Later

by Stephen King

Even a little kid knows certain basic things if he’s not soft in the attic. You said please, you said thank you, you didn’t flap your weenie around in public or chew with your mouth open, and you didn’t talk to dead folks when they were standing next to living folks who were just starting to miss them. I only want to say, in my own defense, that when I saw her I didn’t know she was dead. Later on I got better at telling the difference, but back then I was just learning. It was her nightgown I could see through, not her. Dead people look just like living people, except they’re always wearing the clothes they died in.

“You imagined that, James,” she said, but half-heartedly. She knew better by then, I’m sure she did, but grownups have a tough time believing, and I’ll tell you why. When they find out as kids that Santa Claus is a fake and Goldilocks isn’t a real girl and the Easter Bunny is bullshit—just three examples, I could give more—it makes a complex and they stop believing anything they can’t see for themselves.

While we were eating our ice cream at Lickety Split (Liz phoned my mother to tell her where we were and what we were up to), Liz said, “It must be so strange, what you can do. So weird. Doesn’t it freak you out?” I thought of asking her if it freaked her out to look up at night and see the stars and know they go on forever and ever, but didn’t bother. I just said no. You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.

Tell you what, the worst part of growing up is how it shuts you up.