I'd Rather Not Be Dead (14 page)

Of course, Cris didn't need to
drug me. But he could have rationalized himself into doing it,
couldn't he? I can see his thoughts too. He wouldn't have seen it
as a bad thing, an evil and loathsome act. No, he would have seen
slipping me a little something and lowering my inhibitions as
simply helping me relax. Which might even be an accurate way of
looking at it. Considering what happened after that first time, I
think it's pretty obvious I really did want to be with him. He
would've just been helping me to get past my fear.

Somehow, it doesn't seem to be
bothering me that he might have given me something that day. But it
really, really pisses me off that he would have kept it from
me.

“What the hell do you know,
Cooper Finnegan?” the other me whispers. “Nothing.”

And she's right. So he knows
Cris and I committed a public indecency. Well, a semi-public
indecency. At the time I was certain the room we were in was empty
and locked to stay that way. But, at best, he's jumping to a
conclusion with the drug allegation. He was just trying to shut the
other me up. I can't believe I've wasted this much time thinking
about it.

TOM and I go to our locker, get
a folder from it, and go back to our classroom. Cooper Finnegan
hasn't come back yet, so I sit in his chair while TOM opens her
notebook to furiously scrawl something. A note to Cris,
probably.

After class, I'm proved right
when she hands a folded piece of paper to our friend in the
hallway. He takes it with a smile. “Does this tell me why you look
so pissed?”

“Yes.” She tightens her fingers
around her bag's straps, likely imagining she's choking a certain
Shadow Walking quarterback. “I had to go to my locker last period.
And Cooper Finnegan followed me.”

“No shit?” Cris shakes his head
in disbelief. “He left class to stalk you?”

“Yeah.” TOM twists the strap in
her hands. “And wait til you read what he said.”

“Sounds entertaining.”

The other me laughs. “Or
something. I bet you could sue him over it.”

“I always wanted to sue
someone.” Cris gives her a lazy grin, then kisses her forehead and
says goodbye before ducking into a room. The other me keeps
walking, but I decide to stay with Cris. He reads the note, his
expression the opposite of entertained.

Finn walks in just before the
bell, apparently after making it back to Mrs. Harrison's room to
pick up his stuff. He sits without looking at me.

“Yo, Finn,” Cris hisses at him.
“What the hell, man?”

He looks back without
blinking.

Cris should be scared of the
hostility in Finn's eyes but he either misses it or doesn't have
enough sense. “Why'd you tell her about that?”

Finn raises his eyebrows as I
make a tiny gasp. That was an admission of guilt, wasn't it? And a
confirmation Finn would know something to tell.

My eyes move between the boys as
they stare at each other. The students around them watch avidly,
clearly hoping whatever is going on is going to turn uglier.

“I didn't tell her
anything.”

Which is a technicality. He
implied it strongly enough he might as well have said it.

“Well, you sure as hell let her
know,” Cris snaps. His head shakes. “And to think I told you about
that trying to do you a favor. I was trying to hook you up.”

What? He wanted to hook Cooper
Finnegan up with a date rape drug? If I wasn't so close to crying,
I'd laugh. What would someone like Finn need with those? All he had
to do was turn those gorgeous ever-changing eyes of his toward a
girl and most of them were halfway to undressing already.

“You really want to talk about
this here?” Finn nods toward all the people making no effort to
hide the fact they're listening.

With a disgusted sound and a
glower, Cris turns to face the front, folding his arms and sliding
far down in his chair. He really did drug me. And Finn knew. And
unless he just found out, he helped keep it from me. I must be in
shock, because the part about Finn hurts more than Cris's bit.

As their teacher walks in the
room, I walk out. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm not staying
here.

Chapter Fourteen

There are several cemeteries in
Pine Ridge. We have war memorial cemeteries, church cemeteries,
cemeteries that are only used by the town's oldest families. And,
of course, the main cemetery, conveniently located behind Dairy
Queen. I head there since its the place I'll likely be buried.

