Ashes to Ashes (11 page)

“Oh, no.” Sympathy swamps me. “You drowned.”

She bobs her head, and her eyes get a faraway look in them, like she's remembering the terror of not being able to find air.

“I was in a car accident,” I say, trying to distract her with my own story. I don't want her to get upset. “I was on Route Fifty-two, heading to my boyfriend's house. He called my cell and I answered. I'm not even sure how it happened. It was so fast . . . and then I was in the Prism; it was all over.”

“Sometimes knowing what happened can be good,” says Reena.

“Closure,” I say.

Reena nods solemnly. “Sorry to bring up something so grim.”

“It's okay.” But I brush away the mental image of my crumpled car. I don't want to dwell on that right now.

“Want to check out the pit?” she asks. “See if there's anything going on tonight?”

“Sure.” I know that part of me is pretending that I'm just here with my friend, heading to a bonfire. It's a relief to pretend, just for a moment.

“Where's Leo tonight?” I ask as we walk.

“Doing his own thing.”

“Oh.” I'm still unclear on how I feel about Leo—he seemed like kind of a bully in the barn, but then he tried to help me let Carson know that I was there.

As if Reena reads my thoughts, she says, “Leo's a good guy. He's a little . . .” She pauses and looks ahead, across the sand. “Troubled,” she finishes.

I nod like I understand, but the truth is that I'm not sure I do. What I do know is that I'm way more comfortable with her. She gets me in a way that Thatcher doesn't.

“Dying young can do that to people,” says Reena.

And then I look up at her and say, “Tell me about it.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I guess I'm not telling you anything that you haven't figured out.”

When we get to the edge of the beach, it's almost completely dark. A girl and a guy are standing by the fire pit—they both have the glow of ghosts, but they're in normal clothes, too, like Reena.

“Hey, you guys,” says Reena. “Norris, Delia, this is Callie.”

“Hey,” I say, giving them a wave.

Norris I've seen before—he's the guy who was in the graveyard with Leo during the ghost tour. He has an oval-shaped face and a sharp nose; everything about him looks stretched out—tall torso, long legs, and stick-straight brown hair. He has a blue hoodie pulled up over his head, but I can see that his eyes are bright and amused.

The girl, Delia, has those tight curls that always seem to frizz in the Charleston humidity, but hers shine like spun gold—they're round and thick and perfect. She collects them up into a bun as I smile at her, and she ties a knot into her hair to hold it in place. That's when I see a black mark on her neck—like Leo and Reena have. It's just above the collar of her light cotton shirt.

I suddenly remember that I still have this aura around me—but their clothes show normally, without the cloaking glow. I look down at my body self-consciously.

“Don't worry,” says Delia. “We all had that aura once.”

“It's very eye-catching,” says Norris with a wry smile.

“Why don't you guys have it?” I ask.

The three of them share a secretive look but they don't answer, and I decide not to press the issue. Reena just leads me closer to Norris and Delia, and we sit down with them on a fallen log bench. That's when I notice that there are other people here—of the non-glowing sort.
Living
people.

Three guys in T-shirts and shorts and with bare feet are hovering around the start of a fire. I recognize them from the soccer team—they're my year: Eli, Hunter, and Brian. They've got a giant blue cooler and Eli grabs three beers from it. He tosses two to Hunter and Brian, and when they open up the cans, they make that delicious metal pop sound.

I'll never open a can again
, I think, knowing it's a silly thing to be sad about.

“I know them,” I say to Reena.

“Fun,” she says, her eyes glowing bright in the firelight. “Do you like them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are they cool?” asks Delia, leaning across Reena's lap to get in on the conversation. “Are they
friends
of yours?”

“No,” I say. “I mean, not really, but they're okay guys. They're on the soccer team. . . .”

I almost say “with my boyfriend, Nick,” but I stop myself. I don't want to talk about anything that's going to bring me down, that's going to remind me of what I've lost when I'm trying so hard to pretend that nothing has really changed.

