Okay, but the afterlife? It’s nothing like it looks in the movies. It’s a lot more forgiving than that, for which I guess I’m thankful. I died early on a Saturday morning wearing an old pair of H&M tights under an oversize Hot Chelle Rae T-­shirt I had jury-rigged into a minidress. I was wearing the dress ironically—I wasn’t even a little bit into HCR; my tastes then ran moodier and boozier: Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey—but if I were to get the Hollywood treatment, I’d be stuck in that minidress for all eternity. Badly sewn hem and all.

Luckily, it doesn’t work that way. My eternal spirit isn’t trapped in the wrong clothes: not the slashed-up tee I died in nor the ugly frock my mother picked out for my wake, with its churchy neckline and repulsive peony print. And although I died in an ugly way, I don’t look ugly. I look beautiful, more beautiful than I ever felt alive, though I was beautiful then, too.

Almost no one ever gets a good look at me now, but if they did, they’d see me in my favorite going-out dress from that year, the one I wore all the time before my old college roommate swiped it from me. BCBG, black Lycra with a tummy panel and a cutout just at the center of my rib cage. A little diamond of teasing brown skin placed just so, hints of underboob on either side. Exfoliated, moisturized, hair freshly relaxed. Lips plumped up with this gloss I liked at the time that had a little bit of a chocolaty flavor. One tiny little tube cost twenty-four dollars, a splurge, and if we’d just had a fight, I could sometimes get my boyfriend to buy it for me. I was proud of that then, but I’ve since realized it’s nothing special.

Mostly the look goes to waste, though. Around here, it’s generally the same tired old audience. A few relatives of mine from various generations who couldn’t care less about my overpriced lip gloss. Who, like me, got chopped from the family tree before their branches could flower. Who died on the receiving end of a particular unfulfilled promise—which, by the way, is the best we can figure as to why we’re here. At the heart of all of this is a family farm, a share of which was supposed to pass to each of us but didn’t because we all died cruelly and too soon. The farm is the only thing that connects us four, aside from our deep Cupid’s bows and our insatiable love of gossip.