I'd Rather Not Be Dead (36 page)

“If you break up with me now,
you won't have to tell him.” He says it like a joke, but I hear the
little tendril of fear worming its way through the words.

“I don't suppose we could just
keep us a secret?” I pose.

“Sure. We'll just have to erase
a few hundred memories.” He brushes a light kiss across my lips.
“Still want me to wait outside?”

No. “It's probably best.”

He nods. “Okay. I'll be down the
hall chatting up the nurses.”

“Alright.” I give him another
kiss. “The one with the beard really seems to like you.”

He smiles for me. “Thanks for
the tip.”

Turning me toward Cris's door,
he gives me a little push. My heart swells with tenderness for Finn
as I knock and go into my friend's room, trying to think of
something better to say than, “Hey. Glad you're not dead. And, FYI,
I'm sleeping with your nemesis now.”

But it turns out that I don't
need to think of anything to say. One look at him and I know that
the grapevine's beat me to the punch.

“Cooper Finnegan?” he asks
softly. “You really are pissed at me.”

“It's not like that,” I tell
him, walking into the room while I make a visual estimate of his
condition. His color's almost back to normal, once you take the
yucky hospital lighting into account. He's still on an IV, but only
one, and it looks like just a fluid drip. He hasn't shaved yet and
that gives him a wild appearance. I used to really like it when he
went unkempt like that. There was something primal about it that
drove me crazy.

“Tell me what it is like
then.”

Taking a deep breath, I consider
telling him the whole story. But I've already decided that's a bad
idea. “Classic story, really,” I say, making myself look at Cris
and not the floor, or the ceiling, or the flowers by the bed. “Girl
meets boy. Girl thinks she hates boy. Girl turns out to be
wrong...”

I try to smile, but Cris doesn't
smile back at me. “He's one of them, Drew.”

There are several possible
responses to that, such as, “No, not really,” or, “One of whom?” or
even, “There is no them,” but I discard all of those, choosing
instead, “My only love sprung from my only hate.”

“What?” Cris
asks, not catching the reference. I'm not sure he bothered to
read
Romeo and Juliet
. I know I wrote his essay on it.

I sigh and go for blunt. “I'm in
love with him, Cris.”

“No, you're not.” He seems very
confident of this.

“Yeah, I am.”

He shakes his head with a smile.
“No. You're just trying to make me jealous.”

“I'm really not.” How to be more
convincing about this?

“You don't need to, Drew. I
nearly died.” His eyes look feverish, possessed. “You learn things
about yourself when you almost die.”

I laugh. Don't I know it?

“Drew, I love you.”

I stop laughing. “Don't,
Cris.”

“No, I mean it.” He moves in the
bed, sitting up all the way, folding his legs under the sheets and
looking down at his lap. “I know was a jerk before. I never
appreciated you. I've used you. I've cheated on you...” He looks up
like he expects me to react to that, seems almost disappointed when
I don't. “I treated you like crap, Drew. But I'm going to make it
up to you. Because I really do love you.”

My heart's getting torn to
shreds and I just want to run away. But I can't. “You really want
to make it up to me?”

“God, yes!” The answer is
immediate, his expression eager.

“Then be my friend,” I tell him.
I pause, swallow... Force my eyes back to his. “And just my friend,
Cris. The rest of it... That's in the past. We're just
friends.”

“No,” he states flatly.

The pain inside me hits the
point where it stops being painful, starts being frozen and numb,
like it hurts too much to actually feel. “Then we're not
anything.”

I turn to go, but he stops me
with my name.

“What?” I ask, having to ask
twice because the first time it was whispered too quietly.

“Friends, Drew. For now.”

There's no for now about it, but
I know him better than to think I'm going to get more out of him
than that without giving him far more time. Silent, I nod. And I
take a deep breath. “Tell your mom I said hi.”

On autopilot, my feet take me to
Finn. I manage to make it there without crying. And once he puts
his arms around me, I find I don't need to cry anymore. In fact,
with him holding me, I can almost believe that I'll never cry
again.

“What's wrong with you people?”
someone shouts.

It's a shout of desperation,
followed by a wordless bellow of unhinged rage.

Together, Finn and I turn to
look down the hall. Where Ricky Woodman stands, hair mussed and
eyes raving with madness. He's waving his hands, trying to get
someone to so much as glance at him. He goes still when he sees us
looking.

His eyes widen, making him look
even more insane. “You!” he snarls, his finger jabbing at us like a
claw of accusation. “How did you do this, demon?”

He stalks up the corridor,
passing through a cart without blinking.

I put my head against Finn's
chest and, hoping no one notices, pull us into Shadow.

“You are no match for the power
of the Lord!” Ricky bellows.

Laughter comes to me unbidden.
“And you're in touch with the Lord, are you? Why was He so quick to
let you die then?”

His face turns a ridiculous
shade of red.

“Drew,” Finn whispers
softly.

I glance up at him, meeting his
gaze and then sighing. “You're no fun.”

“I'm not dead,” Ricky states
firmly, if a hair hysterically. “You're lying!”

“No,” Finn answers with more
sympathy than I'd use. “She's not lying. Sorry, but you were in an
accident yesterday, Ricky. Ran off the Parkway.”

“What? And now I'm walking the
Earth as a spirit?”

I give Pine Ridge's newest ghost
a cold smile. “Exactly.”

He shakes his head. “No. Ghosts
aren't real. They're lies told by Satan.”

