I'd Rather Not Be Dead

by Andrea Brokaw

  Cooper Finnegan turns, rounding a corner so Cris and the other me can't see him anymore. “You don't remember because of the trauma of your death. Something happened to you that was bad enough to leave this imprint of your life force and to knock it back in time. Could have tossed you forward just as easy.”

  Imprint of my life force? Yeah, right. “If you could come up with something less hokey, I'd be more likely to buy it.”

  “Still an atheist?” His eyes crinkle in mild amusement.

  “I've seen no evidence this is the afterlife.”

  He leans against the building, folds his arms, and gives me half a smile. “Okay. What do you think is happening then?”

  “I don't know.” I kick at the ground. “But you have something to do with it.”

  His eyebrows go up. “Because I possess awesome magical powers?”

  Okay... No. Nor is he likely to be a mad scientist posing as a small town sports hero. He's not someone who could break the laws of physics.

  “You honestly think I'm dead?” I watch him closely for signs he thinks any of this is funny.

  Far from looking amused, he looks saddened as he answers in a flat tone, “Yeah. I do.”

  “How?”

  He shakes his head at the ground. “I don't know.”

  “How do I stop it?”

  “You can't. It hasn't happened to the rest of us yet, but for you, it's history.” He meets my eyes with sympathy. “You can't change history, Drew.”

  No. I'm not going to accept that crap. “The future can always be changed. And it's her future.”

  “Well, good luck with that.” He pushes off the wall and starts to leave.

  “You aren't going to help me?” I stare at his back. “You're that happy to see me dead?”

  He stops, turns around to face me again. In the space of a second he's transformed into something just this side of terrifying. His skin's gone as white as a skeleton and his expression's turned cold as the grave. As he lances me with a gaze as wicked sharp as a scythe, Cooper Finnegan could well be Death himself. “I am not happy.”

  “Sure you aren't.” My fingers claw into my arms as I glare at him, trying not to let fear gain a foothold inside me. I refuse to be afraid of Cooper Finnegan. And there's no way I'd let him see it if I were. “I'm surprised you're not throwing a party.”

  He comes a step closer, his eyes livid. “Everyone would come if I did.”

  “All of your little sheep.” I nod. “Everyone but Cris.”

  Cooper Finnegan lets out a cruel laugh. “He would if Bobbi asked him.”

  Ouch. There's a response, but it escapes me. I'm too shocked he'd say something like that, that he'd even know to say something like that.

  He turns and leaves.

  I don't try to stop him. It's not like I need him. I can figure how to stop my death myself. I just need time to think.

  Determined not to let his pessimism get to me, I launch myself into motion and pace around the school. The other me huddles in my trench coat as she waves a cigarette through the air. She's obviously cold, but as far as my skin knows the temperature's around the mid-seventies. Not cold. Not hot. Nothing. Leaves tumble across my path but the wind doesn't touch me. No way Cooper Finnegan's responsible for this, whatever this is.

  After at least a mile of stalking in circles, I slip back into the building behind an underclassman who'd snuck out to make a phone call. I need to find myself.

  It's her free period and she's reading a novel in the library. I try snatching the book from her but my hand passes straight through it. Then my hand passes through hers and I shudder. The feeling isn't bad, exactly. It's warm and exhilarating. But talk about unsettling.

  The other me shifts and gives a shiver of her own as I sit on the back of her chair and start reading over her shoulder. I don't remember the book at all.

  A few minutes before the bell, we go to our locker and she pulls out a bag of Doritos. She crams the chips into her mouth like she's starving. Guess she was too busy bickering with Cris to eat enough at lunch.

  Down the hall, Cooper Finnegan's standing in front of his locker too. He's just looking at it, completely spaced out. The bell rings and he gives a start, looking surprised.

  “Boo!” I yell.

  He starts again and the other me lets out a sound of disgust. “You need to back off.”

  “Yeah.” I smirk at him. “Stop looking at her.”

  He rolls his eyes and slams the locker shut without getting anything out of it. He walks toward us, stops just before me. “Drew?”

