I swim with my arms for a while—keeping the noodle under my chest—then I hold on to it and kick with my legs instead. Switch, switch, switch again. After doing that a couple times I have to just drape myself over the noodle and rest.
The third time I have to stop to rest I look up at the lights of my house—my own personal beacon—and I realize they don’t look any closer. If anything, they actually look farther away. Desperation clutches at my throat and I slip back into the water, forcing myself to kick harder and somehow finding the strength. The sunlight is almost completely gone and I have got to get back to shore before it disappears entirely. I kick until my legs burn and then switch to swimming with my arms. When I can barely move any of my limbs, I peek over the edge again.
My heart sinks. The lights are definitely farther away now. Despite my frantic swimming, I’m actually being pulled farther out to sea.
Riptide.
I didn’t check for the signs before I headed out on the noodle. I didn’t care enough to check for the signs. Didn’t care much about anything.
But I do now.
There’s something you’re supposed to do if you’re caught in a riptide, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. How many times have I heard the rules? The ocean is dangerous. The ocean can kill you. If you’re going to play in the ocean, you have to follow the rules. But I can only remember two: never swim drunk, and never swim alone.
Stupid, useless rules.
I start kicking again and hot tears are now streaming down my face. I gulp for air between sobs and water keeps getting in my mouth and choking me. My wet suit is heavy and part of me wonders if I could swim better if I stripped it off. But the rational part of my brain worms its way through the vodka—I’ll be too cold without it.
Kick, reach, stroke, kick, reach, stroke—it’s a pounding rhythm in my head that slows even as I fight to keep going. My chest convulses as I clutch the noodle, but there’s nothing to grip and my fingers are already trembling from the strain of clinging to its slippery foam surface.
The waves are growing stronger as the tide comes in, and I feel the ocean pull at me, fighting to tear me away from my lifesaving bit of plastic. I try to keep my chin out of the water, then just my mouth. But soon the water is creeping up to my nose and every breath includes stinging droplets of salt water.
I can’t cough because my mouth is underwater, but my lungs don’t seem to know that. I hack out some water, but I don’t have the strength to lift my head, so all I do is breathe more in. The burning is back—the excruciating pain. My body rebels against the invading water and I retch and gag, but all its efforts just fill me with even more of the burning, murderous ocean. It’s as bad as that first burning breath that brought me out of the water when I wanted to die. But this time it makes me realize that I want to live. Not just go home and not die, but live.
With every ounce of strength I can muster, I bring my face to the surface one last time, but the effort is all my arms have left to give and when the current drags me under again, my fingers let go of the rubbery surface.
Then I’m under the waves, immersed in both the noise and silence of the ocean world. I force my eyes open against the salt water’s sting, but there’s no sunlight to guide me to the surface.
I can’t find it. My head is spinning, and even if my legs had the energy to kick, I wouldn’t know which way to go. I flail weakly as my whole body begs for air, but I don’t know where to find any. Even underwater I feel the heat of my tears.
No!
I won’t give up. I can’t. And I don’t. I fight every second, every moment, for the life I didn’t know I wanted.
But it’s too late.
My lungs spasm and I open my mouth to breathe, and seawater rushes in. My nose burns; my chest is a ball of fire that expands until every corner of my existence is agony. I can’t bear it another moment, and blackness mercifully envelops me until there is nothing.
Until I am nothing.
No one will miss me.
No one ever does.
I jerk upright, gasping for breath, and my hands fly to my chest. Where that terrible pain still radiates.
No. The pain is gone.
I suck in breath after breath of air as sweet as the finest chocolate. For a few moments I just breathe.
I’m alive.
Aren’t I?
My vision seems to fade in slowly as I look down and take stock of myself. I’m in my Whitestone uniform, my favorite black platforms. My hands fly to my hair and I can just see the blond ends hanging by my shoulder.
They’re dry.
My hearing comes next. People. I hear people. Voices. I turn my head and see kids all around me. Whitestone students I’ve known my whole life. I clear my throat and mutter, “Hello, hello?” under my breath until I’m certain I can, in fact, speak.
That the terrible, stinging ache in my throat is gone.
I blink and slowly realize it’s daytime—sunlight is streaming in from the row of square windows above the lockers. I’m at school. I’m sitting on the ground at Whitestone. In the middle of the main hallway. I must have slipped, hit my head. Blacked out for a few seconds. I laugh nervously as understanding dawns on me.
It was a dream.
The most awful, realistic dream ever. I may never be able to go swimming again.
I curl my feet under me and push up off the floor. I expect my muscles to be sore, but they’re not. A dream, I tell myself again, almost giddy with relief. Just a dream. I know the other kids have got to be staring—I must have pulled the stupidest klutz move ever when I fell—but for once, I don’t care. Couldn’t care less, actually. I put my chin in the air and can’t stop a little smile from curling my mouth into a U. Stare away, jerks. I’m alive!
I need to find Langdon. Practice or no practice, he’s coming out with me now. I don’t want to go drinking, though. I want a freaking milkshake or something. To act like a little kid and make myself sick on sugar. That sounds good.
