Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Even as I said it, I wondered if that was true. When it came time to confront my killer, would I be singing the same song?

As if Amanda Lee hadn’t heard everything else I’d said, she grasped the edge of the bench, pulling herself to her feet. “Please don’t give up on Liz. You can give up on me all you want, but not her.”

What else could I say? I was invested more than I’d ever imagined I could be.

“I’m not abandoning her,” I said, already on my way to the door. “But I can’t stay here, either.”

I was still smarting so bad that I couldn’t help delivering a little pain to her .

“You know,” I said, “for a time, I thought you were the only one I could depend on, too.”

And before I could definitely see if ghosts had tears in them, I slipped under the door, hearing Amanda Lee softly crying again.

God help me, but I hovered outside, knowing it would be smart to go, but wanting to stay out of a sense of… I don’t know. Loyalty? Good-heartedness? Duty?

But there was something my friend Suze used to say, and even though she’d been talking about guys, it was more relevant than ever for me.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

And it sure as hell wasn’t going to happen a third time.

• • •

Once again, after being betrayed by Amanda Lee, I had no idea where to go. But I was getting good at bouncing back from her misguided moves and finding my own way around the world.

I did the sitting-on-the-power-lines thing again, just like the last time we’d hit a personal snag. Amanda Lee’s revelations had drained me. So had the hallucinations—something I’d discovered tonight only after I slightly sputtered halfway through the travel tunnel I’d created after I’d scrammed away from her home.

This sucked so bad, hanging out on power lines, bored silly. I mean, just imagine an existence where your thoughts are active all the time and you never can fall asleep, even if you’re sapped. And it wasn’t just Amanda Lee’s confessions that were whirling through my thoughts right now, but complete irony, too.

Funny, how I’d goaded a confession out of someone tonight, and it hadn’t been Gavin Edgett. Maybe I should at least be happy that my skills were improving.

And maybe there was another positive to come out of all this. I’d never stood up to anyone like I had with Amanda Lee. During my wasted early-twenties life, I’d floated along just as surely as I was doing as a ghost. But after tonight, I wasn’t going to play like that anymore. I had to start truly living sometime.

And you know what? I was going to begin by getting to the bottom of Elizabeth’s and my stories on my own terms.

Feeling a little better, I lay on the lines all night, restoring myself, weaning myself off them at dawn with an idea about how to go about my missions.

Sailor Randy had given me good spiritual advice last time. He was more of a mentor than Amanda Lee could be, and I needed his input if I was going to go alone down a road that might very well send me into a time loop, aka the ghost version of a coma.

But where could I find him?

Where had he said he searched for his girlfriend’s letter during the light of day? Near downtown, by the water, on some rocks, right? And that narrowed a search down pretty well.

It didn’t take me long to find him balancing on a bank of dark rocks as the sun climbed over the rigging on the Star of India , a windjammer ship that’d been home-ported near the embarcadero longer than even when I was a kid.

Randy, his form just as black-and-white-TV-worthy as ever, was poking among the rocks near a seafood restaurant that sat on a dock over the water as I landed a few feet away from him.

“Need some help?” I asked.

When he glanced at me, he smiled, exposing his crooked teeth. His sailor hat was askew, just like last time, his cracked voice still goofy.

“Why, it’s the new ghost,” he slurred. “Jen-Jen.”

If I was stuck with that nickname for all eternity or however long it took to break my tether, I’d die all over again.

“Just Jen,” I said.

“You’re lookin’ a little grayer ’n’ usual.”

Oh yeah. “I had a bit of an… incident yesterday.”

“Ya gotta watch what ya get into out there. Know what I mean?”

He went back to searching.

“You having any luck with your girlfriend’s letter?” I asked.

“Nah. I swear I dropped it along here, though.”

He tripped over a rock, and I sucked in a pseudobreath, reaching out to catch him. But he righted himself before he got to my hands, and all I felt was that fuzzy sensation of ghost-near-ghost.

“Ooopsh,” he said, shrugging. “Hate when that happens.”

“Do you ever…” I motioned to the rocks. “You know. Fall and die, just like you actually did in life?”

He laughed. “Nah, I’m not an imprint, so I don’t hafta relive that nightmare over ’n’ over.”

I started to join his fruitless quest, poking under rocks. “I’m sure you get a lot of energy from being around your death spot, though.”

“It helps. Besides, I like to be on the rocks—espeshly if it involves a good drink.”

I wanted to laugh. Randy was a crack-up, but I was still sore in my essence from what’d happened with Amanda Lee.

Randy might’ve been a drunk, but he was perceptive, and he sat on the rocks and leveled a look at me as, above us nearby, an early plane flew overhead to land at the airport.

When it’d passed, he narrowed his gaze. “Ya got troubles?”

I sat down, too, thankful he’d opened that door. “I’m not even sure where to start.”

“Oh. One of those stories.” He looked bored already.

Right. Drunk ADD.

I tried to make it short but sweet. “You know how I told you I was murdered?”

“Yup.”

I went for it, filling him in on how Amanda Lee had persuaded me to haunt Gavin, then lied to me about her real reasons for roping me in.

“So those are my issues right now,” I said in conclusion.

“Hmm,” Randy said.

The water kept licking at the rocks as the sun rolled higher in the sky. Boats were starting to cut through the water in the bay. Nearby, on the Star of India , I thought I saw a gray ghostly figure on deck: a teen who waved to us.

Randy waved back, just like he’d forgotten I’d told him a story and was waiting for a decent response. Meanwhile, I just smiled and gave the other ghost a bit of a wave, too.

“Thass John Campbell,” Randy said. “Poor kid was a stowaway. Fell from the mainmast and crushed his legs, then died a few days later. Ouch.”

I nodded, wondering if I’d have to repeat my story to Mr. ADD to refresh his memory and get more than a “hmm” out of him.

Evidently not, because he took up where I’d left off. “Ya really stepped into it, didn’t ya?”

“With Amanda Lee? I suppose I did.”

“I wouldn’t wanna be you, Just Jen. A fake wrangler on your tail is bad enough. But you’re askin’ for a lot of pain by gettin’ involved with human stuff, ain’t ya?”

I didn’t love his tone. Or maybe I was just chafed from the whole Amanda Lee thing and I wanted to be a rag to someone.

“Dude,” I said. “I came here for advice. Do you actually have any for me?”

He sobered. “Yeah, I do. Stay out of it.”

“But my tether… You told me that I’d be stuck on this plane until I resolved what was tying me here.”

“I didn’t tell ya to stick your nose in every death out there, did I?”

He gave no indication of being morally offended by my going after someone who could possibly be innocent in a killing. Had Randy lived so long that he was immune to what went on in the world outside of his girlfriend’s letter and getting eternally wasted?