Meg Cabot: Shadowland

Had Jesse, I wondered, sat in this window and smelled the ocean like I was doing, before he died? Before – as I was sure had happened – Maria de Silva's lover, Felix Diego, slipped into the room and killed him?

As if he'd read my thoughts, Jesse suddenly materialized a few feet away from me.

"Jeez!" I said, pressing a hand over my heart, which was beating so hard I thought it might explode. "Do you have to keep on doing that?"

He was leaning, sort of nonchalantly, against one of my bedposts, his arms folded across his chest. "I'm sorry," he said. But he didn't look it.

"Look," I said. "If you and I are going to be living together – so to speak – we need to come up with some rules. And rule number one is that you have got to stop sneaking up on me like that."

"And how do you suggest I make my presence known?" Jesse asked, his eyes pretty bright for a ghost.

"I don't know," I said. "Can't you rattle some chains or something?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so. What would rule number two be?"

"Rule number two ... " My voice trailed off as I stared at him. It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. Dead guys should not look anywhere near as good as Jesse looked, leaning there against my bedpost with the sun slanting in and catching the perfectly-sculpted planes of his face....

He lifted that eyebrow, the one with the scar in it. "Something wrong, querida ?" he asked.

I stared at him. It was clear he didn't know that I knew. About MDS, I mean. I wanted to ask him about it, but in another way, I sort of didn't want to know. Something was keeping Jesse in this world and out of the one he belonged to, and I had a feeling that something was directly related to the manner in which he'd lost his life. But since he didn't seem all that anxious to talk about it, I figured it was none of my business.

This was a first. Most times, ghosts were all over me to help them. But not Jesse.

At least, not for now.

"Let me ask you something," Jesse said so suddenly that I thought, for a minute, maybe he'd read my mind.

"What?" I asked cautiously, throwing down my magazine and standing up.

"Last night, when you warned me not to go near the school because you were doing an exorcism ... "

I eyed him. "Yes?"

"Why did you warn me?"

I laughed with relief. Was that all? "I warned you because if you'd gone down there you would have been sucked away just like Heather."

"But wouldn't that have been a perfect way to get rid of me? You'd have this room to yourself, just the way you want it."

I stared at him in horror. "But that – that would have been completely unfair!"

He was smiling now. "I see. Against the rules?"

"Yeah," I said. "Big time."

"Then you didn't warn me – " He took a step toward me. " – because you're starting to like me or anything like that?"

Much to my dismay, I felt my face start to heat up. "No," I said, stubbornly. "Nothing like that. I'm just trying to play by the rules. Which you violated, by the way, when you woke up David."

Jesse took another step toward me. "I had to. You'd warned me not to go down to the school myself. What choice did I have? If I hadn't sent your brother in my place to help you," he pointed out, "you'd be a bit dead now."

I was uncomfortably aware that this was true. However, I wasn't about to let on that I agreed with him. "No way," I said. "I had things perfectly under control. I – "

"You had nothing under control." Jesse laughed. "You went barreling in there without any sort of plan, without any sort of – "

"I had a plan." I took a single furious step toward him, and suddenly we were standing practically nose-to-nose. "Who do you think you are, telling me I had no plan? I've been doing this for years, get it? Years. And I never needed help, not from anyone. And certainly not from someone like you ."

He stopped laughing suddenly. Now he looked mad. "Someone like me? You mean – what was it you called me? A cowboy?"

"No," I said. "I mean from somebody who's dead ."

Jesse flinched, almost as violently as if I'd hit him.

"Let's make rule number two be that from now on, you stay out of my business, and I'll stay out of yours," I said.

"Fine," Jesse said, shortly.

"Fine," I said. "And thank you."

He was still mad. He asked sullenly, "For what?"

"For saving my life."

He stopped looking mad all of a sudden. His eyebrows, which had been all knit together, relaxed.

Next thing I knew, he'd reached out, and laid his hands on my shoulders.

If he'd stuck a fork in me, I don't think I'd have been so surprised. I mean, I'm used to punching ghosts in the face. I am not used to them looking down at me as if ... as if ...

Well, as if they were about to kiss me.

But before I had time to figure out what I was going to do – close my eyes and let him do it, or invoke rule number three: absolutely no touching — my mother's voice drifted up from downstairs. "Susannah?" she called. "Suzie, it's Mom. I'm home."

I looked at Jesse. He jerked his hands away from me. A second later, my mom opened my bedroom door, and Jesse disappeared.

"Suzie," she said. She walked over and put her arms around me. "How are you? I hope you're not upset that we let you sleep in. You just seemed so tired."

"No," I said. I was still sort of dazed by what had happened with Jesse. "I don't mind."

"I guess it all finally caught up with you. I thought it might. Were you all right here with Andy? He said he made you lunch."

"He made me a fine lunch," I said automatically.

"And David brought you your homework, I hear." She let go of me and walked toward the window seat. "We were thinking about spaghetti for dinner. What do you think?"

"Sounds good." I came around long enough to notice that she was staring out of the windows. Then I noticed that I couldn't remember my mother ever looking so ... well, serene.

Maybe it was the fact that since we'd moved out west, she'd given up coffee.

More likely, though, it was love.

"What are you looking at, Mom?" I asked her.

"Oh, nothing, honey," she said with a little smile. "Just the sunset. If's so beautiful." She turned to put her arm around me, and together we stood there and watched the sun sinking into the Pacific in a blaze of violent reds and purples and golds. "You sure wouldn't see a sunset like that back in New York," my mother said. "Now would you?"

"No," I said. "You wouldn't."

"So," she said, giving me a squeeze. "What do you think? You think we should stick around here awhile?"

She was joking, of course. But in a way, she wasn't.

"Sure," I said. "We should stick around."

She smiled at me, then turned back toward the sunset. The last of the bright orange ball was disappearing beneath the horizon. "There goes the sun," she said.

"And," I said, "it's all right."