Excerpt from Boo by Neil Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Excuse me! Hello!" I called out to the girl in the swivel chair, who woke with a start. She stared at me wide-eyed.

"May I assume I am dead?" I asked.

She lurched out of her chair and hurried over, accidentally kicking her novel under the bed. She grabbed my hand and squeezed. I yanked it back because as you know, I dislike being touched.

"You ain't dead, honey," she said. "You passed, but you're still alive."

"Passed?"

"We say 'passed' here instead of 'died.' Passed like you did good on a math test." She gave me a smile that exposed a gap between her front teeth wide enough to stick a drinking straw through. When she sat down on the side of the bed, it listed because she was heavy. I once read an article on longevity in the magazine Science that claimed that thin people lived longer. To offset my holey heart, I tried to prolong my life by keeping a slim physique. Needless to say, my efforts came to naught.

"Let me introduce myself," the girl said. "My name's Thelma Rudd, and I'm originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, where my family runs the Horseshoe Diner." She asked what my name was and where I came from.

"Oliver Dalrymple from Hoffman Estates, Illinois," I told her. "My parents have a barbershop there called Clippers." 

"Do you know how you passed, Oliver Dalrymple?"

"I believe I died of a holey heart."

"A holy heart?" She looked puzzled. "We all have holy hearts up here."

"No, I mean my heart has an actual hole in it."

"Oh, how terrible," she said and patted my leg.

Thelma went on to explain that she belonged to a group of volunteers known as the "do-gooders." "I always sign up for rebirthing duty here at the Meg Murry Infirmary," she said. "I like welcoming newborns like yourself."

I asked how long a "rebirthing" took.

"It's over in the blink of an eye." Thelma blinked several times. "A do-gooder's always on rebirthing duty at the Meg. We never know when we're gonna get a package."

She patted the mattress, and I eyed the bed, its rumpled blanket and its pillow with the indent from my head. The bed did not look mysterious or miraculous in any way. "We just materialize here?" I asked.

Thelma nodded. She gave me a probing look, eyes so deep-set I figured she, too, once wore glasses. "You know, hon, you're the calmest newborn I ever did meet," she said. "You wouldn't believe the hysterics I seen in my nineteen years in Town."

"Nineteen years!?" I said. "But you look my age."

"Oh, we're all thirteen here."

This particular hereafter, she clarified, was reserved for Americans who passed at age thirteen. "We call it Town," she said. "Us townies believe there's lots of towns of heaven. One for every age—one for people who pass at sixteen, one for people who pass at twenty-three, one for people who pass at forty-four, and so on and so forth." 

"Thirteen," I said, mystified. "You are all thirteen?"

"Townies never age. We stay thirteen all our afterlives. I look exactly the same as when I came here nineteen years ago."

You will find this nonsensical, Mother and Father, but this stagnation in the hereafter saddened me more than the realization of my own death did. I would never grow up, never go to university, and never become a scientist. And, frankly, I had seen enough of thirteen-year-olds back in America—their stupidity, cruelty, and immaturity. 

Thelma noticed my sudden distress. "Oh, but we grow wiser the longer we stay here," she said. "Well, at least some of us do."

"Segregating the afterlife by age seems logical," I said to be a good sport. "After all, if the dead were all housed in the same place, Town would be seriously overpopulated." 

I then asked, "Will I be here for eternity?" 

She shook her head. "No, us townies only get five decades here. After our time's up, we go to sleep one night and never wake. We vanish in the night. All we leave behind is our PJs."

Excerpted from Boo by Neil Smith. Copyright © 2015 by Neil Smith. Excerpted by permission of Vintage. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.