Haunting Zoe (3 page)

She flops into the old chair and kicks her
feet over the arm.

“This is exactly why I don’t go to funerals,”
she mutters.

My eyebrow arches again, this time in
disbelief.

“
This
is why you don’t go to
funerals?”

She shrugs, brushing her hair over her
shoulder with a flip of her hand.

“Fine, not
this
exactly. But nothing
good ever comes from funerals. People are always like,
you
should go, get some closure
. But that’s all a load of crap. All
it is, is another way to traumatize yourself.”

I don’t want to stop her and tell her that I
disagree, so I just let her rant.

“Just more bad memories to heap onto the
pile,” she says finally, her voice small at the end. I know from
her far away expression the funeral she’s thinking of, and it isn’t
mine. We’d been young when her dad died. Zoe’s mother had given her
a single red rose to put on his coffin. Though I was sitting across
from her, I watched her clutch the stem so tightly, that tiny
crimson drops leaked from between her clenched fingers. But her
face was always placid, clam, as if she were a million miles away.
I thought it was brave. It wasn’t until much later that I
recognized the expression for what it really was.

Broken.

I sit on the edge of her bed and relax into
the soft mattress. Her black cat Brimstone, which had to be a
million years old by now, arches her back and hisses right at me
before leaping off the bed and darting from the room.

“Looks like you aren’t the only one who can
see me,” I say jokingly.

“That bi-polar cat is not proof that you
aren’t just a figment of my over caffeinated, over Poe’d
imagination.”

I shake my head.

“This is getting old. How can I prove I’m
really here?”

She sits up, looking at me like she wants to
shoot darts into my face.

“I don’t know. Being haunted is new to me,
can you give me a minute to come to grips,
please
?”

I lean back, “Fine. One minute. Clock starts
now.”

Sitting up in the chair she grabs a small
pillow from behind her back and lobs it at me, only instead of
impacting me, it just passes right through.

“Well, I suppose I should have expected
that,” she mutters with a frown.

I roll my eyes.

“What are you in such a hurry for anyway? You
kind of have, forever, right?”

She pauses, a look of utter terror crossing
her face.

“Oh my God. You aren’t going to haunt me
forever, right? I mean, this isn’t going to be my life now. Being
followed around by an arrogant, pain in the ass ghost?”

I grin.

“Keep up the flattery and I just might.”

She leans back in the chair.

“I hate my life,” she complains.

Her words are like a swift slap in the face,
sharp and quick.

“You know, that’s a pretty bitchy thing to
say in front of a guy who no longer has one.”

She sits up quickly, her eyes snapping open.
I see the guilt wash over her. Maybe it’s just because I’ve known
her so long, but her face is an open book, every emotion raw and
expressed in the tilt of her chin or the curve of her mouth.

“Sorry,” she says quickly.

I shrug, though the sting of her words
linger.

“Are you cold?” she asks, her head cocked in
a funny angle.

I look down at myself trying to figure out
what would make her ADD little brain wonder that.

“Nope. I don’t really feel temperature at
all.”

Her puzzlement continues.

“Why are you wearing clothes?” she asks out
of nowhere.

It takes me a minute to recover. I smile
provocatively. “Why? Were you hoping for a naked haunting?”

She huffs.

“Please, you don’t have the figure for
nudity.”

I snort. I may not be a Hollister model, but
even I knew better than that.

“Oh, I really do.”

She bristles uncomfortably.

“Well, I see your ego is still intact.”

I lean to the side, stretching out across her
bed, staring at her playfully.

She glares. “No offence, but would you not do
that on my bed?”

I grin again. “What? Be sexy?”

Her words are quick, a knife to my
stomach.

“No, be dead.”

I stand up quickly, wishing once again that
it had been anyone else on the freaking planet that I could
communicate with. Because dead or not, I was going to throttle the
girl.

I open my mouth to tell her as much but she’s
making that funny face again, like a kid trying to figure out a
magic trick.

“Oh, go ahead. I can practically see the
hamster wheel in your brain smoking. Ask me whatever.”

“Do you eat?”

I shake my head. “No. Not hungry either.
Which is good, since I can’t actually touch anything.”

“What are you standing on?” she asks
relentlessly. “If you can’t touch anything, what keeps your feet on
the floor?”

I look down at my boots. That’s a really good
question.

“Good question. I don’t know.”

I take a deep breath, and imagine myself
falling through the floor. Suddenly, I’m sinking.

“Huh,” I mumble when the floor is at my
waist. Then I think of being above the floor and I float back up,
my feet hovering a few feet off the carpet.

I look at Zoe, expecting her to be pleased,
but she’s waving at me like a crazy person.

“No, no. Stop that. That’s too creepy to
process.”

I shrug and allow myself to float down until
my feet are once more on solid ground.

“How do you get around? Do you just
walk?”

I shrug again.

“I can ride on things, in cars. I rode around
with Kaylee for a few hours at first, in her Camaro.”

I frown at the memory. Kaylee Greely was my
girlfriend of two years, yet it seemed like my death was barely
fazing her at all. I knew she was cold, but that, I had to admit,
was pretty low even for her.

