I'd Rather Not Be Dead (3 page)

“Bitch.” I pass my hand through
her chest. It's creepy, but hearing her gasp is completely worth
it.

I'm tempted to follow Bobbi but
choose the less sadistic, if more pathetic, route of trailing after
myself. I hover on the edge of my life and struggle to think.

No one in the classroom notices
me, even though I walk up to each and every one of them. Figures. I
say something to all the little sheep, but no one cares. Not that
they cared when things were normal either, but at least they used
to hear me.

The other me doesn't react
either, though I spend most of the period standing over her
shoulder watching her doodle caricatures of the founding fathers.
The one of Ben Franklin's decent.

I leave behind myself when class
lets out. Cooper Finnegan's in my next class, so I find Cris and
shadow him instead. I just don't feel like putting up with Cooper
Finnegan right now.

Cris looks the same as always as
I sit on the floor beside him and stare up. Dark hair. Brooding
eyes. Three piercings on the eyebrow closest to me. Two bores in
the nearest ear. A stud in his nose that looks like it's getting
infected.

“I can't believe you don't know
I'm here. I miss you, Cris.” A serious understatement.

In life, I never let myself
admit how I thought of him. He's not my friend. He's more than
that. A lot more. Even if he never wanted to be. Even if he's a
self-centered asshole using me for sex despite the harsh reality
that he'd rather be with my sister. Even if he imagines her when
he's with me. None of that changes anything.

There's a pep rally in place of
the last period. Cris sits near the door, ready to slip out as soon
as the staff stops guarding against escapees. The other me isn't
with him. She must have cut already.

The rest of the school's right
here. All four hundred of them.

Taking a breath, I walk up to
the microphone in the middle of the gym floor. “Hello?”

It's not on.

My fingers pass through it, of
course. It's not real in my world.

Sighing, I turn my attention to
scanning the stands. No one pays me any attention but that doesn't
mean anything. I wouldn't pay attention to someone just standing
here either.

I wait until Ms. Pauler, the
school principal, strides out to center court. A petite woman,
she's nearly drowning in a wide-shouldered suit of forest green,
the dominant school color. There's a gold-toned bird pinned to it.
I assume she thinks it looks like a bird of prey. Looks more like a
wren to me.

The Pine Bridge Birds of Prey.
Because they couldn't be bothered to come up with a specific bird
of prey to use as a mascot.

Ms. Pauler lowers the microphone
to her level, flips the power on, and yells, “Hello, Pine
Bridge!”

For some reason, the crowd
cheers.

“Are you ready to beat
Mitchell?”

The student body screams back
that they are. Whatever. I step up to Ms. Pauler and plunge my hand
into her shoulder. She shivers, but no one in the stands looks
alarmed.

“Let's hear it for our Pine
Bridge cheerleaders!”

The principal leads the group in
clapping and several people scream enthusiastically as my sister
and her squad run out, a couple of them turning cartwheels and all
of them smiling like Barbie dolls. I notice Cris watching them very
closely, and I wish I hadn't.

The girls do a dance to some
random hip-hop track. It's always cracked me up that they use this
kind of music for their pep when they wouldn't dare be caught
listening to it for recreation. My leg passes through Bobbi as I
try to trip her, but of course she doesn't slide across the room on
her face like I'd wanted.

Predictably, no one in the
audience notices me trying to interfere with the routine. The first
sign of someone noticing me is when the football team gets called
out. Right after Ms. Pauler says, “And our starting quarterback...”
and stupid Cooper Finnegan runs out waving his helmet around like
an idiot. His eyes catch on me and his face shuts down for a
heartbeat before he recovers enough to give the crowd one of his
infamous grins. It's a good thing I haven't eaten all day or I'd be
sick to my stomach.

I kick out at him as he walks by
on his way to stand with the other jocks. He stumbles and narrows
his eyes at me. My breath catches. “You felt that! Like really felt
it!”

He ignores me except for a
tightening of his jaw.

I run down the line of players,
stopping in front of their leader. I reach out and grab his arm.
And actually grab his arm! His flesh is solid. And warm. It feels
like he has a burning fever.