  The other me wipes her fingers on her pants, leaving a trail of cheese powder. Then she deigns to look at him. “Cooper Finnegan?”

  His expression is hard to read as he shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” The other me snickers as he walks off.

  I fling my hands in the air. “Nothing?”

  Cooper Finnegan stops a little way up the hall and bends over the water fountain as I storm up to him.

  “What was I supposed to say?” He presses the button on the fountain and pretends to drink. “I think something bad is going to happen to you? You're about to die? Keep an eye out for murderers? You would've thought I was nuts.”

  Oh. “Or threatening me.”

  “Right.” He straightens, gives me a almost imperceptible shrug, and continues on his way.

  There's shrieking back near my locker, where Bobbi's waving her arms through the air. “I'm not going to let you steal him from me!”

  Both of me laugh at her, as do several people passing by.

  “Like I'd want him.” The other me makes a face at the notion.

  “Then what did he say to you?”

  The other me smirks. “Nothing.”

  “I know he said something! I saw him.”

  Amused by Bobbi's fury, the other me starts to walk away. Probably to tell Cris what just happened.

  “Is everything alright?” one of Bobbi's friends asks.

  “Everything's fine.” My kid sister glares at the other me's back.

  Bobbi's friend tilts her head in worry. “He's been watching her all day.”

  “Marveling that such a freak would be related to me.” Bobbi gives her hair a confident toss, her signature move.

  “Bitch.” I pass my hand through her chest. It's creepy, but hearing her gasp is completely worth it.

  I'm tempted to follow Bobbi but choose the less sadistic, if more pathetic, route of trailing after myself. I hover on the edge of my life and struggle to think.

  No one in the classroom notices me, even though I walk up to each and every one of them. Figures. I say something to all the little sheep, but no one cares. Not that they cared when things were normal either, but at least they used to hear me.

  The other me doesn't react either, though I spend most of the period standing over her shoulder watching her doodle caricatures of the founding fathers. The one of Ben Franklin's decent.

  I leave behind myself when class lets out. Cooper Finnegan's in my next class, so I find Cris and shadow him instead. I just don't feel like putting up with Cooper Finnegan right now.

  Cris looks the same as always as I sit on the floor beside him and stare up. Dark hair. Brooding eyes. Three piercings on the eyebrow closest to me. Two bores in the nearest ear. A stud in his nose that looks like it's getting infected.

  “I can't believe you don't know I'm here. I miss you, Cris.” A serious understatement.

  In life, I never let myself admit how I thought of him. He's not my friend. He's more than that. A lot more. Even if he never wanted to be. Even if he's a self-centered asshole using me for sex despite the harsh reality that he'd rather be with my sister. Even if he imagines her when he's with me. None of that changes anything.

  There's a pep rally in place of the last period. Cris sits near the door, ready to slip out as soon as the staff stops guarding against escapees. The other me isn't with him. She must have cut already.

  The rest of the s
chool's right here. All four hundred of them.

  Taking a breath, I walk up to the microphone in the middle of the gym floor. “Hello?”

  It's not on.

  My fingers pass through it, of course. It's not real in my world.

  Sighing, I turn my attention to scanning the stands. No one pays me any attention but that doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't pay attention to someone just standing here either.

  I wait until Ms. Pauler, the school principal, strides out to center court. A petite woman, she's nearly drowning in a wide-shouldered suit of forest green, the dominant school color. There's a gold-toned bird pinned to it. I assume she thinks it looks like a bird of prey. Looks more like a wren to me.

  The Pine Bridge Birds of Prey. Because they couldn't be bothered to come up with a specific bird of prey to use as a mascot.

  Ms. Pauler lowers the microphone to her level, flips the power on, and yells, “Hello, Pine Bridge!”

  For some reason, the crowd cheers.

  “Are you ready to beat Mitchell?”

  The student body screams back that they are. Whatever. I step up to Ms. Pauler and plunge my hand into her shoulder. She shivers, but no one in the stands looks alarmed.

