This is Your Afterlife (2 page)

Rumors about Jimmy snowballed as the day went on. I didn't run into Mara again. Her seat in study hall was empty, so she must have holed up in the
Bugle
office again. By the time I left school, girls were crying in the corridors. Kids tossed around theories: Jimmy had been abducted by a rival school; Jimmy had been abducted by
aliens;
Jimmy had spontaneously combusted and his helmet was found by a pile of ashes in the locker room.

I left a bunch of flyers at the mall, but my heart wasn't in it. All I could think of was what Jimmy's family must be going through. Especially Dan—somebody I used to know. Several times I wanted to call him, message him to let him know I missed his friendship, but I stopped short. I'm the last person he wants to speak to. I learned his parents are rushing back from an overseas trip. Coming back to heartbreak.

My grandmother's beloved tarot deck lies before me on a soft black cloth. I have other less expensive decks, but Sophia is by far the prettiest and most meaningful. Grandie bought it in Italy when she was very young and rarely made a decision without consulting her old “friend.”

Alongside the deck, a chunky quartz crystal reflects my desk lamp's glow and deflects negativity. Not very well tonight.

I trace the cracked gold leafing on the Empress card. What if...what if I did a reading on Jimmy? Would I be breaking some kind of tarot readers' code of ethics if I were to read his cards without his permission?

“Grandie? Any thoughts on absentee readings?”

Silence.

Figures.

I lay out the ten-card formation that is the Celtic Cross. It's a versatile spread that's best used when there's a specific question in mind, like
Where is Jimmy Hawkins?

Grandie instructed me to visualize a bubble of white light enveloping me whenever I do a reading. It's sort of a protective barrier against dark entities. The thought of entities scares me to hell.
Use the Light and don't let the demons bite
, she said.

I build that virtual bubble as fast as I can and start turning cards.

But instead of clarity, I get muddled messages. The blues, reds, greens and golds of the intricate illustrations blur into a soupy mess. Even my bubble of light grows dim. Nothing's coming to me. It's been a long day. My brain cells are giving up.

Restlessly, I dim the overhead light and tune the radio to a classical music station. Mom's at work, as usual. I'm home alone on a Wednesday night with Beethoven.

I push a chemistry book off my bed and flop face down. The half a can of pea soup I'd had for dinner sloshes in my belly. Whenever Mom works graveyard shifts at the nursing home, I don't feel much like fixing myself a real meal.

“Christ, what kind of messed-up person would paint their walls black?” A deep voice booms.

My face puckers into the mattress. The radio DJ must've pressed the wrong button in the studio, disrupting a dreamy violin concerto. There's a change in atmosphere. The air feels thinner and colder. Goose bumps form on my arm.

“What the...?” Quickly, I roll over.

And scream loud enough to wake the dead in Halverston Cemetery.

I put a feather pillow between me and
the boy
in my bedroom. As if that's going to protect me. I squirm backwards against the navy blue wall.

“Get out before I hurt you!” Adrenaline surges. Every self-defense maneuver I learned in P.E. last year comes to the fore. Which move should I use first? Short, sharp jab to the throat? Kick down on his kneecap? Or go for the groin?

“You can see me?” he asks.

“Of course I can! What kind of question is that?”

Water drips off the intruder's messy blond locks as he shakes his head. His bluer-than-blue eyes stare into mine. A gaze so full of despair I actually gasp.

That's when I recognize him.

“Jimmy?!”

Why the hell would he come to my house? I catch my haggard reflection in the mirror. Quickly I smooth down my hair. It's dead straight anyway. He isn't looking at me anymore, so chances are he doesn't care how bad I look.

I care, though. I care very much, because
Jimmy Hawkins
is in my bedroom. I'm too stunned to even question how he got in.

He doesn't...smell like anything. That isn't normal. Especially the active, outdoorsy kind like him. No body odor. No cologne to mask any body odor. Not even the scent of beer. Yet, Jimmy's got to be high or drunk, or both. If Mom comes home early and catches him here, I'll have some explaining to do.

No,
Jimmy
will have some explaining to do.

