But not Alona. She remained rooted to the spot, staring upward at the horrible cloud. “What … what is that thing, Killian?” Her voice still sounded remarkably normal, despite the tremor in it.
This “thing” was the reason I knew Alona Dare hadn’t committed suicide, no matter what the rumors were. When you killed yourself, all the negative energy—the sadness, the self-loathing, the fear, and the desperation—remained. Most of the ghosts like that were just sad and silent wanderers, vague shadowy outlines of who they’d once been. In this case, the negative energy was so strong, it had consumed any hint of who the person had been, leaving little more than a physical manifestation of pure anger. I’d never seen anything like it before, but that was okay. I didn’t need any hints to figure this one out.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, trying to sound calm. “What are you doing here?”
Dad? This nasty black cloud thing was Killian’s father? On one hand, that made sense. I could maybe see now why Killian was so messed up. On the other … damn, I thought I had problems at home.
At the sound of Killian’s voice, the mass of black smoke rose up and launched itself toward him. Unfortunately, it had to pass through me to reach him. Cold air rushed over me, like tiny slivers of metal slicing open my skin.
I screamed and tried to curl into myself, only to find I’d disappeared, again, from the waist down. Twisting my head around, I managed to catch one last glimpse of Killian. He shoved Joonie out of the way and stood there, pale and resolute, just watching this … thing rush at him.
It engulfed him and threw him hard to the left into the lockers. Killian’s head bounced off the metal with a sickeningly loud clunk. He slid to the floor, his eyes closed, and his body motionless.
So much for Plan A. I wondered if Killian would still be able to help me if he were dead. Surely, even dead he would have more knowledge than the average …
The now familiar tingling sensation rose up through my neck and into my face. I sighed. Here we go …
… Again.
I woke abruptly, expecting to feel the gravel biting into my shoulder blades once more. Instead, I found myself sitting in the backseat of an unfamiliar car that seemed to be traveling at excessive speed and taking corners a little too fast for even my comfort.
What was going on? First, the whole disappearing thing, and now a different location? I did not like this. Did the first four days of my afterlife experience mean nothing?
Not that I was complaining too much. Waking up in a car was more comfortable, at least, than waking up in the road. Whether it was better depended on whether I would die—again or more?—if we crashed. We were coming around the front of the school on Elm Street (I know, right?), just passing the turn for Henderson, where I’d died. Elm veered right sharply, to avoid cutting through St. Paul’s Cemetery, and people were forever missing the curve and cracking into the light pole. “Hey, you want to slow it down?” I shouted at the dark-haired driver, whose face I couldn’t see.
To my surprise, the driver turned slightly at the sound of my voice, revealing her identity. Killian’s friend, Joonie. Or, the High Priestess of Pain, as I liked to call her. She wears safety pins in her face for heaven’s sake.
“Will, you doing okay back there?” she asked, sounding nervous.
Killian? Aware suddenly of a warm weight pressing against my lap, I looked down. Hey, my shoes and socks were back … and Killian’s head was resting on my legs! His hair was softer than I would have thought … and I could feel it. That was weird.
“Ew.” I shoved at his shoulders and actually made contact. My hand touched his sweatshirt, and I could feel the heat and solidness of his body beneath it. Well, that explained how those other ghosts were hanging on him. Something was definitely weird about Killian, and it wasn’t just his obsession with the Walmart sale bin (or wherever he bought his clothes).
Pushing at him didn’t do much good, though. Just made his head loll away from me. He was completely out of it, his body limp. A large red bump had risen on the side of his head, one I could see even through his dark hair. That couldn’t be good.
“Will?” Joonie called again.
A horn blared, and with a muffled curse, she spun around to face forward again.