I push the thought away and continue. “But,
after I saw you leave the wake, I waited around to see everyone pay
their respects.”

“That must have been strange,” Zoe
offers.

I nod just a little.

“People wanted to say goodbye. I figured I
should give them the chance.”

She nods too.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her tone sincere.

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

“I dunno. For calling you a douche wrench at
your own funeral,” she answers.

“Douche hammer,” I correct her. “You called
me a douche hammer.”

She shrugs, “I knew it was some kind of
tool.”

I can’t help but grin. “Well, we weren’t
exactly close.”

“And face it, you are a tool.”

I can tell by her expression that she’s
joking so I smile.

“I guess the million dollar question is –
What exactly do you want from me?” she asks seriously.

I cross the room, squatting down at her
feet.

“When you saw me at the funeral, I was
terrified. Because that means I was really dead, not just having
some prolonged nightmare.” I begin slowly. “But then I was relieved
too because, I guess I hoped that you could help me.”

She takes a deep breath, her shoulders
relaxing. I’d forgotten how pretty she was. Her round chin, the way
her dark eyes are set perfectly in her face, the light dusting of
freckles barely visible across her nose. She is stunning really,
and if she ever let someone get close enough without biting his
head off, he would surely see it too.

“Help you what?” she asks.

I scratch my chin, still balancing on the
balls of my feet.

“I dunno. Help me figure all this out. Help
me just…not be so alone.”

She leans forward. Her voice isn’t mean, but
her words hold a simple truth.

“Why should I? Like you said, we aren’t
friends.”

I sit back on my heels, surprised by her
question.

“We used to be,” I say.

She makes a face, as if she’s unimpressed
with my answer.

“That was a long time ago.”

I stare at her and watch her crack a grin.
She’s messing with me. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“How about this,” I offer. “You’re going to
have to pee some time. And when you do, I’ll be there.”

She makes a disgusted face.

“Fine. Where do we start?”

I nod to her computer.

“Where all strange and possibly evil things
begin. Wikipedia.”

So what if Logan was dead? I mean, it’s not
like he owed me money or anything. I pause at the top of the
stairs, letting my mom move around me and walk inside. To my left a
group of girls are holding each other and ugly crying. I try to
assure myself that the display is genuine and has nothing to do
with the swarm of reporters behind me, their cameras clicking like
insects.

“I bet not one of those girls even knew
Logan,” I grumble.

“Firstly, everyone knew Logan. And secondly,
quit being such a judgy-Mc judge-sickle.”

To my right, Carlos holds out his hand, which
I take and allow him to lead me inside and down the hall. Leaning
over he whispers in my ear.

“I can’t believe you wore that.”

I look down at my dark jeans, carefully
tucked into tall brown boots. My steel grey scarf hangs over my
light tan sweater. I’d even taken the time to throw my long brown
hair into a messy bun.

“We can’t all afford to look like movie
stars,” I mumble back.

Carlos, with his rich brown skin and dark
hair looks like he should be on a billboard somewhere, and the dark
fitted suit he’s wearing only enhances the effect. He’s gorgeous.
One of those genetically gifted boys who could bat his eyelashes
and have any girl he wanted. You know, if he actually wanted girls.
He weaves our arms together and pulls me up to a tall pedestal with
an open book laying on it. A few people in front of us are signing
in like they are registering for a giveaway at the mall. I shift
uncomfortably.

“Relax, Zoe. It isn’t a funeral. Just a
viewing.”

I shake my head, “That’s even worse.” I lower
my voice so no one else can hear, “Who would want to look at a dead
body? I mean, it’s just kinda twisted, right?”

He pats my hand. “Closure, darling. It’s a
chance to say goodbye.”

“I said goodbye to Logan a long time ago,” I
say while looking ahead at the room beyond the pedestal. Rows of
neatly assembled chairs are nearly filled with people from our
quiet little town. Some are talking, most crying. A few are just
texting or playing on their phones. I feel my breathing pick up as
a warmth spreads under my skin and wraps tightly around my chest. I
shudder and it slices down my spine like electricity.

“You guys were friends, right?”

I feel the frown on my face. Friends. Yeah,
right.

“Our parents were friends when we were
little,” I say dismissively. The truth is, once we hit middle
school, everything had changed between us. He got popular, and I
got weird. We went our separate ways and never spoke again. Here we
are, getting ready to start our senior year, and Logan would have
been the reigning king of the school. I, however, am doomed to
spending another year eating lunch in the drama department with
Carlos while he updates his vlog, watching the school lacrosse
games from under the bleachers, and spending my Friday nights
reading in my bedroom. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of
that. A shove from behind pushes me into the group in front of me.
Kaylee Greely brushes past us. She and her entourage of well
dressed clones don’t bother to wait in line, they go straight to
the front and the crowd parts for them. Scribbling quickly like
she’s signing an autograph she strides into the main viewing room,
not even bothering to remove her large sunglasses as she takes a
seat in the front row. As Logan’s girlfriend, I feel a genuine
twinge of sympathy for her. Right up until she pulls out her
compact and reapplies her lip gloss with a loud smack of her
lips.