life between invisible quotes.
Ilsa always had fresh snickerdoodles, and her house perpetually smelled like cinnamon. My mouth watered at the memory, but my stomach didn’t make so much as a peep. The good news about being dead was I could probably eat whatever I wanted and not get fat. Finding food that I could touch, and therefore eat, might be tricky, though. Something else to ask Killian about when he decided to rejoin the land of the living … or wherever we were.
Mumbling under her breath like a true psychopath-in-training, Joonie slowed about midway down the block, pulling into the gravel driveway of a cute but worn-looking brown one-story house, with white shutters and a red door. The garage, almost as big as the house, stood off to the right. A rusted and bent basketball hoop hung over the dented and battered door.
I braced myself against the Bug’s side window, which felt surprisingly solid given my previous experience passing through metal and glass, and wiggled out from under Killian. His head hit the seat with a muffled thump.
“Thank God,” I muttered, though, honestly, standing half crouched in the backseat of a VW Bug was no picnic, either.
Joonie slowed the car to a crawl, pulling behind the house. Uncomfortable and impatient, I shuffled around, taking tiny steps on the floor, until I faced the passenger-side door. I stepped forward, fully prepared to do the whole cold tingly passing through solid objects thing … and my elbow caught on the headrest of the passenger seat.
“The car is not solid, the car is not solid,” I repeated over and over again. But the plastic, metal, and let’s face it, probably asbestos, held me back just as it would have if I’d attempted this in my prebus days.
Joonie jerked the gearshift into park, popped open her door, and jumped out of her seat, flipping it forward to be able to reach Killian.
“Will.” She leaned into the car, bracing her hand on the edge of the seat, and shook him gently. “Come on. Let’s go.”
My knee connected solidly to the side of the car, shaking the whole thing. I stumbled back, clutching my knee. Only my superior balance and coordination kept me from falling onto the seat and Killian.
“Dammit,” I shouted. “What is going on here?” I put my foot down, wincing as my now sore knee bent — yeah, still dead and yet I felt pain, where was the fairness in that? — and turned to find Joonie staring wide-eyed at the car as it bounced on its crappy-ass shocks from my movement.
“Hello?” she said in faint voice. What little color she had drained from her face. Great. If she thought her car was haunted or possessed or something, she’d probably never get in it again to leave Killian’s house.
“Boo,” I said sourly.
She didn’t budge, just continued to look around, her dark eye makeup and pale face making her look like a frightened albino raccoon. I sighed.
“Not so loud,” Killian groaned without opening his eyes.
Frowning, Joonie turned her attention back to him. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
“Home,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, you’re home.” She leaned over and grabbed his arms. Then, bracing her feet against the ground, she pulled him into a seated position and then with another great tug, she yanked him to his feet.
I thought for sure he’d fall and take her with him — he was, like, a foot taller than her — but they seemed to have this routine down. He stumbled forward but managed to stand while she shifted to the side of him, pulling his arm over her shoulders. Aw, she was like a little safety-pin-encrusted crutch.
After Joonie took a quick look around at the surrounding houses — yeah, check now that you’re already out of the car and
Thank God she’d left the car door open. Otherwise, I might have been stuck in there forever. Amazing how I just kept finding new circles of hell.
I stepped out onto the driveway, relieved to be free and breathing (or whatever) fresh air, and followed them at a leisurely pace. At the door, there seemed to be some confusion about the key, which key, who has the key, something that had Joonie first digging in her pockets and then — ew — Killian’s.
So … more waiting. Seriously, is there anything to the afterlife, or whatever this is, besides waiting? With a sigh, I leaned against the side of the house … and fell straight through.
Wood siding, drywall, and — was that a piano? — flashed by in a cold rush. I landed on the floor — this awful brown and cream marbled carpeting — with a thump I felt but couldn’t hear. Stunned, I lay there for a second, staring up at the black upright piano and my legs stuck in the middle of it.
Clearly, this business of walking through walls and such was a lot more complicated than I’d first thought. How come I could fall into the freaking house by accident, but I couldn’t step out of the car, no matter how hard I concentrated? It made no sense.
Unless it didn’t always have to do with me. Maybe it was something else completely. Like, maybe because the house was wood, not metal like the car, the molecules were farther apart and I could slip through more easily or something … I had no idea. Just one more thing I had to figure out.
With a grimace, I curled my legs up toward my chest, half expecting to feel the wall and piano scrape my skin. But it didn’t hurt.
Once all of me was in the house, I rolled to my side and got to my feet. I brushed myself off — again, not strictly necessary, but comforting somehow — and took a look around. Definitely the living room. There was no television, heavy curtains covered the big picture window on the other side of the room, and a feeling of emptiness and nonuse filled the room. Cheap silver-colored photo frames covered the top of the piano. One man, who looked just like Killian only way older, dominated the spread. His father, probably. He looked significantly less dark, twisty, and cloudlike in these pictures.
On my left, two dark wood bookcases held a variety of delicate-looking tea cups and ceramic figurines with a few hardbound books for decoration. On my right, a barf-ugly but perfectly preserved peach-and-teal-plaid sofa from, like, 1993 occupied the wall. Next to it were two matching swinging doors with that awful cheap wood louvering. They were closed, but they appeared to be the only way out of the room.
As if to confirm that fact, I heard a commotion through the wooden slats, a sudden thump-stumble and the jingle of keys, and figured that Killian and Joonie had finally made it through the back door, into whatever room lay behind the swinging doors.
I strode toward the doors but stopped just short of trying to walk through them. If they turned out to be solid and I came busting through, Joonie would definitely see it. Not me, but the doors opening. While it might scare her off, she struck me more as the type who’d stick around and demand an explanation from Killian, which I so did not want. So, I waited until their unique shuffle-drag sounded farther away. Then I reached out for the doors and my hand slipped right through. Perfect.
The rest of me followed my hand without an issue, and I made it into what turned out to be the kitchen — bright orange paint and HUGE orange flowers on the wallpaper;was somebody color-blind? I mean, seriously — just in time to see Killian and Joonie stumbling out another doorway on the other side of the room.
I followed at a distance, turning right out of the kitchen into a tiny hall. Three doors led out of the hall, not including the kitchen. That was it. This was NOT one of those houses that looked bigger on the inside than it did from the outside.
Ahead of me, Joonie and Killian chose door number two, which turned out to be, no surprise, Killian’s room. It wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I expected. No moldy food laying around or gothlike black paint or Marilyn Manson posters. Just a normal-looking guy bedroom: off-white walls, beige carpeting, blue-and-green-plaid curtains to match the blue-and-green-plaid flannel comforter and sheets on the twin bed. One of those cheap, assemble-it- yourself bookcases, crammed full of books and comics, stood next to the left of the bed. A matching nightstand was on the right. Across from the foot of the bed, a battered-looking desk held more books, and the desk chair, turned to face away from the desk, was covered with several layers of black T-shirts and raggedy-looking jeans.
