I'd Rather Not Be Dead (18 page)

“Chill.” Leaving the window, I
flop back onto the sofa, turning to sit upside down with my legs up
on the backrest and my hair hanging down to the floor. “It's an
international holiday celebrating me.”

He snorts at that. “Yeah. You
and everyone else who ever died.” Pressing some buttons on the
printer gets it to emit a long, disgruntled sort of beep. “You're
about to be recycled,” Finn grumbles before poking his finger at
something else.

The device thinks for a second,
then makes a friendlier beep followed by a pleasant hum. When Finn
feeds another stack of paper into the tray and tells the computer
to try printing again, the printer goes at it with a soft purr.

Finn gives me a triumphant grin
that makes me roll my eyes and grab a ferret toy from the ground to
throw at him. He ducks it easily before disappearing into his
closet.

Getting into Finn's closet isn't
as easy as getting into mine. You not only have to undo the latch
on the door, but step over the ferret gate. Apparently there's a
story about Juliet and the foam from a football helmet behind that.
Suffice to say, ferrets and closet access don't mix well.

My toes tap on the underside of
the bed while I ponder what I'm going to do all day. Oddly enough,
I'm disappointed Finn's leaving me alone to go to school despite
the fact that I should be upset he's going to come back. My
thoughts jerk to a halt as Finn comes back out in a black zipped
hoodie decorated with the image of Marilyn Manson. “Where'd you get
that?”

“Concert.” He shrugs and goes
over to check on the paper, letting me see that the back of the
hoodie has a bunch of tour dates on it. My eyes latch onto the
Atlanta date. The closest city on the tour to here. He invited me
there. Said his cousin was driving. I assumed he was making fun of
me.

My feet freeze. That was two
years ago, right after I got here.

Copper Finnegan asked me out? Or
at least on a friendly outing. To a city four hours away. Which
would have involved a lot of time in a car together. I don't
remember what I said to him, but I'd be willing to wager it
involved profanity. It honestly never occurred to me that he wasn't
setting me up for ridicule, that he might actually have been
reaching out to the only person in school who might have wanted to
go. It was only after that things between us turned actively
nasty.

Mind boggled, I turn myself
around until I'm sitting upright. Maybe my last position put too
much blood in my head.

“You okay?” Finn frowns at me
with concern. If he remembers what happened, he's not connecting it
to my current daze.

“Yeah.” I smile weakly. “Just
wishing I could go trick-or-treating. I love those little candy
bars, you know?”

“Who doesn't?”

Something incredibly subtle in
his expression makes me suspect he does know what I was thinking
about. How annoying. “Not much of a Halloween costume, you
know.”

“Who says it's a costume?” he
replies.

Snorting, I fold my arms and
give him a withering look. “Come on, you usually dress like a
prep.”

His grin is pure evil. “What
makes you think that isn't the costume?”

“What?” My eyes roll. “Every
other day of the year you're just pretending to be someone else,
but today you can be yourself? Give me a break.”

“We can't all be as brave as
you, Drew,” he says, his voice soft and completely serious. “Or as
self-destructive.”

“Whatever.”

I move again, putting my feet on
the couch with my knees pulled up to my chest and tilt my head back
until I'm staring at the springs of the bed. A day of doing
absolutely nothing stretches out before me and I wonder why I woke
up to see Finn before he left.

“Drew...” He sits by my feet,
twisting to look at me. One arm stretches along the back of the
futon, coming close to my head. The other reaches out to put a hand
on my knee. “Drew?”

I'd meant to ignore him until he
goes away, which he'll have to do soon if he doesn't want to be
late for class, but I can't stop myself from responding with a
quiet, “What?”

“I've been thinking maybe if you
were locked in here to haunt me, then you'd be able to leave with
me.”

I bend my gaze to him, frowning
as I think about that. The times I tried to leave before, it was
just me. He never had any intention of going anywhere. But he's
right. If I'm here because someone wants to force me to spend time
around Finn, then I should be able to go where he goes. Except...
How complicated does that get? Am I free of the spell as soon as we
get past the door or will I be locked into a vicinity of him
later?

“We can try,” I say, unable to
summon much excitement. “But the ferrets will miss me.”