I don’t even care that it’s Thursday. Because tomorrow it will be Friday, not the end of my existence.
Worst. Dream. Ever.
Even though I’m not actually sore, I’m a little shaky as I set off down the hall. Like everything is different now. It’s as though I had an actual near-death experience and my whole—I don’t know—outlook on life is different now. I feel new. To be honest, it’s a little creepy, like something you might see in a cheesy feel-good movie.
I glance over my shoulder at the kids just milling around, not looking, not pointing. Which I guess is good. But why didn’t anyone help me up? Take me to the nurse or something? Self-centered brats. What else can I expect from a bunch of private-school Special Snowflakes? If I’m honest with myself, I probably wouldn’t have helped someone if I saw them biff it in the middle of the hall, either.
I peer around. What time is it? What class period is it? Is it still Thursday? It must be, but I’m not sure where my memories of today turn into the stupid blackout dream. Going home was obviously part of the dream. The mall, too, I guess. Maybe that means I don’t have to go to the mall today. Don’t have to steal anything. I can do something else. Like Scrooge after his visions of the future or whatever in A Christmas Carol, I can make new choices now.
Just as soon as I figure out what time of day it is. Is school over, or should I be hurrying to class? I need to duck into a classroom and find a clock. I reach for the doorknob on the first classroom I come to.
And miss.
I giggle. I must be seriously whacked from that dream. I reach again.
And miss again.
Am I drunk? I don’t feel drunk.
I stand carefully balanced on both feet and glare at the doorknob. I reach out slowly this time.
And miss again.
No. I’m not missing.
I curl my fingers around the doorknob, not quite touching it, and after a deep breath, close my fist.
And jump back with a yelp.
My h
and went through the doorknob.
That makes no sense. I grab for the knob over and over again, but my hand keeps passing right through it. Angry tears are building up in my eyes, and in a burst of frustration I slam my fist into the door.
And stagger right through.
I gasp and spin back to the door I just walked through. I hear voices behind me and whirl around to find several seniors gathered in Mrs. Campbell’s room, laughing at something I didn’t hear. Their voices echo like they’re far away as I swirl in a vortex of panic and confusion.
“Excuse me?” I say tentatively when I find my voice again.
They don’t move. “Excuse me!” I say louder, just shy of a shout.
They still don’t turn. Not even Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Campbell has always liked me, always listened to me. What’s wrong with her?
“Hey!” I scream, abandoning all decorum. “Hey!”
Not even a twitch.
I storm forward, not paying attention to my feet until I realize I’m walking through desks. “No, no, this isn’t funny!” I’m shouting again. “This is impossible!” Is it possible I’m still dreaming? There’s no way . . . right?
When no one responds I turn and run. I pause at the door but decide a good smack in the head might be just what I need to set me to rights again, so I don’t even try to open it.
I burst right through it. I pivot and stare at the door, willing all of this to stop happening. The hallways are even more crowded now and it takes me several spins before I’m completely certain that people are walking through me. Their shoulders mist through my arms, and backpacks that should hit my face pass through me with no resistance.
I feel a sob building in my throat as I spread my hands wide and start shouting, “Please, someone, I need help. Can you hear me? Please!”
And then I see her.
Sera.
She hates me. I hate her. She’ll see me. We could never leave each other alone—whatever’s happening can’t change that. She won’t be able to bear to walk through me. I narrow my eyes and set myself in her path, arms folded over my chest. She’s pretending to ignore me, but it won’t last. She’ll step around me—I know it. I grit my teeth as she gets closer, closer, and I kind of hate that the new supershort haircut I forced her to get actually ended up looking cute on her.
Bitch.
I hold my ground until she’s only inches away. She’s talking to some other cheerleader and not looking at me. Then, when she’s only inches away, she smiles at something Cheerleader B says and turns her face forward.
To me.
At me.
But her eyes don’t focus on my face; she’s looking through me. And by the time I realize that, it’s too late to move. She walks straight into my chest and passes right through me. Her hair almost tickles my nose as I suck in a breath and brace myself for . . . something. A feeling, a pressure.
But there’s nothing.
I close my eyes—I can’t bear to watch—and after counting to five, I turn and open them.
And there she is. Walking away like nothing happened.
Nothing but me. And somehow, I’m nothing.
Nothing.
I’m . . .
I’m . . .
“I’m dead,” I whisper. “I’m a ghost.”
I hate this school.
No, that’s not exactly true. I hate that this school is my life. My unlife. The echo of the life that I once had. But being here, seeing people who knew me, well, it’s the only place where I feel even somewhat alive. And so I’m still here. Every day.
It’s been more than a year since I first woke up on the hallway floor.
I blink and rub my eyes even though, technically, they don’t feel dry or tired. They don’t feel anything. But it’s something I did when I was alive, and I can’t seem to stop doing it.
It’s been a long night. Yesterday a new girl named Kati—a freshman who never knew me—put this cute little cat hair clip in her locker before she left school.
I want that hair clip.
I tried to think rationally. I can’t use a hair clip, even if I could steal it.
Besides, chances are, that’s what got me into this whole ghostly mess in the first place.
