I'd Rather Not Be Dead Page 5

  “They're meeting there,” another one says. I should probably know their names. but they all look and act the same. It's like they want to be stereotypes, like they take comfort from it or something.

  “Yeah,” chimes a third bottle-blonde. “He's totally into you. Who wouldn't be?”

  “Anyone with a brain?” I suggest. For some reason, I stop myself from adding, “Oh, wait. That wouldn't include Cooper Finnegan, would it?”

  Biting the inside of my lip, I wander away to find myself and settle into the aisle next to her. Cooper Finnegan's across the room, slumping like he needs a shot of caffeine. I shake my head as I watch his eyes drift closed. “Wake up!”

  He jerks in surprise and looks over at me. His blinks imply he missed my arrival. He really is tired. Or really not paying attention to me.

  The other me, thinking he's looking at her, flips him off.

  “Sorry,” I say as he turns away. “She's kind of strung out this week.”

  Cris watches the exchange between the living with a small smirk. I flip him off but he doesn't know it. Oh well.

  The class rustles unhappily as Mr White hands out the tests from Monday. As I expected, TOM bombed. Fifty nine points. That's failing for those of us keeping score.

  Like a lot of other people in the room, Cooper Finnegan frowns at his paper like there's something wrong with it. Did he do worse than expected? Because it seemed like he knew he was fumbling without a clue.

  When class ends, I get my answer.

  Cooper Finnegan approaches the teacher's desk when the room clears and holds out his paper. “Mr. White? There's a problem with this.”

  The teacher's eyes flicker to it, then back to Cooper Finnegan's face. “And what problem would that be?”

  “An eighty?” Cooper Finnegan asks.

  “An eighty?” I sprint across the room to look at the test. “No way you passed.”

  “I know it's not up to your usual scores, Finn, but there's nothing I can do.”

  Cooper Finnegan lets out a quick breath. “Sir, it's at least twenty points more than I deserve.”

  “More like thirty!” I fume. “Who graded this?”

  The teacher examines the paper. “I don't see any problems here. I think you should stop worrying so much about your classwork . Let yourself concentrate on beating Yancy and getting us to finals.”

  Whoa. Did he just say what I think he said?

  Cooper Finnegan grinds his teeth and glowers for a second before calming down enough to speak. “Do it right, Sir.”

  Mr. White gives him an incredulous look.

  “If you don't fix this, I'll take it to Principal Pauler,” Cooper Finnegan says, his voice frighteningly steady. “And if she's too blinded by the fact she's sleeping with you to do anything, I'll take it to the school board.”

  The paper crunches as Mr. White snatches it away. His red pens slashes away at it in short, angry motions. “Fifty five points. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” Cooper Finnegan replies, perfectly polite. He takes the corrected paper and exits while the teacher sits there shaking his head in shock and muttering to himself.

  What was that?

  Mr. White stares at the door in shock. “Don't understand...”

  Me neither. I'd have thought Cooper Finnegan would grab a gift like that and run with it. I'd assumed he did it all the time. Pondering that, I follow Finn to the physics lab, but then move him to the back of my mind as I rejoin myself. Staring at her hasn't been leading to revelations about the end of my life, but I don't know what else to do. I don't even know what time frame I'm trying to recapture. Do I die tomorrow? Next week? In twenty years?

  The room darkens as TOM starts her writeup of today's experiment. Cooper Finnegan sits up slowly and looks around, presumably seeing the ominous shadow too. He reaches behind him to take his jacket from the back of his chair and slip it over his shoulders. No one else seems bothered.

  I shiver and rub my arms as a wind roars to life. Voices ride on it, their words incomprehensible. It has Cooper Finnegan looking spooked. That's probably not good. That probably means this doesn't happen a lot.

  A face presses against the window. A face made of fog, just like in that horror movie.

  My shivering progresses to trembling as its eyes land on me.

  Cooper Finnegan leaps to his feet, jumps over the aisle, and grabs my hand.

