As Dead as It Gets

  And those long stretches of time when there was no sign of Laina…

  They were stretches when things were going well between Jared and me.

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “She’s not trying to kill me. She’s just trying to get me to go to him.”

  Now that Jared was on board with that plan, what hope did I have?

  Halfway into town, Carter glanced at his gas gauge. “Sorry, I need to stop and get gas. You can stay in the car. Want anything from inside?”

  “No,” I said. “But I have to pee.”

  He parked and started the gas pumping while I went around to the back of the building. The light was on and the door was shut, so I couldn’t tell if the bathroom was in use or not. I took a step back and looked around. The property butted up against a densely wooded area.

  And then, through the trees—

  I saw a flash of bright light.

  Laina?

  Did that mean my sister was out there?

  “Kasey?” I called.

  The light was deep within the woods, but I could see it moving through the trees.

  I glanced back at the car. Carter had gone inside. If I stopped to tell him where I was going, I might lose sight of the light.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia asked, appearing next to me.

  “I see her,” I said. “I see Laina.”

  Lydia stared into the woods. “You really think your sister is here, of all places? What are the odds of that?”

  It didn’t matter what the odds were. “What am I going to do, Lyd, not go?”

  I tore across the grass and into the trees, trying to follow the light. After I’d gone a hundred feet or so, it faded from my view—or got so far ahead that I couldn’t see it.

  I paused, panting, and looked around.

  “Call Carter,” Lydia said. “He’ll come help you look.”

  Right. I still had 8A’s cell phone in my pocket. I reached down to grab it.

  But I didn’t get the chance.

  The ball of white light came at me like a tiger lunging at its prey, and everything went white.

  And then it went black.

  KEEP GOING.

  The words faded into my consciousness like the first glow of a sunrise.

  I heard crunching, and it took a moment for me to identify the sound: footsteps. Feet walking on leaves.

  My feet?

  I tried to open my eyes, but they were weighed down by an all-consuming heaviness. My lungs, too, seemed leaden and reluctant. I heard ragged breathing—my breathing?—and felt a tearing pain in my chest.

  If I concentrated, I could seek out the awareness of my feet, feel the texture of the forest floor beneath them. But my concentration was slippery—as quickly as I found it, the awareness slid out of my grasp as if it had been nothing more than a shadow.

  Run! It was an order, and my body was obeying.

  The footsteps came faster and faster, and then suddenly I seemed to be floating. There was a stunning impact, a moment of uncertainty.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on the ground, surrounded by trees.

  When I tried to put weight on my wrists to push myself up, a blazing pain shot through both of them. But it faded after a moment, and I pressed up off the ground and sat on my heels.

  Keep moving.

  My thoughts came like a thick, dark liquid slowly pouring out of a bottle. As soon as enough of them had lined up back to back to back in my head, I realized that something was very wrong.

  My hands, feeling detached from my body, plucked at the silky layers of purple fabric on my body.

  The dress. I was wearing it.

  I must be dreaming.

  I got to my feet, and suddenly my left hand was filled with a bouquet of yellow roses.

  And I was walking. The trunks of trees passed by me, each one leaving a series of vertical echoes imprinted on my vision.

  Where am I going?

  I hated it—this helpless wandering, this sense of dread, of looking for someone, endlessly searching.

  Was I running from someone?

  From Laina?

  No, no, it was the other way around—I was looking for someone.…

  For Jared.

  I have to find him.

  It was wrong, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I had to keep searching for him. And the only way to search was by walking.

  So I walked.

  The night sky sank into a deep indigo. The air cooled around me.

  And I kept walking.

  Gradually I grew thirsty. Surely I could stop somewhere, rest, soothe my parched throat.

  No. Don’t stop.

  I didn’t stop.

  More time passed—how long? An hour? Two hours? My legs burned. I couldn’t even feel my toes anymore. My feet were numb from the cold and from the constant pricking of pine needles.

  “Please,” I said. “I’m so tired. I need water.”

  I couldn’t stop, though.

  It wasn’t that I tried and failed—it was that I didn’t even know how to try. Some force was pushing me onward, farther into the deep, cold night.

  Worst. Dream. Ever.

  After maybe an hour of unanswered pleading and babbling, I decided to save my voice and my cracking throat. My thoughts drifted away while my body drifted ever forward.

  My feet caught on something and I stumbled, reaching out to catch myself. My right hand grazed a tree before I got my balance again, and I lifted a stinging knuckle to my mouth and tasted blood.

  “Five minutes,” I croaked into the night. “Please. Just let me stop for five minutes.”

  Don’t stop.

  And that was when it became clear to me—as clear as anything could be in my foggy mind:

  This was no dream.

  I was walking. I was searching for someone who was twenty miles away. I wasn’t going to find him, and I wasn’t going to stop—Laina wasn’t going to let me stop—

  Until I fell down and died.

  I don’t know how much later it was—long enough that I got a cramp in my side and an intense radiating pain in my hip. I ignored them, though, because I had to. I had no choice.

  “Alexis!”