Oh, my God, I knew exactly where I was now. I was riding in the Death Bug. Joonie Travis had taken a cute little VW Beetle, one of the old ones, and painted it black except for the white skull and crossbones she’d spray-painted on the door panels. Say it with me: FREAK. Right? I mean, how twisted do you have to be to take something so happy and turn it into something so gross and goth? I thought longingly of my graduation present, a silver VW Eos convertible, sitting in my dad’s driveway, waiting for me to come back for a drive. I frowned. Unless my dad had sold it already …
“You want to wake up again and tell me exactly why I’m not taking you to the hospital?” Joonie called over her shoulder, without turning around again, thank God. If she’d paid enough attention, she would have seen that Killian’s head appeared to be floating a few inches above the seat rather than resting on it—at least from her perspective.
Will did not respond. His head remained on my thigh, his left shoulder nuzzled right up next to my hip. I wondered, for a brief second, whether I’d been here, though not aware yet, when he’d decided on this arrangement, or whether he’d simply fallen into this position and I’d rematerialized underneath him, just by chance.
Huh. Seemed an awful lot to put on chance. “Killian, get up.” I reached over his chest and shook his shoulder. “Despite all the brain cells you must have burned up, your head is really heavy and it’s putting my leg to sleep.”
Plus, it was making me a little uncomfortable. His head in my lap suggested an intimacy that I hadn’t even shared with Chris. The thought of Chris, sudden in its attack, made it hard for me to breathe for a second. No, I hadn’t been planning to marry him or anything. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t ever planned on marrying anyone. I’d witnessed the fallout from my parents’ divorce at close range, and I’d have sooner … well, died, than go through that myself. But still, Chris had been mine, you know? Yeah, he’d talked about wrestling way too much and seemed happiest when I wasn’t talking at all, but still. I’d miss some things about him. The smoothness of the back of his neck under my fingertips, the way he always chewed gum before kissing me so that he would taste all minty and fresh … Tears welled up in my eyes. None of that belonged to me anymore. He was Misty’s now, that evil slut.
I sat up straight, jostling Killian’s head in my lap. Had she promised him sex? Is that what this was all about?
Killian groaned, turning himself in the seat until he was on his side … with his hand tucked under my knee!
“In your dreams.” I slapped at his shoulder.
“If you don’t talk to me, I’m taking you to the hospital and calling your mom,” Joonie threatened.
Whether it was the effect of my actions or Joonie’s words, I didn’t know, but he seemed to wake up a little then. He left his hand behind my knee but rolled his head back to look up at me with a dopey smile, his eyes half glazed. “No hospital. Home, please.” He was slurring worse than a freshman left in Ben Rogers’s tender care. Lovely. He’d be all kinds of help in this condition.
His eyes drifted shut again almost immediately, and his body went limp … again. And his head was STILL in my lap.
In the front seat, Joonie relaxed, letting out her breath in a loud rush. “You were starting to scare me there.”
Um, starting to?
“You were talking to people who weren’t there … again,” she said with a shaky laugh. “Anyone we know?” Her gaze flicked to the rearview mirror as though she were expecting him to sit up and have a chat; desperation flashed through her eyes. “Will? Are you awake?”
“Yes, he’s just doing a lot of intense staring at the back of his eyelids,” I muttered.
“Dammit,” she said.
I sighed. “Chill out, psycho. If you’re not g
oing to take him to the hospital—which is probably not the brightest choice you’ve ever made, but then again you’re wearing deliberately shredded tights, so whatever—can you please take him home where he might have a chance of waking up and helping me? Seriously, I’m having, like, the worst day.”
As if she’d heard me, Joonie turned the Death Bug off the main drag in Groundsboro—called, believe it or not, Main Street—and back into the neighborhood behind the post office. Little boxy houses with even tinier lawns lined both sides of the street.
I’d been in this neighborhood before. Ilsa, our cleaning lady, used to live over here, and a long time ago, before the divorce, my mother would drop me off to play with Ilsa’s daughter when my dad was on a “business trip” and she needed “an afternoon.” A “business trip” translated to a weekend away with Gigi, his assistant then and his wife now. “An afternoon” meant a little quality time with Jim, Jack, and Smirnoff. Sometimes I felt I lived my whole life between invisible quotes.
