22

MY EYES BLINK BACK INTO FOCUS as my limbs tingle painfully. I turn my head from side to side and realize I’m in the girls’ bathroom at school, the small one in the foreign-language hall with floor-to-ceiling mauve tile. For some reason, the sight of it makes me want to scream. I’m so sick of not being able to control when I fall into a memory or where I end up afterward, of being in bathrooms and closets, and of people harboring secrets.

It seems everyone I know holds captive some piece of my past. I want the pieces back no matter how much they’ll hurt. They’re mine and only I deserve to hold them.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror above the row of sinks, desperately searching for clarity, but I don’t recognize myself. Not because the iridescent glow of my skin shimmers insubstantially where a solid face should be, but because something is missing. Something I need to get back.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to focus on a truly me moment, something that can bring me back from this place where I’m a stranger in my own mind, but I’m so mixed up that I can’t even differentiate one memory from the next. It’s a fast-forward reel of dance recitals and family road trips and afternoons spent playing Chinese checkers with Joules. I look so young. It’s like my memory is telling me I haven’t been myself since fifth grade and there’s no going back.

The sound of a stall door unlatching makes my eyes open. A small piece of me locks into place when I see my best friend reflected next to me in the mirror.

I turn to face her, then lift my hand to replace a rogue hair that’s escaped her royal-blue knit hat. She catches it before I can, turning my fingers to dust. I snatch my hand away from the prickly shock and wait for the dust to settle into ghostly flesh.

Aimée and I sigh at the same time. I lean into the warmth I know her breath must carry even though I can’t feel it. She’s wearing the super-low-cut black sweater that I bought her for her sixteenth birthday last year. She hasn’t worn it since the day one of Shaw’s friends teased her about being able to see her bra under it. I saw her hide it in her sock drawer that night. She must have dug it out.

“You know, Meems, I’m pretty sure Kyle Daley was flirting when he told you you needed a license to wear that thing.”

Boys was always the one subject Aimée was slow in. She never picked up on the way their teasing was flirting or their staring was admiring. That was probably why she’d been able to fend off Mica’s advances for so long.

I smile to myself, remembering the time Kyle and Aimée joined my family on a trip to Niagara Falls. Three times he “accidentally” walked in on her changing in the back of the RV Dad rented. Once, I can give him. Twice, maybe he forgot to knock. But three times? Shaw’s friends never once walked in on me like that, let alone three times.

“He totally thought you were hot,” I say, pretending things are normal and she can hear me.

After a few seconds of digging around in her messenger bag, she slams it onto the sink in front of her and starts pulling textbooks out and tossing them on the floor—the floor! It’s so not Aimée to bend the rules of hygiene like that.

“What are you looking for?” I ask, wishing I could help.

“You have to be kidding me.” Aimée groans. She turns the bag upside down in the sink and rummages around in the pile of pencils and assignments. Finally, she pulls out a small tub of vanilla lip balm with a flourish.

“That’s empty,” I tell her. It’s Madison’s favorite. She used the last of it when we were at Ethan’s house for a movie night a month ago and put it back so Aimée wouldn’t notice. Anger rises in me, thinking how she must have primped like that in an effort to impress my boyfriend.

Aimée’s addicted to lip gloss the way some people are addicted to coffee or cigarettes or crack. The problem with Aimée’s addiction is, she never has any lip gloss with her. She frowns when she opens the tub.

Out of habit, I reach for my coat pocket because I always carry my watermelon lip gloss with me in case such an Aimée emergency arises, but I’m forgetting, I don’t have access to ordinary things like pockets and zippers anymore.

My eyes jolt from my one-dimensional, freak-show outfit when Aimée’s arm whips past my face. The glass lip-balm tub shoots across the room and cracks in half when it makes contact with the tile wall. The pieces clatter to the floor and the metal top rolls its way back to the sinks. Aimée kicks it so hard with her pointy boot that it ricochets off the door and disappears under one of the stalls. She leans against the wall and slides to the floor.

I sit next to her. “If it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure my lip gloss wand would poke right through my mouth.”

She tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “If you were here my stupid lips wouldn’t be chapped because you’d have that watermelon crap”—I say, “That you hate,” at the same time as she says—“that I hate, but sort of obsessively want now because you aren’t here to lend it to me.” She exhales. “I’m a mess. This is a mess. I need some friggin’ Bonne Bell post-friggin’-haste!”

A girl with mousy brown hair opens the bathroom door. “Everything okay in here? I heard yelling.”

“Having a mental meltdown here. Do you mind?” Aimée waves her hand at the girl, who looks quizzically at the busted glass on the floor.

