by Suzy Cox
“Who?” Nancy asked, pulling out her little spiral notepad.
“The cheerleaders: I wasn’t friends with them at school, I wasn’t even allowed to stand next to them in the lunch line, but now three of them are taking time out of their hectic preening and self-tanning schedule to be here. Do you think it could simply be because they know they look good in black?”
Lorna nodded sagely. “Yes, that does sound strange!” Nancy smiled excitedly.
“In fact I can’t see the head cheerleader now.” I looked around some more. Most people had left, but—unlike Jamie and Kaitlynnn—she hadn’t walked past us. “Kristen—she was the sickeningly pretty blonde who sat in the front row during the service. I didn’t see her leave.”
“That’s because she disappeared into the vicar’s private room with your boyfriend about ten minutes ago,” Tess said. “I wonder if she’s comforting him in there?”
A sick feeling, much worse than porting sickness, started bubbling up in my throat. If this was one of Nancy’s stupid soap operas, I would storm in there and find something bad going on.
But it wasn’t. This was real death. Kristen might be the über-bitch, but David was my loyal boyfriend—the guy who’d just given the cutest speech ever. He’d been talking about marrying me some day. What sixteen-year-old boy says crap like that—especially to a girl who is dead so he’s got nothing to gain from it? He wouldn’t be fooling around with another girl already. Not after that.
“Let’s go see what’s going on then,” Nancy said, trying to calm things down. She must have been terrified I was going to get overemotional again and apparite at my own funeral. While we hadn’t covered that as a specific Rule no-no, I was pretty sure spooking everyone you’ve ever met right after your wake was in there under “really, don’t do.”
Nancy, Lorna, and I walked across the aisle to the small wooden door Tess had pointed to. We all looked at one another expectantly. Nancy was hoping for a breakthrough. I was just hoping I wouldn’t see anything that would break my heart.
We walked through the shut door. Tickle. David was standing by the window, looking out at the busy street outside. Kristen hovered beside him. Now that Mom was out of sight, she was back on arm-stroking duty. Grrrr …
“It’s not even been three whole days, but I miss Charlotte so much already,” David said quietly, his voice shaking. “Is this empty feeling ever going to get better?”
“Of course it will,” Kristen said brightly. “Look at Brad and Jen. Okay, she didn’t die—unless you count the career suicide that was The Breakup—but Brad was back in the game and dating again within weeks. And dating someone who was way more on his social and attractiveness scale.” Bitch. “Your Angelina could be just around the corner!”
I was pretty sure David had no idea who she was talking about. But he smiled anyway.
“I tell you what, how about we think of some of the things you didn’t like about Charlotte,” Kristen said.
Um, how about we don’t?
“That’s what I always do when I want to get over a guy,” she said. Like she had ever been ditched by any man. “It helps me realize he wasn’t perfect and that I can live through this and find someone better.”
Kristen pouted, waiting for David to speak. She’d somehow found time to reapply her lip gloss between the front pew and here. If I wasn’t so mad, I’d be impressed by such stealth styling.
“Charlotte was … she was amazing,” David said. “She was everything I ever wanted from a girlfriend: She was kind and smart and cute and she got me.”
More pouting—this was not what Kristen wanted to hear.
“Though she could be kinda controlling at times, I guess,” he said quietly, ducking down his head.
WTF? Controlling? Controlling? The only thing I ever tried to control was the frizz level of my hair.
“Oh, and …,” he started.
Oh and what, precisely? For someone who thought I was “amazing” three seconds ago, David seemed to be warming to his subject now.
“Once, when I wanted to have a Brooklyn bands day on my iPod, she pressed shuffle because it was making her depressed and that meant I had to listen to music from all over the world, which was really not the point of what I was doing. That kinda annoyed me.”
Give me strength.
“See! She wasn’t totally perfect after all.” David nodded. “You know what I think? I think the way through this pain is for you to try to forget about Charlotte,” Kristen said. “This is a new time in your life now. A new start for you. And I’d”—muchos eyelash batting and shy floor-staring—“really like to be part of that.”
