As Dead as It Gets

  Ashleen stood a few feet away from me, staring right at the camera. She was barefoot, wearing a light purple dress made of gauzy layers of fabric. The top was detailed, ruffly, and feminine. But the bottom of the dress just kind of…disappeared. I mean, looking at it, you couldn’t really say, “That’s the bottom of the dress.” It just dissolved into the air.

  I stared at it, with a sense déjà vu, until it hit me: it was the dress from the dream I’d had the night of Ashleen’s party.

  I looked around, suddenly in a panic, thinking that not only had Lydia just crossed over from bad ghost to evil ghost, but that there was a distinct possibility she could invade my subconscious mind, too. But even if she could plant dreams in my head, why would she use a purple dress? As far as I could remember, I’d never seen Lydia wearing a dress like that one. What could it mean?

  I looked back down at the picture and studied Ashleen’s confused expression. Sometimes ghosts don’t understand what’s happened to them—they don’t even know they’re dead. So they just wander, thinking they’re in a dream.

  But it wasn’t the look on her face—or even the dress—that bothered me the most.

  No, the really bizarre thing was that, in her left hand, Ashleen held a bouquet of yellow roses.

  In all my pictures of ghosts, I’d never seen one actually carrying something that wasn’t part of what they wore when they died. For example, one day I’d taken a picture of a woman downtown—she wore a long black Edwardian-era dress and walked hunched over, with her hands out in front of her. The whole effect was startling and horrible, almost demonic, like she was prowling around, ready to strike out at someone.

  Then, after watching her pass countless living people without even noticing them, I realized what she was doing: pushing a baby carriage. Only, the baby carriage didn’t exist in her ghostly plane. Have you ever heard the saying, You can’t take it with you? Well, it’s true. Unless you’re wearing it, you can’t.

  So why—and how—was Ashleen’s ghost holding roses?

  There was something else in the last picture. I glanced at the photograph and noticed, over her shoulder, a bright white spot of light, barely shining through the trees.

  My heart raced. I raised my camera, removed the lens cap, and flashed off a few more exposures.

  Ashleen had begun to wander away, but the light was still there. It was getting closer, in fact.

  “I’m sorry, Ashleen,” I said into the night air. But I wasn’t focused on her any longer. I had to get rid of Lydia before she could do this to anyone else.

  “Lydia!” I called, in the direction of the light. “Stop being a coward and show yourself!”

  I reached for the charm book and opened it to one of the pages I’d bookmarked. My hands shook as I looked over the spell. Should I immobilize her first and then send her away? Or just send her away? The immobilization spell was much shorter. I had a better chance of actually finishing it.

  I began to read it aloud.

  “Excuse me.” Lydia’s voice interrupted me. “What are you doing?”

  I raised my voice and kept reading.

  Lydia slapped the book from my hands.

  As I knelt to pick it up, she got right in my face. “I asked you a question. Why are you out here in the middle of the night?”

  “I know what you did,” I said. The bookmarks had fallen out of the book, so I flipped through the pages. I found the “move to a transitional state” first and held the book in an iron grip.

  Lydia looked over my shoulder. “What does that mean? A transitional state? Permanently? Do you know what that sounds like?”

  “It sounds awesome,” I said, starting to read.

  “No,” Lydia said, having the gall to act appalled. “It sounds like limbo. Like a gray void. You would put me in a gray void forever?” She tried to knock the book out of my hands again, but her fingers passed right through it.

  She was weak right now. I stopped reading and looked at her, unable to pass up the opportunity to tell her off.

  “You made the choice,” I said. “You’re the one who killed Ashleen.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Who’s Ashleen?”

  “Give me a break.”

  “No, seriously. Who’s Ashleen?” She looked around. “Is there a killer out here?”

  Oh. My. God. “You’re already dead, Lydia,” I said. “And if you didn’t kill her, who did? And why does she have your yellow roses?”