“The ferrets'll get over
it.”

Wow. Placing my happiness above
that of his beloved fuzzies? He either really likes me or really
wants me gone.

Finn locks the critters away and
grabs his bag.

“Don't forget the print out,” I
remind him.

With a shake of his head, he
turns and grabs it from the printer tray. “Thanks.”

We trot down the stairs while
Finn flips through the papers to make sure they're all there. At
the bottom, he opens the door in silence and gives me a look of
solidarity. His mother's car isn't in the drive, so we don't have
to worry about her seeing me come out. If I can.

Finn takes my hand and we spend
a second bracing ourselves before moving forward.

The doorway is filled with air.
And only air. We, both of us, pass straight through it.

“Bravo,” Fray says, leaning
against the porch railing and giving us a slow clap. “And it only
took you, what? Two? Three? Days to figure it out?”

“Screw you.” I drop Finn's hand
and glare at my fellow ghost. “You could've told me.”

“No, I couldn't. It keeps people
out too.”

“Seriously?” I peer at him, then
look back to the door. “Why?”

“How should I know?” Fray
shrugs. “You think I did it?”

“Did you?” Finn asks, not
sounding very friendly. His eyes are narrow as he looks up from
shoving the essay into his backpack.

“Call that a costume?” Fray asks
back. The shade himself is decked out to look like some sort of
demonic jester. He even has one of those little sticks with bells
on them. Except the bells are skulls.

“Boys,” I chide, feeling like a
kindergarten teacher. “Finn, this is Fray. Fray, Finn. I think
you've met before.”

“Yeah,” Finn says, not happy
about it. He closes his bag with a zip that manages to sound
angst-ridden.

“What're the rules now I'm out?”
I ask Fray, who's watching Finn with raised eyebrows and a barely
contained grin.

“You'll probably feel a need to
stay near him. You'll be compelled to go back to the house when he
does...” My friend and I fall into step with Finn as the latter
starts walking toward school. “And if you fall asleep, you should
wake up back here.”

“Why here? I thought Finn
himself was my Place of Power. Not his house. Shouldn't I wake up
wherever he is?”

“Good question.” Fray gives the
skull bells a jingle. “Wish I knew the answer. But I don't. I just
know what the energy around you looks like.”

“There's energy around her?” All
of a sudden, Finn's willing to notice Fray again.

“Around both of you,” my dead
friend corrects. “It sort of floats between the two of you. And the
house. You're tied to the house too, Finn. You'd have a hard time
spending the night somewhere else, though you wouldn't be moved
back.”

Finn's forehead wrinkles in
confusion. “Why would someone do that?”

Fray jingles the bells again.
That's starting to get aggravating. “Another good question.” He
looks at me. “I thought you said he was an idiot.”

“You're mental,” I mutter back
at him.

Fray makes a clicking sound with
his tongue. “Love you too, luv.”

Me grabbing his silly stick and
using it to whack his arm makes him laugh, but Finn notes it with a
frown before casting his eyes to the ground for the rest of the
walk.

“You hanging with us today?” I
ask Fray as we come withing sight of the building. “Drew had a
little ghost,” I sing. “Little ghost, little ghost.”

“Who you callin' little, little
girl?” He yanks the jester stick from my hand before shrugging and
going back to the question. “Might as well follow you to school
today. Nothing going on anywhere else until noon.”

“I'd forgotten about
that...”

“About what?” Finn asks, still
looking at the sidewalk rather than me and Fray.

“Oh, there's this...” I look to
Fray. “What'd you call it?”

He chuckles. “We're off to see
the wizard!”

I blink and miss Fray
transforming into the Tin Man.

“I'm supposed to meet The Shadow
Lord,” I tell Finn, who stops walking and starts staring at me. “I
probably should have mentioned it earlier.”

“You sure that's a good idea? I
mean...” His eyes flicker ever so quickly to our companion. “Are
you sure?”

Fray shakes his head. Despite
being the the Tin Man now, he's still clutching his jester stick,
but at least he's stopped jingling it. “It's the only idea. If she
doesn't go, then she's flaunting The Shadow Lord's authority.”