  The other me yanks her book bag across the lab table, pressing it against her while she gapes at Cooper Finnegan. The whole room's staring. But the fog's gone, completely vanished as soon as my hand was touched.

  I lean over to his table and nudge his pen, rolling it to the floor.

  He bends over and picks it up with his free hand, then, apologizing in an inarticulate mumble, he holds the pen up and retreats back to his seat. He doesn't let go of my hand even though people are still watching him. I reposition myself beside him, so at least he doesn't have to sit there with his arm stuck out.

  “Thank you,” I whisper as I settle into an uncomfortable squat at his side.

  His fingers squeeze. They're so warm... He holds onto me for the rest of class, but when the bell rings, he lets go ever so slowly, his eyes on the window. The fog stays vanished.

  “Yo, Finn!” The other two football players in the class approach us. “What was up with that?”

  “Dropped my pen,” he says, his tone going for sheepish.

  One boy snorts at the answer while the other says, “And you and Devil Girl?”

  Devil Girl. That would be me, I suppose. I've been called worse.

  Cooper Finnegan chooses to ignore the question, grabbing his stuff in silence and just leaving.

  “What's up with him?” one of the jocks asks the others.

  “Game nerves.”

  “He'd better get over it. Post-season rides on this game.”

  “Dude, that's why he's so freaked.”

  And then I'm sitting in an empty room, staring at the window and wondering what the heck happened. I'm not certain, but I think Cooper Finnegan may have just saved my afterlife.

  Chapter Six

  The freaky fog doesn't sweep down on me when I leave the school building. I'm nervous about distancing myself from Finn, but I don't think he's going to answer the questions bouncing in my head. I'm not sure he actually could. I need to find Fray.

  Of course, my new friend isn't in the hunting club. And there's no one in the hardware store either. No one dead at least. The customers, being alive, rank somewhere below the furniture for me.

  Where else to find a ghost? The cemetery maybe?

  I start walking that way but I'm stopped about a block from Finnegan's Hardware by a little girl who calls out to me. “What are you doing?”

  The sound of her voice makes me smile. The smile dims when I notice her feet are sharing space with a pile of cardboard without the boxes seeming to mind, but since I'm looking for a ghost...

  “Hi. I'm Drew.” I hold my hand out to her but she looks at it like it's a viper.

  “The Spirit is strong today.” The girl's eyes are huge, more like a cartoon's than a child's. “Get to your Place of Power and stay there.”

  “My Place of Power?” I ask. “Where's that? What do you mean The Spirit's strong today?”

  “The Spirit hunts,” she replies in a creepy voice. “Go to your Place of Power.”

  She starts to back away and when I step toward her, something blocks me from entering the alley. “This is my Place! Go to yours!”

  “But where is mine?”

  “Go!” she yells as she turns and runs behind a dumpster.

  And the unnatural darkness returns, sending terror straight into my core.

  “Find your Place of Power, you idiot!” the child screams from hiding.

  My Place of Power? What the hell is my Place of Power? Ice prickles on my back and I know without looking that the fog looms directly behind me. So I do the only thing I can. I run.

  Cooper Finnegan. God hel
p me, but I have to find Cooper Finnegan.

  The fog rolls closer. The voices tumbling in it get louder. They call to me and I consider stopping, consider letting it swallow me. I run faster, but it's no use. The fog's catching up. I can't outrun this thing. I need a Place of Power. I need... I need Cooper Finnegan.

  The world shifts, the fog falls back. There's a clap of thunder and I'm running through a hallway at school, crashing into the cafeteria.

  Cooper Finnegan... Where is he? I look to the popular table. It's filled with the usual assortment of jocks and pretty people. Minus, naturally, the one I'm looking for.

  The room darkens and horror fights to take control of my mind. It's not having to fight hard. Reason is more than willing to take a dive.

  “Drew!” Cooper Finnegan yells.

  My head snaps to him and I sprint indiscriminately through tables and students in a mad dash for his safety while the whole room goes silent to stare at him.

