The Ghost and the Goth

Apparently, he was not happy with my decision to leave. Not surprising, given that the last time I’d ever spoken to him, he’d made me promise to take care of my mother. I hadn’t realized at the time, of course, that he meant in place of him, forever. It had been just a regular Monday morning. He’d kissed my mother good-bye and told me to take care of her, just as he always did. Then he’d driven three miles away to a railroad crossing that hadn’t been upgraded yet with lights and barriers, parked on the tracks, and waited. He’d worked for the Southfolk Northern train line for the last year and half, making repairs, so he’d known the train schedule and that the engineer wouldn’t be able to stop in time.

Sometimes, right after it happened, I tried to imagine what he was thinking while he was waiting there. Then I realized I didn’t want to know.

“Hello? Earth to Killian?” I heard Alona moving around, and then suddenly, the foot of my bed sank with her weight. “Whoa,” she whispered. “That’s weird.” She was quiet for one blissful second. Then she started up again. “Did you know that sometimes—”

“When you’re near me, within a few feet, you have weight and substance again.” I opened my eyes again and forced myself to stand up the rest of the way. “Everything responds to you as though you were alive and in your physical body again. Yeah, I know.” I dropped my bag on the bed beside her and unzipped it.

She gaped at me. “You’re doing that? How? And it’s not that much weight,” she added rather testily.

I shook my head. “My God, you’re just as shallow as ever. Even dying didn’t change you.”

“Does it change most people?” She curled her slim legs up under herself, her perfect toenails painted some bright girlie color between red and pink. “From what I saw today, it seems more like it freeze-dries them in place, making them just like who they were before they died.”

I frowned. That was a relatively decent observation. Maybe she wasn’t as dumb as I’d thought. I moved carefully, in deference to my head, around the bed to the desk chair to grab a couple handfuls of clothing.

She glanced from the bag to me and back again with mild interest. “Where are we going?”

“We aren’t going anywhere.” I returned to the bed and jammed the clothes into my bag.

“Really?” She stretched her legs out full length on my bed — my bed! — pushing aside my bag with one shapely and toned thigh. I swallowed hard.

“That is so cool,” she said in wonderment, more to herself than me.

“Alona—” I began.

She leaned back on her elbows. “Look, here’s the way I see it, Killian. You can either help me out and tell me what I want to know, or I can just follow you around everywhere.” She gave me that fake sweet smile I’d seen her use so often at school. Her gaze stayed as sharp and merciless as ever. “It’ll be so nice to have someone to talk to, twenty-four hours a day. You know, I don’t sleep anymore. At least, I don’t think I do. I’ve never really—”

I groaned. “All right, all right.” I did owe her something. She’d dispatched Grandpa B., Liesel and Eric, and the rest of them with surprising efficiency. Of course, nothing stood in Alona’s way when there was something she wanted. One advantage to being a social leper — it afforded me plenty of time for uninterrupted observation. From what I’d witnessed, Alona Dare was single-minded, determined, and ruthless. If high school was a zoo, she was the lioness running the hunt on the hapless tourists who’d wandered into the wrong enclosure.

She studied people, learned their weak spots. And then she pounced, offering sweet smiles and fluttering eyelashes, or biting comments and a raised eyebrow of disgust, whatever was most effective. It worked, too. People caved and cowered. Some pretended not to care, but they were back at her table, begging for scraps in a matter of weeks. The fact was, unless you were Misty Evans — her best friend and the only seeming exception to Alona’s all-powerful reign — you bowed and scraped and got the hell out of her way.

It was disgusting. And yet, some part of me admired her for it. Knowing what you want and that you’ll get it if you push hard enough — even money couldn’t buy that kind of confidence. Of course, I’d also heard countless tales of innocent bystanders eviscerated by Alona’s particular brand of “charm.” A good thing to keep in mind.

I checked the clock again. “You have ten minutes,” I told her.

“Deal.” She sat up again swiftly, tucking her legs underneath her again. I wondered if she’d stretched them out deliberately to get my attention. I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Okay, first question.” She steepled her fingers. “Why are you the way you are? Why can you see and hear me and nobody else can?”

That was an easy one. “I don’t know.”

She gave me a withering look. “You must have some idea. I mean, seriously, you have all these books about dying and weird stuff.” She swept her hand toward my bookcase. She’d been snooping around my room? Great. “They must say something, and I know you’ve got at least a theory.”

“What makes you think that?” I felt slightly flattered that she would think so.

She shrugged and flipped her glossy hair behind her shoulders. “What else do you have to do with your time besides think about stuff like this? It’s not like you’re real heavy into extracurriculars. Besides, you’re all, like, goth and into the dead, right?”

Alona Dare, queen of the insult-compliment. “Wow. Thanks. Anyone ever tell you you’re good with people?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Good. I’m not goth.”

“Your hair is black, you have piercings, you wear black all the time and act all freaky—”

“My hair is naturally this color. I have three earrings in one ear, that’s it. This shirt”—I tugged at the fabric across my chest—“is navy blue, and if I act weird all the time, it’s because of ghosts like you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Killian, whatever. So, you’re not a goth. Don’t be such a baby … and don’t call me a ghost,” she added with a scowl.

“Why not?”

“Hello? Do you see a bedsheet and chains on me?” She gestured dramatically to herself.

That brought to mind all kinds of other, nonghostly images … I shook my head to clear those thoughts away. “What would you prefer, then? Living-impaired?”

She sighed. “Just shut up and explain your theory already, okay?”

“Fine.” I sat down on the opposite end of the bed. If she was going to make me go through all this, I wanted to save my strength for getting out of here when our “talk” was done. “The best way I can figure it is this: the living occupy a dimension, a particular location in time and space, right?

When you die, your energy transitions out of that dimension into another one.” I paused. “You are familiar with the idea of different dimensions, right?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” she lied, shifting a little uneasily.

The bed wiggled in response to her movement, reminding me once more that the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life was in my bedroom, on my bed, just feet from me. Shimmery hair, full mouth, long graceful neck, and was that lace beneath the tread mark and her almost-see-through white gym shirt?

Of course, unlike the occasional fantasy I’d entertained, she was dead and we were talking about the afterlife and different dimensions instead of her batting her eyelashes and pouting while she offered to do “anything” if I helped her pass her English final. Still, the similarity was a little mind-blowing.

“Killian?” She waved her hand to catch my attention. “Are you spazzing out or what?”

Back to reality. My chances with Alona Dare, dead or alive, were about the same, somewhere in the negatives. I cleared my throat. “The dimensions overlap a little bit, I think, and when people die, sometimes they get stuck in between. Like this.” I reached back and rummaged through my nightstand drawer for a piece of paper and something to write with. I came up with a receipt for the latest Manhunter and a decades-old broken stub of a pencil. Good enough.

I drew two entwined circles and labeled all the pieces appropriately.

I handed her the receipt. “Does that help?”

She studied it intently for a long moment before raising her gaze to meet mine with a frown. “So, you’re saying I’m stuck here.” She held up the receipt and tapped at it. “In between. Like purgatory.”

I held up my hands. “I don’t do religion.” I’d seen enough dead people of all religions and no religion to know