all year, considering how many students and teachers Eastlake had lost under unexplained circumstances since the school year started. “I really have to go,” I said, picking up my backpack.
Ms. Hirsch exhaled slowly, then met my gaze again. “Kaylee, this office is a safe space.” She spread her arms to take in all four walls, then folded them on top of her desk, rumpling the pamphlet. “You can say anything you need to say in here, and what you tell me is completely confidential. I’m sure you have family and friends you can talk to, but sometimes it helps to talk to someone completely uninvolved. I want you to know that I can be that person for you. If things get too overwhelming at any point during the school day, I want you to come down here. We can talk. Or you can just sit in here and take a break.” She placed her hands palms down on the desktop and her gaze intensified. “Safe space. Please remember that.”
“Thanks. That’s good to know.” I threw my backpack over my shoulder and practically ran out the door and through both sets of offices. In the bathroom, I had to take refuge in a stall, waiting for the small mid-third-period crowd to go back to class so I could blink out of the school without anyone seeing me disappear. While I waited, two sophomores whose names I couldn’t remember chatted in front of the mirrors, like they had nowhere better to be. As soon as they started talking, I realized they hadn’t seen me come in. If there was ever a time to use my new instantaneous method of transportation, this was it. But their conversation froze me in place.
I shouldn’t have listened. But I couldn’t help it.
“The cops think he tried to…you know. And she fought back.”
“How do you know that?”
“My mom works in dispatch.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. Mr. Beck could have had anyone he wanted, so why go after Kaylee Cavanaugh? And even if he did, it’s not like she would have said no. She’s a closet slut. She was with Scott Carter the day he was arrested, remember? Cheating on her boyfriend with his best friend—her own sister’s boyfriend.”
“I think Sophie’s her cousin.”
“Whatever. She cheats on Nash with Scott, and he ends up in the psych ward. Then she kisses some guy in the middle of the school, and the next day they find Mr. Beck dead on her bed, and Nash gets arrested. She’s like King Midas, only everything she touches turns to shit instead of gold.”
Anger flared inside me and I threw the stall door open—then realized that’s as far as my plan went. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped, glaring at both of them in the mirror. “Is there some broken filter or busted pressure gauge in there that lets every half-formed thought leak out of your mouths?” I demanded, tossing a careless gesture at their heads. “Because if these are the gems you actually intended to share with the world, you should know they don’t paint a very flattering picture of your intellect.”
I stomped out of the bathroom with them staring after me and ran smack into a tall, dark-haired guy I’d never seen before.
“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked, one hand on my arm to steady me. I nodded, and he frowned down at me, like he suddenly recognized me. “Hey, are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”
I exhaled, trying to purge my anger, but with it came words I hadn’t intended to say. “Yeah. I am. And, yes, I’m glad to be alive. No, I’m not a slut. And, no, you can’t see my scar. Does that about cover it?”
He stared at me in surprise and I took off down the hall at a run because I could feel myself fading from physical existence and I couldn’t let him—or anyone else—see that happen. My footsteps faded as I rounded the corner, and a girl at the other end of the hall looked up like she’d heard something, but her gaze floated over me like I wasn’t even there. And from her perspective, I wasn’t.
Dead people have to want to be seen in order to exist on the physical plane, and I’d never wanted to exist less.
3
“HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” TOD SAID, taking my hand as I sank into the waiting-room chair next to him. “Rough day at school?”
“Mandatory counseling. And I got mobbed in the hall between first and second period.”
He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “You’d think they’ve never seen a murder victim returned from the dead to reclaim the souls of the fallen and grant them eternal rest.”
“Well, when you say it like that …”
“Just give them some time, Kaylee. Eventually you’ll be old news again, and life will go back to normal.” Tod shrugged. “Except you won’t actually be living it.”
“Not helping.” There was a time when I’d thought it would be nice to be noticed. To stand out, like Emma or Sophie. Now I stood out, but for all the wrong reasons. Anonymity was a luxury I’d never expected to miss.
I ran my thumb over the back of Tod’s hand. Just touching him made me feel more…real. More there. More alive. I pulled him closer for a kiss and my heart beat faster when his lips touched mine. My pulse raced, and I suddenly remembered what it had felt like the first time we’d kissed, not in my head, like a mere memory, but in my entire body. Like I was reliving it. Like I could go back to that moment, the most alive I’d ever felt before or since, and live in it for eternity.
For a second, I almost forgot I was dead. And that he was dead. And that we were surrounded by sick people in the waiting room of the local hospital.
Then someone coughed and a baby started crying. Reality roared back into focus, and it was such a disappointment that my chest ached from the loss of something I hadn’t really had in the first place.
Why did I feel so disconnected from everything around me? How could I look the same, but feel so different? Empty, like a shell. A Kaylee-shell, still me on the outside, but hollow on the inside. I’d thought that going back to school—seeing friends and classmates, and even teachers—would help me fill the void. I’d thought that if I could stuff the shell of my former self with the pieces of my former life, everything could go back to the way it was.
I’d thought my death could be just a blip on the radar of my life, over and done with in short order. I should have known better, just from being with Tod. His death wasn’t a blip. It was the defining moment of his existence. His death—how, why, and when he’d died—had shaped him. Defined him.
What did my death say about me? That I was a victim? That I wasn’t strong enough to protect Nash like I’d protected Emma and Sophie?
“Hey.” Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. “I think death looks good on you.” He took my other hand and his fingers wound around mine, my arm stretched over the chair rail between us. “I look forward to the day when I won’t have to share you with roving bands of high-school gossip mobs.”
“That day could be today,” I admitted. “I don’t want to go back.” But I didn’t have any choice. I’d begged and bargained for the chance to pretend I was still alive, and now that I’d gotten that chance, I had to uphold my end of the deal. I had to keep up with appearances.
“It’ll get better,” Tod said, and his next blink was too long. “So, did you see Nash?”
“Only in passing. I doubt he’ll be offering an olive branch anytime
