The Ghost and the Goth

foot, followed closely by the rest of me, smacked solidly into metal and plastic. “Ouch.” I reached for the car door handle.

“Becca Stanhope.”

I stopped, my fingers wrapped around the metal handle. “The fat …” I paused and rolled my eyes. “Big-boned girl from pre-calc who wears the baggy sweaters? What does she have to do with anything?” I tossed a triumphant look over my shoulder at Killian. “She came to my funeral, and she cried.”

“Probably with relief because you were dead and wouldn’t be bothering her anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You made her cry.”

It took me a second to remember what he was talking about. I’d said something to the her, I didn’t even remember what. Only that she’d run from the room, crying, her sweater flapping behind her. “Once, and that was, like, months ago.”

He gave me an accusing look. “You told her she should buy her clothes in the right size.”

“So?” I shrugged, feeling surprisingly defensive. “She should. There are plenty of cute things in the plus-size section. It just takes a little effort and—”

“Her grandmother makes her those sweaters.”

“Her grandmother should know better. It’s like she’s trying to make the girl look even worse.” I frowned. “How do you know that? About the grandma sweaters, I mean?”

“Because she cried every day at the end of PE when she was getting dressed for her next class. Pre-calc,” he said flatly.

“You’ve taken to spying in the girls’ locker room, Killian? I didn’t think you were that desperate.” My comeback lacked punch. The image of Becca Stanhope sobbing in the aisles of the girls’ locker room made my conscience twinge. I hadn’t necessarily meant to be cruel. It just bugged me how little people cared about themselves and how they were perceived. You don’t care what the world thinks? Fine, but don’t expect the world to accept and applaud you solely for that fact.

“Joonie has class with her. She told me,” Killian said in that lofty voice of the morally superior. He sounded like Father Rankin.

“I’m sure Becca and Joonie are close friends, right?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Joonie probably went right over, gave her a big hug, and told her it was going to be okay.” Becca wasn’t in my lunch hour, so I had no idea where she sat, but based on the look of her, I’d guess the fourth or fifth tier of caf tables, probably floating between the band geeks and the Spanish club. Nowhere near the courtyard full of burners like Joonie and Killian.

Killian looked away. “She overheard Becca telling Mrs. Higgins.”

“Yeah, see, you and your friends exclude people, too.” Actually, Becca probably would never have spoken to Joonie anyway, so it was more of a mutual exclusion, but my point was the same. Everyone does it.

Killian shook his head. “We’re not deliberately mean.”

I gaped at him. “I’m not—”

“Joey Torres,” he said immediately, as if he’d just been waiting for me to deny it.

“Pizza-faced Joe?” I frowned.

Killian winced. Whatever. I didn’t give Joey that nickname. “He asked you out, and you made fun of his skin. He had to transfer schools because of you.”

“That’s what people are saying?” I asked incredulous.

He arched an eyebrow. “That’s not what happened?”

“First of all, I had a boyfriend at the time, which he knew.”

“Not everyone keeps up with the minute details of your social life.”

“Fine, then he should have known. Isn’t the first rule of asking someone out — make sure they’re single?”

“You’re saying you would have gone out with him if you didn’t have a boyfriend?”

I shuddered. “Of course not. He is so not my type.”

“Why, because he sits at the wrong cafeteria table?” Killian sneered.

“No, because he dresses up as a storm trooper on the weekend,” I snapped. “He invited me to some kind of sci-fi convention thing.”

Killian looked startled.

“The point is,” I continued, “it doesn’t matter. He asked me out, knowing I had a boyfriend, and hoping he could count on guilt or pity to force me into going. I said no, that’s it.”

He shook his head. “You are a piece of work.”

Now I was getting angry. What was this, Beat Up on Alona Day? Someone should have told my mother she’d created a new holiday. “Oh yeah, how is your good friend Joey doing now?”

“What do you mean?”

“He goes to St. Viator, right? In town?”

Killian shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know.”

“I do.” I sounded smug, and I didn’t care. “I saw him at a basketball game a few months ago when we played their team. His skin was clear, and he had his arms around a cute little nerdette, very early Jennifer Garner, as a matter of fact.”

“You take credit for that, I see.”

“Of course not. I was just honest with him and said no. The world is cruel, Killian, and you should know that better than anyone. People don’t get jobs if they show up looking sloppy. Having physical flaws doesn’t mean you should rely on pity for dates. Just because your life doesn’t automatically work out the way you want it doesn’t mean you get to give up and expect the rest of the world to work around you. You have to play within the system to win.”

“Says the girl with the perfect face, the perfect body, the perfect life …” he intoned.

I should have been pleased that he’d bought into my image; I’d spent years cultivating it and countless, exhausting hours refining and tweaking it, buying just the right clothes, planning just the right thing to say, making it look effortless. But instead, I felt this wave of fury building in my chest. He was going to judge me? Like all this so-called perfection just fell in my lap and I should have been more grateful or something?

“Let’s go,” I snapped. “Drive.” It was still early. My mother would probably still be passed out. The empty vodka bottles I’d painstakingly arranged yesterday into the word STOP on the floor would still be in place. Let him get a good whiff of my perfect life.

He gave me a confused look. “Drive where? We’re already here. And”—he checked his cell phone with a grimace—“ten minutes late. Brewster’s going to kill me.”

I reached over and yanked the gearshift down one notch into reverse, and metal on metal shrieked.

Alarmed, he jammed his foot onto the brake. “Alona! The transmission is not—”

“You want perfect?” I said in flat voice I barely recognized as my own. “I’ll show you perfect.”

10 Will

I’d never seen this side of Alona Dare, and to be honest, it was kind of freaking me out. She’d been silent — other than giving me directions on where to turn — and still, except for her foot jouncing against the floorboards, since we’d left the school parking lot. I’d never realized how much of her was movement, energy, and life — even after death — until seeing her this way.

I turned into a cul-de-sac lined with sprawling brick houses and huge yards. Ben Rogers lived somewhere over here. We weren’t far from where Lily had … had her accident. This was definitely not my side of town.

“Now what?” I asked. I let the car roll forward slowly, hoping it looked like we were lost and checking addresses.

Probably wouldn’t take much for people in this neighborhood to call the cops. One shabby-looking car doing