  I ignored the sound of my name the way I ignored the pain in my abdomen. “Can you hear me?” Yes. “Stop! Stop walking! Listen to me!” Something came between me and the haze. I walked toward it, unable to stop, and ended up walking right through it. My cold body got even colder. “Ow! Stop! Stop moving right now!” I didn’t hear the rest. I was already gone. Another hour passed—or two? Maybe even three. The moon was arcing gently across the sky. My hands were puffy; the skin felt so dry I thought it might peel off. My fingers were fat little sausages, and when they touched each other or the skirt of my dress, they burned, like the flesh was being chafed right off of them.

  I would have cried, but my body was so dried out there were no tears left to cry.

  Please let me wake up.

  Please let me wake up.

  Please let me wake up.

  But I knew I wasn’t asleep.

  SOMETHING STUNG MY ARM. Not that a whole nest of wasps could have stopped me.

  I slowed for a moment to dry heave into the roots of a tree, but as soon as I was done, I stood up and started walking again.

  Another sting on my arm. Then on my neck. And my face.

  Then I realized what the stinging was—

  Rain.

  Water.

  I tried to open my mouth and catch some on my tongue, but my head lolled on my neck, and my tongue felt almost too swollen to get through my lips.

  “Stop!” yelled a voice. The same voice as before.

  Lydia.

  “Stop it right now, Alexis! I mean it—stop walking! Are you trying to die out here?”

  But I didn’t stop—I couldn’t.

  I was looking for Jared, like Laina had. Except she hadn’t found him in time.

  And neither would I.

  But Lydia se
emed determined not to let that happen.

  “Look at me!” she shrieked, right in my face. “Look at me!”

  My eyes were open, I was sure of it. But I didn’t see her. Everything was a dull gray haze.

  “All right,” she said. “Fine, Alexis. You leave me no choice!”

  No choice. I knew all about that.

  Something swept through me, like a stiff wind blowing by. I felt a whole-body chill.

  It didn’t stop me.

  “All right,” she said. “Here I come again.”

  Another whoosh went into and out of my body, like air was being propelled through my skin. I got even colder.

  “Fourth time’s the charm, right?” She was panting with effort.

  If I could control my mouth, I would have told her, This is pointless. You might as well go away. It’s never going to work.

  But then the oddest thing happened.

  Instead of walking, I was lying on my back. And my eyelids felt as light as helium balloons.

  I stared up into the clearest night I’d ever seen.

  Lydia stood over me, looking down. She was much fainter than usual—though not as pale as she had been after the encounter with Elliot. Her ghostly gray skin was extra gray, and she looked exhausted. “Are you…are you dead?”

  “I don’t know.” I could feel the dry skin in my throat cracking as I spoke. “Am I?”

  She sank to the ground next to me. “No, I guess not.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah—but not how you mean.”

  “I’m so tired,” I said, starting to let my eyes slide shut again.

  “No!” she said. “You can’t go to sleep. Don’t even think about it.”

  So I looked up at her instead.

  Her black eyes burned down at me. “You have a cell phone in your pocket. It’s off. Can you reach down and turn it on?”

  “Not a chance.” The words floated out of my mouth, piggybacking on a shallow exhalation.

  “Try.”

  I moved my almost lifeless arm, a millimeter at a time, toward my pocket.

  I found the phone, and my fingers crawled over the keys, looking for the power button. A second later, the little chime sounded. It filled the air around us like a symphony.

  “Now call someone,” Lydia said. “Call nine-one-one.”

  No. If I called them, I’d be in the hospital for days, and I couldn’t let that happen. I had something I needed to do.

  My finger reached for the keypad, and I found the little groove on the number five, then dialed with my fingers, by touch.

  I listened through the night for the ringing. It didn’t come.

  Lydia leaned over to look at the phone. “Frack. No signal. You have to walk.”

  A dry laugh, almost a snort, burbled out of me.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You have to get up and walk.”

  “Yeah, no,” I said.

  “Are you forgetting about Kasey?” she asked. “About your sister?”

  I blinked.

  Kasey was in danger.

  Minutes later, I was somehow on my feet, stumbling through the woods behind Lydia, who ducked and scampered around like a wood sprite, checking the path ahead to be sure it was clear.

  I don’t know how long I walked before she said, “Here! Over here! There’s a road! Mile marker eighty-seven!”

  I got to a point where I could see the break in the trees and sank down, my back against a thick trunk.

  I closed my eyes.

  “No, Alexis,” Lydia said, waving her hand in my face. “Are you kidding me? No, no, no. Uh-uh. You’re not going to die now. Dial. Call Carter. Right now.”

  I turned my head to escape her fingers. “I can’t. I’m too tired.”

  “You will,” she said. “You’re going to do it for your sister.”

  I lifted the phone and typed in a number.

  Then I sent a text message:

  vaughn hwy mile 87

  The effort drained the last of my energy. The phone plunged out of my hand.

  “Nope,” Lydia said. “No sleeping. Wake up.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes.

  “You have to wake up. I mean, think about it…if you die, I totally win.”

