Queen of the Dead

But I’d evidently also given Lily’s family cause to hope. The quantity and variety of Ouija boards in her room screamed of desperation. If this one didn’t work, maybe another one will. Maybe she doesn’t like the plastic ones. Maybe we should get one in her favorite color. They’d pinned their hopes on every new purchase, never knowing, of course, that there was no perfect board, and even if it existed, Lily wasn’t around to use it.

Lily was gone in the only way that mattered. She had moved on to that peace, that blissful space empty of worry and fear, the one I could only remember in the briefest and most frustrating flashes.

But thanks to me, her family thought she was still hanging around, and in fact, I was here today to use that belief to my advantage.

I swallowed hard, looking down at the pale, hospital-thin girl who seemed lost among her bedcovers and pillows. She wasn’t exactly pretty, or hadn’t been, but she could have been striking, with a little confidence and the right education in hair products and makeup. Now there was also the matter of the jagged scar stretching from her hairline down to edge of her jaw on the left side of her face. But even that seemed to be getting better in small degrees. It looked less puffy and red this time. That part of her was healing, even if nothing else was, and probably gave her family yet another reason to hope.

Could I really do this? Once, I probably wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d used people in all kinds of ways when I was alive without thinking twice. My perspective was if you were willing to be used or weak enough to allow it to happen, then you got what you deserved. If you’re not a predator, you’re prey, you know? But now…

One time. That was it. I just needed to get a message across to my parents.

I moved closer to her bed to wait, my heart beating too fast. I half-expected Will to appear in the doorway suddenly and start shouting at me. He knew what I could do. In fact, I was the only spirit he’d ever seen or heard of with this ability. He had to know I’d be thinking of this…right?

But Will did not come.

The room stayed quiet and still with only the steady beeping of Lily’s heart monitor in the background to break the silence.

Then, a woman with the same light brown hair as Lily’s entered the room, bearing a hospital tray with a pathetic-looking sandwich, a wilted salad, and two oranges. Her mother. It had to be. According to Will, her mother rarely, if ever, left Lily’s side, hoping she would wake up enough to communicate again.

I watched her approach. She moved like every step was painful. Her hair-ball — brown cardigan seemed three or four sizes too big for her rail-thin frame.

“I brought you oranges, baby,” she said softly, like Lily was just dozing and she didn’t want to scare her awake. She picked her way carefully around the end of the bed and sat in the visitor’s chair on the far side by Lily’s head. “I know how much you love them. I thought I’d peel them up here so you could smell them. Maybe have a slice or two if you wake up.”

Her voice sounded hoarse with weariness. This woman was giving all she had to her daughter, her every bit of energy, every ounce of strength. If Lily could have been tube-fed the will to live, her mother would have had her up and around in no time.

This was the worst part. To communicate through Lily, I would need someone living to take down my words. I would be using her mother as much as I was using her.

That first time, the consequences of communicating to Joonie through Lily had never occurred to me beyond the immediate benefit — Joonie would stop and Will would live. I hadn’t thought about her family, waiting for months on end to see if she would wake up, only to not be around the few short minutes she had appeared to demonstrate some momentary awareness. It must have been devastating…and cruel.

It hadn’t been intentional, not then. But now it would be, and contrary to what most people, including Will, seemed to believe about me, I did have a conscience. Telling someone she looks like a bloated pumpkin in her new cinnamon minidress (truth) is worlds away from giving somebody’s grief-stricken mother false hope (mean).

Just get it over with. You’ll do this just once, and then maybe once everything settles down, you can come back and tell her family good-bye for her. She’d probably appreciate that.

I waited until her mother was settled and peeling anorange before I started. I did not want to have to do this twice today. I remembered all too clearly the feeling of losing myself that had gone along with using Lily’s body, like we were merging into one person. It had been scary, really scary. And I wasn’t eager to experience it again.

I leaned over the side of Lily’s bed, lining my hand up with hers. Then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then placed my hand on top of Lily’s.

For a second, I didn’t think anything would happen. I could feel the warmth of her skin against my palm, but that was all. Then, like I’d broken through the surface tension in a pool, my hand slipped down into hers. At our wrists, the boundary between us smeared, becoming a blur of my still sun-darkened skin and hers, a pale hospital- bleached white.

Trying to ignore the sensation of heat crawling up my arm, even faster than it had the first time, it seemed, I forced my hand forward and Lily’s lurched in response. The plastic planchette dug into the wood of the board under the weight of her hand, but I could still move it. It had been easier when Will was here and I could just move the piece around on the board myself, but this would work, too, and it would, I admitted reluctantly, have more of an effect.

MOM

I grimaced. It felt wrong, bad to be using this word for someone who wasn’t my mother. Then again, my mother couldn’t even be bothered to hang on to my stuff, let alone relocate it somewhere else entirely. She was just trying to survive in the only way she knew how. I got it. But still.

The heart monitor next to Lily’s bed picked up a beat or two, but nothing too bad sounding.

MOM

It took a few seconds for Lily’s mother to recognize the sound she was hearing — the scrape of the planchette across the board. She jolted up, the tray slipping from her lap to the floor with a rattle of hard plastic and the crash of ceramic, to stare at the Ouija board on the other side of the bed.

MOM

Ugh. I was sweating already from the effort…and I hate sweating. The heat from Lily’s arm had crawled up my arm and into my shoulder, and a strange pulling sensation had started, like vacuum suction, yanking me downward. The muscles in my back ached with the effort of keeping me upright.

This time, though, Mrs. Turner understood. She paled, raising a shaking hand to her mouth, her gaze fixed on the board, like if she looked away it would vanish.

Okay, what now?

Um…

HI

Her mother began this weird laughing, crying thing, with her shoulders shaking and tears streaming, but no sound emerging. She came around to my side of the bed, and she touched Lily’s hand. The strange part is, I felt it on my hand.

DONT B SAD

IM OK

Her mom nodded wildly, tears flying off her face and splattering our arms and the bed below.

Yeah, I would definitely have to come back and say good-bye on Lily’s behalf. I couldn’t leave it like this with her mom. She didn’t deserve this.

She stroked our arms, and I shivered at the odd sensation. “Baby, I’m so glad you’re here. I need you to do me a favor,” she said.

Okay, I had not been expecting this.

“Your father needs to see this. Then he’ll believe me.” She whipped her cell phone out of her sweater pocket and began dialing. “I could record it, but you know your dad, he won’t believe anything until he sees it for himself.”

So I was just supposed to hang out here until Lily’s dad made it in from wherever? I don’t think so. I started painstakingly spelling out my message, hoping her mom understood texting abbreviations.

MSG FRM ALONA

“Just wait, please, baby? He needs to see this.” Her mother covered the phone with her hand. “You know he doesn’t mean anything by it, all that talk about taking you home to…to pass. He just doesn’t understand.”