“What’s going on?” A second girl peeks her head past the door; her blond ponytail swishes across her neck. As Aimée looks up, a wicked smile curls her mouth because two people from her list have offered themselves up for questioning.

“You know who I am, right?” Aimée asks them as she stands.

Carly and Megan nod in unison as they step inside. “We’re really sorry about your friend,” Carly says.

“I’m sorry too—for you,” Aimée says with faux sincerity, hand over her heart.

Megan tilts her head to the side, clueless. “Why?”

“You must have been close with Cassidy, seeing as you were at her invite-only birthday party. You lost a friend too, right?” The girls look at each other, scrambling for a response. “Have you told the police you were uninvited guests at a party that ended with a body count?”

Megan and Carly flinch at Aimée’s harsh tone. I do too.

“We were invited—honest,” Megan says.

Carly elbows her.

“By who?” Aimée asks.

Megan looks at Carly, who flicks her ponytail when she turns to Aimée and says, “I’m getting a little tired of taking crap for a rumor I didn’t even start.” Aimée arches one eyebrow, challenging Carly. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. The person who told me is a reliable source.”

“Of course.” Aimée steps toward Carly. “And I’m going to assume that ‘source’ is yourself and pass my suspicions on to the police unless you tell me what you know right now.”

“M-Mica Torrez,” Megan sputters. “Carly hooked up with him last week, and he told her Ethan and Cassidy were going through a rough patch, about to break up or something.”

Carly’s eyes practically pop out of her skull. “Megan. Shut. Up.”

Megan looks at Carly. “What? It’s not like he ever called you back. He can deal with her.” She lowers her voice so only Carly will hear. “She’s scary.”

Judging by the smirk Aimée turns on, she heard. “Did he invite you to the party?”

“Chill, I’m not scammin’ on your man,” Carly says in a rush, cutting Megan off. “We were invited by Madison Scott like everyone else.”

Of course. Madison invited the freshman gossip twins to spread the word that Ethan and I were breaking up, probably as backup in case her original plan fizzled.

“Mica is not my man,” Aimée insists.

“Whatevs. I didn’t even see him at the party. And he didn’t tell me anything about Cassidy. I sort of read his texts while he was in the bathroom.” She pinches the top of her nose like telling the truth has taken this enormous toll on her nervous system. Or maybe lying has. “I truly am sorry. I wouldn’t have said anything if I’d known Cassidy was going to take it so hard. You’re not going to call the cops on us, are you?”

The genuine look of horror on Carly’s face reveals her role in what happened to me: pawn. Aimée sees it too and answers no. The girls leave before “scary” Aimée has a chance to say anything else. As soon as they’re gone, her tough façade fades.

That rogue piece of her hair falls again, and I mimic her movement so it seems like my hand tucked it under her hat, not hers. She reaches into the sink for her bag and starts replacing her textbooks inside. She hesitates, holding the star-shaped note. She carefully unfolds it and reads, “It’s easy to jump when you get a push.”

I run my finger just above the large print. “We need to find out who wrote this, Meems.”

Aimée checks her watch, then gets to her feet. She stuffs—or rather, very quickly reorganizes according to height—her pencils under the front flap of her messenger bag and dashes out of the bathroom to class.

*   *   *

AT LUNCH, Aimée waits for Ethan at a small table in Freshman Bottom-Feeder No-Man’s-Land on the clear opposite side of the cafeteria from our usual crowded table. I follow Ethan through the lunch line, where he purchases a supremely nutritious meal of Powerade.

“How’s that liquid diet treating you?” I ask as we cross over into No-Man’s-Land.

Ethan holds the bottle up to his mouth and pretends to take a sip as he answers me. “Those who don’t eat don’t get to judge the dietary choices of others.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I didn’t expect to see you smiling,” Aimée says to Ethan as we reach her table. “Do you have good news?”

Ethan’s head snaps up. “No, I was, um, superthirsty. This Powerade really hit the spot.” He holds out the red drink for Aimée to see.

“Dork,” I say, and laugh.

Ethan pulls out the chair across from Aimée, purposely bumping into my leg, and I stumble. He takes a drink to hide his smirk. I poke him in the ribs as I sit beside him.

For a moment, this feels so blissfully normal that I forget I’m invisible to Aimée and the rest of the world and that there’s another me in the morgue somewhere. For a moment, I’m back to being me. Good old normal alive Cassidy.

“Do you have any ChapStick on you?” Aimée asks Ethan as she rubs her red lips.

I open my mouth to answer, but Ethan beats me to it. “That was Cassidy’s job.”