  Just before I reach him, I fall, tripping on my own feet. I slide against the ground, grabbing his ankle and holding onto it for dear life.

  The darkness pauses, recedes.

  “What?” the other me yells at my savior.

  He stares at her, no clue what to say. The entire cafeteria is waiting.

  “Ms. Pauler wants to see you,” I say. There's a good chance it's true. Or at least that everyone will think it's true. It would be a rare day if the principal were happy with me.

  He repeats the line perfectly and TOM scowls at him. “Whatever. Mind your own business.”

  His leg gives a jerk to show he'd like to move now.

  Worried the fog will come back the second I let go of him, I take my time unwrapping myself from his foot. The light stays though.

  Cooper Finnegan doesn't go to his usual table but walks out of the cafeteria into a deserted hallway. He untwists the cap off the sports drink he'd been fetching when I ran in and downs about half of it in one gulp.

  “It's not beer,” I tell him. “That probably won't work.”

  He laughs and screws the top back on. Leaning against the wall, a splash of color on the white bricks, he shakes his head in mild wonder. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don't know. I kind of hoped you would.” I take a deep breath. “I think it's The Spirit.”

  His eyebrows draw together and he nods slowly. “Could be. My grandfather described it as something less tangible though.”

  I shrug, putting a lot of effort into not allowing myself to look around and make sure the darkness isn't lurking nearby. “I met a little girl who said it was strong today.”

  He nods again, tapping the end of his bottle lightly against his leg. “Becky Lynn?”

  My eyes roll, completely of their own accord. “We didn't have time for introductions. She said I had to get to my Place of Power to hide from the thing.”

  This produces a frown and makes the bottle go still. “So why'd you come here?”

  I give a disgusted grunt. “Because I don't know where my Place of Power is.”

  He stares at me for several seconds before pushing off of the wall and starting to walk away. He glances to make sure I'm following, like I'm going to get separated from him again with fog hovering around.

  “Usually someone's Place of Power is the place they died.” Cooper Finnegan turns down another hall, heading, I think, toward the athletic storage room.

  “I don't know where I died,” I remind him.

  “That would be a problem.” We go into a room filled with random sports equipment and Cooper Finnegan sits down on a box lid. “Where do your postmortem memories start?”

  Folding my legs, I sit on the floor in front of him. “One of the stops off the Parkway.”

  His head tilts and he makes a thoughtful noise. “It wouldn't be the first to get a ghost.”

  “It wouldn't?”

  He gives me a funny look. “Don't talk to folks much, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Well...” Letting out a breath, he opens the bottle again. “I wouldn't go so far as to say all of them are haunted, but there are several stories everyone knows. There's one where one of the men who built the road was crushed to death. There's another where a man shot a cheating wife.” He meets my eyes. “And one where a college girl was thrown off a cliff.”

  I've gone so cold I can't remember ever being warm. “You're saying I was murdered?”

  “Something bad happened to you,” he says.

  I smack the carpet beside me with both palms, the sting of it riding up to my shoulders. “Yeah, I'm dead!”

  Cooper Finnegan sighs. “Exactly.”

  Pulling my knees up to my chest, I think about that for a while as he takes a drink. “So, you think that overlook is my Place of Power?”

  “Could be.” His cautious tone doesn't convey much certainty though. “But usually ghosts haunt their Places of Power. And you don't seem very attached to that spot.”

  “Maybe I haunt the school?” I seem to spend more time here than anywhere else.

  “No, I don't think so. Or The Spirit wouldn't be able to try to swallow you here.” He leans forward, his arms on his legs while his drink dangles from one hand. “That's what The Spirit does. It assimilates ghosts.”

  “Like the Borg?”

  He smiles at me, grimly and without being willing to meet my eyes. “Exactly like the Borg. Except, I think the Borg retain more individuality.”

  I shudder. “So learning to stay away from The Spirit is important.”

  “Yeah.” His shoulders slump and his head bows forward. “Unless you're suicidal.”