  I lifted one eyelid to look at her.

  She nodded smugly. “Yeah. Think about what a jerk I am. Think about how I almost sacrificed all of you guys for Aralt. Think about—”

  “No,” I whispered. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “No,” I said, fighting to keep my eyes open. My lashes kept slipping down like a broken curtain in a theater. “And…I’m sorry I let you die.”

  “Let me die?” Lydia sat back and looked at me in disbelief. “Um, if I recall correctly, I was completely kicking your ass. You tried to stop me.” She looked out into the distance. “Alexis, I don’t blame you. I never really did. I was just mad. Mostly…at myself, I think.”

  She ripped a handful of grass out of the ground and threw it in frustration. “I am. I’m mad at myself. What a waste of a life. What a waste of a death.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, turning to me. “And that’s why you’re not dying tonight. You’re going to rest and drink some electrolytes or something, and not die. Because I’m not watching someone else die for no reason. It’s stupid. It’s the stupidest thing in the world.”

  Already, my head was starting to clear. My body was still exhausted, but I wanted to live. She was right. I had to stop Laina and save my sister.

  But there was something I needed to say.

  “Lydia,” I said, “the reason you feel like you need to protect me is because…every ghost has a power center. And I’m yours. I thought you should know.”

  “What?” She sat back, eyes wide. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I want you to have a choice,” I said. “Or at least know why you’re doing this. It wasn’t fair—what I made you do…with Elliot.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I cannot believe you, Alexis.”

  I thought she was horrified by my confession, horrified by the fact that I’d kept this information secret. I expected her to get up and leave.

  “Do you think the whole universe revolves around you?” She pursed her lips and stuck her nose in the air. “You are not my power whatever. And that is not why I’m doing this. Where do you think I’ve been for the past week? I was trying to keep my parents from throwing away the mix CD my dad made for me when I was five. Do you know how many phone books I had to flip open, how many internet searches I had to type, letter by letter, before they took the hint and made this…sort of lame…little display? So get off your ginormous high horse. You are not my power thingy.”

  All this time. All of the effort. The way she’d swallowed her pride and started working with me…

  “Is it really so hard to believe that I’m helping you because I want to?”

  I stared at her, and she sighed.

  “Okay, yeah, you’re right. It sounds hard to believe. But…I don’t know what to say. I wanted to help you. I’m sorry.”

  “Lydia,” I said, an impossible thought dawning in my mind, “you’re just a good ghost.”

  She reared back in disbelief. “Ha!”

  “No, I mean it. Most ghosts are bad, but some are good…like angels.”

  Her eyes went wide for a moment, then her expression relaxed. “If I’m an angel…” She looked up at the trees. “Does that mean that when I’ve filled my purpose—like, something I’m destined to do—I’ll go somewhere? Somewhere that’s not the transitional plane?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest.

  “Well, then, maybe…” I thought of Megan’s mother, Shara. Her ghost had disappeared after helping us. I felt a sudden twinge of dread and realized, to my utter shock, that I didn’t want Lydia to go anywhere.
/>
  She started speaking, like she was confessing. “Did you know my mom has a cat now? He’s like a zillion years old. I used to see him in the neighborhood—he was all skinny and weird-looking. He’s still weird-looking, but she let him in the house and he follows her around and he’s, like, pleasingly plump now. He totally worships her. And she…” Lydia’s voice broke. “She calls him Lydia. She talks to him like he was me. And he just sits there and listens, and…there are so many things she never said to me, Alexis. But she says them to the cat, and she tells him to tell me when he sees me. And I swear, he listens to every word she says.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lydia,” I said.

  “No, you don’t understand.” She turned to me, blinking back ghostly tears. Her face practically shimmered in the moonlight. “That’s a happy story. My mom’s going to be okay. And that means my purpose isn’t helping her. Maybe it’s helping you.”

  Headlights. An engine cutting off. Footsteps.

  “Alexis!?” The footsteps broke into a run. “Alexis, where are you?”

  “Over here! We’re over here!” Lydia yelled, before remembering that people couldn’t actually hear her. She gave me a nudge.

  “Here!” I called. “I’m here!”

  In the distance, the footsteps hesitated and then started again, heading toward us.

  Carter’s face appeared between the trees.

  “Alexis!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

  “I need water.” My throat burned.

  “What happened? I waited for you for twenty minutes and then I realized—” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. Then he lifted me off the ground and started walking.

  * * *

  As we approached the road, I heard another voice. For a moment I thought someone from Harmony Valley was after us.

  A person came crashing through the woods toward us. “You found her?”

  “Is that Megan?” I asked.

  Carter paused for her to catch up with us. Megan gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and stared into my eyes. “What happened? Is she—”

  “She’s okay. Let’s get her in the car,” Carter said.

  “I’m riding with you guys,” Megan said. “I’ll just leave my car.”

  He drove, and Megan sat in the backseat with me. We stopped at a convenience store and Carter went inside. I could feel Megan’s eyes on me like a mother lion watching her cub.