“I cannot believe he is falling for this,” Lorna whispered.
“That was ridiculous,” Nancy agreed, nodding.
“Will you guys just shhhh!” I pleaded. “He’s not falling for it. Not David—you heard what he said out there. He loves me. He’d never go for this blowup Barbie, he—”
Then the blowup Barbie did the worst thing imaginable. She looked up, tilted her head, and slowly gave David a kiss. ON THE LIPS.
“Noooooo!” Lorna and Nancy said in unison behind me.
And then, an even more unimaginably worse thing happened. David didn’t pull away. In fact, for one long horrible second, it looked like he was kissing her back.
“I’m sorry, Kristen. I can’t do this,” David said, as he finally managed to tear his lips away from hers.
My boyfriend, my supposed soul mate, the guy I was pretty sure I’d lost my best friend for had just kissed a hideous cheermonster. At my funeral? My body might have been cold, but I hadn’t even been buried yet. He should have pulled away faster. Ducked. What was he doing?
Much as I wanted to, especially with Tess there, I couldn’t hide how I felt. I was devastated. Sure, I had allowed a teeny tiny, like, 0.000000001 percent of my brain to think that maybe one day David would move on. But I thought that would be years away. And by then I would have found my Key, gone through the Big Red Door, and whatever was on the Other Side would hopefully have been so awesome I could have forgotten about David until he came through it to join me. That would have been okay. That was the plan. Even if he’d lived until he was really old and got all Regis-wrinkly, I could have taken it. As long as he didn’t have an elderly wife in tow.
I didn’t expect this. He hated cheerleaders. He hated cliques and gangs and popularity contests. He hated high school. Now he was sucking face with its queen bee?
“Oh, dear,” Tess said behind me. “Guess lover boy wasn’t so keen on you after all.”
I turned around. Why was she here only during the bad times in my afterlife? I wished I had some smart remark, the kind of comeback that Lorna and Nancy would be quoting back to me later on. But I didn’t. I didn’t have anything. Apart from a massive lump in my throat, and a prize view of David getting over me by getting under another girl.
I had to get out of there. To somewhere else. Somewhere that always made me feel safe. Somewhere I knew, where I could try to erase the image in front of me, and just pretend that my funeral had ended when he gave that lovely, beautiful speech.
Which was clearly a crock.
I closed my eyes, ignored the nausea, and thought my way out of there. Blocks and blocks away.
To Central Park. To our favorite rock. The place where David and I had last been in love. Eternal soul mates. Or so I stupidly, stupidly thought.
Chapter 12
I LAY ON OUR ROCK, WATCHING THE EARLY evening sun duck behind the trees all around me and draw long shadows across the grass of Central Park, like a silent alarm telling everyone to go home and start the evening instead.
I’d always loved sitting up here—ever since I’d discovered it as a kid. I guess I used the rock in the same way Holly Golightly used Tiffany’s. It was a place I could head for if things weren’t going my way. Nothing bad could happen to me here.
If you sat on the rock and looked around, it felt like you were in a forest, surrounded by trees. As
a kid, I’d pretend they were enchanted and that, when night fell, they came to life and swallowed up anyone stupid enough to be in Central Park after dark. But if you stood up and looked above you, New York’s skyscrapers loomed above their leaves. It was like two worlds had been messily glued together. I loved both of them. That was one of the reasons why this was my favorite place in the city and why—even though I totally wanted to travel—I couldn’t imagine living anywhere in the world but New York. Even after we started dating, I didn’t bring David here for months, because it was my place. I didn’t want us to break up and feel like it was tainted by memories of him. But sitting here now was weirdly comforting.
Somewhere, not that far away, I could hear a group of kids giggling in delight. Whatever they were doing, they sounded happy, while for the second time in as many days, my world had fallen apart. First I died. Then I was dumped.
“Shhh! I’ve found her. Here she is!” Was Lorna ever going to learn about volume control? Her attempts at a whisper were anything but. At least she was never going to be able to sneak up on me. Unlike Edison. Or Tess.