Ilsa always had fresh snickerdoodles, and her house perpetually smelled like cinnamon. My mouth watered at the memory, but my stomach didn’t make so much as a peep. The good news about being dead was I could probably eat whatever I wanted and not get fat. Finding food that I could touch, and therefore eat, might be tricky, though. Something else to ask Killian about when he decided to rejoin the land of the living … or wherever we were.
Mumbling under her breath like a true psychopath-in-training, Joonie slowed about midway down the block, pulling into the gravel driveway of a cute but worn-looking brown one-story house, with white shutters and a red door. The garage, almost as big as the house, stood off to the right. A rusted and bent basketball hoop hung over the dented and battered door.
I braced myself against the Bug’s side window, which felt surprisingly solid given my previous experience passing through metal and glass, and wiggled out from under Killian. His head hit the seat with a muffled thump.
“Thank God,” I muttered, though, honestly, standing half crouched in the backseat of a VW Bug was no picnic, either.
Joonie slowed the car to a crawl, pulling behind the house. Uncomfortable and impatient, I shuffled around, taking tiny steps on the floor, until I faced the passenger-side door. I stepped forward, fully prepared to do the whole cold tingly passing through solid objects thing … and my elbow caught on the headrest of the passenger seat.
What the hell?
“The car is not solid, the car is not solid,” I repeated over and over again. But the plastic, metal, and let’s face it, probably asbestos, held me back just as it would have if I’d attempted this in my prebus days.
Joonie jerked the gearshift into park, popped open her door, and jumped out of her seat, flipping it forward to be able to reach Killian.
“Will.” She leaned into the car, bracing her hand on the edge of the seat, and shook him gently. “Come on. Let’s go.”
This is ridiculous. I did it once. I can do it again. I concentrated, imagining the feel of the gravel beneath my shoes, the smell of the fresh air instead of burned oil and old pot. Just one confident step forward and I’d be …
My knee connected solidly to the side of the car, shaking the whole thing. I stumbled back, clutching my knee. Only my superior balance and coordination kept me from falling onto the seat and Killian.
“Dammit,” I shouted. “What is going on here?” I put my foot down, wincing as my now sore knee bent—yeah, still dead and yet I felt pain, where was the fairness in that?—and turned to find Joonie staring wide-eyed at the car as it bounced on its crappy-ass shocks from my movement.
“Hello?” she said in faint voice. What little color she had drained from her face. Great. If she thought her car was haunted or possessed or something, she’d probably never get in it again to leave Killian’s house.
“Boo,” I said sourly.
She didn’t budge, just continued to look around, her dark eye makeup and pale face making her look like a frightened albino raccoon. I sighed.
“Not so loud,” Killian groaned without opening his eyes.
Frowning, Joonie turned her attention back to him. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
“Home,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, you’re home.” She leaned over and grabbed his arms. Then, bracing her feet against the ground, she pulled him into a seated position and then with another great tug, she yanked him to his feet.
I thought for sure he’d fall and take her with him—he was, like, a foot taller than her—but they seemed to have this routine down. He stumbled forward but managed to stand while she shifted to the side of him, pulling his arm over her shoulders. Aw, she was like a little safety-pin-encrusted crutch.
After Joonie took a quick look around at the surrounding houses—yeah, check now that you’re already out of the car and obvious, that’s a good idea—the two of them staggered toward the house.
Thank God she’d left the car door open. Otherwise, I might have been stuck in there forever. Amazing how I just kept finding new circles of hell.
I stepped out onto the driveway, relieved to be free and breathing (or whatever) fresh air, and followed them at a leisurely pace. At the door, there seemed to be some confusion about the key, which key, who has the key, something that had Joonie first digging in her pockets and then—ew—Killian’s.
So … more waiting. Seriously, is there anything to the afterlife, or whatever this is, besides waiting? With a sigh, I leaned against the side of the house … and fell straight through.