My feet drag as I approach my
body's future resting place. It feels like I'm walking through a
bog. At first I assume it's my mood or an understandable reluctance
to get near my grave, but as the air gets thicker and stickier I
realize it's something external. It reminds me of when I tried to
leave town, except I'm nowhere near my limits now.

“Hey, new girl!” someone yells,
startling me. A gorgeous woman with dark hair and olive skin rushes
up the street and gives the gates at the end of the road a nervous
look. “Do you know what you're doing?”

“Looking for other ghosts.” I
assume I've found one in the petite Hispanic woman if Finn's the
only medium in town. “My name's Drew.”

“Yes, I know.” She grabs my arm
above the elbow and tugs me back the way I came from. “Come on.
Before you summon The Spirit out here.”

“The Spirit?” Confused, I let
myself be led away.

“It's strongest in the
graveyards,” the woman says, as if it's general knowledge and I'm a
dimwitted child.

“Oh.” I shiver. I was never
scared of grave sites when I was alive. How funny that I am now I'm
dead. “Um... Thank you.”

“No problem.” She clucks her
tongue as she drops my arm, still walking away from the cemetery.
“My boyfriend would have killed me all over again if he found out I
let you commit suicide without even meaning to.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“Al Finnegan.”

Al Finnegan. That must be Finn's
granddad. “Why would he care?”

The woman gives me a funny look.
“Even if the boy wasn't family, it's in our interests to keep our
Walker happy. The last thing we want is him leaving like his mother
did. Or drugging himself out of seeing us like she does now.”

“Finn's mom's a medium?”

She nods with a little
affirmative sound. “That sort of thing runs in families.”

Of course it does. And obviously
dead people can't enter cemeteries. And Halloween parties are
clearly meant to be held in the middle of the day. What else don't
I know?

“I think you made a mistake,” I
say. “I don't think keeping me alive is a good way to make Finn
happy.”

“Then you don't know very much
about Finn.”

I snort. “And you do?”

The woman smiles. “I know him
well enough.”

There's something in the smile I
don't like. Something that makes me want to claw her eyes out.

“Don't know yourself very well
either, do you?” she asks.

“Who are you?”

Her hand shoots out, offering
itself to be shaken. “Gloriana Maria Lucinda Ramirez dela Cruz.”
The names roll of her tongue in a series of artistic loops. I take
her hand, even though I'd rather bat it away. “Call me Glory.”

“Nice to meet you, Glory.” But
not really. I let go of her hand as soon as I politely can and
stuff both of mine into the pocket of my hoodie.

She's silent but she seems to be
laughing at me.

As we turn onto Main Street, I
wonder how to ditch Glory. I'd thought I wanted to find others like
me, but now that I have I just want to be alone.

Since the last time I walked
down Main Street, someone's taped fliers to the lampposts warning
that people who celebrate Halloween are destined for Hell. I don't
need the Fort Jesus logo in the corner to know they're behind it,
nor am I at all surprised to see the Crusade for Christ emblem next
to it. Ricky Woodman probably got permission to cut school to hang
them. Or made poor spineless Tanya do it.

With a string of rapid Spanish,
Glory rips the one I'm looking at off of the post. “The Day of the
Dead is not Satanic. It is as Christian as any holy day.”

As Christian as any holy day
that existed centuries before Christ was born, at any rate.

The flier flutters through
Glory's hand and she sighs. “I wish I could take them all
down.”

I grab the one off of the
ground, then take down the next six, balling them up and tossing
them into the trash. Seven more go into the next trashcan. I stop
after that, realizing Glory's fallen behind. Her mouth hangs open
as she stares at me.

“You trying to catch flies?” I
ask. “Sorry I'm not recycling them, there aren't any bins near
here.”

“How are you doing this?” she
whispers, her accent thick and her voice full of awe.

“First, I grab the paper. Then,
I rip it off the pole. Ball it up like this.” I crumple the paper
in my hand and move on. “Then I repeat.”

“But...” Shaking her head, she
says something in Spanish. “You're so strong. You're new. You
shouldn't be this strong. Fray said you were more powerful than the
rest of us, but... You're like the living.”