I pushed my body—not that you could even call it that anymore—up by my hands and sat up straight. Just as I expected, out of the corner of my eye I could see Lorna and Nancy on the other side of my rock. Half crouching, half kneeling, so as not to ambush me: the poor, fragile cheatee. They must be here to check I was okay. As if okay were something I was ever going to be again.
All I needed now was for Tess to show up, say something sarcastic, and make me wish someone would kill me all over again. Not that I’d even managed to die properly. Who messes that up? Was it any wonder David had upgraded me for some perfect, perky, popular blonde whose life line was still visible on her hand? Kristen was six foot in heels. I was six feet under. What did I have to offer a relationship anyhow?
“So I know that looked bad—what we just saw in the church—but maybe Kristen and David were just …” Even Nancy was struggling to see the positive here. “Maybe he was thinking of you and he got caught up in the moment? And he did pull away eventually.” She grimaced.
“The only thing he was thinking of was himself,” Lorna said, fuming. “I’m sorry to speak ill of the Living, but David totally deserves it. That was beyond disgraceful. Has he not heard of the time-date continuum?”
Despite myself and my twenty-stories-deep depression, I managed an eh?
“The time-date continuum,” she repeated. “The rules for when you can and can’t do things in a relationship?” No, Nancy and I clearly did not know them. Lorna sighed at our ineptitude, like she couldn’t believe we’d made it to our sixteenth birthdays while still being this clueless. “When it comes to how you behave in a relationship, it’s what governs everything,” she said. “For example, after a guy texts you for the first time, you can’t reply for at least three hours or you look desperate.” Okay, fine, even I knew that. “And, after you actually go out with a boy, you need to make him wait a week between dates.” She fluffed up her hair. “It’s called playing hard to get.”
Lorna was rattling this off at an alarmingly well-versed rate. Though I wasn’t quite sure what first datetiquette had to do with kissing someone else during your girlfriend’s memorial service.
“Likewise,” Lorna said, “though this is not something that happens, like, all that often, if you do happen to die while you’re dating someone, he definitely, definitely, definitely is not allowed to suck face with anyone else until at least a month after your funeral. It just looks bad. Like he never cared about you in the first place.”
Ouch.
Lorna realized what she’d said and stopped. Fast. “Not that David didn’t love you—I mean, we all heard his eulogy—of course he did. I think he just got confused and did something bad.”
“I just don’t get why he did it,” I said. “Right now, David’s supposed to be mourning me, not proving he’s got no morals and even less taste. I just didn’t think I’d die to see him behave like this. There are some guys you know—pretty much the second you meet them—are total creeps who will make out with another girl when your back is turned. I didn’t think he was like that. I guess Kristen did take advantage of him when he was having a moment of weakness. And that grief makes you do crazy things. So I should be more annoyed at her than him, right?”
Lorna and Nancy wouldn’t meet my stare.
I looked down off the rock, at the grass below. It didn’t seem to have any magic here’s-what-to-do-when-your-soul-mate-turns-out-to-be-a-sniveling-worm advice either. Bummer.
Nancy tried to change tack. “You know what this is?” No. “It’s a classic case of post-mortal depression. That’s why you’re feeling so bad.” She gave Lorna a help-me-out-here look.
“Yeah, like, after I died, I felt weird about it for the first few weeks too.” Lorna gently sat down next to me, which was super-sweet of her because I could see that she was totally hating the thought that the rock might somehow get a speck of dirt on her skirt. “But it soon passed. And your blue feeling will too.”
“And after my town house went up in the explosion …,” Nancy said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Charlotte. It’s okay—and it could have been so much worse. My parents were out so I was the only one hurt. Thankfully.” She touched my arm and took a second. “Anyway, afterward … well, I’m glad I had Lorna here to help me through. Just adjusting to being here was hard enough, so I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.”
Poor Nancy, I thought.
“You’ve had a lot to deal with,” Nancy added kindly. “Murder and a double-crossing boyfriend? Well, that’s every girl’s worst nightmare.”