We're just a few feet away from Eli, Hunter, and Brian.

I look down at the log where I'm sitting and realize with some surprise that I'm not actually touching it. I'm doing that hover thing again, which I guess is what happens now. I'm
remembering
sitting, but not actually making contact with my seat. Weird. I notice my skin, how it isn't touched by the breeze that I know is coming off the water. The trees are moving back and forth, almost like a storm might roll in, but I don't feel the air. I lean forward a little bit to determine if I can sense the heat from the fire, but I don't. I wonder if I could walk right through it without a trace of a burn, and I guess I could. Being dead, not having a body to protect or even experience, is so new. Will I ever get used to my senses fading away?

“Y'all, I feel good,” says Delia. She's sitting to my left, leaning back and looking up at the stars. “My energy is on point tonight.”

“It's Callie,” says Reena from my right. And I think about energy; maybe that's my new sense, my new way of feeling.

“Let me get in on that!” says Norris, pushing Delia gently so he can sit next to me.

She laughs and moves over.

I wonder for a moment if I'm like the fire, sharing my warmth. Maybe I have more energy because I'm newly dead, and they've been gone for a while. I like the sense of togetherness I have here with these three.

“Do you feel it, Callie?” asks Reena.

“Feel what?”

“We're sharing energy,” she says. “The four of us, I mean. Can you tell?”

“I feel something,” I say, tuning in to the buzzing current that runs through me, has been running through me since I got here. “But it doesn't hurt or anything.”

“No, it doesn't hurt,” says Delia. “It's nice, actually. Thanks for sharing.”

“No problem,” I say, not sure what I'm doing but glad everyone's happy. I can hear the crickets going now, hiding in the forest as the waves rumble on the beach.

“God, I wish I could have a beer,” says Norris, pantomiming drinking from a bottle.

“Do we ever eat?” I ask, and I can't believe this didn't occur to me sooner.

“No,” says Delia. “It's the most incredible bummer.”

“Stop, you guys,” says Reena. “If we start talking about food, we'll want it. Don't think about it.”

“Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger!” chants Norris.

Delia puts her fingers in her ears and sings, “Lalalalalalala . . .”

It's too late for me, though. I'm already thinking about the blue- cheese burger from my favorite fancy diner at Hilton Head. I don't crave it, exactly—not like when I was alive and my mouth would start to water—but I
remember
it, the way it felt on my tongue and the way it slid down my throat.

“Oh, no,” says Delia, looking at me with a distraught face.

“What?” I ask.

“I can tell you're remembering food,” she says. “It's a slippery slope.”

“Thatcher won't like it,” says Reena ominously.

I meet her gaze, and it's almost as if she's challenging me to do something else that Thatcher won't like. Suddenly she cracks up into laughter, the dare gone. Maybe it was never there. Delia and Norris join in and I smile. “You guys!” I shout. “I got scared that thinking about food was dangerous or something.”

“Only to your sanity,” says Norris. “Just try to put it out of your mind until we figure out a way to get into a body and go for an ice cream.”

“Ice cream . . . oh!” Delia flops down on the log dramatically.

I laugh and pull her up again, feeling a flash of heat that radiates out from where our hands touch to encompass all of me. She didn't move away, I notice—she's not like Thatcher. With Reena and Delia and Norris it feels like there are no walls up, no boundaries.

More than that, they see me. They hear me. When I'm haunting, even though I'm with the people I love most in the world, I'm invisible. Right now, I'm not.

We move on to discuss how great it is to be on the beach without getting sandy, since we're not physically touching it, and then I hear something from over by the fire that gets my attention.

“Dude, have you guys seen Carson Jenkins's
ass
lately?” Eli puts down his beer and gestures in a lewd way.

“Yeah,” says Brian. “It's getting big, and I
like
it.”

“Whatever, she's getting to be a porker,” says Eli.

My mouth drops open.

“What?” asks Reena.

“They're talking about my best friend,” I say.

Brian and Hunter are laughing.