  “What yellow roses?” she asked. She was beginning to sound scared. “Alexis, I don’t want to go to a transitional plane forever. I didn’t kill anybody—”

  Biggest, fattest “whatever” in the history of humanity.

  I glanced down at the page and opened my mouth to read the spell, determined not to let her distract me again.

  And then—

  The laugh.

  It swirled in circles just like it had in the empty field—a tornado of malevolent energy, with me at its center. I felt it pulse against my skin like the wings of a thousand evil butterflies.

  And in one motion, the book was ripped from my hands.

  It exploded into dust in midair.

  I shrieked, unable to stop myself, and covered my ears with my palms. Then, in a panic, I turned to run, my camera bouncing against my side. I felt a crunch and the rough jolt of a tree trunk against my hip, and changed directions.

  Still, the laughter followed me, wrapping around me as tightly as a spider binding its prey.

  If only I could find my way out of the woods—back to my car—

  But my mind flailed like a bird with a broken wing. There was no way I would be able to focus enough to find the trees I’d marked. I’d be driven deeper and deeper into the woods—and if I didn’t freeze to death or fall off a cliff, I’d be driven mad by the laughter.

  Suddenly, my mad scrambling carried me through a pocket of freezing air.

  As I tumbled out the other side, the laughter disappeared.

  I plopped to the ground, my breath as loud in my ears as a passing train, and looked up to see Lydia standing a few feet away.

  She pursed her lips and stared down at me.

  “Why…?” I had to stop speaking to suck more air into my lungs. “Why, Lydia?”

  I couldn’t contain my tears anymore, and I started to sob.

  It was the ultimate display of weakness, and I expected Lydia to try to hurt me, to torment me, to chase me farther into the woods.

  But she didn’t.

  A few minutes passed, and Lydia didn’t go away. She didn’t speak, either.

  She just stood there, looking at me.

  Finally, I got to my feet, my legs unsteady beneath me. “I’ll leave you alone. I won’t try to send you to the void. I swear to God. Just stop hurting people. Please, Lydia.”

  Without speaking, she turned to walk away. Her body grew fainter and fainter.

  “Please!” I cried, too exhausted for pride. “I’ll get down on my knees and beg you, if that’s what you want. Or take me—kill me—do whatever you want to me, but…”

  She was gone.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and groaned. The crunch I’d felt when I hit the tree had been the face of my phone cracking.

  I drew in a breath of cold air, burning my throat and lungs.

  I was totally lost, with no way to get back to my car.

  Life’s not fair—I get it—but this was ridiculous.

  And then there was a sudden sharp snap! and I looked up just in time to see a huge branch about to fall right where I was standing. I rushed out of the way, swinging around another tree trunk, full-on bear-hugging it like a frightened toddler hugging her mother’s leg.

  After the massive branch crashed to the ground, and the dust and leaves settled, I took a step back…and saw the chalk slash on the bark of the tree in front of me.

  I would have broken down in relief, except there was no part of me whole enough to break down. So I just followed the chalk mark to the next marked tree, and
gradually made my way back to the car, surrounded by the miserable silence of the forest.

  “HEY, HONEY, YOU’RE GOING to be late for school,” my father said, sticking his head into my bedroom the next morning.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and pulled the blankets up to my chin.

  “It’s already seven fifteen, you know.”

  He was waiting for an answer, so I croaked one out. “It’s a four-minute drive.”

  “But don’t you have all sorts of elaborate beauty rituals?”

  “No.” I burrowed down into my pillow. “That’s Kasey.”

  “What’s me?” my sister’s voice piped up. “Lexi, you’re going to be late.”

  I turned away from them to look out the window.

  “Never mind,” Kasey sighed. I heard her walk away.

  “Well, don’t cut it too close,” Dad said. He left too.

  Could I really make myself get out of bed and go to school—just walk around like a regular person having a regular day?

  I felt a gentle hand on the back of my head. “Sweetheart, you overslept,” Mom said.

  I collected all of my strength and sat up.