“Stop it,” he whispers without
moving his lips.

“I can touch you!” I grin at
him.

His mouth twitches. “I'm
busy.”

“But-” I cut myself off short
when it strikes me who I'm clinging to. My hand drops and I take
several steps back, appalled. I was latching onto Cooper Finnegan
like he was some sort of... Not disgusting thing. “Why can I touch
you?”

There's a slight rolling of his
eyes and he waves to someone behind me.

“Is it the same reason you can
see and hear me?” His gaze flickers to mine, moves up and down like
a nod, and then goes back to his fans.

Okay... This makes it official.
I really am dead. I have to be. Because this is Hell.

Chapter Three

There are no mega-chain stores
in Pine Bridge. It can be more than moderately annoying to have to
drive more than an hour just to hit Wal-Mart, but on the plus side
it means there's still a downtown. It's just too bad for me that
all the little indie shops are owned by conservative hicks and not
by the type of people who would carry things I want to buy. Or all
the shops except the florist. That's owned by my mother, who may
just be the only grownup liberal in the entire county.

I wander Main Street, trying to
find someone, anyone who isn't Cooper Finnegan, who notices my
presence. No once glances at me in the bookstore. The barista at
Fresh Grounds ignores me. The old ladies in the collectibles store
fail to look disapproving. I have no luck with the jewelers in the
gem store. Even Mom pays no attention to me as she arranges pink
roses in a cute little “It's a girl!” vase.

She's humming along to the
radio, to a Beatles song. She loves the Beatles. I leave in a
hurry, before the scene makes me cry. I'm done with crying. Can't
let myself forget that.

I keep going for another hour
before finding my first success contacting others in the hardware
store. As soon as I walk in, a sandy haired twenty-something man
whose clothes went out of style in the forties gives me a kind look
and a gentle smile. “You're not going to have any luck, kiddo. Not
just wandering around hoping someone notices you.”

Whoa. He sees me! And took the
time to say something snidely vague. My eyebrows raise. “And I will
have luck how?”

With a teasing grin, he picks up
a bolt from the bin beside us and throws it straight at one of the
workers.

The target curses. “That darn
ghost is back!”

“There's no such thing as
ghosts!” the manager yells from deep in the store with a weariness
that sounds like he's yelled the same thing many times before.
“Stop horsing around before you scare the customers.”

“This place is haunted,” the
worker says to an older man in paint splattered overalls as he
glowers at a spot a few feet left of us.

“Is it? I never noticed.” The
ghost winks at me and vanishes from sight.

I take a deep breath. Clearly,
I'm not the only ghost in town. The jury's still out on whether I'm
alone in my sanity though. Not that things would be so much
different than when I was alive if I am.

My eyes go to the bin of washers
as the customer shuffles to a different aisle and the employee goes
back to restocking. The shiny little circles of metal don't look
any more tangible than anything leaves or textbooks, but then
again, neither do chairs, so I move my hand toward them anyway. If
one ghost can toss them around, maybe we all can. “Here's goes
nothing.”

My fingers glide through the
washers as if they aren't there and I sigh. But maybe there's hope,
maybe I can learn. That guy hadn't looked particularly powerful or
anything.

I spend an hour working to pick
up a washer, but at the end of it I'm exhausted and the whole bin
is undisturbed. The metal feels different than it did at first,
like an electric current turned up, but it's as intangible as on my
first try. Tired and disheartened, I leave the shop and go to the
bench sitting beside it. The bench supports my weight when I lie
down but after a few minutes someone sits right in the middle of my
stomach and I spring to my feet, cursing the redneck's complete
lack of consideration.

The man doesn't hear me, but he
must sense something. Something that motivates him to get up again
and rush down the street in a sudden hurry to get somewhere
else.

“He wasn't trying to hurt you,”
Cooper Finnegan says.

My eyes narrow on the annoying
jock. “What are you doing here?”

He waves at the store window.
Finnegan's Hardware and Contracting. Right. “You know your store's
haunted?”

His eyes roll. “What'd Grandpa
do now?”

