The Ghost and the Goth

She stood up and started for my door.

“What are you going to do about Dr. Miller?”

She looked weary suddenly. “I don’t know. You’re not going back there. I guess I need to report him to someone, and get a recommendation for another doctor.” Except Miller had been the most affordable option out there and the only one with an immediate opening for a new client on a regular basis. Now, maybe we knew why that was.

What an asshole. I wished I could have seen his face when he got a load of Alona’s handiwork. That was actually a fairly clever move on her part for one so newly dead. I was beginning to suspect that she hid a fairly sizable intelligence beneath her pretty face and bitchy attitude. Granted, it was an intelligence directed mostly toward popularity contests, backstabbing, and self-promotion, but intelligence just the same. Her move against Miller, whether for my benefit or her own amusement, had given me the reprieve I needed. It would take a few weeks, maybe even a month, to line up another psychiatrist, barring any more major incidents like the one yesterday, and I had a plan, maybe, to handle those, if Alona would agree. I felt pretty sure I could come up with an incentive to make that happen.

I shoved back the covers and got out of bed, feeling better than I had since before my dad died.

My mother’s mouth fell open. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“School. You talked to Brewster so I could get back in, right?” I crossed the room to rifle through the laundry on the chair and the pieces that had spilled over onto the floor, thanks to Alona, searching for a clean T-shirt and boxers.

“William, you don’t have to prove anything—” she began gently.

“Mom, I’m fine. I can do this.” I did a quick sniff test under the arms of my favorite black T-shirt. It said in plain block letters across the front, there is no spoon. No one else got it, but it worked for me, reminding me that reality was always up for question.

“What about Marcie? Your music?” She frowned. “Brewster gave you an in-school suspension for the rest of this week.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have a plan.” Technically, I had bribery, and a dead homecoming queen who wanted my help. Close enough.

I doubled back to kiss my startled mother on the cheek and then headed for the shower.

Alona Dare died during zero hour on the Henderson Street yellow centerline, just twenty feet or so from the edge of school property. Zero hour was notoriously easy to skip, particularly if you put in the effort to show up in the first place, as Alona had that day.

Rumors continued to fly about why she’d come to school only to leave again, in such a hurry that she didn’t bother to look both ways. Some people said she never looked where she was going, expecting everyone and everything to get out of her way. So, it wasn’t so much an accident as her arrogance that had done her in. I suspected those people were seeking to make sense of the world by turning her into a cautionary tale, the lesson being, Look both ways. And don’t be such a bitch.

Other people whispered about suicide, pointing to her boyfriend, Chris Zebrowski, who was already tangling tongues with Misty Evans, Alona’s best friend. A subset of this same group claimed to have witnessed a private showdown between Misty and Alona that left Alona running from the building.

Either way, the result was the same. Alona was dead, Chris and Misty were publicly hooking up an indecently short amount of time after Alona’s funeral, and the population of Groundsboro High had something to gossip and whisper about for at least another few weeks.

I pulled the Dodge over to the side of the road on Henderson, next to the tennis courts, flipped the hazard lights on, and waited. Alona hadn’t committed suicide, I knew that. The girl had enough arrogance and self-esteem to choke a horse. She had, however, died a violent and unnatural death, which probably meant she was still tied to the exact place of her death. In this case, the middle of Henderson Street. Even though the bloodstains had long been scrubbed away, something of Alona likely remained, calling her back here over and over again at the time of her death. As a bonus, I’d only have to wait a few minutes to see if I was right.

Cars en route to the high school went by, people staring out the windows at me as they passed. Whatever. By now, they’d probably heard about what happened yesterday, and they were probably staring as much for that as for me sitting here. Still, I rolled down my window and pulled my cell phone from my front pocket and held it in my hand to give me the air of authenticity. Waiting in my broken-down car for a tow, that’s me.

“Hey, Will Kill.”

I looked up automatically, responding to that stupid nickname someone in the first tier had tagged me with.

Ben Rogers hung his head out the open window of his Land Rover. “Classes are held inside the building, freak.”

I smiled tightly, my cheeks hurting with the effort. “Really? Thanks a lot.” Dickwad. For the millionth time, I wondered what Lily had found so fascinating about him and his kind.

Someone behind Rogers, waiting to turn into the school parking lot, laid on the horn.

Looking disgruntled at my lack of reaction, Ben pulled his head back in and accelerated abruptly, his tires screeching when he rounded the corner into the parking lot.

“God, I hate it when he does that.” Alona’s voice suddenly sounded next to my ear, and I jumped. “What does he think this is, The Dukes of Hazzard ? He is so not Johnny Knoxville.”

I turned to find her in my passenger seat. She stretched her arms over her head with a big yawn, seemingly unconcerned at her sudden and unexpected arrival.

“What are you doing in here?” I demanded. “You died out there.” I jerked my thumb back toward the road.

She lowered her arms and glared at me. “Thank you, Mr. Obvious. How should I know? Yesterday, whenever I disappeared, I kept waking up in your room. Like that wasn’t a pain in the ass.” She rolled her eyes. “I had to keep walking everywhere. Also? You snore.”

I gaped at her. “What are you talking about?”

She ignored me. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked with a frown. “I thought you’d be tugging at your chains in the crazy house by now.”

I held my breath and counted to five before responding. This was just who Alona was. She didn’t mean to be demeaning and … actually, yeah, she did. “You helped me, I came to say thanks,” I said through gritted teeth.

She frowned again. “You mean scaring off the chin-rubber?”

I raised my eyebrows, confused, until she furrowed her brow and nodded in mock thoughtfulness while her hand came up to support her chin, the top two fingers tapping just below her lower lip.

Startled by her cleverness once again, I shook my head with a reluctant smile. “Chin-rubber, yeah.”

She nodded. “He’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

I grimaced. “We found the papers about his book. You left those for us?”

“He’s skeevy.” She lifted a shoulder. “Figured you might want to know about it.”

“Thanks,” I said cautiously. So, she’d actually done me a favor? Maybe she wasn’t quite as bad as she seemed. Maybe.

She heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah, you’re welcome, I guess.” Her head drooping, she slumped down in her seat and stretched her long legs out in front of her.

I cleared my throat, trying to drag my eyes away from the sight. What can I say? I’m a leg man. “What’s the matter?”

“Aside from the obvious?” She threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know. I thought I had it figured out yesterday.”

“Had what figured out?”

“The afterlife. What I’m supposed to do to … move on, find the light, whatever.” She waved her hands dramatically.

“And that is?” It didn’t bode well for my plan if she’d found her own way to fix her situation. I’d have no value to her then, and Alona Dare did not do favors. At least, I wouldn’t have thought so until today.

A horn honked and Alona automatically looked up, a smile starting to form and her hand lifting to wave … until she realized they couldn’t see her. The smile disappeared and her hand fell back to her lap. “This bites,” she muttered.