Battle of the Bands (7 page)

“I'm not dead. I'm still me. I still have a body and everything.”

“You are still you, but you don't have a body. What you're seeing is a thought form.” He points to a tall gold urn up by the minister. “Your body is in there. You were cremated.”

Thunk thunk, thunk thunk. My heart pounds in my chest. Dread mushrooms in my stomach. Sweat beads on my forehead.“But everybody knows death is the end. That there's nothing left but matter.”

“Death is only the beginning, Logan. Hannah knows that. Lots of people do.”

Logan always takes the easy way out. After a night of drinking and driving, he wakes up to find he has been involved in a car accident and is dead. With the help of his guide, Wade, and the spirit of his grandmother, he realizes he has taken the wrong exit. He wasn't meant to die. His life had a purpose—to save his sister!

Isn't she fazed by any of this? Does she do this all the time? Make unsuspecting, seemingly straight girls squirm? Or am I making it all up? But making up what? The butterflies are real. The fact that I want to kiss her is real.

Would kissing a girl be different from kissing boys? If all I did was kiss her, would that make me queer? Are you queer just for thinking it? Or does doing it make you queer? And what if I don't want to be queer? Do I get a say in this at all?

Because of a moment of indiscretion, Hope's parents send her to New York to spend the summer with her sister. Miserable, Hope ends up meeting Nat and developing a powerful crush. The only problem is that Nat is a girl. Hope is pretty sure she isn't gay. Or is she? Struggling with new feelings, fitting in and a strange city far from home, Hope finds that love—and acceptance—comes in many different forms.

I was happier than I had been for a long time. Everything was crashing down around Dana. Finally I was getting some justice. But I wanted a bigger helping.This wasn't enough. I had to do something.

I went into the washroom and dug a marker out of my pencil case. I drew a box and a couple of circles, with lines for a flash going off, on the outer wall of the first cubicle. No one would be able to miss it. It didn't look exactly like a camera, but it would do. And for the finishing touch I wrote SMILE DANA, with a happy face right beside it.