“And did you want your crush to see you all like that, gross and ugly?”
“No,” I said, closing the notebook. “But they did anyway.”
“What are you talking about? The only one that saw you was me. You wouldn’t even let your mom in—” Katie paused. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have a confession of my own. Since we’re being honest.”
“What is it?” Katie asked. Her voice was breathy, like she was nervous.
“I love you, too.”
“Really?” she smiled, floating higher into the air. He blue glow shined brighter as she rose toward the ceiling.
“Really,” I said. “I’ve never loved anybody more in my entire life.”
“Wow.” Katie smiled sadly. “I guess we should have said something when I was alive.”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
Katie settled down onto the ground. “So, do you believe me now?”
“How can I not?” I said. “I mean, if you had ever said anything about this I would have been over the moon. I don’t know how I believe you, but I do.”
“It’s about time,” Katie said. “Now, we have work to do.”
I looked up. “What kind of work?”
“We have to save the world.”
I stood up and walked toward the door. “Let’s go save the world then, I guess.”
“Wait,” Katie said. “Put down the notebook.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, holding it to my chest. “Can’t I just read through it a little bit more?”
“No,” Katie said. “Put it back, and never look at it again.”
I sighed and stuffed the book back under the bed. “Fine, but I’m not happy about it.”
“Well, I’m dead, and I’m not happy about that either. We can’t get what we want, can we?”
“I guess not. Okay. I’m putting it back, but, if I do that, you have to do something for me.”
“What?”
I cleared my throat. “Stay out of my head.”
“Oh, but I like it in there.”
“I’m serious. I don’t like you hearing my thoughts any more than you like me reading yours.”
“All right,” Katie said, nodding her head. “You have a deal. I don’t like it.”
I looked back to her bed, where the diary stuffed with secrets was hidden. “That makes two of us.”
“Come with me,” Katie said with a smile, and she floated out of the room. I didn’t know where she was going, but I knew I would follow her to the ends of the Earth.
Chapter 12
“Where are we going?” I asked as Katie led me down our street.
She glanced over her shoulder. “I have something to show you.”
I followed behind her until she reached the edge of the woods at the end of our street. We used to play in those woods all the time. There were frogs to catch, leaf piles to jump in, and one summer my father even built us a tire swing that swung out over the creek running through the middle of the woods.
“It’s in here,” Katie said. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. “I’m with you.”
I knew I might be out of my mind to believe I was following a ghost, but she had told me something I didn’t know before. That meant she couldn’t be a hallucination of my own mind. She told me that she loved me, really loved me. My heart started to flutter thinking how much I loved her, too.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, walking through the woods.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Katie replied.
“You were dealing with a lot, and I didn’t want to add something else to your plate. Besides, if you were going to reject me, I didn’t want it to get awkward.”
“What made you think I would reject you?”
I stepped over a log, only able to see it in the dark because of Katie’s glowing blue aura. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard enough being a human when you like boys, and stuff. Liking girls, and your best friend on top of it. That’s extra levels of awkward.”
Katie turned back to me. “I wish you had told me.”
“Well, yeah. I wish I did, too, knowing what I know now. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Katie stopped and hovered in place. “I didn’t want to know the truth. If you didn’t like me, then I might have lost my best friend. And if you did, well, I didn’t want you to have to deal with a dead girlfriend. It’s hard enough dealing with a dead friend.”
“But we would have had those few months together. That would have made it all worth it.”
“Maybe, but now, you would have to deal with losing me, not just friend me, but…I didn’t want you to have to go through that.”
I walked toward Katie’s floating ghost. “That’s so stupid.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s my reasoning though, stupid or not.”
I wanted to touch her, to hug her, but when I reached my arm out, my hand fell right through her. She wasn’t wrong. Knowing that she had loved me made it feel like I had lost her all over again; harder still was knowing that we could have been together, and we were too scared to say the words to each other.
“Yeah,” Katie said, watching me return my hand to my side. “We can’t, like, touch. That makes this even more awkward. I think we should just move on from what we said to each other and figure out how to save the world.”
“So just not talk about it?” I asked.
“At least not right now,” Katie said, floating forward through the woods again.
“Fair enough. This is all really weird, and I don’t know if I can handle being in love with a ghost right now. I can barely handle losing my best friend. Let’s focus on why you’re here then. Why are you here?”
“I’m here to save your world.”
“Yes, you’ve said that…can you be a little more specific?”
“It’s a little complicated, but I’ll try. There is a rift between your world and mine. A barrier that separates the living and the dead. We call that the Dark Place.”
“Because it’s dark?”
Katie nodded. “It’s so
