The Dead Girls Detective Agency (31 page)

“But if you don’t want to be with me, I don’t want you to be with anybody else.” She raised her arm, ready to lunge again. Oh God, she had a knife. David was so shocked, he couldn’t get up.

“Charlotte, if you don’t want Blondie sharing your room in the Attesa, we need to do something—and fast,” Tess said, shaking me out of my trance.

This was it. This was my cue. I looked from the psycho sophomore to David and back again. He might have hurt me more than anyone else in my entire death, but I didn’t want him to be murdered too. I had to do something.

And that’s when the burning started. In my toes, up my legs, my belly, my arms, my shoulders, until my head felt as if it were on fire. A familiar pink glow began to illuminate the rooftop. But it wasn’t a light. It was me.

David yelped. “Charlotte? B-But you’re, you’re …,” he stuttered. “This has to be a joke. A sick Halloween joke.” He looked desperately around the roof. “Are you in on this?” he asked Library Girl. “Who’s doing this? Make it stop,
please
.”

“It’s no joke, David,” I said, raising my arms and walking toward him, to show that I was a real ghost and not just a light show like the ones zooming around the ballroom below. Was it wrong to be kinda happy that he looked so terrified?

“I’m here to avenge my death,” I said slowly and deliberately. “I can’t rest until I know who killed me. I have to make my murderer pay.”

“Murderer?” David said. His face was even whiter than mine. “But I thought you fell under the F train. Charlotte, I thought you tripped.”

Library Girl dropped the knife and stumbled away from David, like a drunk person. She could hardly walk. She couldn’t take her eyes off me or stop shaking. Suddenly I got what the expression “you look like you’ve seen a ghost” meant. Not so brave now are you?

I motioned for Tess and Ed to Jab David away from the edge of certain death. They stood on either side of him and gave my confused ex a couple of less-than-gentle pushes to the safety of the center of the roof.

I turned to Library Girl, who was sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor, shaking. Really, was she going to give in this easily?

“You!” I said, pointing at her and floating over. “I am here for
YOU
.”

Too much?

“Please.” Her whole body quivered like a frightened animal’s. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Just don’t push me over the edge. Don’t kill me. There’s so much more I want to do with my life. It can’t end now.”

I crouched down, so I was on eye level with her. I wanted her to look at my face. Right now, I was so mad, I could hardly speak.

“You know what? There are hundreds of things I’ve never done,” I said. “And I can never do them now.”

Her eyes slowly rose up my face until they finally found the courage to meet mine.

“I never visited another country, or stayed out past eleven,” I said. “I didn’t get to watch the sun rise, or drink a cocktail that’s been properly mixed for me by a barman, instead of Ali swiping stuff from my parents’ liquor cabinet. I won’t get to see my friends graduate. I’ll never dance at my prom. I can’t ask my mom for advice when things get tough, and I’ll never give my dad another hug. I’ll never download the Arctics’ next album or wear something other than my horrible school uniform again.” I felt my voice catch. “I was only sixteen—
sixteen
—I had everything to live for. But I didn’t get to live my life. So you tell me: Why should I let you live yours?”

Library Girl’s eyes welled and she began to sob. Whatever. Her waterworks were not going to get to me.

“Don’t talk to me about missing out,” I said. “Not when someone took my life before it had even begun.” I was beyond angry now. “All I want from you is the truth. I need to know what happened to me.”

Her eyes were defeated and red. “I didn’t have anything against you as a person, Charlotte,” she started. “But I knew he would never notice me with you here.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we may have just cracked young Feldman’s case,” said Tess. Edison motioned for her to shhh.

“Go on,” I said. Oh God, I thought.

“There was a day, weeks before you died … David came into the library,” she said. “He gave me the biggest smile.” She actually grinned herself at the memory, through the shakes. “I thought, finally,
finally
, after all these years, David knows who I am. I’d tried so hard to get his attention, but it was like I was invisible.”

“I know the feeling,” Tess said.

