I spun around, and there she was. Just leaning up against her locker – excuse me, my locker – and glaring at me, her arms folded across her chest. She was wearing a pair of charcoal colored slacks – nice ones – and a grey cashmere sweater set. She had an add-a-pearl necklace around her neck, one pearl for every Christmas and birthday she'd been alive, given to her, no doubt, by a set of doting grandparents. On her feet were a pair of shiny black loafers. Her hair, as shiny as her shoes in the yellow light from the floodlamps, looked smooth and golden. She really was a beautiful girl.
Too bad she had blown her head off.
"Heather," I said, pushing the hood of my sweatshirt down. "Hi. I'm sorry to bother you – " It always helps at least to start out polite. " – but I really think we need to talk, you and I."
Heather didn't move. Well, that's not true. Her eyes narrowed. They were pale eyes, grey, I think, though it was hard to tell, in spite of the flood-lamps. The long eyelashes – dark with mascara – were tastefully ringed in charcoal liner.
"Talk?" Heather echoed. "Oh, yeah. Like I really want to talk to you. I know about you, Suzie."
I winced. I couldn't help it. "It's Suze," I said.
"Whatever. I know what you're doing here."
"Well, good," I said. "Then I don't have to explain. You want to go sit down, so we can talk?"
"Talk? Why would I want to talk to you? What do you think I am, stupid? God, you think you're so sly. You think you can just move right in, don't you?"
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Into my place." She straightened, and stepped away from the locker, and walked toward the courtyard as if she were admiring the fountain. "You," she said, tossing me a look over her shoulder. "The new girl. The new girl who thinks she can just slip right into the place I left behind. You've already got my locker. You're on your way to stealing my best friend. I know Kelly called you and asked you to her stupid party. And now you think you can steal my boyfriend."
I put my hands on my hips. "He's not your boyfriend, Heather, remember? He broke up with you. That's why you're dead. You blew your brains out in front of his mother."
Heather's eyes widened. "Shut up," she said.
"You blew your brains out in front of his mother because you were too stupid to realize that no boy – not even Bryce Martinson – is worth dying for." I strolled past her, out onto one of the gravel pathways between the garden beds. I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself, but it was making me a little nervous, standing under the breezeway after what had happened to Bryce. "Boy, you must have been mad when you realized what you'd done. Killed yourself. And over something so stupid. Because of a guy."
"Shut up!" This time she didn't just say it. She screamed it, so loud that she had to ball her hands up into fists at her sides, close her eyes, and hunch up her shoulders to do it. The scream was so loud, my ears were ringing afterward. But no one came running from the rectory, where I saw a few lights on. The mourning doves that I'd heard cooing in the eaves of the breezeway hadn't uttered a peep since Heather had shown up, and the crickets had cut short their midnight serenade.
People can't hear ghosts – well, most people, anyway – but the same can't be said for animals and even insects. They are hyperalert to the presence of the paranormal. Max, the Ackermans' dog, won't go near my room thanks to Jesse.
"It's no use your screaming like that," I said. "No one but me can hear it."
"I'll scream all I want," she shrieked. And then she proceeded to do so.
Yawning, I went and sat down on one of the wooden benches by Father Serra's statue. There was a plaque, I noticed, at the statue's base. I could read it easily with the help of the flood-lamps and the moon.
The Venerable Father Junipero Sena, the plaque read, 1713-1784. His righteous ways and self-abnegation were a lesson to all who knew him and received his teachings.
Huh. I was going to have to look up self-abnegation in the dictionary when I got home. I wondered if it was the same as self-flagellation, something for which Serra had also been known.
"Are you listening to me?" Heather screamed.
I looked at her. "Do you know what the word abnegation means?" I asked.
She stopped screaming and just stared at me. Then she strode forward, her face a mask of livid rage.
"Listen to me, you bitch," she said, stopping when she stood a foot away from me. "I want you gone, do you understand? I want you out of this school. That is my locker. Kelly Prescott is my best friend. And Bryce Martinson is my boyfriend! You get out, you go back to where you came from. Everything was just fine before you got here – "
I had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, Heather, but everything was not just fine before I got here. You know how I know that? Because you're dead. Okay? You are dead. Dead people don't have lockers, or best friends, or boyfriends. You know why? Because they're dead."
Heather looked as if she was about to start screaming again, but I headed her off at the pass. I said, smoothly and evenly, "Now, I know you made a mistake. You made a horrible, terrible mistake – "
"I'm not the one who made the mistake." Heather said, flatly. "Bryce made the mistake. Bryce is the one who broke up with me."
I said, "Yeah, well, that wasn't the mistake I was talking about. I was talking about you shooting yourself because a stupid boy broke up with – "
"If you think he's so stupid," Heather said with a sneer, "why are you going out with him on Saturday? That's right. I heard him ask you out. The rat. He probably wasn't faithful a day the whole time we were going out."
"Oh," I said. "Well, that's just great. All the more reason for you to kill yourself over him."
There were tears, sparkling like those rhine-stones you buy and glue to your fingernails, gathered beneath her lashes. "I loved him," she breathed. "If I couldn't have him, I didn't want to live."
"And now that you're dead," I said, tiredly, "you figure he ought to join you, right?"
"I don't like it here," she said, softly. "No one can see me. Just you and F-Father Dominic. I get so lonely...."
"Right. That's understandable. But Heather, even if you do manage to kill him, he probably isn't going to like you for it much."
"I can make him like me," Heather said confidently. "After all, it'll just be me and him. He'll have to like me."
I shook my head. "No, Heather. It doesn't work that way."
She stared at me. "What do you mean?"
"If you kill Bryce, there's no guarantee he'll end up here with you. What happens to people after they die – well, I'm not sure, but I think it's different for everyone. If you kill Bryce, he'll go to wherever it is he's supposed to go. Heaven, hell, his next life – I don't know for sure. But I do know he won't end up here with you. It doesn't work that way."
"But – " Heather looked furious. "But that isn't fair!"
"Lots of things aren't fair, Heather. It isn't fair, for example, that you have to suffer for all eternity for a mistake that you made in the heat of a moment. I'm sure if you'd known what it was like to be dead, you never would have killed yourself. But, Heather, it doesn't have to be this way."
She stared down at me. The tears were frozen there, like little tiny shards of ice. "It doesn't?"
"No. It doesn't."
"You mean … you mean I can go back?"
I nodded. "You can. You can start over."
She sniffled. "How?"
I said, "All you have to do is make up your mind to do it."
A scowl passed over her pretty face. "But I already made up my mind that that's what I want. All I've wanted since it … since it happened … was to get my life back."
I shook my head. "No, Heather," I said. "You , misunderstand me. You can never have your life – your old life – back. But you can start a new one. That's got to be better than this, than being here all by yourself forever, storming around in a rage, hurting people – "
She shouted, "You said I could get my life back!"
I realized, all in a flash, that I'd lost her. "I didn't mean your old life. I just meant a life – "
But it was too late. She was freaking.