  “Oh, you’re already dressed,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”

  I muttered that I was, and Mom went to the kitchen. I swung my legs—stiff in the dirty jeans I’d been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours—over the side of the bed and sat there, staring at nothing.

  The fact is, I wasn’t “already” dressed. I was still dressed. And any paranoid parent worth his or her paranoid salt would have noticed that—and the scattered pieces of dirt on my pale beige carpet—especially my carpet, of all carpets, because I was a borderline OCD-level clean freak.

  My parents hadn’t noticed.

  But apparently my sister had.

  “What happened to your carpet?”

  I swung around. “My shoes were muddy.”

  Kasey stood in the doorway, staring at the floor. “Why were your shoes muddy?”

  “Because I stepped in some mud,” I said.

  “How’s Jared?” she asked.

  “He’s great,” I said. “How’s the cradle-robber?”

  She rolled her eyes and sniffed, but she didn’t back away in a huff like I’d been hoping she would. “Keaton is fine. He got accepted to Berkeley.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “That’s good. I mean, it’s pretty close…if you guys are still together.”

  She shrugged and sort of swung on the doorframe a little. “I don’t know. I’m too young to get that serious…don’t you think?”

  Kasey had just turned fifteen. I’d just turned sixteen when Carter and I started dating. And I didn’t feel like we were too young to be serious. It just felt so right with him. I mean, until Aralt and the Sunshine Club came between us, I could see myself with Carter forever. Not that we’d have gotten married right out of high school or anything, but I just never pictured us breaking up, because I just couldn’t imagine not wanting to be with him.

  “I think it depends,” I said. “I think if it’s important to you to make it work, you’ll make it work.”

  “Was it—” She cut herself off, and I knew she’d been about to ask about Carter—if it was important to me.

  “Yeah, well,” I said.

  She gave me a sad smile.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have Jared now.”

  Her sad smile turned into a little grimace.

  That’s when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, my cell phone. It sat on the nightstand with the shattered screen on display for everyone to see. Naturally, my life would be much easier if I could keep my sister from seeing it.

  “I’d better get dressed for school,” I said.

  “You’re already dressed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, did you sleep in your clothes?”

  “Good-bye, Kasey,” I said, getting up and moving toward the door.

  She backed away. I gave the door a push and picked up my phone to get a better look at it.

  But Kasey had peeked back in. “Holy cow, what happened?”

  I stepped forward, tucking the phone behind my back. “Excuse me, have you ever heard of privacy?”

  “Your phone—” She craned her neck to try to see. “It looks like—”

  “It’s fine,” I said, slipping the phone into my pocket. “I cracked the screen yesterday. It still works, though.”

  I waited for her to ask me what I’d been doing that would crack the screen.

  Stop, I thought. Don’t ask any more questions. Just go be normal. Be happy. One of us to has to come through this okay, and it’s not going to be me. So stop asking questions.

  Her face fell. Her feelings were hurt. She looked like a little girl.

  It’s for your own good.

  She didn’t need to get messed up with ghosts again. She just needed to be a normal teenager.

  “Sorry, Kase,” I said, and shut the door.

  By the end of the day I was so exhausted from my constant fear of saying the wrong thing that I didn’t even want to go to Jared’s house. I knew they’d find the body before long—maybe even that same night. So I went straight home and got into bed.

  Luckily, Kasey was off with her friends, so at least I didn’t have to justify my bedridden afternoon. I closed my eyes and let the misery sink down through my body. I could feel it going into my pores, through my skin, into the muscle and sinew, right into the core of my soul.

  I was the only person in the world who knew Ashleen was dead.

  How long would I have to carry that knowledge around with me while the police searched and Ashleen’s family suffered?

  Lydia’s voice was clear and cold. “Warren, pity party of one, we have your table ready.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, afraid to move. But Lydia came and stood right above me. Her long ghost-hair hung down, almost touching my face. I fought the urge to try to brush it away.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “I didn’t kill that Ashley chick. I didn’t push Kendra off that cliff. And I don’t want to be sent to the transitional plane.”

