She turned around and began putting all the first-aid stuff back in the box. “Did you like her?”
I tilted my head, not sure if I was hearing her correctly. “I’m sorry?”
“I said, did you like her?” She kept her back to me. She seemed to be rearranging the contents of the first-aid kit by alphabetical order or size or something. It should not have taken that long to put back tweezers, bandages, and antibacterial cream.
“I…” My God, there was no good way to answer this. “Yes” was obviously out. She’d detect “No” as a lie immediately. And “I don’t know her well enough to know if I like her” was just weak. “I was curious,” I said finally.
“How curious?”
Damn, another impossible-to-answer question. I was starting to sweat. “I don’t understand what you’re —”
“She didn’t seem to have a spirit guide. At least not right now.” Alona shrugged. “And if she ever had one, he probably deliberately made himself disappear just to get away from her,” she added, her mouth tight.
Okay…there was a question in here somewhere. I could feel it coming. I had no idea from which direction, though. Leave it to Alona, the most direct person I knew, to broach whatever this was in the most oblique manner possible.
“With that device she used against Mrs. Ruiz, she probably doesn’t need one,” she continued.
The silence that hung in the air after those words held a slightly different quality, like she was testing the verbal waters and waiting for a “too hot” or “too cold” response.
Ah, wait. Now I was getting it.
Maybe.
“I was just curious,” I said cautiously. “Not looking to change things.”
“She’s alive. Your mother would like that better.”
I let out a silent breath of relief. I’d guessed correctly. She was worried I wanted to replace her or get rid of her or something, but in true Alona fashion, she couldn’t just say that. Nope, that would be admitting that it mattered.
“My mom is still…adjusting,” I said.
The ghost-talker thing had been a hard reality for my mom to accept, especially once she got the full grasp of what it meant. A normal life for me…would not be so normal, even now. I’d applied to colleges, just like we’d talked about, but so far, nothing but a pile of rejections.
I couldn’t say I was surprised. You try explaining a spotty attendance record, more detentions than a reasonable person would bother counting, a half dozen or so in-school suspensions, and God only knows what kind of notes from a vindictive principal on your permanent record (which, by the way, really does exist and the school does send it out)
Add to all of that, the person that I spent the most time with now was a beautiful girl who happened to be a spirit but who was still living (in her own way) and very touchable? Yeah. For some reason, that meant only one thing to my mom — the possibility of me having weird, undead, inter-dimensional SEX. Right.
I wish.
In any case, my mom had been a little less than welcoming the few times she’d been forced to acknowledge Alona’s invisible-to-her presence. But I hadn’t realized it had bothered Alona this much…or at all.
“She’ll get there,” I said. “She just needs time.”
Alona closed the kit and zipped it shut before turning to face me. “You know I’d find another way, if I had to. I don’t
“I know.” I wasn’t sure how she would help people — earn her points, learn her lesson, or whatever it was she’d been sent back specifically to accomplish — without me, her only point of access to the living, but I knew better than to underestimate her. I’d learned that lesson already. “But this is not…I don’t think…”
I took a deep breath. “I’ve been alone with this ghost-talking thing my whole life,” I said, choosing my words carefully. This had serious potential to blow up in my face. “Even when my dad was alive, he wanted nothing to dowith it. So, yeah, finding someone else like me is kind of abig deal.”
She stiffened.
“But it doesn’t change anything,” I said. “Not like that.”
She looked unconvinced. I hesitated and took it a step further. I grabbed her hand, and she didn’t pull it free immediately. That was a good sign, right?
“I don’t want to do this — what we do — with anyone else, okay?” I said quickly. There. I felt dangerously exposed and kind of like an idiot, but at least I’d said my piece. God, no wonder Alona danced around these kinds of things.
Her eyes widened, and she pulled her hand from mine.
I winced in anticipation. It was entirely possible that I’d completely misinterpreted her concerns, and now I was so going to hear about it.…
She touched my face, her fingers light against my cheek, and then she was kissing me. Her mouth was warm and soft and, as always, tasted vaguely of vanilla lip gloss. Her tongue brushed across my lips, and I could barely think.
Huh. Maybe I should take a chance like that more often.
4
Alona
Will Killian is a surprisingly good kisser. I mean you’d never know it by looking at him. He’s perpetually pale with scruffy black hair, a seriously questionable wardrobe, and an attitude that makes Eeyore look like a ray of sunshine. One might think he wouldn’t have had a chance to get much kissing practice, especially what with most people considering him crazy. And yet…wow.
I stopped on the sidewalk outside of Will’s house, running a tentative finger over my mouth. His mom had come home before things could get too intense, and I had to get out of his room before she barged in. But my lips still felt puffy in that “I’ve been thoroughly kissed” way. Some guys seem to have the impression they should try to swallow half of your face. But — color me surprised — not Will. He was gentle and sweet, and yet not at all afraid to step up and take the lead.
I shivered in delight at the thought. At one point, he’d pulled me into his bedroom and…
“Just a cozy night in, huh?” a sarcastic voice asked from behind me.
I froze, startled, and then groaned inwardly when I realized I recognized the speaker. She’d found me again. “Jealous?” I asked, turning around.
Liesel Marks stood on the sidewalk a few feet behind me. The streetlight overhead turned her pink polka- dotted prom dress into a shade of white with brighter white speckles. Behind her, as always, hovering on the edge of the shadows, was her longtime prom date, Eric Hargrove. He was dressed in the best of powder-blue tuxedo finery. They looked exactly like what they were: escapees from a prom inthe late seventies.
But they hadn’t really escaped anything. They were stuck here, in between, just like the rest of us. Liesel and Eric had died in a fiery car crash on prom night, a cautionary tale for high school students everywhere. Well, living ones anyway. I personally couldn’t have cared less. Karma is a bitch, and you get what you get when you steal someone else’s guy.
“Right,” Liesel snorted. “Like I want to be the ghosttalker’s pet.”
On my very first day as Will’s spirit guide, Liesel had been the one to explain, very mockingly, all the downsides to the job. They weren’t so bad, mostly. I showed up wherever Will was at the time of my death or anytime I disappeared. And I could be “called” to him, if he concentrated on it. That was it. But I had no such powers over him, unfortunately.
