by Stacey Kade
I tapped my foot, waiting for Joonie to leave, but she just stood there, still breathing hard from the effort of moving him, and watched him. Yeah, because that’s not creepy or anything.
The sound of Killian’s deep even breathing—not quite snoring, but certainly not that almost silent, barely there breaths he’d been taking before—filled the room. Still, she did not leave.
She tugged at one of the piercings in her lip, like a nervous twitch or something, and I winced.
“I have to go,” she said finally, speaking to Killian’s sleeping backside. “If I miss PE again, Higgins will fail me and I won’t graduate. And you know”—she gave a weird little laugh—“I have to get out of that house.”
Okay, descending to new levels of freakiness here.
“I need you to be honest with me, Will. I think you’re lying to me, trying to protect me.”
A tiny ping sounded, and I looked down in time to see one of her safety pins skitter across the hardwood floor. Gross.
“You have to tell the truth,” she said, sounding close to tears. Blood now dotted her lip where the safety pin she’d been playing with had escaped. “Otherwise, this is never going to work, and I need this to work. Okay?”
I groaned. “Have some pride, will you? Begging someone to like you is so pathetic. Begging for Killian to like you is … I don’t even have a word for how sad that is.”
“I do love you, you know.” She sniffed and wiped under her eyes, her finger coming away black with eyeliner. “I’m sorry that you got hurt.”
“Be glad you’re sleeping,” I told Killian. “I wish I was.”
Fortunately, that last declaration seemed to end Joonie’s need for dramatic and imploring speeches. She took a deep breath, nodded, and with one last look at Killian, she finally left. A few seconds later, I heard the back door shut.
I dropped into the desk chair, exhausted. All of this to have a conversation alone with someone I didn’t even like. Being dead sucked.
The familiar pattern of yellowed water stains on my bedroom ceiling greeted me when I opened my eyes. Home. Safe and in bed, if the soft comfort beneath me was any indication. I had vague memories of stumbling to and from Joonie’s car with her support, but not much more than that. Encounters with the twisted and ghostly remains of my dad always left me weak, drained, like he absorbed energy from me. Add to that whatever damage Grandpa Brewster and the others had inflicted first and …
Grandpa Brewster. Principal Brewster. Expelled. Each word triggered the next, like a series of lights clicking on in sequence until the whole picture was revealed. A sense of horror dawned inside me. I’d ditched school—albeit for a good reason, not that that would matter—less than an hour after Brewster threatened me with expulsion. Expulsion meant a call to my mother, who would in turn call Dr. Miller, and by this afternoon, it would be, “Welcome to Ivythorne Psychatric Hospital, Mr. Killian.”
“Shit.” I bolted into an upright position and sagged not five seconds later when my head gave a ferocious throb and darkness crowded the edge of my vision. Too fast, too fast.
“Finally. Do I need to ask you what year it is, who’s president, that kind of thing?” a strangly familiar voice demanded. More than a hint of imperiousness colored her tone, so definitely not Joonie, and—
“Because you have been acting all kinds of freaky. Not”—she sniffed—“that that’s anything new for you.”
“No. No, no, no, no.” This was not happening. I refused to believe it, but my eyes opened of their own accord. My vision cleared enough to reveal Alona Dare, the Alona Dare, as she probably referred to herself, sitting in my desk chair atop layers of clean laundry, her sleek cheerleader legs drawn up against her chest. She looked paler than usual. Not altogether surprising for someone who was, in fact, dead.
“You’re here.”
She scowled. “You don’t have to get pissy about it. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here.”
“Good. Go away.” The clock on my desk said 11:33. I’d lost more than three hours. Plenty of time for Pederson to report in to Brewster and Brewster to make the call to my mother. The only reason I was still here was because Sam, my mom’s boss at the diner, didn’t let her keep her cell phone on her while she worked. Mainly because he knew she’d be calling to check on me every five minutes. I had the diner number if there was a real emergency, and Sam’s “rule” gave me some semblance of normality and freedom. I liked him for that.