  “Let's hear it for our Pine Bridge cheerleaders!”

  The principal leads the group in clapping and several people scream enthusiastically as my sister and her squad run out, a couple of them turning cartwheels and all of them smiling like Barbie dolls. I notice Cris watching them very closely, and I wish I hadn't.

  The girls do a dance to some random hip-hop track. It's always cracked me up that they use this kind of music for their pep when they wouldn't dare be caught listening to it for recreation. My leg passes through Bobbi as I try to trip her, but of course she doesn't slide across the room on her face like I'd wanted.

  Predictably, no one in the audience notices me trying to interfere with the routine. The first sign of someone noticing me is when the football team gets called out. Right after Ms. Pauler says, “And our starting quarterback...” and stupid Cooper Finnegan runs out waving his helmet around like an idiot. His eyes catch on me and his face shuts down for a heartbeat before he recovers enough to give the crowd one of his infamous grins. It's a good thing I haven't eaten all day or I'd be sick to my stomach.

  I kick out at him as he walks by on his way to stand with the other jocks. He stumbles and narrows his eyes at me. My breath catches. “You felt that! Like really felt it!”

  He ignores me except for a tightening of his jaw.

  I run down the line of players, stopping in front of their leader. I reach out and grab his arm. And actually grab his arm! His flesh is solid. And warm. It feels like he has a burning fever.

  “Stop it,” he whispers without moving his lips.

  “I can touch you!” I grin at him.

  His mouth twitches. “I'm busy.”

  “But-” I cut myself off short when it strikes me who I'm clinging to. My hand drops and I take several steps back, appalled. I was latching onto Cooper Finnegan like he was some sort of... Not disgusting thing. “Why can I touch you?”

  There's a slight rolling of his eyes and he waves to someone behind me.

  “Is it the same reason you can see and hear me?” His gaze flickers to mine, moves up and down like a nod, and then goes back to his fans.

  Okay... This makes it official. I really am dead. I have to be. Because this is Hell.

  Chapter Three

  There are no mega-chain stores in Pine Bridge. It can be more than moderately annoying to have to drive more than an hour just to hit Wal-Mart, but on the plus side it means there's still a downtown. It's just too bad for me that all the little indie shops are owned by conservative hicks and not by the type of people who would carry things I want to buy. Or all the shops except the florist. That's owned by my mother, who may just be the only grownup liberal in the entire county.

  I wander Main Street, trying to find someone, anyone who isn't Cooper Finnegan, who notices my presence. No once glances at me in the bookstore. The barista at Fresh Grounds ignores me. The old ladies in the collectibles store fail to look disapproving. I have no luck with the jewelers in the gem store. Even Mom pays no attention to me as she arranges pink roses in a cute little “It's a girl!” vase.

  She's humming along to the radio, to a Beatles song. She loves the Beatles. I leave in a hurry, before the scene makes me cry. I'm done with crying. Can't let myself forget that.

  I keep going for another hour before finding my first success contacting others in the hardware store. As soon as I walk in, a sandy haired twenty-something man whose clothes went out of style in the forties gives me a kind look and a gentle smile. “You're not going to have any luck, kiddo. Not just wandering around hoping someone notices you.”

  Whoa. He sees me! And took the time to say something snidely vague. My eyebrows raise. “And I will have luck how?”

  With a teasing grin, he picks up a bolt from the bin beside us and throws it straight at one of the workers.

  The target curses. “That darn ghost is back!”

  “There's no such thing as ghosts!” the manager yells from deep in the store with a weariness that sounds like he's yelled the same thing many times before. “Stop horsing around before you scare the customers.”

  “This place is haunted,” the worker says to an older man in paint splattered overalls as he glowers at a spot a few feet left of us.

  “Is it? I never noticed.” The ghost winks at me and vanishes from sight.

  I take a deep breath. Clearly, I'm not the only ghost in town. The jury's still out on whether I'm alone in my sanity though. Not that things would be so much different than when I was alive if I am.

