Body and Soul

Will’s mouth tightened, and he gave me a look like he wanted to say something, but he just shook his head instead.

“What?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” But then he kept going. “It’s just, you act like Lily is some kind of horrible punishment for you.”

I gaped at him and then yanked my hand free of his. “You don’t want me in here, either!”

“I don’t,” he said immediately. “But do you know how many people would kill to be alive again, eating doughnuts, smelling flowers, talking to people—other living people—and all you care about is what you look like in her body, which, to be honest, has always been more than fine to me.” The words poured out of him like he’d been holding them back for a while.

I sat back, stu

“I know that,” he said in an even tone. “I never said you were.”

And yet, he still somehow managed to imply that whoever or whatever I was—not Lily!—was somehow worse. “Well, which is it, then?” I asked. “Are you offended that I’m sullying your precious Lily with my horrible personality, or that I’m just not grateful enough for the opportunity to do so?”

“Forget it.” He grimaced. “I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, no, let’s talk about it,” I snapped. “Let’s talk about how great it is pretending to be someone I’ve never met so her family doesn’t get upset, let’s talk about not recognizing yourself in the mirror, let’s talk about not being sure who you are anymore because everyone who looks at you sees someone else.” I blinked back tears, refusing to let them fall.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I charged on. “And hey, before you bring it up, you’re right. I did do this to myself. It was an accident, but it’s all my fault. I love how I’m villainized for messing up, but Lily, who dumped you as a friend, fooled around with Ben Rogers, and wrapped her car around a tree, well, she’s a freaking saint.”

His jaw tightened. “I never said she was—”

“Please, you’ve done everything but turn in the paperwork. Meanwhile, nothing I do is ever good enough. Have you thought about what those other people—those spirits who would be so grateful for this chance—what they might be doing with this body? What kind of post life adventures they might be taking with your sweet, perfect, never-made-a-mistake Lily?”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even try, but I could see, by the color rising in his pale face, I’d scored a direct hit.

“I am doing the best that I can. For you, for me, even for Lily.” I gestured down at myself. “And have you ever even considered what it’s like for me on a personal level?” I asked, weary of fighting with him about the late (sort of ), great Lily suddenly. “I live with a family that’s not mine, watching them care about me and knowing it’s not really for me at all. I can’t even talk to myfamily about anything—other than magazine subscriptions or candy fund-raisers or whatever excuse I can come up with to be at their doors as a stranger—without freaking them out. And then there’s you…” I shook my head bitterly. “Most girls have to hear about a guy’s former crushes. I have to wear yours.”

That shut up him up but, oddly, did little to make me feel better. We spent the last ten minutes of the twenty-minute drive in stony silence, which was fun.

This situation was, quite simply, a nightmare. I wanted to go home, my home, the one that didn’t exist anymore. My mom had put our house on the market and moved into a condo a couple of weeks ago, according to the neighbors I’d talked to when no one had answered at home. At my dad’s house, I’d turned a polite request to use the bathroom into a chance to look around and found that my old room had been turned into a nursery for my step-Mothra’s new spawn, which was a girl, no less. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like I could show up at either place with a claim to belong there, especially looking like this.

More than any of that, though, I wanted my old life back. Even my afterlife had been better than this. At least I’d been me, and the people who could see me knew I was me. Now, at best, I might one day be free, back to spirit form and hoping for the light, but it couldn’t go back to the way it was with Will. Not with knowing his true feelings about Lily. Like maybe he’d have rather had her back from the light than me.

Fantastic.

Will passed the Turners’ street and pulled around the corner into Sacred Heart, as was our practice. The Turner house backed to an empty lot, and Sacred Heart, a huge cemetery, was across the street from that lot. It was my cemetery, in fact. Living as Lily Turner, I was now closer to my original body than I’d been since I was in it. Irony, right?

In any case, the cemetery groundskeeper’s shed was on the outer edge of the property and the perfect place to hide the Dodge from view while Will dropped me off or picked me up. This additional subterfuge was, unfortunately, necessary. Will was still persona non grata around the Turner household—Mrs. Turner still blamed him for what had happened at the hospital. And my first attempt at sneaking out through the front door a few weeks ago had ended in the neighbor tattling on me, and my being forced to come up with a story that involved taking a long walk as part of my physical therapy (lie), and how if there had been a car in the driveway it must have been after I left (BIG lie).

I pulled at the handle and shoved the door open, ready to jump—well, stumble—out as soon as possible.

“Wait,” Will said. “I…I’m sorry, Alona.”

But it was one of those apologies that didn’t sound all that apologetic. It was the “I’m sorry if you’re upset” bullshit Chris and a couple of other ex-boyfriends had tried at various times on me. Uh-huh. There was a reason why they were exes. Well, reasons beyond my dying and, in Chris’s case, his cheating. Though those were good reasons, too.

Will tapped an uneven rhythm on the steering wheel, watching his hands instead of me. “I think we should just agree that we’re doing our best to find a solution to this…situation, and we should try not to take the stress of it out on each other.”

“Fine,” I said tonelessly. He could say whatever he wanted. It didn’t change the fact that I still was—and always would be—the bad guy. For not being Lily, for not being grateful for the chance to be Lily. Whatever.

He sighed. “I’m going to try to see Malachi again tomorrow. It’s safer if you stay here—”

“That’s fine. I’m going to see Misty tomorrow.” The words were out of my mouth before I even realized I’d made the decision. But I guess some part of me had been mulling it over since seeing her in Malachi’s waiting room. I knewMisty, probably better than anyone. She was not prone to scaring easily or imagining things that weren’t there. Heck, when I’d triedto haunt her, she hadn’t even noticed. If she thought “Alona” was haunting her, she probably had good reason to, and I wanted to find out what was going on, even if Will didn’t. Someone out there was taking advantage of my absence and pretending to be me, and doing it so well that even Misty, the person who’d known me best in my old life, believed it. That was sonot going to stand. I wanted to know who was behind it so I could kick ass accordingly.

He looked at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I gave him a tight smile and felt the still-tender skin of my scar stretch painfully with the movement. “Then I guess we’re even.”

“How are you going to get there?”

Oh. That would be a small problem. Misty lived on the other side of town, closer to where I used to live. Car privileges weren’t exactly up for the asking these days in the Turner household—near-fatal car accidents tend to have that effect—and walking with a bad leg was pretty much out of the question. I shrugged, hoping it looked breezy and unconcerned. “I’ll figure it out.”