Queen of the Dead

I stared at her for a long second. She hadn’t heard me…had she? No. When I looked closer, I noticed the awkward tilt of her head and her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear. So getting rid of the accumulation of my life wasn’t even worth her full attention? Now I was pissed.

“Stop!” I strode across the room and swatted at the bag. My hand passed through most of it — not exactly a shock there — but it jumped a little bit in her hand, which was about the most I could accomplish on my own. She looked down at the bag with a frown. Then, the phone conversation distracted her again.

“No, Russ, I promise. I wouldn’t do that.”

Russ. My dad. My mother was talking on the phone with my dad? My knees felt wobbly, all of a sudden, like I might faint. I didn’t know if that was possible in my condition, but I wasn’t eager to find out.

My parents hadn’t spoken willingly to each other and without a third party present in years. And somehow I seriously doubted that this was a three-way call with their attorneys.

What the hell? I sank slowly to the floor, next to my mother’s feet and the garbage bag. I could see the top of the ridiculous collage I’d been forced to make for Mrs. Johnson’s psychology class — theme: How Sex Sells in Advertising — sticking out of the bag’s opening.

“It’s better. Not easy, but better.” She took a deep breath. “Every step helps.” Alcoholics Anonymous; she had to be talking about her meetings. My mother had been a hopeless and helpless alcoholic since my parents’ divorce three years ago. Which was another reason why this conversation was hitting the top of the freaky-meter. She was actually sober. Stone-cold sober, as far as I could tell. Prior to the last couple of months, my mother had been the queen of drunk dialing…and drunk texting, drunk e-mailing, and even drunk drive-bys. Not good.

“I appreciate you letting me know so I didn’t have to find out from someone else.” She dusted off her hand on her sweatpants and pulled the phone from between her shoulder and her ear and sat on the edge of my bed. Then she took a shaky breath and forced a smile. This close to her and with her face washed clean of makeup, I could see all the little lines at the corners of her eyes. “Congratulations to you and Gigi. Really. It’s something to celebrate. I know Alona would be pleased.”

A foreboding chill swept over me. Nothing involving Gigi, my dad’s second wife and former administrative assistant, could have possibly pleased me. My mother had become a pathetic, alcohol-soaked mess after the divorce, yes, and I’d spent some time blaming her for my death. I’d been coming home, after dipping out on zero- hour gym, to drag her sorry, hungover butt out of bed so she could meet with my dad (and their lawyers) when the early morning band bus and I had met in a rather sudden fashion.

But Gigi…she was just a bitch. When I’d been alive, she’d constantly been after my dad to cut back on his alimony and child support, so she could have more of what she wanted. We had a well- documented and mutually understood hatred for one another. Anything she’d celebrate clearly meant trouble for me.

My mom hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. Her face crumpled, and she dropped the bag to pull herself onto my bed, her knees tucked up to her chest. She cried for a couple of minutes into my pillow, which I knew from my last visit had already begun to smell like dust and disuse instead of Pantene and cucumber melon body lotion.

Then she sat up, and to my shock, instead of heading downstairs to stare longingly at the now empty liquor cabinet or to root out the last stash of booze I was sure she had tucked away somewhere, she stood up and grabbed the garbage bag again and began throwing away more of my belongings, muttering under her breath what sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

There went the printout of my painstakingly created spreadsheet, which compiled all the potential outfit possibilities from the contents of my closet and tracked when I’d worn each combination last. The ticket stubs from when my best friend Misty and I went to the Boys Like Girls concert last October. The tiny scrap of stiff satin I’d cut from the back of the Homecoming Queen sash before returning it that last time. (Yes, they recycled the sash from year to year. That’s why there was never a year printed on it. Tacky and cheap, that was Groundsboro High for you.)

I felt like I might throw up. Those things weren’t garbage. They were memories, symbols of the life I’d lived, and the only things I had left from it. “Mom! Stop!” I reached for the bag again, with even less success this time. The bag didn’t even move.