“That’s the problem.” Aimée slouches in her chair. “Every little thing that pops up feels like it’s a Cassidy job. Talking to people, being friendly so they’ll be willing to tell me what I need to know. My tolerance for fake sympathy is too low. I get annoyed. And I feel like no one’s telling me the whole story.”

“Well, you are pretty intimidating, Aimée.” She angles her chin upward like it was a compliment. He spins the cap of his drink like a top and it goes rolling along the table—through my arm.

That moment of normal passes.

Ethan stares in awe at the cap as it slowly wobbles in a progressively smaller circle until it stops flat under my elbow. Aimée reaches across the table, snatches up the cap, and replaces it on the bottle.

“Ouch!” I hold out my arm until the dusty bits of me reshape. When I look up, Ethan’s jaw is on the floor. “Pull yourself together,” I whisper to him.

“Sorry,” he whispers back.

“What?”

Ethan turns away from me quickly and looks over at Aimée. “Don’t feel bad about getting frustrated with people. No one in this school knows what it’s like to lose someone they love as much as you loved Cassidy.”

“Except you,” she says quietly. Ethan drops his eyes to his lap, and I wrap my fingers around his hand, ignoring the rift between us because he’s the only thing I have left and he knows it. “So,” she asks, “what did you find out?”

“I talked to Nancy.”

“She has an alibi.” Aimée pushes her tray of untouched nachos aside and folds her arms on the table. “I talked to her brother. He said he was with her when she found Cassidy.”

“He could be lying for her,” I say.

“She used his cell to call 911,” Aimée adds before Ethan can translate for me.

“Yeah,” Ethan replies, “I didn’t get the feeling she had anything to do with what happened.”

“I talked to Carly and Megan, too. Not much there to work with either.”

“Maybe.” Ethan pauses. “Maybe we’re talking to the wrong people.”

Aimée perks up. “Who do you have in mind?”

“Nancy told me she overheard Madison at the party telling Drew she wanted to get Cassidy alone.”

“Your point?” Aimée says with a challenge.

Ethan glances at me before continuing. “I talked to Drew. He said Madison and Cassidy got in a big fight that night.”

Aimée instinctively starts to defend Madison, then sinks back in her seat. “I wouldn’t doubt it. Madison was avoiding Cassidy for most of last week. I asked her about it, but she told me it was my imagination.”

“Madison hasn’t mentioned anything about a fight?”

Aimée shakes her head. When Ethan glances at me again, I tell him, “She needs to know what Madison did.”

Ethan looks squarely at Aimée. “I know about Caleb. I found out at the party courtesy of Mica, but it was a setup. Madison was trying to break up Cassi and me.”

Aimée straightens. “I don’t believe that.”

“Cassidy saw her dealing pills to Caleb. Didn’t you say Dr. Scott made her stay home because of the meds he had her on?”

“That’s absurd.” Aimée’s voice shakes, making her confidence in Madison seem tenuous. “She would never do that, and her dad didn’t write her ’scrips for anything remotely recreational until after the party.”

Crap. I scramble for a believable excuse for how I told him about the pills after I died.

Ethan says without missing a beat, “That’s what Madison told you. Doesn’t mean it’s the truth.”

Aimée’s eyes go wide. Her voice is hard and flat. “Are you suggesting Madison killed her best friend over you?”

“No, actually, I have absolutely no idea why she’d want to hurt Cassi. Do you?”

Aimée gathers her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck and grips it with both hands. “I’m calling her.” She digs her cell out of her bag and discreetly holds it to her ear. Aimée groans when Madison’s voice mail picks up. She hangs up and puts her thumbs to work speed-texting We need 2talk!!! before looking across the table at Ethan.

“Now what?” he asks.

“We run through the rest of the list.”

“Between the two of us, we’ve already talked to everyone.”

“My list has a few more names than yours.” Aimée reaches into her pocket and flattens the folded page of stationery between them. Ethan frowns at the inclusion of his name. Aimée’s voice holds a note of apology when she says, “I had to include everyone who was alone with her at the party.”

“Then you better re-add Mica. Why did you cross out his name?” Ethan jabs his finger at her list.

Aimée snatches it up and narrows her eyes at him. “Because I put him on your list. It’s a moot point anyway though because he wasn’t on the bridge with Cassidy. He was in my house with Drew and about five other people who vouched for him.”

Ethan shakes his head. “I knew he’d get to you. Let me guess, those five people are girls he’s hooked up with?”

“Why don’t you trust him? He’s supposed to be your best friend.”

“Was.”