  “No.” Leaning back, I look up at him. “But why does touching you make it go away?”

  “No idea.” He shrugs, keeping his eyes rooted on the ground. “Maybe because I'm a Shadow Walker.”

  “Shadow Walker?” I repeat, unable to keep from sneering at the phrase.

  “Also known as the guy who just saved your ass so you can cut it with that condescending smirk.”

  I do my best to blank my expression and say, “I'll stick with medium.”

  Probably, I should thank him for the whole rescue thing, but it's not like he really had to do anything. And I'm not exactly thrilled to be learning that not only is Cooper Finnegan the only living person I can see or touch but he's also the only thing standing between me and being absorbed into a giant, menacing fog bank. “I'm going to have to follow you everywhere you go, aren't I?”

  He sits up sharply. “No.”

  “You want me to die?” I ask. “Again? Because I'm still blaming you for the first time.”

  “Me? You think I killed you?” There's a tremble in his shoulders as he looks at me through eyes that have gone wide and very, very dark.

  “You're not doing anything to stop it,” I point out, snarling to cover up the tremor his expression brings to my voice. “That makes you an accomplice.”

  In a blast of exasperation, he jumps to his feet and hurls the bottle across the room, where it slams into a poster proclaiming the virtues of endurance. Unnaturally blue liquid slides down the wall. “We've been over this already. I can't stop you from dying. If I could, you wouldn't be here now.”

  My lip tries to quiver, so I turn the motion to petulant speech. “What? The universe would explode?”

  Cooper Finnegan glowers down at me, his anger flaring before evaporating completely in a sudden whoosh of defeat. His body slumps and he shakes his head. “I have no idea, Drew. I just know it isn't possible. I wish to hell you didn't have to die. But I can't stop it.”

  He steps around me and leaves, just like that. He's gone before I remember I was supposed to be trailing him.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time I get into the hall, Cooper Finnegan's nowhere to be seen. Not having a clue what class he has after lunch, I seek out myself. She and Cris are both in the library on their free period. Usually, they'd be huddled together to snicker over some website or another, but today they're on
opposite sides of the room.

  I guess Cris is still mad at us. On one of the couches along the windows, he flips through a magazine, shooting glances in TOM's direction but showing no signs of talking to her as she sits with an English essay open on one of the schools antique computers. She types slowly, thoughtfully, while I read over her shoulder.

  Funnily enough, she's discussing the ghost of Hamlet's father.

  “Drew?”

  TOM and I look up from the monitor. Tanya Stewart's biting her lip, her eyes wide behind slightly smudged lenses as she waits for TOM's attention.

  “What?” the other me asks, not bothering to be nice about it.

  “I just...” The girl's arm shoots out, a pamphlet in her hand.

  The other me makes an annoyed sound. “I know who Jesus is, Tanya. I walk by his fort twice a day.”

  “I...” Tanya struggles to take a breath. The pamphlet wavers in the air. “I just... You can be saved?”

  I find myself giggling as the other me shakes her head.

  “Please? Just read it?”

  TOM closes her eyes for a second. “Why are you bothering me with this? Do you honestly think I've never heard of the Baptist Church before?”

  Tanya looks like she might cry. “It's my duty to help the unsaved find salvation.”

  TOM just looks at her.

  “You want to go to Hell?” Tanya asks.

  “Already there.”

  The poor little Baptist girl pales.

  With a dramatic sigh, TOM takes enough pity on Tanya to hold out her hand. “Just give me the damn paper.”

  Without a word, not even to mention that cursing is a no-no, Tanya rams the tract into TOM's hand, turns, and literally runs away. Which is just over-reaction. I'm not that scary.

  TOM crumples the paper into a ball and tosses it into the wastebasket before returning to work.

  I watch her fingers dance over the keyboard. Click, click, click...

  If I can use a remote, maybe I can type too. Leaning over the desk next to TOM's, I put a hand out to the keyboard. It's there. I can touch the computer. Yes! I position my fingers to type and enter my username.

  It doesn't work.