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“And I really think we do this the way we always have,” said Jack. “With everyone.”

“But you know we won’t get everyone, right, Jackie? You know that. Not now.”

Somewhere in a distance carved by time, in a past as dead as he was, Jack could hear the sound of combat boots stomping over earth, the swoosh of a sundress against overgrown shrubs.

“Let’s get cooking,” he said, a quirk in his lips. And with that, he traipsed back to the car.

5

Frankly, Jack had figured he’d never see Eli again. Not so much because he was dead but because Eli seemed pretty hell-bent on making sure he didn’t.

As far as Jack knew, Eli was out of prison. That was handy. Jack figured it wasn’t easy to get much done in prison that didn’t involve building unnecessarily large biceps or becoming born-again, and neither would be much help with his latest scheme. Not that he knew much about the penal system beyond what he’d learned from Orange Is the New Black. Somehow, despite his penchant for petty crimes, he’d never suffered through more than a night in the slammer. The same couldn’t be said for Eli. Like the ladies of Litchfield Penitentiary, Eli was something of an expert on life behind bars.

Meanwhile, Eli’s life on the outside was based in an apartment building called Azure Heights, which was neither blue nor particularly tall, but did have one working washing machine and a rat colony that was still going strong after decades. Dale had to navigate to the complex. It had been nearly two years since Jack had last seen Eli and even longer since he’d been invited over for a beer. Not that they’d ever had a falling-out or anything. They’d simply outgrown each other over the years. It was something even a bad psychic could have seen coming. Still, Eli was an important ingredient in the You Again gang, and Jack figured it was worth a shot to see if that was still enough to get him on board.

He knocked at apartment 3A. Eli appeared a moment later in gray sweats and a frown.

“Yeah?”

Jack tried to force his new features into a more recognizable configuration, rounding his smile downward at the corners the way his old smile had; furrowing his brows so they sat lower on his borrowed forehead.

“This is going to sound crazy,” said Jack, “but I need you to keep an open mind here. It’s me. Jack. Jack McCoy.”

“Huh?”

Dale shifted at Jack’s side. “Here we go.”

Jack forced his back a little straighter, trying to attain even a fraction of the height he once had. “Okay, so I was dead, right? You know that part. But I figured a way out of it. There was this old lady just standing there, not really using her body for anything, and I needed one, you know? Anyway, one thing led to another and now here I am.”

Eli looked down at the old lady who was Jack. He gave a prolonged blink, his frown deepening.

“I swear it,” Jack continued quickly, his arguments already primed on his tongue in the wake of his encounter with Carter. “Your middle name is Franklin,” he listed off on his index finger. “We stole Principal MacNeil’s car together junior year and did doughnuts in the high school parking lot until you threw up Froot Loops. You’re afraid of butterflies and told me you’d kill me if I told anyone. It’s me. It’s Jack. I swear.”

Jack steeled himself for rebuttal, ready for the inevitable disbelief and chastisement that was keying up to follow, but when Eli finally opened his mouth, all he said was, “Fuck.”

Jack shot a glance at Dale, but before Dale could reply, Eli continued. “Get inside.”

“Wait, what?” was all Jack could manage.

Eli turned from the door and disappeared into the apartment. Jack exchanged one last look with Dale, who shrugged his own bewilderment, before following Eli inside.

Apartment 3A hadn’t changed much since the last time Jack had visited. The collection of fast food containers on the coffee table represented different chains, and the couch had an extra hole or two, but otherwise it was the same apartment it always had been. That was the upside of ping-ponging in and out of prison, Jack mused. Home upkeep was probably pretty minimal.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Jack said all the same in an attempt to fill the silence. Eli bolted the door and gestured to the corduroy couch; a side-of-the-road find that had taken Jack, Eli, and Dale thirty minutes of sweating and swearing to carry back here in the middle of a heat wave. Jack sat. Dale slumped substanceless onto a cushion beside him.

In front of the couch, Eli paced, a fist held at his mouth. If Jack didn’t know better, he would say Eli was gearing up to punch somebody. But Jack did know better, which was why he’d say instead that Eli was using every ounce of willpower within him not to punch anybody.

“Fuck,” he said again instead.

“Crazy, right?” said Jack.

“No, not crazy,” Eli snapped back.

“I mean, a little crazy,” Jack countered.

Eli shook his head. “You didn’t want to be dead, so you’re not.”

Jack crossed one dainty ankle over the other. “Right.”