Stacey Kade - The Ghost and the Goth

It was easy enough to sneak out of school. I knew that from previous experience. This time, all I had to do was wait until Mrs. Higgins had led everyone onto the outdoor track and then slip behind the bleachers and walk down to the other opening in the chain-link fence.

Sneaking back in, though … that would be a bitch. But I’d just have to deal with that when I got back. Like always.

I shivered in the cool morning breeze. It was 7:00 a.m., or a little past, on the first day in May, and it wasn’t nearly warm enough to be out walking around in the stupid thin T-shirt and short shorts they made us wear for gym. At least on the track, the bleachers blocked the wind and the black cinders held some of the heat from the day before. Out here, I had nothing but anger to keep me toasty.

How could she do this to me again? Didn’t she get it? It was never going to happen. There would be no fairy-tale ending for her, not this time. And I was sick of all the stupid phone calls from him asking about her, and the thinly veiled questions about him from her.

I picked up the pace, heading toward the tennis courts. After a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure I’d cleared enough distance between me and the track, I opened my cell phone, which I’d kept hidden in my closed hand to avoid Mrs. Higgins’s wrath, and hit speed dial. Number one, of course.

The phone rang on the other end, and I pictured it flashing hopefully in the dark kitchen on the sticky granite counter. She wouldn’t answer. That would defeat the purpose, but she’d know it was me calling. She’d be clutching the upstairs cordless phone to her chest, checking the caller ID, hoping it was him and not me.

I hoped somebody would kill me before I ever became that desperate for someone’s attention. Seriously, it was pathetic. And she was ruining lives. Specifically, MY life. Now, not only would I have to lie again to Mrs. Higgins about why I’d dipped out on class — something I’m not opposed to in the right circumstance for the right reason, but this was neither — I’d also miss meeting up with Chris and Misty, my boyfriend and best friend, before classes officially started, which would require another lie. They only tolerated each other for my sake and would hate it if I wasn’t there to referee. Worse yet, it was Senior Celebration Day, and now Chris’s locker, unlike those of the rest of the senior athletes, would have to remain unadorned until lunch, when I’d have time again to decorate.

Not that she would care about any of that. She never cared about anyone but herself.

By the time the answering machine picked up, I was beyond pissed. I stomped past the tennis courts toward Henderson Street, waiting for the piercing beep. When it sounded, I shouted into the phone so she could hear me all the way upstairs in her nest of tangled bedsheets and crumpled-up tissues. “I know you can hear me, and I can’t believe you’re making me do this again. Don’t you have any pride? He called me, me , not you. Are you sensing a pattern here yet? My God, just get over it already and—”

A blast of hot air pressed against my skin, startling me into shutting up for a millisecond, and I realized I’d crossed the curb into the street without even noticing. In that moment, I heard the blare of the horn, smelled the reek of exhaust and burning tires, and witnessed the flat, bright orangey-yellow nose of a school bus approaching my face at an unstoppable speed.

God, buses are so ugly when you see them that close up.

Dying should have been the worst moment in my life. I mean, hello, getting run over by a school bus full of band geeks while wearing the regulation gym uniform of red polyester short shorts and a practically see-through white T-shirt? It doesn’t get more tragic than that. Or, so I thought.

On Thursday, three days AD (after death … duh), I woke in the usual way — flat on my back and just to the left of the yellow lines on Henderson Street with the heat of a bus engine passing over my face.

It wasn’t “the” bus, obviously. The one that killed me was probably still being repaired or maybe decommissioned or whatever they do with vehicles that now have bad juju.

I coughed and sat up, waving the hot plumes of bus exhaust away. I know, weird, right? No lungs, no body, no breathing, but hey, whatever. I don’t make the rules, I just live here … sort of.

I got to my feet just in time for Ben Rogers’s Land Rover (his dad owns a dealership … lucky) to pass right through me. I flinched, but it didn’t hurt. These days, nothing did, but it was taking a while to get used to that. Ben, of course, didn’t notice a thing, just kept jabbering on the cell phone pressed to his ear. He couldn’t see me. Nobody could.

If I seem pretty calm about this whole being-dead thing, it’s only because I’ve had a few days to adjust. The first twenty-four hours? Definitely not among my best. Listen, if anyone ever tries to pull that whole “I had no idea I was dead until I turned around and saw my own gravestone” cliché on you, they’re lying.

First of all, headstones, as they’re properly called, take months. Especially special order Italian rose-marble ones with weeping angels on top. Second, if standing by your own crumpled and limp body on the street isn’t enough of a clue, try following it to the hospital and watching a hassled and tired-looking emergency-room doctor pronounce “you” dead, even as you’re shouting at him to listen to you, to please look at you. Then, how about when your dad finally arrives at that cold little room in the hospital basement, where the hospital people show him “you” on this grainy and horribly unflattering closed-circuit television?

I tried to talk to him. My dad, I mean. He couldn’t hear me. Nothing altogether new about that. Russ Dare only hears what he wants to hear — or so he always says. That’s what makes him such a good corporate negotiator … or a complete bastard if you listen to some people. But this time, he wasn’t ignoring me. I could tell — his eyes weren’t doing that squinchy annoyed thing at their corners. And then he started to cry.

My dad — the one who’d taught me that “show no emotion” is the first rule of getting what you want — stood in that tiny antiseptic-smelling room alone, his face gray under his golfing tan, and tears lighting up like silver streaks on his cheeks in the flickering fluorescent lights.

That’s when I knew. Even before he said, “That’s her,” in this choked-up whisper that was nothing like his normal booming voice. I was dead. Maybe not all of me — after all, some part of me was still here and watching everything happen. But it was definitely my body on that television screen, covered by a crisp white sheet, looking smaller and frailer than I’d ever seen myself, and my hair all tangled and snarled around my too-still face.

That had been the breaking point for my dad. Even as the hospital people had shoved forms at him to sign, he’d asked over and over again, “Someone will fix her hair? She doesn’t … it’s not like her to look like that. She would hate it.”

I drew in a deep breath (ironic, I know) and shook my head. None of that mattered now anyway. Sometime soon, very soon, a big bright light was going to shine in the distance and suck me in. Then I’d be living the life — or some imitation of it — of sunbathing on a white sand beach with NO sunscreen, nonvirgin mojitos, and an endless selection of shoe stores where everything was free. Hey, it was heaven, right? Before that happened, though, I wanted to see everything I could. A girl only dies once, you know?