“Grandpa?” The man I met wasn't
anywhere old enough to be anyone's grandfather.

“The Ghost of the Hardware
Store,” Cooper Finnegan whispers, his voice trying to be spooky.
The rumors of the football team's drug usage must be true.

“Died young?”

Cooper Finnegan shakes his head.
“Lived to see ninety three.”

“Then you have two ghosts.”

His gives me a look like I'm as
dumb as a sack of flour. “Ghosts retain the appearance their energy
thinks they should have. Regardless of how they appeared in
life.”

He stops speaking as a woman
leads a little girl in a pink dress and long pigtails out of the
store. He smiles at them, making the woman go all flustered. She's
blushing as she smiles back, although it's hard to tell with all
the foundation caked on her skin. “Hey, Finn,” she says with an
annoying simper. “Good luck tonight.”

Good grief! The woman's at least
thirty-five and wearing a wedding band. She's got her kid with her
and everything!

“Thanks.” He smiles with his
usual trademarked charm, as if he doesn't realize the woman's in
danger of fainting if she gets much more direct attention from
him.

“Go Birds of Prey!” the daughter
chimes in.

Great, the guy's got the
kindergarten set drooling over him too. Like he needed more
adoration.

“And thank you.” Finn's smile
widens for the little kid, becomes more genuine. The girl grins up
at him, drowning in his glory without appearing to suffer from
hormonal overload.

I clear my throat as the two
move on. “So a ghost looks as old as they thought they were? The
young at heart will be young in ghostly body?”

Cooper Finnegan turns his head
to make sure the retreating customers won't overhear him. “Pretty
much.”

“Finn!” The store manager pokes
his head out of the door. “You here for Jerry's order?”

“Yes, sir, Uncle Mark.” The
smile he gives his uncle is the exact same smile he gave the woman
a moment ago, but it doesn't seem to make his uncle want to
swoon.

I've never figured out why
Cooper Finnegan, alone of all the Finnegans in town, is called Finn
rather than by his first name. I asked Cris about it when I first
moved here, but Cris just shrugged and mumbled it'd always been
that way.

“I have errands for work and
then a game,” Cooper Finnegan says from the corner of his mouth. He
walks into the store without saying anything else, leaving me
feeling dismissed.

“Hope you break your neck,” I
mutter. Then I regret it. If he dies, there's a chance he'll wind
up haunting this place too. Then I'd be stuck with him for
eternity. Or... I stop walking. I could leave.

Sure, Cooper Finnegan's the only
medium in this town, but what about Asheville? Charlotte? Surely a
city the size of Charlotte would have someone living to talk to.
Someone who could help me, who could keep me from dying in the
first place.

Even if I'm doomed to die, I can
always go be dead at home. Real home. Not the house my parents are
in, but Philadelphia... There's got to be plenty of awesome
deceased to hang with in Philly.

Excitement and pride in my
cleverness brings a smile to my face as I sprint down the street to
the gas station that serves as a Greyhound stop. The posted
schedule says the last bus of the day is due in two hours. Two
hours...

There's not much I can do since
I can't touch anything. No reading, no crossword puzzles, no
ripping apart blades of grass. I'm the ultimate spy, but there's no
one I want to look at.

The time creeps by as I try in
vain to move leaves, but at long last, as twilight rushes forward,
the bus pulls up. I'm relieved it stops. With no one waiting here,
I was afraid it would pass right by me.

The driver gets off and walks
into the shop. Guess he needs a bathroom break. Or a cup of coffee.
The prospect of the driver needing something to keep him awake
might make me nervous if I were still alive.

He comes back out after a few
minutes, a Styrofoam cup in his hand. He opens the doors and I leap
onto the bottom step after him. And crash to the street.

Ah, crap. I can't get on the
bus. Why on earth did I spend the last two hours assuming I could?
Cursing my stupidity, I scramble backwards, needing to get away
from the strange feeling of sharing space with something that isn't
really there.

I walk to the nearest car and
stick my hand through the door of it. Furniture and floors are real
here. Vehicles and other things that move aren't. Well, crap. No
help for it, I'll have to walk to Pennsylvania.