Aprilynne Pike - Life After Theft

“Of course I know how to swim, moron; I live . . . lived on a private beach. The same one I drowned at, actually.” A touch of something resembling real emotion clouded Kimberlee’s eyes for an instant before she ran her fingers through her hair; whatever it was I’d seen was erased by that casual gesture. “I got caught in a riptide,” she said softly. “It happens.”

“But why—?”

“Dude, riptide. Move on!” Kimberlee snapped, scowling.

“Fine. Uh, what color of flowers did you have at your funeral?”

She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Score one for me. “I didn’t go. I was so busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on that I didn’t really start going anywhere until about two weeks after the funeral.”

“Convenient,” I scoffed.

“What else do you want?” she said. “I drowned in a riptide, I went to Whitestone, I was seventeen, my dad’s a judge, my mom’s a CFO, I’m an only child. Good enough?”

“I guess,” I muttered, turning back to the screen and typing the rest of her name.

“S-c,” Kimberlee corrected from behind me.

“Get over there!” I said, pointing to the opposite side of the room. “You are not allowed to see this!”

“Fine!” she said, sulking away.

I pressed Enter, fully prepared to bask in the proof of my own brilliance.

But the first page of more than 4,000 results popped up on my screen.

Teen Dies in Tragic Accident. Local Judge Mourns the Death of His Only Child. Prominent Prep School Suffers Tragic Loss. Teen’s Body Found on Private Beach. Missing Seventeen-Year-Old Confirmed Dead.

I skimmed the articles, my jaw dropping as the details swirled in front of my face, complete with a number of photographs that were unmistakably Kimberlee. Not the least of which was one of her in her freaking coffin.

“I—I could have read this last year,” I said, scrambling for an excuse—totally not ready to accept this.

“Eventually you’re going to have to stop trying to talk yourself out of this and believe me. Besides,” she said, turning to face me now. “Who tries to convince themselves they’re insane instead of accepting the fairly rational explanation of someone being a ghost? Maybe you really are a nut job. Like a hypochondriac, but for craziness.”

I’m agnostic, but that moment was the first time in memory I wished I did believe in a god. Then I would have someone to beg to deliver me from this demented undead. “Whatever,” I mumbled, clicking through website after website, skimming each for mere seconds before scrolling to the next one. It was possible, wasn’t it? That my brain had unconsciously stored the details of something I’d read and “forgotten,” then used that info to spit out a made-up person? Now I was really starting to sound crazy. About being crazy. I was double crazy.

“Your email,” I said, coming up with one last test. “You have a Yahoo or Gmail account or something?”

“I did,” Kimberlee said, clearly not following my stream of logic.

“Okay, tell me your username and password. There’s no way I could know that, so if it works it would prove that you’re not some figment of my imagination.” Cool, calm, logical. I can do this.

“Not a chance,” Kimberlee said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you cyberspying on me!”

“It’s not cyberspying—it’s proving your story.”

“My email is private. Don’t go there.”

I hesitated. “Facebook?”

She snorted. “That’s hardly better.” After a moment of hesitation: “How about my MySpace page? I didn’t use it for, like, years before I died, but it’s still there and definitely mine.”

I nodded. “That’ll work. What is it?”

After a few moments’ thought she rattled off her MySpace username and I found the page. Not surprisingly, it was pink and seizure-inducingly sparkly.

And covered with pictures of a definitely alive Kimberlee from junior high school. She looked a little different but it was definitely her. I squinted at a couple of group shots and recognized Langdon, the guy who had almost squished me to a pulp today. “Hey!” I said, pointing. “That’s Langdon.”

Kimberlee rolled her eyes. “So?”

I turned back to the computer and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, “this is definitely Kimberlee Schaffer’s MySpace page. What’s the password? And none of this guessing stuff. You nail it the first try, or I ignore you for the rest of my life.”

“Fine,” Kimberlee said, leaning forward with a predatory look in her eye, “but I get a part in this deal, too. If the password works you believe me, one hundred percent. No more made-up-person stuff. Deal?”

I swallowed hard. “Deal.”

“UMMM,” I SAID SLOWLY AS I stared at the screen.

“What?” Kimberlee said, tension spiking her voice about two octaves. “It didn’t work? You typed it wrong, then—do it again!”

“You have over three thousand new messages.”

“Oh,” Kimberlee said. Then she straightened casually, as though she hadn’t been on the verge of hysteria an instant ago. “Well, dying makes you popular.”

I stared at Kimberlee as if seeing her for the first time. All the ghosts in movies were see-through and white and did that glowing thing. And they floated. Kimberlee looked solid and walked right on the ground like anyone else. The lights made her hair shine a little, but she definitely wasn’t glowing. “Can I touch you?” I asked curiously.

She put her hands on her hips and pushed her chest out. “I admit, I haven’t gotten any action in a while.”

“Not like that,” I protested, mortified. “I mean in terms of, uh, physics. Can I touch your arm, or will I go right through?”

Kimberlee studied her arm quizzically. “Everyone else goes right through. Course, none of them can see or hear me either. You can try.” She held out her arm.

I lifted my hand for a second before wussing out and turning back to my computer. “I don’t want to.”

“Come on,” she said. “If you don’t, I will.”

I felt something cold pass through my shoulder and a massive chill shot down my spine. “Okay,” I said when I could talk again. “That was the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me. And after today, that’s really saying something.”

But when I turned to her, she looked disappointed.

“What?”

She gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “I—I hoped you’d be different, that’s all.”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Not that I could help it. “So,” I said, feeling suddenly very awkward. “You’re a ghost, huh?”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you going to help me now, or what?”

“Uh . . .”

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed. “Look,” she began hesitantly, “you can see me. And hear me. So you’re the only one who can help me. You have to say yes.”

I sighed. “What do you need help with?”

“My unfinished business.”

“Your what?”

“In books and movies people become ghosts when they have unfinished business. That must be why I’m still here.”

“Did someone tell you that? Did you have some, I don’t know, angel, I guess, tell you what you need to do?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I just woke up in the middle of the school and I was dead. I’m guessing on the rest.”

“What’s your unfinished business?”

She twisted a ring around on her finger. “I kind of stole some stuff when I was alive and I think I need to return it.”

“That’s it? No unrequited love? Revenge unrealized?”

“Nope.”

“And you want me to return it so you can be on your merry way?”

“That’s the plan. It’s the only thing I can think of. I had a great life. Pretty much everyone loved me—except the people who wanted to be me—and I had everything I ever wanted.”