“And do not even think about going in there to try to talk to him yourself.” I jabbed a finger at her. It would be awfully tempting for her, I knew, with him so close by. It was one thing for Mrs. Ruiz, someone we’d never met before, to approach Will directly with an immediate need. Something different for Liesel to continually harass him.
“I won’t,” she said with exasperation. “God.”
“Because I will put you even farther down the list, behind people who aren’t even dead yet.” I frowned at her. “How did you find me here?”
We were very careful about not meeting spirits at Will’s house. It was the one place where he could be guaranteed some peace and quiet. And since we weren’t omniscient after death any more than we’d been in life, and had significantly less access to a phone book or the Internet, most spirits had no idea where he lived.
“I followed you here a couple days ago,” she confessed.
Damn. I was going to have to start being even more careful. One more thing to worry about.
“Don’t do that again, and if you tell anyone where he lives, you’re off the list completely,” I said to her, though I wasn’t entirely sure I had the authority to make that decision. “Now go before I change my mind.”
But she didn’t scurry away as I expected.
She brushed off the front of her dress, though it held no dirt or grass stains. “I meant what I said…earlier,” she said, keeping her eyes focused on her task.
I bristled.
“You’re going to have to pick a side at some point, his or ours.” She looked up, a challenge in her gaze.
“I’m on my own side,” I said.
She nodded, but I could see she wasn’t convinced.
Whatever. I turned and walked away. Like what Liesel Marks thought mattered to me. I wasn’t working on her behalf.
Will and I had an understanding. He helped me. I helped him. That was all there was to it, and the only thing that mattered.
* * *
Arguing with Liesel had put me in a less than stellar mood—I mean, who did she think she was, anyway?—so I walked home instead of trying to catch a ride…or ten. Trust me, there is nothing more frustrating than sliding into a car to hitch a ride only to have it turn thirty seconds later in a direction you don’t want to go.
But by the time I breezed through the front door of my old house—literally through; this passing through solid stuffthing was awesome so long as Will wasn’t around to trip me up—I was feeling better.
Home, for all that it had been a chaotic nightmare when I was alive, was sort of comforting now in its familiarity. School was out. My friends (and enemies) had graduated. I was dead.
But home was still home, you know? The one thing that hadn’t really changed.
The downstairs was empty. The lights were on in the kitchen, but my mom wasn’t there, which was kind of weird. Now that she wasn’t drinking anymore, I usually found her in the kitchen eating a Lean Cuisine right out of the black microwaveable tray while she watched a lame sitcom or chatted online with her old college friends. (I know; creepy, right? The elderly have invaded Facebook. That is just wrong in so many ways.) Pretty much the rest of the time, she was either at an AA meeting or working. She’d gotten a job at the Clinique counter in Von Maur and got to wear one of those cool white lab coats.
“Hello?” I called more for my peace of mind than anything. Occasionally, I still had trouble with the idea that I was in the world but not of it, if that makes sense. It was comforting to keep up the habits and conventions of the living.
There was no answer, of course. But I thought I heard her moving around upstairs.
Our house is a big, brick two-story with a dramatic foyer open to the second floor and a sweeping staircase in the front hall, which, let me tell you, would have rocked for prom photos if I could have ever brought anyone to my house.
I started up the steps, noting that all the piles of magazines, laundry, and school stuff I’d stacked on the individual stairs during the last days of my life had disappeared. Also, very weird.
At the top, I discovered the light was on in my room, and my heart started to pound like crazy. (Yes, I am dead. Yes, I attended my funeral and watched them put my body in the ground. But I still feel things. My heartbeat, breathing, laughing, crying, all of that. I can’t explain it and don’t really even want to try. Just call it Phantom Body Syndrome or something.)
