The Ghost and the Goth

I took a tentative sniff of the air. It smelled like fresh laundry and boy in here. Not sweaty, old-gym-socks boy smell, but that good clean scent I sometimes used to catch when I kissed Chris’s neck and he’d forgotten to put on his cologne.

Not that Will Killian smelled good. No, no, no. I wasn’t saying that. Just that his room did.

“Here.” Joonie helped Killian toward the bed, and he practically fell face-first onto it.

“Thanks, J,” he said, sounding muffled by the pillow.

Oh, God, I hoped he didn’t suffocate. Then again, that might make this conversation happen more quickly.

I tapped my foot, waiting for Joonie to leave, but she just stood there, still breathing hard from the effort of moving him, and watched him. Yeah, because that’s not creepy or anything.

The sound of Killian’s deep even breathing — not quite snoring, but certainly not that almost silent, barely there breaths he’d been taking before — filled the room. Still, she did not leave.

She tugged at one of the piercings in her lip, like a nervous twitch or something, and I winced.

“I have to go,” she said finally, speaking to Killian’s sleeping backside. “If I miss PE again, Higgins will fail me and I won’t graduate. And you know”—she gave a weird little laugh—“I have to get out of that house.”

Okay, descending to new levels of freakiness here.

“I need you to be honest with me, Will. I think you’re lying to me, trying to protect me.”

A tiny ping sounded, and I looked down in time to see one of her safety pins skitter across the hardwood floor. Gross.

“You have to tell the truth,” she said, sounding close to tears. Blood now dotted her lip where the safety pin she’d been playing with had escaped. “Otherwise, this is never going to work, and I need this to work. Okay?”

I groaned. “Have some pride, will you? Begging someone to like you is so pathetic. Begging for Killian to like you is … I don’t even have a word for how sad that is.”

“I do love you, you know.” She sniffed and wiped under her eyes, her finger coming away black with eyeliner. “I’m sorry that you got hurt.”

“Be glad you’re sleeping,” I told Killian. “I wish I was.”

Fortunately, that last declaration seemed to end Joonie’s need for dramatic and imploring speeches. She took a deep breath, nodded, and with one last look at Killian, she finally left. A few seconds later, I heard the back door shut.

I dropped into the desk chair, exhausted. All of this to have a conversation alone with someone I didn’t even like. Being dead sucked.

6 Will

The familiar pattern of yellowed water stains on my bedroom ceiling greeted me when I opened my eyes. Home. Safe and in bed, if the soft comfort beneath me was any indication. I had vague memories of stumbling to and from Joonie’s car with her support, but not much more than that. Encounters with the twisted and ghostly remains of my dad always left me weak, drained, like he absorbed energy from me. Add to that whatever damage Grandpa Brewster and the others had inflicted first and …

Grandpa Brewster. Principal Brewster. Expelled. Each word triggered the next, like a series of lights clicking on in sequence until the whole picture was revealed. A sense of horror dawned inside me. I’d ditched school — albeit for a good reason, not that that would matter — less than an hour after Brewster threatened me with expulsion. Expulsion meant a call to my mother, who would in turn call Dr. Miller, and by this afternoon, it would be, “Welcome to Ivythorne Psychatric Hospital, Mr. Killian.”

“Shit.” I bolted into an upright position and sagged not five seconds later when my head gave a ferocious throb and darkness crowded the edge of my vision. Too fast, too fast.

“Finally. Do I need to ask you what year it is, who’s president, that kind of thing?” a strangly familiar voice demanded. More than a hint of imperiousness colored her tone, so definitely not Joonie, and—

“Because you have been acting all kinds of freaky. Not”—she sniffed—“that that’s anything new for you.”

“No. No, no, no, no.” This was not happening. I refused to believe it, but my eyes opened of their own accord. My vision cleared enough to reveal Alona Dare, the Alona Dare, as she probably referred to herself, sitting in my desk chair atop layers of clean laundry, her sleek cheerleader legs drawn up against her chest. She looked paler than usual. Not altogether surprising for someone who was, in fact, dead.

“You’re here.”

She scowled. “You don’t have to get pissy about it. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here.”

“Good. Go away.” The clock on my desk said 11:33. I’d lost more than three hours. Plenty of time for Pederson to report in to Brewster and Brewster to make the call to my mother. The only reason I was still here was because Sam, my mom’s boss at the diner, didn’t let her keep her cell phone on her while she worked. Mainly because he knew she’d be calling to check on me every five minutes. I had the diner number if there was a real emergency, and Sam’s “rule” gave me some semblance of normality and freedom. I liked him for that.

“Is this any way to treat someone who just saved your life?” Alona demanded.

“He wasn’t going to kill me. Not yet,” I said grimly. “He was just … making a point.” I stood up slowly, waiting for the rush of dizziness to pass, and the rest of her words sank in. “You saved my life? What planet are you living on?”

“Exactly. That would be the question.” She nodded with satisfaction.

I stared at her. “Sorry, maybe this is the head injury talking, but … what?” She opened her mouth to answer, and I shook my head. “Never mind. Forget it. I can’t do this right now.” My mom’s shift ended at noon. She’d be on the phone checking messages at 12:01. Figure ten minutes to get a hold of Dr. Miller and explain the situation, twenty minutes or so for them both to drive over here from town … yeah, I had probably about forty-five minutes of freedom left. Plenty of time.

Right.

I knelt beside my bed, careful to keep my head level, and felt for my duffel bag behind the dust ruffle my mother had insisted on to hide my version of storage — otherwise known as, cram everything under the bed and hope you don’t need it again anytime soon. I had to leave for a few days. Let things calm down. Wait until I could talk to my mom alone … and try to figure out a way, again, to explain what had happened without telling the truth. Erickson’s parents, both lawyers, were always gone. I could crash there for a few days and they probably wouldn’t even notice. Hell, Erickson might not even notice.

“I’m serious, Killian.” Alona kicked her legs out and stood up. The chair, which was wobbly and on wheels, didn’t even wiggle. She must have been out of range.

Despite the fact that I should have been concentrating on finding my stupid bag and getting out of there, I watched her come closer, sort of hypnotized by the movement of her long, tanned legs.

“Where, exactly, am I? How come you can see and hear me? Am I dead, alive, somewhere in between? Am I stuck here for good? How do I make the white light come for me? Where’s the food?” She ticked off the questions on her fingers as she approached.

I shook my head to clear it. “It’s hard to believe, but I think you were less annoying when you were alive. Did you not hear me say I can’t talk to you now? Go haunt somebody else.” My fingers closed over the edge of a strap, and I yanked the bag out, bringing a cloud of dust along with it.

“Trust me, I’d find someone else if I could. You’re just mad because I never talked to you when I was alive.”

“Yeah, the waves of regret are washing over me.” I started to stand but had to stop on one knee, brace my hand against the side of the mattress, and close my eyes again. The sudden change in position made my head swim. Another twenty-four hours to sleep, which I didn’t have, and I’d be fully recovered, if my previous experiences were any indicator. I’d seen my father, rather what was left of him, ten or twelve times in the last eight months, ever since that night at St. Catherine’s after Lily’s accident, when I told my mom and Joonie I was leaving after graduation. He’d been pronounced dead at that hospital, and I guess some part of him still remained.