Your heart beats for a final time, your lungs stop drawing air, and all brain activity shuts down. But during the exact microsecond, the very instant that you pass from the world of the living to the world of the dead, you experience a jolt of omniscience that is as brief as it is intense. During this briefest of moments, you gain all the knowledge and wisdom in the universe. All the mysteries of the world are solved, you get a peak behind every curtain, and everything you ever wanted to know is spelled out for you as clear as day.
And then it's over.
Different people fixate on different elements of this omniscience, but the awareness that Lisa came away with was that nobody was as perfect as they seemed.
Nancy, the class president, was seeing a therapist to deal with stress issues.
Melissa had such a negative body image that she was secretly considering liposuction.
Becky and Tom, the All-American Homecoming King and Queen were miserable with each other.
Jeanne, Dana, and Lily hadn't really hooked up with college guys that summer.
Phil hadn't actually gotten early acceptance to Princeton like he was telling everybody.
More than half of the cheer leading squad was only pretending they liked Kim. In reality, they hated her.
None of the other girls on her field hockey team were really as confident as they pretended to be.
Her older sister didn't enjoy high school nearly as much as she had claimed to.
Everybody else in her high school was sensitive, too.
Everybody else worried about fitting in, too.
Everybody else was insecure, too.
They were just better at hiding it than Lisa was.
But by the time she realized that, it was too late. And that was the last thought that went through her head before her neck snapped and the lights went out.
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There is a lot of truth in that, and sadness, too.
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