“As if any of you have a
shot
!” I shout.

Reena looks at me and smiles. “They can't hear you,” she says, and my mind replays Thatcher's words.

“I know,” I say quietly.

“Still, we can't let him get away with that.” She glances at Delia and says, “Back me up.”

Then, suddenly, she's striding toward Eli. Delia and Norris are smiling gleefully, like they know exactly what Reena's doing.

Eli's skin is tan from the summer sun and his teeth are gleaming white. He tips his head back to take a sip of beer, and that's when Reena strikes. She closes her eyes and raises her hand like she's going to slap him across the face.

Instead she smacks the can, and it bolts out of Eli's hand and across the fire pit, landing with a thud at Hunter's feet.

“Dude, spaz, what was that?” Brian laughs.

Hunter shakes his head, picking up the almost-full can. “Don't waste this shit, Eli,” he says. “My brother only got us one case.”

Stunned, Eli stares at the hand that was holding the beer like it betrayed him. “I have no idea what the ef just happened,” he says, opening the cooler again. “Thing flew out of my hand.”

“Whatever, man, just don't mess around,” says Hunter, staring lovingly at the can. “Liquid gold, baby.”

Reena is back at my side, smiling.

“That was amazing,” I say, getting excited. “You have to show me how you did that!”

“Oh, I'm just getting started.”

“Huh?” I say, but she's already up and leaning over next to Eli's ear.

She whispers something that I don't hear, but it's obvious that Eli does. He whips his head around. “Who said that?”

“Said what, man?” asks Brian, lazily leaning back on a log.

“That's not funny, y'all,” says Eli, looking back and forth from Brian to Hunter. His eyes are big and there's sweat beading on his forehead, though it's not a superhot night. The temperature dips low sometimes, even in the summer, and Brian is wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, so tonight it must be around seventy degrees, which is frigid for Charleston.

Brian and Hunter are both laughing at Eli. “Dude, you're freaking out,” says Hunter. “Did you smoke up before you got here or something?”

“No,” says Eli. “My mom would kill me if she found my stash again. I'm dry. I just have these.”

He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket along with some matches, sheltering the flame as he lights up. I notice his hands are shaking. The firelight dances across his face and makes his expression flicker from light to shadow and back again.

Norris starts clapping, and his neighing laugh echoes over the beach.

Delia tosses her head back and howls a ghostly sound, like the one I heard at Middleton Place. I look at her a little warily, but she just smiles. “What use is it being a ghost if you can't have a little fun haunting?” she says.

My shoulders relax. She's right. And even if Thatcher thinks it's bad to do these kinds of tricks, I think it's pretty entertaining. I could use some fun in my, uh, life? Death?

Eli sits down. Using two fingers, Reena pulls the cigarette directly out of his mouth, flinging it into the fire.

“Jesus!” shouts Eli. “What the hell is going on?”

“You're being a complete freak!” says Brian as he and Hunter start to laugh again. “Did you just spit out a fresh cigarette?”

“No!” says Eli. “Someone took it out of my mouth. I'm telling you guys, there's something weird happening . . . it's like there's a—”

Just then, Reena grabs Eli's entire pack of cigarettes and throws it into the fire. Then she leans in to him again, and this time I hear her say, “Eli, those things will kill you.”

His eyes wide, he frantically glances around. He grabs his bag and says, “I'm out. You guys find your own ride home.”

Brian and Hunter start laughing again, but then they realize their ride is really leaving and they start calling after him. Eli's long gone, though—he bolted.

Reena comes back and sits with us again.

“That was epic,” says Norris.

“Want to keep it going?” asks Delia, standing up and taking his hand. I see a stream of blue light pass between them.
Is that the energy we're sharing?

“You guys go ahead,” says Reena, lying back across the log. “I'm shot.”

Delia and Norris wave to us and then jog down the path behind Brian and Hunter, who are struggling to catch up to Eli.

“What are they going to do?” I ask.

“Just have a little more fun,” she says.