Generally speaking, if you can
flaunt someone's authority, they aren't the sort of person to take
lightly to having their authority flaunted. Otherwise, you wouldn't
use those words. You'd just say it would make him unhappy. And even
that sounds ominous when you're talking about someone named The
Shadow Lord. The title doesn't exactly scream warm and fuzzy.

“And, no,” Fray answers a
question no one voiced. “No living allowed. Not even Walkers.”

Wonder which one of us was
wondering about that.

A car drives up, honking.
Someone yells Finn's name out the window as it passes and he waves,
then starts moving again.

“When will you be back?” The
words are muffled through the corner of Finn's mouth and directed
at the sidewalk a foot ahead of us.

The question was meant for me, I
think, but I have to let Fray answer since he's the one who knows.
“Nightfall.”

“What's up with that?” I ask
him. “It's Halloween and all the spooks are going to be home by
sunset?”

He laughs and shakes that stupid
stick in my direction. “Not a good question, luv.”

I glare at him in response,
making him sigh and give me a real answer. “We'll be finished with
official business at nightfall. And thus free to roam the streets
with all those adorable kiddies.”

Finn gives me a tiny smile.
“Jack-o-lanterns keep away bad spirits and guide the good ones home
again.”

“So you'll be carving one to
scare me away?”

“Please.” He rolls his eyes.
“Carved it a week ago. It's been in the fridge.”

I grab Fray's jester stick to
smack Finn with, which the latter seems to find more amusing than
when I hit Fray with it. Masochist.

The three of us all go to Finn's
locker while I brief Fray on the layout of the building and tell
him about our classes. He's good with English and physics, but has
no idea what calculus even is, having learned minimal math when he
was alive and never having an interest in learning more after his
death. Trailing off an explanation of what it is you do with
advanced math, I lean against the locker next to Finn's with a
groan. “I'm going to be sick.”

I don't mean to say that out
loud, but as I stare down the hall, the words sort of fall out.

The spectacle by my locker, or
my reaction to noticing it, strikes Fray as funny enough that he
whoops in laughter. Not so Finn, who, alerted by my whining to the
fact that the other me and Cris are busy violating the school PDA
policy, has his hands clinched at his sides like he might storm
down there and hit someone.

“I can't believe she wore that,”
I say, referencing TOM's donning of my sister's cheerleading
sweater. Sure, it's decorated with cobwebs and worn over a ripped
miniskirt and clearly meant to symbolize that everyone in this
school is a mindless zombie, but still.

“I can't believe you let him
touch you in it,” Finn growls.

Fray grins. “Notice how you two
use different pronouns?”

Finn glares at him, making the
freshman passing behind him gasp and pick up her pace.

“Are you stoned?” I pause at the
thought. “Can we get stoned?”

“Sadly, no on both counts.” His
clothes shift into 1960's tie-dye. It sort of suits him. “Although
I think you might be.” He peers down the hall at the other me,
who's stopped making out with Cris but is still talking to him.

Both Finn and I tense, squinting
toward TOM ourselves. She doesn't look high on anything, other than
hormones and stupidity. “Are her thoughts clouded or
something?”

“A little.” Fray bites his lips
and walks closer to the pair. Looking back to the current me, he
frowns. “Is it possible he's the one who kills you?”

Finn goes absolutely rigid. I'd
thought he was tense a second ago, but that was nothing compared to
how tightly wound he is now. “What?”

“Dude, just saying hi.” One of
his teammates stops, overlapping Fray until until the shade moves.
“Wanted to make sure you're coming tonight...”

Visibly annoyed, Finn nods.
“Yeah. Sorry. I'm...”

“No worries. The end of the
season gets to me too.” The other guy winces in commiseration. “All
that aggression and nothing to do with it.”

“He's not planning anything,”
Fray says over the interruption. “But he has a lot of issues.”

I snort. “Like being in lust
with my sister?”

“Amongst other flaws.” Eyes
narrowed, he concentrates harder. “And he's not half as picky as he
should be concerning who he gets his supplies from.”

“I don't do his drugs though.”
Well, except for the occasional weed. But that's not a drug the way
those pills he takes are.