“I knew that if I could just get him to talk to me, he’d realize we were meant to be together,” she said. “And now he’d noticed me—it was my time. So while he was studying, I went over to say hello.” Her face clouded over. She looked over at David, who sat crumpled in the center of the roof. “But by then you had snuck in. David was sitting with you, and you guys were”—she looked disgusted—“
making out
. I told you to stop, threatened you with calling a teacher and getting a detention, but neither of you seemed to care. You carried on kissing. And when you walked out of the library, you were holding hands. That was when I knew—if I was going to get to him—I had to get you out of the way.”

I’d been waiting seven days to hear someone say those words—every night when the world was asleep, I lay there agonizing about who my murderer could be—but now that Library Girl was saying them, they didn’t feel like the prize I expected. Instead it was like I was having to deal with my death all over again.

“Go on,” I said slowly.

Library Girl sat upright. “I started following you, every day for a couple of weeks …”

How hadn’t I seen her? Why hadn’t I turned around or caught her out of the corner of my eye. I guess that, even if I had, I wouldn’t have noticed her. What she said was true: Compared with the Tornadoes or the drama club or even Brian and his sugar-sandwich-induced bulk, she was one of the invisible people.

“It wasn’t difficult.” She twisted a stray curl around her finger. “You always took the same route home. At first I didn’t know what I was going to do to you. I thought about putting pills in your coffee—you always had a cup of that in your hand—but then I figured that they’d do an autopsy and the cops would pick up the drugs and know it was murder. And I couldn’t have that. How could I get close to David if I was in jail?”

My glow faded a little. My energy was shrinking. I hadn’t won even if her words gave me my Key. It was horrible to hear this.

“I knew I had to make it look like an accident so that no one would be suspicious,” she said. “But what kind of accident could it be? Then I saw you and David after class one day. You were walking across the road and you tripped …”

“I remember it. I grabbed your arm.” David’s voice was taut. I’d almost forgotten he was here.

“You were both giggling—laughing at your clumsiness—while he teased you about how that happened all the time and how you would hurt yourself one of these days if he wasn’t there to catch you when you fell. And that was all I needed to know. I had my method, my alibi. I thought about pushing you under a cab, but that might not have killed you.” She shuddered. “What if you’d just been injured and David spent the rest of his life caring for you, like Cary Grant in
An Affair to Remember
? I’d never get between you then.”

I hated how much she’d thought this through.

“No, a cab wouldn’t do. I needed something faster. Something heavier. Something fatal. Like a subway train.” Library Girl smiled at her own ingenuity. “So I waited until you were traveling home on your own that day. It helped that you were wearing those stupid high-heeled boots that you couldn’t walk in.” She looked at my feet, noticing for the first time that I was wearing them still now.

She lifted her eyes back up to mine; they were cold now, expressionless. I knew then for sure, before she even admitted it, that she’d done it, she was the one.

“Then I got right behind you, on that crowded platform, and when the train came in, I pushed. And that’s when you—”

I screamed. A horrible, loud, last-noise-on-earth scream. It was a noise I’d only made once before. Then. For a second I was back there, back on the platform. As the wind sucked back my hair. The F train chugged. My foot felt wet. Headlights in the dark. A sharp push. Someone screamed. Heat. Then nothing. Until I came to and saw Nancy’s face.

Until I realized my life was over.

I looked over at Edison. I forgot the platform, the confusion, and Nancy. Instead I remembered what he’d taught me at the river. I remembered the lights dancing on the water, the gulls bobbing up and down, the silence of the night, and everything he said. His most important lesson of all.

The burning inside me began to change. All my pain and hurt and anger—at Library Girl and Kristen and Jamie and Kaitlynnn and the Blondes and David and even Tess—traveled down inside of me, until I wondered if there was anything left.

Then it started to rise.

I got hotter and hotter and hotter until I thought I was burning. The light around me turned from pink to a toxic neon green. Ectoplasm began to drip from my arms. I felt my spirit grow and rise off the roof.

This wasn’t apparition, this was different. I was stronger than I’d ever been.

And I was going to take this bitch down.

Chapter 30

“
YOU ARE MY MURDERER.” MY VOICE WAS
louder than before. It echoed around the skyscrapers, like thunder in a summer storm. “What gave you the right to steal my future?”