“Is this any way to treat someone who just saved your life?” Alona demanded.
“He wasn’t going to kill me. Not yet,” I said grimly. “He was just … making a point.” I stood up slowly, waiting for the rush of dizziness to pass, and the rest of her words sank in. “You saved my life? What planet are you living on?”
“Exactly. That would be the question.” She nodded with satisfaction.
I stared at her. “Sorry, maybe this is the head injury talking, but … what?” She opened her mouth to answer, and I shook my head. “Never mind. Forget it. I can’t do this right now.” My mom’s shift ended at noon. She’d be on the phone checking messages at 12:01. Figure ten minutes to get a hold of Dr. Miller and explain the situation, twenty minutes or so for them both to drive over here from town … yeah, I had probably about forty-five minutes of freedom left. Plenty of time.
Right.
I knelt beside my bed, careful to keep my head level, and felt for my duffel bag behind the dust ruffle my mother had insisted on to hide my version of storage—otherwise known as, cram everything under the bed and hope you don’t need it again anytime soon. I had to leave for a few days. Let things calm down. Wait until I could talk to my mom alone … and try to figure out a way, again, to explain what had happened without telling the truth. Erickson’s parents, both lawyers, were always gone. I could crash there for a few days and they probably wouldn’t even notice. Hell, Erickson might not even notice.
“I’m serious, Killian.” Alona kicked her legs out and stood up. The chair, which was wobbly and on wheels, didn’t even wiggle. She must have been out of range.
Despite the fact that I should have been concentrating on finding my stupid bag and getting out of there, I watched her come closer, sort of hypnotized by the movement of her long, tanned legs.
“Where, exactly, am I? How come you can see and hear me? Am I dead, alive, somewhere in between? Am I stuck here for good? How do I make the white light come for me? Where’s the food?” She ticked off the questions on her fingers as she approached.
I shook my head to clear it. “It’s hard to believe, but I think you were less annoying when you were alive. Did you not hear me say I can’t talk to you now? Go haunt somebody else.” My fingers closed over the edge of a strap, and I yanked the bag out, bringing a cloud of dust along with it.
“Trust me, I’d find someone else if I could. You’re just mad because I never talked to you when I was alive.”
“Yeah, the waves of regret are washing over me.” I started to stand but had to stop on one knee, brace my hand against the side of the mattress, and close my eyes again. The sudden change in position made my head swim. Another twenty-four hours to sleep, which I didn’t have, and I’d be fully recovered, if my previous experiences were any indicator. I’d seen my father, rather what was left of him, ten or twelve times in the last eight months, ever since that night at St. Catherine’s after Lily’s accident, when I told my mom and Joonie I was leaving after graduation. He’d been pronounced dead at that hospital, and I guess some part of him still remained.
Apparently, he was not happy with my decision to leave. Not surprising, given that the last time I’d ever spoken to him, he’d made me promise to take care of my mother. I hadn’t realized at the time, of course, that he meant in place of him, forever. It had been just a regular Monday morning. He’d kissed my mother good-bye and told me to take care of her, just as he always did. Then he’d driven three miles away to a railroad crossing that hadn’t been upgraded yet with ligh
ts and barriers, parked on the tracks, and waited. He’d worked for the Southfolk Northern train line for the last year and half, making repairs, so he’d known the train schedule and that the engineer wouldn’t be able to stop in time.
Sometimes, right after it happened, I tried to imagine what he was thinking while he was waiting there. Then I realized I didn’t want to know.
“Hello? Earth to Killian?” I heard Alona moving around, and then suddenly, the foot of my bed sank with her weight. “Whoa,” she whispered. “That’s weird.” She was quiet for one blissful second. Then she started up again. “Did you know that sometimes—”
“When you’re near me, within a few feet, you have weight and substance again.” I opened my eyes again and forced myself to stand up the rest of the way. “Everything responds to you as though you were alive and in your physical body again. Yeah, I know.” I dropped my bag on the bed beside her and unzipped it.