“Yep.” He gives a cheerless smile and jams thick fingers into his jeans pockets. “I'd say ‘in the flesh,' but that's not exactly true anymore.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I see a lot of flesh from where I'm sitting. He's not exactly Gigantor—five-ten-and-three-quarters, according to yearbook stats—but in my tiny bedroom he dominates the space. I let go of the pillow and ease off the bed, legs wobbling.

He stares at me for a long, deep, electrifying moment. “It means...I'm dead.”

Multiple shudders, powerful enough to register on the Richter scale, rocket through me. “You can't be dead. You're standing right in front of me. And...and you have a game Friday night!”

Like that's a valid reason not to die. It's an off-season game, but so what? The thought moves thickly through my uncomprehending brain.

Jimmy? Dead?

And
I
can see his ghost? I'm not psychic or clairvoyant or anything esoteric. I definitely don't see dead people. But here's a spiritual being. Devoid of pheromones. Dead yet visible to my naked eye.

No, this is a trick. Jimmy was missing, but now he's been found. In my bedroom.

“Yeah, well...apparently I can die! It blows about the game, too. Thanks for reminding me.” He lets out an exaggerated sigh. No air comes out of his lungs. His body seems solid at first glance, but it has a shimmering glow that makes him semi-transparent. “You're friends with my brother, Dan, right? Keira?”

I'm too dazed to say Dan and I
used
to be friends. I just nod, floored that Jimmy even knows my name.

Gingerly, he presses a hand against a deep gash on the left side of his head. A thick burgundy mess clumps his hair.

“Oh, my God, sit down!” I step toward him, tissues in hand. My inner paramedic automatically takes over. But when I try to apply the makeshift bandage my hand swings through the air. Of course.

He screws up his face. “First aid isn't gonna help.”

I put the tissue to good use anyway, swiping away tears pouring out of my eyes like the Hoover Dam. The back of my throat starts to swell. Jimmy wasn't a close friend. But Dan was, and part of me still cares about him. Losing a family member is devastating.

“How did it happen? Did you fall?”

His mouth twists before he answers. “Beats the hell out of me. I woke up in the woods. I knew I had to get back home, but I didn't know where I parked my car. Christ, and I thought concussions were bad.” He laughs sheepishly, maybe at the idea of driving under the influence of death. He pats his jeans pockets and his brow furrows. “Where did I put my phone and keys? Could've sworn...”

His voice trails off as he turns his empty pockets inside out.

I use all the tissues in my hand and pluck a few more from the box. My nose honks like a ship's horn, but this is no time to be delicate. I'm struggling with the idea that Jimmy's gone. And I can see him. I don't understand why he's here. Jimmy is...was a good guy. He should have been beamed directly to heaven.

Unless Jimmy's soul is paying the price for his misdeeds and my bedroom is purgatory.

“You shouldn't be here like this,” I croak. “You shouldn't be dead!”

“Damn, right, I shouldn't.” His expression turns stormy. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if lightning bolts shot from his eyes. “I need you to help me get home.”

“You want to see your family?” A tiny fissure opens in my heart as he nods. It's only a matter of time before that crack splits wide open.

“I was told everything would be all right once I get home.”

“Um, sure. Everything will be fine,” I say with a confidence I don't feel. Who told him that? “So you...you don't see any other, uh, options?”

“Like pearly gates?” he snorts cynically. “No.”

“Why can't you find your own way home?”

“Why do you have to ask so many questions I can't answer? I'm in a parallel universe here. I don't know what the fuck is happening to me!”

His tone hits me like a jab to the gut. It even brings tears to my eyes.

“Sorry,” he says. He tries to shift the curtain aside, but he can't quite grasp it. His grimace is hard to miss. “Do you ever have dreams where you're trying to get somewhere and you keeping hitting roadblocks?”

“Sure. They're the worst kind.” Along with dreams about going to the bathroom in public or showing up at school butt-naked. They don't compare to Jimmy's nightmare, and he'll never wake up.

“That's how it feels for me right now. I can't find my way home. But the old lady said you could help me out.”