Wood siding, drywall, and—was that a piano?—flashed by in a cold rush. I landed on the floor—this awful brown and cream marbled carpeting—with a thump I felt but couldn’t hear. Stunned, I lay there for a second, staring up at the black upright piano and my legs stuck in the middle of it.
Clearly, this business of walking through walls and such was a lot more complicated than I’d first thought. How come I could fall into the freaking house by accident, but I couldn’t step out of the car, no matter how hard I concentrated? It made no sense.
Unless it didn’t always have to do with me. Maybe it was something else completely. Like, maybe because the house was wood, not metal like the car, the molecules were farther apart and I could slip through more easily or something … I had no idea. Just one more thing I had to figure out.
With a grimace, I curled my legs up toward my chest, half expecting to feel the wall and piano scrape my skin. But it didn’t hurt.
Once all of me was in the house, I rolled to my side and got to my feet. I brushed myself off—again, not strictly necessary, but comforting somehow—and took a look around. Definitely the living room. There was no television, heavy curtains covered the big picture window on the other side of the room, and a feeling of emptiness and nonuse filled the room. Cheap silver-colored photo frames covered the top of the piano. One man, who looked just like Killian only way older, dominated the spread. His father, probably. He looked significantly less dark, twisty, and cloudlike in these pictures.
On my left, two dark wood bookcases held a variety of delicate-looking tea cups and ceramic figurines with a few hardbound books for decoration. On my right, a barf-ugly but perfectly preserved peach-and-teal-plaid sofa from, like, 1993 occupied the wall. Next to it were two matching swinging doors with that awful cheap wood louvering. They were closed, but they appeared to be the only way out of the room.
As if to confirm that fact, I heard a commotion through the wooden slats, a sudden thump-stumble and the jingle of keys, and figured that Killian and Joonie had finally made it through the back door, into whatever room lay behind the swinging doors.
I strode toward the doors but stopped just short of trying to walk through them. If they turned out to be solid and I came busting through, Joonie would definitely see it. Not me, but the doors opening. While it might scare her off, she struck me more as the type who’d stick around and demand an explanation from Killian, which I so did not want. So, I waited until their unique shuffle-dra
g sounded farther away. Then I reached out for the doors and my hand slipped right through. Perfect.
The rest of me followed my hand without an issue, and I made it into what turned out to be the kitchen—bright orange paint and HUGE orange flowers on the wallpaper;was somebody color-blind? I mean, seriously—just in time to see Killian and Joonie stumbling out another doorway on the other side of the room.
I followed at a distance, turning right out of the kitchen into a tiny hall. Three doors led out of the hall, not including the kitchen. That was it. This was NOT one of those houses that looked bigger on the inside than it did from the outside.
Ahead of me, Joonie and Killian chose door number two, which turned out to be, no surprise, Killian’s room. It wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I expected. No moldy food laying around or gothlike black paint or Marilyn Manson posters. Just a normal-looking guy bedroom: off-white walls, beige carpeting, blue-and-green-plaid curtains to match the blue-and-green-plaid flannel comforter and sheets on the twin bed. One of those cheap, assemble-it-yourself bookcases, crammed full of books and comics, stood next to the left of the bed. A matching nightstand was on the right. Across from the foot of the bed, a battered-looking desk held more books, and the desk chair, turned to face away from the desk, was covered with several layers of black T-shirts and raggedy-looking jeans.
I took a tentative sniff of the air. It smelled like fresh laundry and boy in here. Not sweaty, old-gym-socks boy smell, but that good clean scent I sometimes used to catch when I kissed Chris’s neck and he’d forgotten to put on his cologne.
Not that Will Killian smelled good. No, no, no. I wasn’t saying that. Just that his room did.
“Here.” Joonie helped Killian toward the bed, and he practically fell face-first onto it.
“Thanks, J,” he said, sounding muffled by the pillow.
Oh, God, I hoped he didn’t suffocate. Then again, that might make this conversation happen more quickly.