Fray talks about me? Tells
people I'm strong? Is it good or bad that he's leading the town's
dead population to gossip about me? Am I touched he would brag
about knowing me or mad he'd talk about me behind my back?

“What else did Fray say?” I ask,
not too kindly, as I rip down another piece of trash.

Her smile is a bit too knowing.
“He's impressed with you. Fond of you. He said your temper can be
like the lash of a studded whip, but he said it as an endearment.
He also said you are very, very stubborn.” She laughs softly. “He
sounded less pleased with that.”

I toss the most recent bundle of
fliers into the trash and give Glory a long look. “And when did he
say all this?”

She pales. As I thought, the
answer isn't one I was supposed to have. “He... He said it...” She
brings her chin up and looks me in the eyes. “He said it when I ran
into him. Walking.”

Right. Because it always takes a
while to spit out that you randomly bumped into a friend. When I
take the next flier down, I rip it in half before balling it up.
“Was there a town meeting about me or are you part of some secret
organization?”

She doesn't answer until I stop
and stare her down. “We were at court. The Shadow Lord... He called
us to ask questions about you. He likes to know about
newcomers.”

There's more to it than that. I
bet you a million dollars he doesn't usually bother summoning
people who live near the new ghostie. I bet he's usually happy to
get a report filed whenever the next census is taken. Why care so
much about me?

I tear the next flier to shreds
thinking about it.

“Don't be angry,” Glory begs.
“Fray had no choice, you understand.”

“Sure,” I mutter. This is just
not a good day for me on the friends scale. In the last hour and a
half, I've learned Cris gave me drugs without my consent on at
least one occasion, Finn's been keeping that knowledge from me, and
now Fray's handing the government intelligence about me. It's the
sort of thing that leads people to questions like, “What's
next?”

What's next is that I suddenly
start to feel very, very sleepy. Lovely.

Flinging the ripped paper to the
ground, I stalk into the nearest building, the county library, and
charge through some guy by the entrance who looks more likely read
a tractor manual than a work of literature. Glory doesn't follow
me.

I find a corner in nonfiction
that looks like it's been deserted for twenty years, curl up on the
floor, and dream of fog and kings and betrayal.

“No blocking the aisles!”
someone fusses in a decidedly mean-spirited way.

Groggily, I open my eyes.

“This is not a bed and
breakfast, young lady,” says a stern woman with hair pulled into a
tight bun and tiny spectacles balanced on a beak-like nose. “Get
up.”

I sit, blinking at the woman as
I try to wake up. She seems to be somewhere between forty and sixty
years old, but the awakening wrinkles in her skin don't include
laugh lines. Not a good sign. “You must be the librarian.”

“And you must be the rude
newcomer.” She glares at me. “Get up. Surely you weren't allowed to
sleep in the stacks when you were alive.”

“Um... No.” I pull myself to my
feet. “But when I was alive, people couldn't walk through me.”

The librarian sniffs. “They
shouldn't have to now.”

She turns on the heel of her
granny boots and walks briskly away. I consider jogging after her,
but she'd probably just complain about me running in a library. No
wonder she's haunting this place. Bet she haunted it when she was
alive too. She was one of the stereo-typical old school librarians,
the ones who act as if they like books very much and like people
even less. Her life revolved around glaring at patrons with her
finger over her lips. I wonder if she even noticed when she died or
if everything just went on the same way it always had.

Poorly rested but capable of
staying awake, I weave my way back to the populated section of the
building to find out what time it is. The clock reads four thirty.
It doesn't mention the date.

The librarian at the circulation
desk is the opposite of the ghost. She's smiling and cheerful. She
seems to have something nice to say to everyone, is excited about
the books being checked out, is as happy to see the books that are
coming back as if they're friends of hers. She's got to drive the
dead bitch absolutely insane.

I smile at the thought of the
crabby old librarian having to live with the constant annoyance of
people who enjoy being here and turn to leave, nearly walking
straight into my youngest sister as she comes in the door.

“Rain,” I whisper.

She stops and looks around. For
an instant, I think she heard me and my heart starts to race with
excitement. But she's just looking for the card catalog
computers.