She gaped at me. “You’re doing that? How? And it’s not that much weight,” she added rather testily.
I shook my head. “My God, you’re just as shallow as ever. Even dying didn’t change you.”
“Does it change most people?” She curled her slim legs up under herself, her perfect toenails painted some bright girlie color between red and pink. “From what I saw today, it seems more like it freeze-dries them in place, making them just like who they were before they died.”
I frowned. That was a relatively decent observation. Maybe she wasn’t as dumb as I’d thought. I moved carefully, in deference to my head, around the bed to the desk chair to grab a couple handfuls of clothing.
She glanced from the bag to me and back again with mild interest. “Where are we going?”
“We aren’t going anywhere.” I returned to the bed and jammed the clothes into my bag.
“Really?” She stretched her legs out full length on my bed—my bed!—pushing aside my bag with one shapely and toned thigh. I swallowed hard.
“That is so cool,” she said in wonderment, more to herself than me.
“Alona—” I began.
She leaned back on her elbows. “Look, here’s the way I see it, Killian. You can either help me out and tell me what I want to know, or I can just follow you around everywhere.” She gave me that fake sweet smile I’d seen her use so often at school. Her gaze stayed as sharp and merciless as ever. “It’ll be so nice to have someone to talk to, twenty-four hours a day. You know, I don’t sleep anymore. At least, I don’t think I do. I’ve never really—”
I groaned. “All right, all right.” I did owe her something. She’d dispatched Grandpa B., Liesel and Eric, and the rest of them with surprising efficiency. Of course, nothing stood in Alona’s way when there was something she wanted. One advantage to being a social leper—it afforded me plenty of time for uninterrupted observation. From what I’d witnessed, Alona Dare was single-minded, determined, and ruthless. If high school was a zoo, she was the lioness running the hunt on the hapless tourists who’d wandered into the wrong enclosure.
She studied people, learned their weak spots. And then she pounced, offering sweet smiles and fluttering eyelashes, or biting comments and a raised eyebrow of disgust, whatever was most effective. It worked, too. People caved and cowered. Some pretended not to care, but they were back at her table, begging for scraps in a matter of weeks. The fact was, unless you were Misty Evans—her best friend and the only seeming exception to Alona’s all-powerful reign—you bowed and scraped and got the hell out of her way.
It was disgusting. And yet, some part of me admired her for it. Knowing what you want and that you’ll get it if you push hard enough—even money couldn’t buy that kind of confidence. Of course, I’d also heard countless tales of innocent bystanders eviscerated by Alona’s particular brand of “charm.” A good thing to keep in mind.
I checked the clock again. “You have ten minutes,” I told her.
“Deal.” She sat up again swiftly, tucking her legs underneath her again. I wondered if she’d stretched them out deliberately to get my attention. I wouldn’t put it past her.
“Okay, first question.” She steepled her fingers. “Why are you the way you are? Why can you see and hear me and nobody else can?”
That was an easy one. “I don’t know.”
She gave me a withering look. “You must have some idea. I mean, seriously, you have all these books about dying and weird stuff.” She swept her hand toward my bookcase. She’d been snooping around my room? Great. “They must say something, and I know you’ve got at least a theory.”
“What makes you think that?” I felt slightly flattered that she would think so.
She shrugged and flipped her glossy hair behind her shoulders. “What else do you have to do with your time besides think about stuff like this? It’s not like you’re real heavy into extracurriculars. Besides, you’re all, like, goth and into the dead, right?”
Alona Dare, queen of the insult-compliment. “Wow. Thanks. Anyone ever tell you you’re good with people?”
She frowned. “No.”
“Good. I’m not goth.”