I was at least nine feet tall. I raised my arms high and green streams of light shot out of my palms, the lime glow reflecting in the windows of the buildings around us. David let out a whimper and covered his eyes. I loomed over Library Girl, my ectoplasm dripping on her freshly laundered dress.

“The cops might not know what you did,” I said, “but I do, and I am going to make you pay.”

Library Girl said nothing. She just sat in the same upright position, gently quivering.

“Um, Charlotte,” Tess said, bending down and waving an apparited hand in front of Library Girl’s face. “You can stop with the second-rate Stephen King script regurgitation. You got her confession. Plus I think you may have finished her off already.”

“What?” I boomed.

“She seems to be in a catatonic state of shock.” Tess Jabbed Library Girl’s arm, but she didn’t react. “I think you’ve scared her cuckoo.”

Oh.

I floated down to her level. Library Girl’s eyes were glassy, her pupils unmoving. The only sign she was still alive was the gentle rising and falling of her chest and the occasional blink. I’d made her pay all right. The entrance fee to the nearest psychiatric unit.

“Is she going to snap out of this?” I asked. “Should I feel bad?”

“Bad?” Edison asked. “She
KILLED
you, Charlotte. She just admitted it. And you’re worried about her future mental health?”

There was a sob from the other side of the roof. David. I had to talk to him. I had things I needed to say. I looked over at Edison, who was watching me intently, his expression as impossible to read as ever. This wasn’t a situation
Seventeen
magazine prepared you for: what to do when you’re haunting your ex, but the guy you’ve just kissed has ported there too.

I’d deal with Edison later. This might be the only chance I had to talk with David. I floated from Library Girl to where David was sitting. He jumped back.

“Charlotte, I-I-I can’t believe it,” he stuttered.

Was he on the verge of tears? I hoped so. He looked so small and helpless. My anger cooled and my shape shifted from zombie to apparition again, the glow around me switching from emerald to rose. I looked more like the old Charlotte now. The one he used to love.

“I can’t believe the little sophomore from the library
murdered
you because she liked
me
.” He shook his head in disbelief, his bangs falling back over his eyes. “This is all my fault—I should have realized the effect I have on women
years
ago.”

There was a time when I thought he was the hottest, cutest, coolest guy ever. And I would have let him get away with a comment like that. But not anymore.

“Yes, it is your fault,” I said. “David, everything is. You owe me. Big-time. And not just for saving your life back there. But for getting hot and heavy with half the school before I’d been dead for a week.”

“You know about that?” he said with a small sniff.

I nodded, unable to hide the fact that I was still, really, majorly bothered about it.

“The truth is I missed you. And Kristen was just there. She was comforting me. Nothing happened, Charlotte, honest.”

“Oh, please,” I said, sinking down to face him. “David, I might be dead, but I am not stupid. I’ve been watching you. I know everything—and every
one
—you have done over the last seven days. I know about Kristen in the chapel and Jamie in your room and Kaitlynnn in the hallway and …”

David’s eyes were wide. “You saw all
that
?”

“Oh yeah and sooo much more.” My hands found their way to my hips. “I’m a ghost, David, it’s, like, my job to spy on the Living.” I took a second and tried to calm down.

“Honestly, this is me you’re talking to now, so no more BS,” I said firmly. “Why did you do it? We were choosing colleges based on how close they were to each other. You were supposed to be my soul mate.”

David bowed his head.

“The way you’ve acted … ,” I said, shaking mine, “I need to know: Did you ever give a shit about me in the first place?”

I looked at him, dreading yet desperately waiting for his answer. And totally aware that Edison was watching us closely all the time.

“Yes, of course I did. Please don’t ever think that I didn’t care for you. I love you.”

David tried to touch my arm, but his hand went right through it. He sucked in his breath.

“I loved being with you,” he said, “but our whole thing was that we got each other so much, we didn’t care about what anyone else thought of us. You were like no other girl I’d ever met. You weren’t into malls or matching your nail polish to your hair band or whatever. When we were together we talked about
stuff
. Like bands and authors and artists. Important stuff.”