As Dead As It Gets

“What?” She sat back, eyes wide. “I beg your pardon?”

“I want you to have a choice,” I said. “Or at least know why you’re doing this. It wasn’t fair—what I made you do…with Elliot.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “I ca

I thought she was horrified by my confession, horrified by the fact that I’d kept this information secret. I expected her to get up and leave.

“Do you think the whole universe revolves around you?” She pursed her lips and stuck her nose in the air. “You are not my power whatever. And that is not why I’m doing this. Where do you think I’ve been for the past week? I was trying to keep my parents from throwing away the mix CD my dad made for me when I was five. Do you know how many phone books I had to flip open, how many internet searches I had to type, letter by letter, before they took the hint and made this…sort of lame…little display? So get off your ginormous high horse. You are not my power thingy.”

All this time. All of the effort. The way she’d swallowed her pride and started working with me…

“Is it really so hard to believe that I’m helping you because I want to?”

I stared at her, and she sighed.

“Okay, yeah, you’re right. It sounds hard to believe. But…I don’t know what to say. I wanted to help you. I’m sorry.”

“Lydia,” I said, an impossible thought dawning in my mind, “you’re just a good ghost.”

She reared back in disbelief. “Ha!”

“No, I mean it. Most ghosts are bad, but some are good…like angels.”

Her eyes went wide for a moment, then her expression relaxed. “If I’m an angel…” She looked up at the trees. “Does that mean that when I’ve filled my purpose—like, something I’m destined to do—I’ll go somewhere? Somewhere that’s not the transitional plane?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Well, then, maybe…” I thought of Megan’s mother, Shara. Her ghost had disappeared after helping us. I felt a sudden twinge of dread and realized, to my utter shock, that I didn’t want Lydia to go anywhere.

She started speaking, like she was confessing. “Did you know my mom has a cat now? He’s like a zillion years old. I used to see him in the neighborhood—he was all ski

“I’m so sorry, Lydia,” I said.

“No, you don’t understand.” She turned to me, blinking back ghostly tears. Her face practically shimmered in the moonlight. “That’s a happy story. My mom’s going to be okay. And that means my purpose isn’t helping her. Maybe it’s helping you.”

Headlights. An engine cutting off. Footsteps.

“Alexis!?” The footsteps broke into a run. “Alexis, where are you?”

“Over here! We’re over here!” Lydia yelled, before remembering that people couldn’t actually hear her. She gave me a nudge.

“Here!” I called. “I’m here!”

In the distance, the footsteps hesitated and then started again, heading toward us.

Carter’s face appeared between the trees.

“Alexis!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

“I need water.” My throat burned.

“What happened? I waited for you for twenty minutes and then I realized—” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. Then he lifted me off the ground and started walking.

* * *

As we approached the road, I heard another voice. For a moment I thought someone from Harmony Valley was after us.

A person came crashing through the woods toward us. “You found her?”

“Is that Megan?” I asked.

Carter paused for her to catch up with us. Megan gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and stared into my eyes. “What happened? Is she—”

“She’s okay. Let’s get her in the car,” Carter said.

“I’m riding with you guys,” Megan said. “I’ll just leave my car.”

He drove, and Megan sat in the backseat with me. We stopped at a convenience store and Carter went inside. I could feel Megan’s eyes on me like a mother lion watching her cub.

“Kasey,” I whispered.

“I know,” she said. “We were all out looking for her when Carter called me.”

“It’s too late,” I said. Tears sprang to my eyes. “There’s no way…”

“There is a way,” she said. “There’s a chance. The ghost was with you for a long time tonight, right? Like, hours?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know exactly what’s going on,” she said, “but I have some ideas. And one of them is that this ghost can’t be in two places at once. Which means that when it was with you, Kasey may have had a chance to stop and rest…or find water. Or even get help.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “I mean, what makes you think that?”

“It’s based on what Kasey told me. She came to see me. She wanted to prove that you were i

Carter came back with a bottle of Gatorade and two bottles of water. I chugged the Gatorade, then promptly leaned out the window and threw it all up. So I sipped the water instead.

He turned to look at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I just need to drink more. Maybe eat. And then I need to find my sister.”

I glanced at the clock and gasped.

It was 4:45 in the morning. We’d lost a whole night.

No way was I stopping until Kasey was found.

“Did you tell my parents I was missing?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t. I didn’t want them distracted from their search.

“No,” Carter said. “But they knew you left Harmony Valley. They called to ask if I’d heard from you—”

“Me too,” Megan said.

“And I said I hadn’t. Maybe I should have told them, but—I know you don’t want to go back there.”

I nodded, then took another sip and closed my eyes—but this wasn’t going-to-sleep-forever eye closing. I was just resting.

“What happened to you—it’s what happened to those other girls, isn’t it?” Megan asked. “Only they never woke up. How did you wake up, by the way?”

“Lydia,” I said. “Lydia’s a ghost. She helped me.”

There was silence.

“Lydia’s a good ghost?” Megan asked dubiously.

“One of the best,” I said. “Believe it or not.”

“Not quite,” Megan mused.

“Hey!” Lydia said, popping into view in the front seat.

“So what now?” Megan asked.

“We find my sister,” I said. And I didn’t care if I had to knock Kasey unconscious or break her kneecaps or tie her to a tree.

Laina wasn’t going to take her away from me.

AS WE DROVE, Megan’s phone rang. She glanced down at it and looked at me. “It’s Sava

“Sava

Megan shrugged. “I needed help. So I told her everything. She’s really smart. Kinda nuts, but…hello, Van?…Hmm…I don’t know. She’s right here; I’ll put her on.”

She handed me the phone.

“Hello?”

Sava

“Worried,” I said.

“Okay, down to business.” I heard her flipping the pages of a book. “The girl ghost isn’t wearing the clothes she died in?”

“No,” I said. “She couldn’t be. Nobody hikes in a fancy dress.”

“Was it, by any chance”—more page flipping—“the dress she was buried in?”

I blinked. “That seems really likely. Is that common for ghosts?”

“Nope, not at all.” She was quiet for a second. “So, when she moves in your pictures, that’s not common for the ghosts you see?”