My protest passed unnoticed, and she continued tocrumple up and toss away my most prized possessions. Bythe time she was done, it would no longer be my room. Sure, she’d leave the furniture, the framed pictures (one of each of my parents, a couple of Misty and me, and various boyfriends at proms and homecomings), my alarm clock and stereo…all that stuff would stay.

But the things that had made it mine, really mine? She was chucking them away, like they meant nothing. Like I’d meant nothing. Weren’t parents supposed to keep all your stuff forever? All those macaroni necklaces, finger paintings, and first spelling tests? Weren’t they, like, treasures of the past or something? Wouldn’t all of that be even more poignant if your kid was dead?

Watching my mother’s efficiency with the garbage bag, it didn’t seem like it.

An unwelcome idea intruded. Will was right. He’d tried to warn me about this, and I’d ignored him. I brushed that thought aside, fleeing my room and the house. I didn’t have to stay here and watch this. She wasn’t, thank God, my only parent. She wasn’t even my favorite.

Fifteen minutes later, after cutting through backyards, navigating steep drainage ditches, and crossing a few busy streets (another nice thing about being dead — if you’ve been run over once, you never have to worry about it happening again), I stood at the foot of the driveway to my dad’s new house, a little Cape Cod cutesy-bungalow type thing that he shared with Gigi. And it really wasn’t so new. It had been three years since he’d left my mom, and two and a half years since he and Gigi had gotten married.

I noticed with a start that the adorable silver VW Eos, my intended graduation present, no longer held a place of honor at the top of the drive, blocking the half of the garage my dad used to store his golfing equipment. Instead, this ginormously ugly minivan had taken its place.

No, no, no. I didn’t stop to think, just ran for my dad’s study, not even bothering to pass through the doorway. Doors, walls, they were all the same now anyway.

I found my dad exactly as I’d expected and hoped. He was slouching at his desk, his head propped up by his hand, and staring at a photo of us from a Daddy-Daughter Dance in fifth grade. At that time, I’d not yet learned the magic of smoothing creme for taming the frizzies and I still had braces, ugh. But he seemed to like it. It was the only photo on his desk, the only one in the whole room, as a matter of fact. A glass of brandy sat in front of him, inches from his hand. And even in the dim imitation Tiffany-lamp light, I could see that he’d been crying.

“Thank God.” I flopped down on the leather sofa behind him, flipping my hair over the armrest so it wouldn’t get all tangled, more out of habit than necessity. “Someone still misses me.” My dad and I had always been closer anyway. “Do you know what Mom is doing?” I asked. “You have to stop her.”

He didn’t respond, of course, and even if he, by some miracle, had been able to hear me, I seriously doubted I’d have been able to convince him to go over to her house, his former house, for any reason. He’d left there like he was fleeing a plague-infested city. Going back would be a death wish…execution courtesy of Gigi.

But I still felt the need to try. “She doesn’t get it, Daddy. She’s throwing away everything.” To my horror, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and a lump in my throat. In my life, when I was actually living, I’d rarely cried, if ever. Tears were a weakness, a luxury you couldn’t afford if you wanted to remain in power. I had, once upon a time, ruled at the top of Groundsboro High society. Now I was dead, and almost everyone I knew had graduated. And I was freaking crying…again. My afterlife sucked.

The door to the study opened without a knock, and I sat up, wiping under my eyes. Gigi. My step-Mothra, so dubbed because she is an evil creature destroying everything in her path, stood in the doorway. Even though she couldn’t see me, I didn’t want there to even be so much of a hint of vulnerability in the air around my stepmother. Gigi would score no points on me, even in the afterlife.

She made a sound of disgust and then stalked over to my dad’s desk and slapped down a piece of paper. “I was going to wait to show you this, but you obviously need something to hold you together.” She stepped back, still dressed in her work clothes: trim little black-and-white cropped jacket, a black pencil skirt, and killer patent leather stilettos. Yes, I hated her, but that did not mean I could not respect her ability to recognize fine fabrics and a rockin’ pair of heels. It did, however, mean that I could notice with some evil glee the way her skirt was pulling up and straining at the seams, like her ass was a prisoner slowly trying to bust its way to freedom.