“Your hair is black, you have piercings, you wear black all the time and act all freaky—”
“My hair is naturally this color. I have three earrings in one ear, that’s it. This shirt”—I tugged at the fabric across my chest—“is navy blue, and if I act weird all the time, it’s because of ghosts like you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Killian, whatever. So, you’re not a goth. Don’t be such a baby … and don’t call me a ghost,” she added with a scowl.
“Why not?”
“Hello? Do you see a bedsheet and chains on me?” She gestured dramatically to herself.
That brought to mind all kinds of other, nonghostly images … I shook my head to clear those thoughts away. “What would you prefer, then? Living-impaired?”
She sighed. “Just shut up and explain your theory already, okay?”
“Fine.” I sat down on the opposite end of the bed. If she was going to make me go through all this, I wanted to save my strength for getting out of here when our “talk” was done. “The best way I can figure it is this: the living occupy a dimension, a particular location in time and space, right?
When you die, your energy transitions out of that dimension into another one.” I paused. “You are familiar with the idea of different dimensions, right?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she lied, shifting a little uneasily.
The bed wiggled in response to her movement, reminding me once more that the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life was in my bedroom, on my bed, just feet from me. Shimmery hair, full mouth, long graceful neck, and was that lace beneath the tread mark and her almost-see-through white gym shirt?
Of course, unlike the occasional fantasy I’d entertained, she was dead and we were talking about the afterlife and different dimensions instead of her batting her eyelashes and pouting while she offered to do “anything” if I helped her pass her English final. Still, the similarity was a little mind-blowing.
“Killian?” She waved her hand to catch my attention. “Are you spazzing out or what?”
Back to reality. My chances with Alona Dare, dead or alive, were about the same, somewhere in the negatives. I cleared my throat. “The dimensions overlap a little bit, I think, and when people die, sometimes they get stuck in between. Like this.” I reached back and rummaged through my nightstand drawer for a piece of paper and something to write with. I came up with a receipt for the latest Manhunter and a decades-old broken stub of a pencil. Good enough.
I drew two entwined circles and labeled all the pieces appropriately.
I handed her the receipt. “Does that help?”
She studied it intently for a long moment before raising her gaze to meet mine with a frown. “So, you’re saying I’m stuck here.” She held up the receipt and tapped at it. “In between. Like purgatory.”
I held up my hands. “I don’t do religion.” I’d seen enough dead
people of all religions and no religion to know better than to explain it in those terms.
“You said you thought I went straight to hell,” she pointed out.
Damn, she was definitely sharper than I’d thought. “I meant gone for good.”
She lowered her hand with the receipt, staring down at it. “When I disappeared this morning, both times, I don’t know where I went. I don’t remember anything. Time passes, I guess, based on when I wake up back here. But I’m just … gone.” Her green eyes met mine defiantly, but they sparkled a little more than normal, like she was close to tears.
“Are you saying I’m in hell when I’m not here?”
“I don’t know.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Does your hair smell like brimstone when you get back?”
Her forehead furrowed. “How do I know what …” Her eyes widened as she caught on. “Oh, you’re an ass!” She tossed the receipt back at me. “I’m being serious here.”
“I don’t know, okay? People disappear in Middleground all the time. Sometimes they come back, most of the time they don’t.” I frowned. “Usually, though, the ones that stick around have unresolved issues, things they need to work through.”
“Yeah, and … ?” Her eyes flashed dangerously, like I was perilously close to saying the wrong thing.
I shifted uncomfortably. “What kind of issues could you have, anyway?” Other than being a bitch. I kept that little gem to myself, but it didn’t seem to help.
Her head jerked back like I’d slapped her, her mouth falling open slightly. Then her green eyes narrowed, and she pushed herself off the bed, her feet landing with a thump on the hardwood. “I don’t have issues? I don’t have issues?” She grabbed for the closest thing at hand—which was, unfortunately, my half-packed bag—and chucked a T-shirt at my head. “You don’t even know me, you … freak.”
“Hey!” I held my hands up in a defensive position.
“I’m dead, and I’m stuck here. I totally have issues!” A pair of jeans sailed at my face.
