see each other again. 

But right then, right there, I knew we wouldn’t.