Stacey Kade - The Ghost and the Goth

His mouth worked helplessly, but no words emerged.

Brewster had nearly offed himself thirty-some years ago, a few years after he’d come back from Vietnam, a young man who’d seen and done too much in a jungle half a world away. He eventually chucked his gun into the river instead, embarrassed about the fact that he’d even thought about suicide — a quitter’s way out. His grandfather — dead only a couple of years at that point — had been right beside him the whole time. The dead see everything, man, whether you want them to or not, and they tell a lot of it to me, even if they don’t know I’m listening.

“That’s nothing you should be talking about, kid.” Grandpa B. sounded alarmed.

I ignored him and pushed past Brewster to collect my pass, detention slip, and a sympathetic smile from Mrs. Piaget in the outer office.

I was opening the door to the main hall before Brewster recovered enough to emerge from his office, eyes wild, hands clenched at his sides.

“Let’s see how you survive the rest of the year without your special privileges, you little freak,” he spat at me, but he didn’t come any closer. Good enough for me.

“Bob!” Mrs. Piaget turned to stare at him.

Ha. It would be a miracle if I could make it an hour. But at least, when they carried me out, he wouldn’t be calling me sport. I nodded. “You’re on.”

The surface beneath me felt way harder than my bed and nowhere near soft enough to be a cloud. I reached out a hand without opening my eyes, and my fingers brushed over … was that gravel?

Opening my eyes, I found myself — where else? — just to the left of the yellow line on Henderson. Not a dream, not heaven, just right back where I’d started from. Dead in the middle of the road.

I sat up, swallowing the urge to start crying again. I mean, clearly I was trapped in hell, right? Doomed to live on, unseen and unheard, while my best friend makes out, goes to college with, and eventually marries my boyfriend. Just the thought of it made me want to curl up in a ball right there in the road.

So I did, resting my cheek against the warming asphalt. What, like I had somewhere else to be? Like someone would see me? Then I remembered how many times I’d seen hick guys spitting tobacco out the car window on their way to school — gross! — and I moved to the curb.

Behind me, the tennis courts filled with the sounds of life, people laughing, tennis balls bouncing, and the chain-link fence clanking. I turned around, startled. It was Mrs. Higgins’s first-hour gym class — I used to see them trooping across the softball field to the courts when I was in government and staring out the window in utter boredom, wishing I was anywhere but there.

It was halfway through first hour, already? This was not the way things usually worked. For the last three days, whenever I’d gotten tired — yeah, that still happened — I’d made my way home, curled up on the couch in my dad’s study, and closed my eyes. Then, presto. When I’d opened my eyes it was 7:00 a.m. again — I could tell by the buses going by — and I was on the road. Literally. It was like some giant reset button got pressed every day.

But this time … I didn’t know what to think. I’d never been “reset” in the middle of the morning before. Of course, I’d never disappeared before, either. I shivered. Where exactly had I gone? I couldn’t remember. Did it matter? Not really. I was still stuck here, that much was clear. Stuck here and helpless.

I stared past the tennis courts to the window where my government class went on without me. Now I would have killed for the chance to be bored by Mr. Klopinski. To be alive. To take Misty down in front of the entire caf. Then we’d see who laughs at Alona Dare. Nobody, that’s who.

Except for maybe Will Killian.

Frowning, I stood up and started pacing, just in time for Jesse McGovern’s green and nasty hooptie to pass right through me as he sped from the parking lot to his loser classes at the trade school in town. I ignored the cold shuddery sensation, trying to focus on a vague memory struggling to come to the surface. I remembered hearing Leanne and Miles bitch about me and seeing Misty kissing Chris, that was clear enough. After that, though, everything started to get a little fuzzy. The bell had rung, and people had started walking into the building, and then …

Will Killian’s mocking smile and pale blue eyes appeared in my head. He’d laughed at me. He’d looked right at me and grinned, delighting in my misery. Any other day I would have been worried that someone like him was making fun of me , but today, all I could think about was, to do that, he had to have been able to see me. Hear me, even.

If Killian could see or hear me, maybe other people could, too. Maybe I wasn’t really dead. At least, not all the way. Though what I’d seen at my funeral would indicate otherwise. I’d watched them lower the casket into the ground and—

I shook my head, sending my hair flying across my face. No. I wouldn’t think about that now. Being dead and trapped here forever, unable to do anything, that wouldn’t be fair.

There had to be another explanation, and Killian probably knew all about it, freak that he was.

All I had to do was make him tell me.

Too easy. After all, he could see me, right? Freak or not, Killian was still a guy.

I flipped my hair back over my shoulders, smoothing it down. After another quick second to tug my shorts back down into place — evidently getting hit by a bus gives you a semipermanent wedgie — I was ready to go. I couldn’t do anything about the big tread mark that ran diagonally across my white shirt, though I hated it, and my favorite M·A·C lipstick was probably still in the locker I shared with Misty. If she hadn’t taken that for herself, too.

I looked pretty good for a dead girl, though, if I did say so myself. Not that I could see my reflection or anything, but when I’d first woken up here days ago, I’d immediately checked my arms and legs for gaping cuts and bones sticking out and gross stuff like that. I found nothing but a few bruises and scrapes that went away, like, the next day. My face, which I’d explored cautiously with my fingers, appeared similarly undamaged. Apparently, according to the coroner, I’d died of massive internal injuries. But nothing you could see out front. Awesome. Killian didn’t stand a chance.

For the second time today, I headed around the edge of the tennis courts and up toward the school building. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much farther this time than I had the first. Double doors, big glass ones with that chicken wire stuff threaded in between the panes, blocked the main entrance. Typically, they stood open when everyone got here in the morning, but now with classes in session, Principal Brewster had locked everything down tight. All the better to keep a random psychopath out, never mind the ones in the student body that were locked in by the same measure.

I reached for the metal handle, just to jiggle it to see if the door might pop open, and my hand passed through it. I yanked my hand back and cradled it against my chest until the cold tingling feeling passed. It didn’t make sense. Cars and people passed through me, yeah, but I still managed to walk on the ground, sit on a chair at the funeral home, and—

Suddenly the doors in front of me seemed to shift and grow larger. What the—?

I looked down and found my feet sinking into the concrete sidewalk, like at the beach when you dig your toes in and the wave washes more sand over you until your feet seem to be gone. Only this was the real thing.

Oh, no, no, no. I squeezed my eyes shut tight. The ground is solid, the ground is solid. I just kept repeating it to myself until I could feel, once more, the sensation of concrete beneath me.