I’d been dead and living, if you can call it that, as a spirit for about two months now. In that whole time, the door to my room at my mother’s house had stayed closed. Just like I’d left it when I’d bolted out the door for school on that last morning. Okay, yeah, my mom had probably looked in there every once in a while or whatever. I definitely had. It was kind of disturbing and sad in some way that I didn’t quite understand. I mean, I’m still me, I’m still here. And yet, when I’d see my sleep shorts still on the bed where I’d tossed them, the covers shoved back, like I’d just gotten up, and my backup outfit for the day—a super cute vest with matching tie over a three-quarter-length sleeve, white fitted shirt and a black pleated mini—hanging on the front of the closet door, it gave me this odd pang in my chest.
It was like a memorial—or a museum display—for a girl who no longer existed. And yes, while a little creepy, it was also reassuring, like hard proof that I’d once been here and that I might still somehow walk back into my life, into this moment frozen in time.
But now…with the door open, the light on, and sounds of movement coming from inside my room, any hint of reassurance was being replaced by blind panic. What was she doing in my room? That was unacceptable. I’d spent years training both my parents to stay out unless they were invited in, which, hello, like that was going to happen.
I bolted the last few steps to my room, a protest she wouldn’t be able to hear already forming on my lips, and then stopped dead in the doorway, my mouth falling open.
My mother was not just poking around, picking up random items and crying, as you might expect. Nor was she looking for my secret diary. (I didn’t have one—too risky. Why give a rival everything she needs to take you down in one easy package?)
No, my mother was in the middle of my room with a HUGE black garbage bag in her hand, and she was throwing things away! My life was being tossed into the garbage! As I watched, she pried the Krekel’s takeout cup of Diet Coke off my dresser, where it had been disintegrating into a puddle of sludge and paper pulp for the last eight weeks or so, and tossed it into the bag. That cup might not seem important to her or to anyone else, but it had technically been my last meal, or part of it.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, when I could breathe again.
“It’s not everything. Just the garbage.”
I stared at her for a long second. She hadn’t heard me…had she? No. When I looked closer, I noticed the awkward tilt of her head and her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear. So getting rid of the accumulation of my life wasn’t even worth her full attention? Now I was pissed.
“Stop!” I strode across the room and swatted at the bag. My hand passed through most of it—not exactly a shock there—but it jumped a little bit in her hand, which was about the most I could accomplish on my own. She looked down at the bag with a frown. Then, the phone conversation distracted her again.
“No, Russ, I promise. I wouldn’t do that.”
Russ. My dad. My mother was talking on the phone with my dad? My knees felt wobbly, all of a sudden, like I might faint. I didn’t know if that was possible in my condition, but I wasn’t eager to find out.
My parents hadn’t spoken willingly to each other and without a third party present in years. And somehow I seriously doubted that this was a three-way call with their attorneys.
What the hell? I sank slowly to the floor, next to my mother’s feet and the garbage bag. I could see the top of the ridiculous collage I’d been forced to make for Mrs. Johnson’s psychology class—theme: How Sex Sells in Advertising—stic
king out of the bag’s opening.
“It’s better. Not easy, but better.” She took a deep breath. “Every step helps.” Alcoholics Anonymous; she had to be talking about her meetings. My mother had been a hopeless and helpless alcoholic since my parents’ divorce three years ago. Which was another reason why this conversation was hitting the top of the freaky-meter. She was actually sober. Stone-cold sober, as far as I could tell. Prior to the last couple of months, my mother had been the queen of drunk dialing…and drunk texting, drunk e-mailing, and even drunk drive-bys. Not good.
“I appreciate you letting me know so I didn’t have to find out from someone else.” She dusted off her hand on her sweatpants and pulled the phone from between her shoulder and her ear and sat on the edge of my bed. Then she took a shaky breath and forced a smile. This close to her and with her face washed clean of makeup, I could see all the little lines at the corners of her eyes. “Congratulations to you and Gigi. Really. It’s something to celebrate. I know Alona would be pleased.”
A foreboding chill swept over me. Nothing involving Gigi, my dad’s second wife and former administrative assistant, could have possibly pleased me. My mother had become a pathetic, alcohol-soaked mess after the divorce, yes, and I’d spent some time blaming her for my death. I’d been coming home, after dipping out on zero-hour gym, to drag her sorry, hungover butt out of bed so she could meet with my dad (and their lawyers) when the early morning band bus and I had met in a rather sudden fashion.