I shrug as Finn makes a little
choking sound, probably remembering me saying something very
similar, minus the bit about Satan. “Then what's happening? Why
can't anyone else see you?”

Ricky's body shakes as he takes
a long breath, his eyes sparkling with tears as he licks his lips
in thought, putting together everything that's happened to him.
“Because I'm dead. Because I'm dead and I'm in Hell.”

He slumps against the wall,
shaking his head in disbelief.

A nurse rushes by, her legs
passing through Ricky's while he stares in terror.

“You'll be alright, Ricky,” I
tell him, my voice softer than before. “It's really not so
bad.”

He doesn't look up before we
vanish. But just before we leave the hospital, I hear his voice
whispering. “Hell...”

In Dedication...

This novel was dedicated to my
mother. The following is a blog excerpt from a few years ago, from
back when I'd Rather Not Be Dead was titled Shadow and before
Hedgie Press was born. It should help you to understand why it's
safe to say this book would never have come about at all without my
mom.

Mothers Day, 2010

My Mother Loves My Novel

You don't have to look far to
find someone saying that you shouldn't place much value on the
opinions of your friends and family on your writing. In fact, in
some places you'll find people openly mocked for statements like,
“My mom loved my novel!” Which kind of upsets me, because it's
important to me that my mom enjoyed SHADOW. But the true value in
mother's feedback wasn't when she said she loved it, it was when
she told me what she didn't love.

When my mother first asked to
read the book I kept talking about, I'll admit I was worried.
Scared even. I kind of expected her to give me a quick, “That's
nice, dear...” and not much else. Sort of like when my
eight-year-old babbles out a tale that makes no sense to me and I
smile at him while trying to edge away. I had no idea if she'd like
it or not and I was worried I'd never even really know. I mean, my
mom's a really nice person. Plus, you know, she's my mom...

Turns out, I should have had
more faith in her.

My mother's an amazing woman,
someone I've always admired. She's strong. Smart. Brave. You have
to be brave to call up your daughter and tell her, “Yeah, that's
nice, dear. But....”

I've given much more beta-reader
feedback since I sent Mom the second draft of SHADOW to read than I
had prior to that, so I have an even better understanding of how
much guts it took to give me the help I needed. When I write notes
for other writers, I spend hours staring at them before I hit send,
trying to see if it all really needs to be said, hoping I'm not
going to hurt someone who trusted me, praying I'm not going to say
something that's going to make this other writer give up on their
dream... How much worse would those fears be if I were talking to
my child?

She considered the easy route,
just metaphorically patting me on the head and saying she was
proud. She even called my sister and asked her if I'd really meant
it when I said I wanted to know the flaws in my novel or if I just
wanted her to give her support. I suspect she more than half-hoped
my sister would let her off the hook. But my sister writes too. No
pardon was granted.

So my incredibly awesome mother
got on the phone and told me all the problems she had with my
story. At first, she sounded as uneasy as I've ever heard her, like
she was certain I was going to yell or cry or call her names. When
I instead ate up everything she was saying, she started getting
into it. By the time she was critiquing the ending she was
downright gleeful suggesting alternatives to what I'd written. (I'm
going to assume that's because she relaxed. Not because she got to
the bit where she insisted someone who originally lived needed not
to... ;)

SHADOW wouldn't be what it is
now without my mom, it would be something much weaker. I've had a
lot of other beta-readers, several of them writers and many of whom
said really helpful things, but none of them came up with nearly as
much to work on as Mom did. She pointed out plot holes, she brought
my attention to problems with characterization, she let me know the
sections where the mood was off. She came up with a whole slough of
things that no one else had mentioned. She was hands-down SHADOW'S
MVB, Most Valuable Beta.

So, yeah, my mom loves my book.
She loves it so much that she was willing to man-up and tell me
which parts of it could be improved. She gave me what my novel
needed, even though she wasn't certain it was what I wanted until
after the fact. It's one of many things I love her for.

Acknowledgments

First off, thank you to the
organizers of National Novel Writing Month because this story
started out as a NaNo project. Thanks to everyone who played along
with me way back in... 2007? (Yikes!) Thanks to my alpha-readers
for encouraging me as I wrote that first draft. Thanks to the betas
who helped me through numerous other drafts. Special thanks to the
lovely Kat Lunn of England, who took the time to write to a random
stranger from across the ocean to tell me to take this novel off
the shelf and let the world read it. And thanks to all the friends
who reacted to being told about Kat's letter with an exasperated,
“I've been saying that for years!”

I think we've already
established that this book owes its biggest debt to my mother,
Linda Collins. If you like this book, credit her. If you don't,
blame me. It's not her fault her daughter's a nutjob.

Speaking of my mother's
daughters, it was my sister who came up with the final name. One of
the options I was debating was I'd Rather Be Dead and she told me
that she thought Drew would rather NOT be dead, actually. And she
was right!

While acknowledging the role of
my family, we should tip our hats to my father for his constant
support of every project I take up and my grandfather, Lewis Allen,
who told me my very first ghost stories.

Special kudos also go to my
husband, Jimmy Brokaw, for not only sharing his wife with a
keyboard but for always telling me I could achieve far more than I
believed I could. And, of course, a huge dose of gratitude to our
son, Eric, who has grown up knowing that at any given moment
there's a part of his mother's brain that isn't with him but is off
playing with her imaginary friends, but who tells me on a regular
basis that he's not only cool with that but it's something he loves
about me.

And thanks to you, for reading
all this and presumably the book. Readers are why writers
write!