“Old lady?”

“She came from out of nowhere and walked with me...on the road. Led me here.” He screws up his face again like doing so will help jog his memory, squeeze his synapses into action. “She said the girl inside—I'm guessing that's you—would help me out. Then she disappeared like that.” He clicks his fingers.

My knees buckle. A strong feeling of who that old lady might be rattles my bones. The one person I miss more than anything. More than the father I've never met. Grandie. Why is it that I can see Jimmy and not her? Why can I see Jimmy at all?

I. Am. Not. Clairvoyant.

Grandie knew that. What was she thinking? How am I supposed to help Jimmy?

I swing the door open and peer down the dim, narrow hall. “Where is she? Why didn't she help you?”

He shrugs. “She told me she had other important things to do.”

That doesn't sound like something Grandie would say. I was her favorite granddaughter, the center of her universe. It's inconceivable that she'd pass up the chance to talk to me now.

“What did she look like?” I ask with an ounce of suspicion.

“Short. Like you. Gray hair. Not like you. And she had that soapy, old-lady smell.”

“Lavender.” I used to hate the way that scent clung to my senses for hours, but after losing Grandie, I found myself stealing into her old room and sniffing her bottle of L'Occitane bath salts. Death changes everything.

“You've got her nose,” Jimmy says, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Kind of cute.”

If I weren't grappling with Jimmy's passing and my dead grandmother's snub, I'd be dizzy after a compliment like that. Right now, I have to help him. Somehow.

Grandie's talks didn't cover anything like this. She spoke about dying, floating into the “light,” taking that next step on the soul's journey. Of course, then, she couldn't tell me how it was done. She could
now
, if she would just reveal herself.

“So are you like one of those psychics on TV? Can you figure out what I'm doing here?”

I answer both questions with one sentence. “I have absolutely no idea.”

A shimmering halo around Jimmy's body catches my gaze. He winces like he's in intense pain. How is that even possible?

He charges through me, and for an uncomfortable few moments, I feel like I'm swimming in an ocean of icy, viscous water. I gasp as the chill sends a violent shiver deep into my bones.

Jimmy paws at the wound on his head. Strangely, the blood seems to be crusting over the injury like it would if he were alive. “I keep getting these weird headaches ever since I... You know, died. Why is that happening?”

“I really don't know,” I admit, feeling as useful as a deckchair on a submarine. How could someone as vital and beloved as Jimmy die so young? I can't wrap my head and my heart around it. I can only imagine how he feels. As the coldness thaws, I spy Jimmy's look of despair.

“How did I end up dead?”

Sitting down beside him, I try to put an arm around his shoulder. “I don't know, but I wish it wasn't true.”

He looks around my room. The leather-bound books I inherited from my grandfather take up one wall. I've read almost every title. Aside from my laptop, that collection is one of my most prized possessions. This isn't Buckingham Palace, but it's comfortably shabby. Not a place for a guy to spend his afterlife, though.

“Dying wasn't part of the plan. There's gotta be a way out of this.” He pummels a fist into his left palm. “Can you drive me home?”

“But...you don't need me to
drive
you...” I allow him to draw his own conclusion to that statement. Unlike the living, ghosts have no use for cars. His jaw clenches as he thinks my words over.

“I guess.” Though his lungs no longer need air, he sucks in a deep breath. An act of someone trying to get a grip. The Jimmy I watched from afar was confident, never showed fear. He slowly brings his gaze up to meet mine. “So...do I just walk there? Will you walk with me?”

I give him a reassuring smile. He doesn't need to know I've never assisted the dead before. I have to put aside my own internal freak-out. Helping Jimmy might also bring me a little way closer to my grandmother. That's what I want more than anything.

“Jimmy Hawkins, I'd be honored.”

Our little town was named Northern California's Most Livable four years running. But now that I'm walking a ghost to his former house, Halverston's quiet streets seem Most Spooky.

We pass under a streetlight. Jimmy stalls and stares up at it without even squinting. I shield my eyes. Gnats throw themselves at the flickering blub, bounce backward, and then smack into it again. Suckers for punishment.