But Gigi…she was just a bitch. When I’d been alive, she’d constantly been after my dad to cut back on his alimony and child support, so she could have more of what she wanted. We had a well-documented and mutually understood hatred for one another. Anything she’d celebrate clearly meant trouble for me.
My mom hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. Her face crumpled, and she dropped the bag to pull herself onto my bed, her knees tucked up to her chest. She cried for a couple of minutes into my pillow, which I knew from my last visit had already begun to smell like dust and disuse instead of Pantene and cucumber melon body lotion.
Then she sat up, and to my shock, instead of heading downstairs to stare longingly at the now empty liquor cabinet or to root out the last stash of booze I was sure she had tucked away somewhere, she stood up and grabbed the garbage bag again and began throwing away more of my belongings, muttering under her breath what sounded suspiciously like a prayer.
There went the printout of my painstakingly created spreadsheet, which compiled all the potential outfit possibilities from the contents of my closet and tracked when I’d worn each combination last. The ticket stubs from when my best friend Misty and I went to the Boys Like Girls concert last October. The tiny scrap of stiff satin I’d cut from the back of the Homecoming Queen sash before returning it that last time. (Yes, they recycled the sash from year to year. That’s why there was never a year printed on it. Tacky and cheap, that was Groundsboro High for you.)
I felt like I might throw up. Those things weren’t garbage. They were memories, symbols of the life I’d lived, and the only things I had left from it. “Mom! Stop!” I reached for the bag again, with even less success this time. The bag didn’t even move.
My protest passed unnoticed, and she continued tocrumple up and toss away my most prized possessions. Bythe time she was done, it would no longer be my room. Sure, she’d leave the furniture, the framed pictures (one of each of my parents, a couple of Misty and me, and various boyfriends at proms and homecomings), my alarm clock and stereo…all that stuff would stay.
But the things that had made it mine, really mine? She was chucking them away, like they meant nothing. Like I’d meant nothing. Weren’t parents supposed to keep all your stuff forever? All those macaroni necklaces, finger paintings, and first spelling tests? Weren’t they, like, treasures of the past or something? Wouldn’t all of that be even more poignant if your kid was dead?
Watching my mother’s efficiency with the garbage bag, it didn’t seem like it.
An unwelcome idea intruded. Will was right. He’d tried to warn me about this, and I’d ignored him. I brushed that thought aside, fleeing my room and the house. I didn’t have to stay here and watch this. She wasn’t, thank God, my only parent. She wasn’t even my favorite.
Fifteen minutes later, after cutting through backyards, navigating steep drainage ditches, and crossing a few busy streets (another nice thing about being dead—if you’ve been run over once, you never have to worry about it happening again), I stood at the foot of the driveway to my dad’s new house, a little Cape Cod cutesy-bungalow type thing that he shared with Gigi. And it really wasn’t so new. It had been three years since he’d left my mom, and two and a half years since he and Gigi had gotten married.
I noticed with a start that the adorable silver VW Eos, my intended graduation present, no longer held a place of honor at the top of the drive, blocking the half of the garage my dad used to store his golfing equipment. Instead, this ginormously ugly minivan had taken its place.
No, no, no. I didn’t stop to think, just ran for my dad’s study, not even bothering to pass through the doorway. Doors, walls, they were all the same now anyway.
I found my dad exactly as I’d expected and hoped. He was slouching at his desk, his head propped up by his hand, and staring at a photo of us from a Daddy-Daughter Dance in fifth grade. At that time, I’d not yet learned the magic of smoothing crème for taming the frizzies and I still had braces, ugh. But he seemed to like it. It was the only photo on his desk, the only one in the whole room, as a matter of fact. A glass of brandy sat in front of him, inches from his hand. And even in the dim imitation Tiffany-lamp light, I could see that he’d been crying.