  My eyes go to the bin of washers as the customer shuffles to a different aisle and the employee goes back to restocking. The shiny little circles of metal don't look any more tangible than anything leaves or textbooks, but then again, neither do chairs, so I move my hand toward them anyway. If one ghost can toss them around, maybe we all can. “Here's goes nothing.”

  My fingers glide through the washers as if they aren't there and I sigh. But maybe there's hope, maybe I can learn. That guy hadn't looked particularly powerful or anything.

  I spend an hour working to pick up a washer, but at the end of it I'm exhausted and the whole bin is undisturbed. The metal feels different than it did at first, like an electric current turned up, but it's as intangible as on my first try. Tired and disheartened, I leave the shop and go to the bench sitting beside it. The bench supports my weight when I lie down but after a few minutes someone sits right in the middle of my stomach and I spring to my feet, cursing the redneck's complete lack of consideration.

  The man doesn't hear me, but he must sense something. Something that motivates him to get up again and rush down the street in a sudden hurry to get somewhere else.

  “He wasn't trying to hurt you,” Cooper Finnegan says.

  My eyes narrow on the annoying jock. “What are you doing here?”

  He waves at the store window. Finnegan's Hardware and Contracting. Right. “You know your store's haunted?”

  His eyes roll. “What'd Grandpa do now?”

  “Grandpa?” The man I met wasn't anywhere old enough to be anyone's grandfather.

  “The Ghost of the Hardware Store,” Cooper Finnegan whispers, his voice trying to be spooky. The rumors of the football team's drug usage must be true.

  “Died young?”

  Cooper Finnegan shakes his head. “Lived to see ninety three.”

  “Then you have two ghosts.”

  His gives me a look like I'm as dumb as a sack of flour. “Ghosts retain the appearance their energy thinks they should have. Regardless of how they appeared in life.”

  He stops speaking as a woman leads a little girl in a pink dress and long pigtails out of the store. He smiles at them, making the woman go all flustered. She's blushing as she smiles back, although it's hard to tell with all the foundation caked on h
er skin. “Hey, Finn,” she says with an annoying simper. “Good luck tonight.”

  Good grief! The woman's at least thirty-five and wearing a wedding band. She's got her kid with her and everything!

  “Thanks.” He smiles with his usual trademarked charm, as if he doesn't realize the woman's in danger of fainting if she gets much more direct attention from him.

  “Go Birds of Prey!” the daughter chimes in.

  Great, the guy's got the kindergarten set drooling over him too. Like he needed more adoration.

  “And thank you.” Finn's smile widens for the little kid, becomes more genuine. The girl grins up at him, drowning in his glory without appearing to suffer from hormonal overload.

  I clear my throat as the two move on. “So a ghost looks as old as they thought they were? The young at heart will be young in ghostly body?”

  Cooper Finnegan turns his head to make sure the retreating customers won't overhear him. “Pretty much.”

  “Finn!” The store manager pokes his head out of the door. “You here for Jerry's order?”

  “Yes, sir, Uncle Mark.” The smile he gives his uncle is the exact same smile he gave the woman a moment ago, but it doesn't seem to make his uncle want to swoon.

  I've never figured out why Cooper Finnegan, alone of all the Finnegans in town, is called Finn rather than by his first name. I asked Cris about it when I first moved here, but Cris just shrugged and mumbled it'd always been that way.

  “I have errands for work and then a game,” Cooper Finnegan says from the corner of his mouth. He walks into the store without saying anything else, leaving me feeling dismissed.

  “Hope you break your neck,” I mutter. Then I regret it. If he dies, there's a chance he'll wind up haunting this place too. Then I'd be stuck with him for eternity. Or... I stop walking. I could leave.

  Sure, Cooper Finnegan's the only medium in this town, but what about Asheville? Charlotte? Surely a city the size of Charlotte would have someone living to talk to. Someone who could help me, who could keep me from dying in the first place.

  Even if I'm doomed to die, I can always go be dead at home. Real home. Not the house my parents are in, but Philadelphia... There's got to be plenty of awesome deceased to hang with in Philly.