It was already after last bell and all the normal kids had gone home. Then all the extracurricular kids, who apparently have nothing better to do than hang around school and sweat or act or sing, went home. Then the teachers. Then—long after everyone else—the janitors. It’s a schedule I know well, one I’ve watched for months and months.
And the whole time, I just stood there in front of Kati’s locker, wishing I could take that hair clip. Lockers aren’t easy to break into, but you can do it. I can do it. Or, at least, I could.
In my other life. My real life.
Now I can’t touch anything. And so I just stood there, all night. I guess that’s the beauty of being a ghost. I don’t have a real body—no muscles to get tired, no spine to spasm, no feet to ache. My new life. My life after theft.
I shouldn’t have let myself stand there all night. I should have gone somewhere else, tried to distract myself. I could have gone to the mall, followed Langdon home, gone to one of Khail’s wrestling matches just . . . because. I know dozens of little survival mechanisms to keep myself from going crazy.
Crazier.
Because for that first month, I honestly thought I was going to go insane. Like bat-shit crazy insane. I’ve developed some coping techniques that keep the crazy at bay. They don’t do much else, but it’s just barely enough to keep my life from being an actual hell.
But I wasn’t in the mood to survive last night. I was in the mood to yell and scream and ache and wallow in the pathetic misery that is me.
And I definitely did some of that.
But I didn’t leave. So now, when the early-morning orchestra members start to arrive at school, right on the janitor’s heels, I’m still standing here, in front of this locker, wishing I were alive. Not just to open the locker and steal the pathetic hair clip, but to breathe, to talk and have someone hear me, to touch something. Anything.
It’s superearly and I don’t know if Kati is in orchestra, but just in case, I force myself to slink away. The last thing I need this morning is to watch her open her locker so I can see the hair clip again. That will just start me obsessing all over and I certainly don’t need a repeat of last night’s hell.
I put my head down and start the long loop through the school that I sometimes walk fifty times in one day. Just for something to do. Along the first-floor hallway, up the stairs, down the second-floor hallway, loop around to the gymnasium balcony, back down to the ground floor. Familiar. Almost hypnotizing in its sameness.
I reach my tongue back behind my teeth and pull out a pink piece of gum and start chewing. Apparently God . . . or whoever . . . decided I should have one thing to amuse me.
I’m not impressed.
But I’m pretty damn good at bubbles.
Up stairs. Down stairs. Through the long hallways. I walk very, very slowly, so the whole loop takes me almost an hour. When I finally come back to the main hall it’s about ten minutes before the bell and the halls are getting crowded. Which is annoying. I actually don’t like walking through people. It creeps me out and sometimes it creeps them out, too. It makes them look back. Sometimes they shiver. That sort of thing.
When I noticed that, I got excited and thought I was getting closer to being seen, or heard, or something. But they never see me.
So once the halls get crowded I just close my eyes and lie down for a while. Because despite the fact that other people can sometimes feel me, I can’t feel them. I don’t know why I always lie down right there in the middle of the hall, exactly. Habit, I guess? Maybe because I woke up there.
I plop down onto the light-brown tiles and lie flat, with my ankles crossed and the uniform of my skirt falling neatly onto my legs. Not that modesty counts for much; it wouldn’t matter if I went around flashing the whole school. A ti
red sigh escapes me, as though I were actually weary from standing all night.
I’m not; it’s all in my head. I can’t sleep. I wish I could. Sleeping away half of my pointless existence would be heaven!
Well, figuratively.
I don’t know. Maybe you can sleep in heaven. I’ve never been there. But I know for a fact that you can’t sleep here in hell.
My eyes flutter closed and I start blowing bubbles. It’s actually kind of relaxing. Cathartic. It might simply be because this gum doesn’t stick to me. Just blow, pop, blow, pop.
I can hear feet all around me and some are probably stepping through me, but in a few minutes they’ll all be in class. Blow, pop, blow, pop.
My ears prick when I hear a bit of commotion. Commotion? At Whitestone? Never, I think sarcastically. But I open my eyes when someone yells, “Hey!” and wish I hadn’t. Some guy’s big black boots land right next to my face, scaring me a little in spite of my ghostly invulnerability.
“Look out, asshole,” I mutter, refusing to flinch. I am just starting to close my eyes again when some guy walks over to me.
“You okay?”
It takes me a second to understand what’s happening.
Like three seconds. Maybe five.
Holy crap! This guy is talking to me!
My eyes latch on to him and I feel like what’s-his-face in that movie Cast Away when he finally enters civilization again: shocked and maybe a little psycho.
The boy is pretty normal looking—if a bit nerdy—with brown hair in a weird almost-hairstyle and a Whitestone uniform that screams brand-new.
Transfer student.
He’s staring at me with concern in his eyes and for a second I’ve forgotten what to do when someone looks at me. No one has looked at me in over a year. It’s weird and strangely complimentary.
He’s waiting for an answer; he must have asked me a question. I couldn’t have told you what it was to save my soul.
Assuming I still have one.
I need to say something, though. My brain spins, trying to find something brilliant . . . no, pithy . . . no, flattering. But what I actually say is, “Are you talking to me?”