I ended up sitting on the floor in my secret bathroom on the second floor. The place that only Katie and I knew about, so I wasn’t surprised that she found me there after I locked the door.
“I’m sorry,” Katie said. “I was just trying to have fun.”
“This is not normal,” I said, leaning my head back against the wall. “If anybody finds out that I’m talking to you…I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me, okay?”
“I won’t do it again,” Katie said, floating down next to me as I curled myself in a ball on the floor. “But I do think Samantha can help.”
“Of course you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Katie asked, slightly offended.
“You always see the good in people, okay? Even when they abandoned you, you never got mad at them or anything. You just thought everybody was the best.”
“That’s because everybody is the best,” Katie replied.
“Your friends didn’t come to your funeral, you know? Nobody came, except for like ten people.”
“So what? I didn’t go to it, either. Why should they be expected to go and be bummed out?”
“How can you be so cool about the fact nobody came to your funeral?”
“I had a lot of time to think about death while I was dying. One of the nice things about being terminal is that it allows you to get your house in order. I made peace with it.”
I pushed myself up from the ground. “There you go, looking at the positive in all of this again.”
“And you’re looking at the negative. That’s why we need Samantha. She’s like our neutral, like a neuron. She can help balance us out. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Besides she’s kind of cute, okay? Sue me.”
I laughed. “Fine, but if I get committed, you’re stuck haunting me forever.”
“Deal,” Katie said. “But if you get committed, we have failed, and the whole world is doomed. So don’t get committed, okay?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
The lunch bell rang as I was walking back to the cafeteria and I managed to catch up with Samantha on her way to class.
“All right,” I said.
“That’s weird. Did you think I would know what you were thinking when you walked up to me, weirdo? I’m going to need more than ‘all right.’”
I wrung my hands as I walked. “I’m sorry I ran out so fast.”
Samantha nodded. “That’s a start.”
“I’m weird.”
“I know.”
“If you want to know what I know, and why I’m being even extra weird right now, then you have to come with me after school.”
“Are you going to murder me?”
“No,” I said. “But I am going to lead you into the woods. That might make it seem like I’m going to murder you, but I’m not.”
Samantha gave me a side-eyed look. “That sounds like the type of thing somebody who was going to murder me would say.”
“It sure does, but you’ll know I won’t murder you when I don’t murder you.”
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “I’ll be kept in suspense until then.”
I shrugged. “If that’s what it takes to get you there.”
“And what if I don’t come? Because this is weird and you’re freaking me out.”
“If you don’t come, then you won’t know, but I’m not going to answer any questions. I need your help, and for some reason we think you can help us.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
I sped up and called over my shoulder. “All questions will be answered after school.”
Katie floated past me as I walked to class. “I think you thoroughly freaked her out.”
“Yeah,” I whispered with a smile.
“You’re hoping she doesn’t meet us after school, aren’t you?”
“I’m hoping she never talks to me again,” I thought to Katie.
“Well, I hope you’re wrong.”
“You would,” I thought before stepping into class. In just a couple of hours, we would find out just how much weirdness Samantha was willing to endure.
Chapter 17
I didn’t want Samantha to help us, and thought I did a pretty good job scaring her off from ever talking to me again. For all I knew, I might have been saving her life. She wouldn’t have to be the victim of the Anna curse.
I certainly didn’t expect to see her leaning against the flag pole, tapping her foot, when I came out of the front door.
“Where have you been?” she asked, pushing herself upright. “I’ve been waiting.”
I scratched my head. “I didn’t think you would show up.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You told me you would show me why you’re acting like a freak. I am endlessly fascinated by freaks. Of course I was going to show up.”
Katie smiled a gleeful smile as we walked toward the bus. “I knew she was going to show up.”
I ignored her and turned back to Samantha. “Let’s go then. By the way, I’m not driving you home.”
“That’s fine,” Samantha said. “I actually have a car. I was wondering if you wanted a ride.”
“You really want a ride,” Katie said to me.
“What kind of car is it?” I asked.
“It’s a 1991 piece of garbage,” Samantha said with a shrug. “It doesn’t even have airbags. But it will get us where we want to go, assuming it doesn’t stall out trying, or get hit by anything.”
“Sounds safe.”
“Well, safer than a school bus. Those things don’t even have seat belts.”
“All right,” I said, walking back over to her. “Let’s go.”
“Follow me.”
Samantha’s car wasn’t as bad as she made it out to be. It was small, but so were all hatchbacks. It was clean, though, and while it didn’t have any bells or whistles, it didn’t smoke as she drove it either. I figured that was about all you could ask from a car.
“I hope you don’t mind classic rock,” Samantha said, turning on Pandora and tossing her phone in the cup holder. “I don’t have a