“Apart from the never-getting-to-wear-different-clothes thing,” Lorna said and smiled in her attempt to cheer me up. She clapped her hands. “You know what you need?”
A time machine to go back seventy-two hours, so I wasn’t in this mess?
“You need cheering up!” she said, punching the air.
My face fell. I didn’t need “cheer” anything.
“Sorry, you need a treat!” Lorna said. “Don’t mention the ‘cheer’ word,” she mouthed at Nancy.
“Great idea!” Nancy said.
“Now, what can we do to chee—to make you happy?” Nancy asked. “How do we fix a broken heart?”
“When I was alive, and a guy love-ratted on a friend, I’d take her for a mani,” Lorna said. Her face fell as she remembered that was not an option. “Oh, or …” I dreaded to think what was about to come out of Lorna’s mouth. “I’d let her do whatever she wanted. No matter how silly. Anything! Come on, Nancy, I think this is one of Charlotte’s Nine Times.”
Nine Times?
“One of the Nine Times when you can break the Rules and Miss Goody Two-Shoes here won’t go mad at you,” Lorna explained.
“Break the Rules?” I asked.
“Charlotte, have you even read the red book I gave you?” Nancy said with a playful scowl.
“You know what, I kinda haven’t. I’ve been too booked up with death, burial, and betrayal to fit it in,” I said.
“I know, sorry.” Wow, Nancy just apologized when I was clearly in the wrong. She must feel bad for me.
“How about you get it out now and turn to page thirty?” she said kindly.
I pulled it out of my blazer pocket and thumbed through the pages until I got to one headed “Your Nine Times.”
“So it explains there that every ghost knows that death is a tricky time, especially for teens,” Nancy said. “So that’s why we have the Nine Times. It’s kinda like nine hall passes—nine opportunities to break the Rules on nine separate occasions, just for fun, repercussion-free.”
“It’s basically in here to cut us some slack,” Lorna said.
“To make the transition from livinghood to ghostdom a little easier,” Nancy explained.
Says who?
“So the big question I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said, “is where do the Rules come from? Like, I get that Lyndsay gave you g
uys the book and you’ve passed it on to me, but who wrote it originally?”
And is it really, as Edison hinted, just a load of crock to keep us in control?
Nancy and Lorna exchanged a look. “All we know is what I told you, Charlotte,” Nancy said quietly.
“But tell her your theory,” Lorna said, her blue eyes pleading.
Nancy looked at her hard, then back at me. She slowly nodded. “Okay, so here’s the thing: Soon after I first got here, there was kinda this … incident,” she said. This sounded interesting. “This new kid, Jimmy, he arrived and, well, he was kinda annoyed to be dead.”
“Which is, like, the most major understatement ever,” Lorna whispered to me, sitting closer.
“According to the information we got from our preliminary investigations, we found out that he’d gotten in with the wrong crowd at his school and got into some bad stuff”—Nancy said the words in a tone that let me know she’d not be elaborating on what the “bad stuff” was anytime soon—“and one of his supposed friends ran him down with a car.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly,” Lorna said.
“Well, when he arrived at the Attesa, I explained that Tess, Lorna, and I had formed the Agency and decided to use what we’d learned to help newbies solve their murders,” Nancy continued. “We taught him how to apparite and port, but after that he wasn’t interested. He said he knew who’d killed him already—and all he wanted was revenge.”
Revenge?
“We didn’t see much of him after that,” Lorna said. “He was always out. Especially at night.”
“I hoped he was making his own investigations”—Nancy shook her head sadly—“but then they arrived and we realized he hadn’t been using his new skills wisely.”
“They?” I asked.
“The adults,” Nancy said. “Murdered teens come to the Attesa, adults to another hotel uptown, remember?”
“I told you that,” Lorna said.
“I’d never met any of them before,” Nancy continued, “just heard from Lyndsay that was how it worked. But that day two of them turned up—a man and a woman—who explained that Jimmy had been drawing attention to himself.”