  “Go away,” I whispered.

  “I’m not going away until you apologize.”

  I sat up, not afraid anymore. I couldn’t help it. Lydia was just too aggravating. “Apologize? For what?”

  “For accusing me of murder,” she said, sitting on my desk, right on top of my camera. “I’m not a murderer.”

  “You tried to kill the whole Sunshine Club,” I said. “Or have you forgotten?”

  Her jaw dropped. “That doesn’t count! A, I was possessed, and B, it didn’t work.”

  “So if you didn’t kill Ashleen, why were you in the forest last night?” I asked. “Hmm? Just out for a hike?”

  The thing was, I did believe her. Taking even a fraction of a moment to think about it, I realized that luring girls to a miserable demise in the woods was way too subtle for Lydia. If she wanted to kill people, she’d do it in the mall food court or something.

  “I was there…” Her voice trailed off, like she really didn’t know why, and then she reloaded. “I was there because I…” She was staring at the floor, as if trying to remember something that bothered her.

  “And you were out there when Kendra was hurt, too!” I said. “And you were in my car that day at the nature preserve—”

  “No, I wasn’t,” she said. “That wasn’t me. And yeah, I was there when you found Kendra—I mean, when I found her for you, you’re welcome very much—but I’m not the one who hurt her.”

  “Honest to God?” I asked.

  “I swear on my own grave,” Lydia said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Excuse me, my grave is pretty important to me.”

  I leaned back against my pillows and covered my face with my hands, suddenly exhausted.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she said.

  I opened my eyes. “I know. But if you didn’t attack Kendra and Ashleen, then who did, Lydia?
” A giant sigh forced its way out of my lungs. “And why are you always around?”

  I would never have thought ghosts could blush, but Lydia was actually blushing. She pursed her lips and stared out the window. “I’m not telling you.”

  “Tell me,” I said, “or I’ll find another copy of that book, and it’s off to never-never land you go.”

  She flounced and huffed and folded her arms and gave me the dirtiest look in the history of dirty looks.

  “All right,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to go check eBay.”

  “You won’t send me to limbo?” she asked. “If I tell you? You promise?”

  Technically, I’d promised the night before. Not that there was any reason to remind her of that.

  “Fine. I promise.” As much as I wanted Lydia to go away, I knew I had a really unique opportunity, and I had the presence of mind not to squander it. I’d met ghosts before, but always in battle. Never just in a regular conversation. “But…Lydia, ghosts aren’t natural. You shouldn’t even be here to begin with. Why wouldn’t you want to move on? Isn’t it lonely for you here?”

  “I do want to move on,” she said, swinging her legs through my desk chair. “I guess. But not to a transitional state—for all eternity. I mean, think about it, Alexis. No matter how much you hate me, do I deserve to be in a gray void for the rest of time?”

  I sighed. And I really did think about it.

  If Lydia didn’t kill Ashleen—and if that wasn’t her in my car…

  Then, no, of course not. Yeah, she tried to kill the Sunshine Club—but to be fair, when I was possessed, I tried to kill my family in their sleep. If Kasey hadn’t stopped me, I could easily have been a mass murderer.

  I leaned my head forward and rested it in my hands. Of all the things I didn’t need.

  “Ha!” Lydia said. “I’m right, and you know it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you didn’t hurt Kendra or kill Ashleen, you don’t deserve the gray void. Now tell me. Why are you always around when these things happen, if you’re not causing them?”

  “You know what?” She raised her chin haughtily. “I’m tired of your accusations. I’ll see you later. If I feel like it.”

  And she disappeared.

  When I heard my mother’s car pull into the garage, I strained my ears to listen to her—the way she walked, the way she hung her keys on the hook—for any indication that she’d heard something about Ashleen. Overcome by my need to know if she knew, I stuck my head into the hallway.