Intersections Read online

  “But yet, we can move each other,” I said, thinking of how she’d tried pushing me out of the van.

  “I was a prisoner in my own bedroom until this morning, when Mom finally opened the door to get Bastion.”

  “Who’s Bastion?”

  “None of your fucking business. God, just leave me alone.”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “Enough.” She turned on me. “We’re not friends. We’re not going to have some tender ghostly girl power moment here in the fucking road. I’m dead and it’s your fault. I can forgive Tara for being a bitch, but I won’t forgive you for killing me.”

  I had to grab my lone heel to keep up with her. The persistent footwear tugged against my hand, eager to return to my foot.

  “So,” I said. “Where are you going now?”

  She sighed. “Back to my funeral. I’ve got a huge turnout. The whole damn town practically. I was watching from the trees when the goddamn Ouija board summoned me.”

  For a moment, I wondered why she watched from the trees instead of graveside at the service. “I wonder if I already missed my service.”

  “It’s later today at Lamb Funeral Home. My parents were talking about going over to scream at your mother.”

  “Oh.” I struggled for words. “I wonder why I ended up going up toward the Light, and you stayed down here?”

  “Beats me. Maybe because I actually had something to live for.”

  Ouch.

  I stopped walking. She didn’t bother looking back. I stared again up at the Light, surprised but relieved that I wasn’t floating back up to it. Birds chirped in the trees. A bee buzzed past. I decided to go check out my funeral service.

  Shannon stuck to the shadows of the trees lining Dorothy Pike. Dumb kid. She could’ve saved a ton of time by cutting through the field beyond the trees. Her path was taking her way out of the way. I almost called out to her, but figured she could go screw herself.

  When I stepped out of the shadows and onto the street, I saw myself for the first time in raw sunlight. My astral body was as translucent as a jellyfish, with streaks of red and blue blushing beneath my insubstantial skin. The light revealed traces of my bones. A vague aura of white light glimmered around my whole body. When I held my hand up, the light stuck between my fingers like a bird’s webbed feet. I noticed wisps of smoke rising from my fingertips a split second before pain bubbled under my skin.

  That’s when I realized why Shannon watched her funeral from the trees—to stay out of the sun.

  The hurt started as a dull simmer but escalated to full-on agony. My legs gave out. I fell to my knees and screamed. The asphalt beneath me seemed to chew on my seared flesh. The sun was burning me alive, um, dead. Even my skirt and top were burning, and pale smoke drifted from every crevice of my tortured body.

  I reached for the shadows, ready to drag my seared flesh across the gritty road. My blood boiled. The sound of me screaming and sizzling masked the noise of the oncoming van until it was too late. I turned my head in time to see through a blur of simmering tears the blue van’s grill rushing toward me.

  The impact knocked me backward. Tires rolled over my legs. The undercarriage throttled my hips and arms. It happened so fast, and then I was lying in the road.

  A mangled wreck.

  I tried lifting my arms but the fractured stems only twitched in response. My legs were cracked husks. Smoke rose from my body. My hair smoldered. The sun set me ablaze. I lay in the road. Helpless.

  3

  Sharp blades of white-hot light slashed through my phantom form. The sunshine burned like acid and sizzled upon my skin. Through my skin. My blood boiled over, splitting my astral flesh. My bones cracked and smoldered. My eyes popped and sizzled like eggs in a hot pan, leaving me blind. I tried to scream, but could only choke out a raspy hiss.

  So this was how the afterlife ended. In agony.

  Pressure ruptured unexpectedly under my armpits. Someone lifted and dragged me. My lower half scraped across the road. Coolness settled over me, but my tortured body wasn’t yet able to experience relief. My mangled hands clutched my face, massaging my busted eyes.

  A moment later, I blinked away tears.

  I could see again. Steam wafted from me, rising upward in spiraling tendrils. Mind-crunching hurt swarmed inside my cooked ghost flesh. Shannon stood over me, shaking her head. Wisps of smoke rose from her shoulders. She’d dragged me into the shade.

  “That sucked,” I said around a swollen tongue.

  “Ghost Life Tip Number Two: You have to stay out of direct sunlight, moron.”

  I chose to ignore the insult. “Why?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Um, because it burns?”

  “But why?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  I examined my charred flesh. “God, I look like Freddy Krueger.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Your burns will heal quick enough.”

  “You saved me. Thank you.”

  She shrugged. “Whatevs. Just be glad a cloud passed over the sun or I would’ve let your dumb ass fry in the road.”

  Without another word, she stalked off.

  I tried to sit up, but my fractured limbs wouldn’t obey. Unimaginable hurt festered in my body. In life, I’d never experienced pain like this. Not physical pain, anyway. Directly above me, the blobby mob of souls clustered around the Light. A cloud drifted past, and the sun shone brilliantly again. I flinched and whimpered, but thankfully, Shannon had dragged me well into the tree shadows.

  Just as Shannon had said, my phantom flesh stitched itself back together. Bones crackled and crunched. My crumpled mass gradually inflated like a balloon. The healing took an eternity. All the while, the sun slowly slid across the sky. The shade draped over me receded.

  Bit by tenuous bit, the hateful light inched toward me, a plodding race of relentless sunshine versus ghostly restoration.

  Soon, the light was only a yard away.

  Two feet.

  One foot.

  My arms and legs were mostly restored, but now I had a new problem. Hundreds of grass blades skewered my body all at once—a bed of thin green nails. I bit back a whimper and braced myself. Ectoplasmic tears slid down my face.

  Six inches.

  The sun crept closer to my left hand, and I could see that the band of pressed flesh once left by my wedding ring had finally disappeared. It’d been years, and I didn’t think it’d ever leave. Maybe that was just part of being dead, though. I made a mental note to see if I still had my tattoos, assuming I survived what happened next.

  Gritting my teeth, I tore my left arm free of the grass. A mist of ectoplasmic blood rained through the air.

  I screamed. Oh, how I screamed.

  The sun kept on coming, that relentless orb pursuing me like a hungry dog. I braced myself and sat up. Hundreds of tiny blades unsheathed themselves from my back. I couldn’t do this in increments any more. No, I had to push through. Hard and fast. This couldn’t be a marathon. It had to be a sprint. That sucked because I was a long distance runner, not a sprinter. I was all about the long haul, not the quick pay-off. My hands tightened into fists. I took three deep breaths before remembering that I wasn’t really breathing.

  With a savage grunt, I yanked my ass and legs free of the grass and threw myself across the ground. You could’ve called it crawling, but it was more like flailing. Like dying. The grass sliced into my shins, knees, hands, and feet. I pressed onward through the hurt. Just short of the treeline, where the grass mercifully receded, I lost my resolve. The pain proved too much.

  I crashed face-first.

  The green blades stabbed into my face. They pierced my breasts and belly. Jabbed into my eyes and—yes—even my sacred lady parts. I could go no further. I was pinned.

  For a long while, I succumbed to the agony. It was easier if I didn’t resist. The grass knives stung like fire, but if I lay very still, I could endure it. The wounds on top of my body healed and the ones on the bottom s