“Thank God.” I flopped down on the leather sofa behind him, flipping my hair over the armrest so it wouldn’t get all tangled, more out of habit than necessity. “Someone still misses me.” My dad and I had always been closer anyway. “Do you know what Mom is doing?” I asked. “You have to stop her.”
He didn’t respond, of course, and even if he, by some miracle, had been able to hear me, I seriously doubted I’d have been able to convince him to go over to her house, his former house, for any reason. He’d left there like he was fleeing a plague-infested city. Going back would be a death wish…execution courtesy of Gigi.
But I still felt the need to try. “She doesn’t get it, Daddy. She’s throwing away everything.” To my horror, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and a lump in my throat. In my life, when I was actually living, I’d rarely cried, if ever. Tears were a weakness, a luxury you couldn’t afford if you wanted to remain in power. I had, once upon a time, ruled at the top of Groundsboro High society. Now I was dead, and almost everyone I knew had graduated. And I was freaking crying…again. My afterlife sucked.
The door to the study opened without a knock, and I sat up, wiping under my eyes. Gigi. My step-Mothra, so dubbed because she is an evil creature destroying everything in her path, stood in the doorway. Even though she couldn’t see me, I didn’t want there to even be so much of a hint of vulnerability in the air around my stepmother. Gigi would score no points on me, even in the afterlife.
She made a sound of disgust and then stalked over to my dad’s desk and slapped down a piece of paper. “I was going to wait to show you this, but you obviously need something to hold you together.” She stepped back, still dressed in her work clothes: trim little black-and-white cropped jacket, a black pencil skirt, and killer patent leather stilettos. Yes, I hated her, but that did not mean I could not respect her ability to recognize fine fabrics and a rockin’ pair of heels. It did, however, mean that I could notice with some evil glee the way her skirt was pulling up and straining at the seams, like her ass was a prisoner slowly trying to bust its way to freedom.
“Gigi gi-ant ass.” I snickered. Love it. Out of habit, I looked down at my hands, just in time to see my fingertips start to flicker. Damn it. “But she seems to make my dad happy,” I said dutifully.
My father stared for a long time at the paper Gigi had given him, and then he held it up to the light on his desk with a shaking hand. He needed glasses—everybody knew it but him—he was just too vain to admit that it was his eyes rather than the world that had gone blurry. God. Shoot me if I get like that when I’m old. Oh…never mind.
“Is this accurate?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “What it says at the top?”
I sat up a little straighter. From my perspective, overmy dad’s shoulder and to the side of Gigi’s ever-expanding backside, the paper he held looked like one of those abstract, blobby things Dr. Andrews used to try to get me to identify in our completely useless sessions. (I’d just told him everything looked like handbags, varying the designer to keep things interesting. Apparently Steve Madden means I’m suffering from severe repressed hostility.) Only this page was mostly black with a white shape instead of the other way around. But my dad had certainly recognized it, whatever it was.
Gigi sniffed and nodded.
Sniffed? Was she crying? I pushed myself off the sofa and moved in for a closer look at whatever this was that could have provoked such a reaction from my step-Mothra, taking care not to bump into my dad or Gigi. I would pass right through them, and while they might shiver at a touch of cold that would be blamed on a random draft, I’d be treated to a stomach-rolling and head-spinning blast of dizziness.
Even inches from the paper, I still had no idea what I was looking at. It looked like a grainy photograph of some big white blur with little arrows and tiny corresponding letters pointing out—I squinted, leaning farther over my dad’s shoulder—feet, heart, spine, and…Oh, shit. There, at the top of the page. Baby Girl Dare. Due Date: 12/24.
Gigi was growing my replacement.
I stumbled back and my elbow crossed through Gigi’s chest. She shivered, and I fell to my knees, trying to breathe, and fighting the urge to retch while the room spun around me. A baby? Step-Mothra was reproducing? But my dad had always said he was done with kids. Too expensive, he’d claimed, and besides, what did he need with another one when he had a perfect one already? That’s what he used to say to me when Gigi was bitching and moaning about her decrepit eggs.