Aimée and I both stare at Ethan, waiting for an explanation he doesn’t offer. “You do realize what you’re doing here, right?” Ethan doesn’t answer. “You’re focusing on two ridiculously unlikely suspects so you won’t have to admit who Cassidy was actually with on the bridge.”

“If you don’t believe me, ask Madison about the pills. Skip the rest of the day and go to her house. I hear she’s a mess.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “She won’t be able to pull off lying to you anymore.”

“If you’re right…” Aimée thinks a minute. She stands. “I’ll call you after I talk to her.”

He half stands when she passes him to leave, and I take an involuntary step toward her. Warmth travels up my arm when his hand finds my wrist, tempting me to stay with him, but the pulse in my chest is pulling me toward Aimée. I place my other hand on top of his. “Ethan. I have to go with her.”

He opens his mouth again, maybe to stop me, but he stays silent, releasing his hold on me. I don’t want to let him go, but indomitable forces are making that decision for me.

I catch up to Aimée in the parking lot in what feels like a single blink. She’s so worked up from arguing with Ethan that she can’t seem to find her car keys. She digs through her coat pockets three times each, then shoves a hand into her messenger bag. Right when she clutches her rhinestone A key chain in victory, she bumps into the tailgate of a yellow pickup truck. “Son of a—ow!” She bounces on her good leg and groans.

“Aimée, hey.” Mica pokes his head out of the driver’s-side door. “Are you here to bust me for skipping?”

I stare hard at him, struggling to awaken some fragment of my memory that knows whether he’s responsible for my death. I try to figure out what Drew and Ethan were talking about earlier and how Mica knew about Caleb and me before Ethan did, but it’s no use. That part of my memory is blank.

Aimée hobbles around the side of the truck, rubbing her knee. “I’m skipping, too.” She stands as best she can despite her hurt knee, defiant and proud.

Mica nods. “I’m impressed. Not sure you’ll be able to outrun the law with that injury though.” Aimée smirks at him, but stays quiet. “Is something wrong?”

“Why?”

“You look like something’s bothering you, I guess.”

She rubs her visibly chapped lips. Then she asks abruptly, “Did you go out with Carly Davies?” Mica appears confused. “Freshman. Blond. IQ of a mentally challenged unicorn.”

“I know who she is.”

“Okay. Did you go out with her?”

Mica scratches his smooth cheek. “Maybe once, I think.”

Aimée narrows her eyes at him. “How long ago?”

“Is that what’s bothering you? Carly wasn’t anything serious. You don’t need to worry about her.” Mica reaches for Aimée’s hand, but she backs away.

“Can you get over yourself for one minute? I couldn’t care less about how many V-cards you’ve swiped—quite the opposite, actually,” she says a little too insistently. “I’m more concerned about you starting rumors about Cassidy and Ethan breaking up.”

“It wasn’t a rumor. They did break up, at the party. You knew that, right?”

Aimée shakes her head, losing some of her attitude.

“Yeah,” Mica says, “E walked in on her making out with that Caleb kid and ended it. Was pretty brutal.”

Hearing him sum up the worst moment of my life in twenty words or less does painful things to my ghostly insides.

“Ethan said you were there when he found Cassidy with Caleb. He was really pissed about it, actually. Why didn’t you tell me you were there?” Aimée asks.

Mica scratches his cheek again. “E blames me, y’know, ’cause I’m the one who told him what was what. Guess I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you, too.”

“How did you find out?” Aimée’s expression tenses as she waits for his answer.

“Well, Drew told me a few weeks ago that Cassidy was steppin’ out on E. I didn’t believe it though. Not until I caught her with him at the party.”

“You must’ve been angry with her for cheating on your best friend,” Aimée says, assessing his reaction.

Mica pulls up his playboy grin. “It would be pretty two-faced of me to be angry with someone for sleeping around.”

“Cassidy didn’t sleep with Caleb,” Aimée says with quiet confidence even though she has no way of knowing whether it’s true; she simply trusts it. So do I. She looks up at him. “Did Drew tell Madison about Caleb, too?”

“No,” Mica says with genuine surprise in his voice, “not that I know about anyway. Drew’s always crazy careful not to have to break bad news to her. He’s paranoid she’ll take it out on him, finally dump him for good. He’d never risk it.”

Aimée hesitates a moment, and I can tell she’s trying to make sense of what Ethan told her about Mica being alone with me at the party and Madison inviting Caleb so she could set me up, deciding if she believes any of it.

“You still look like something’s bothering you,” Mica says.

Aimée bites down on her bottom lip. “Actually, I am in dire need of lip gloss.”

Mica digs into his truck’s coin tray and pulls out a ChapStick, the original kind with a black label, the kind that smells like grandpas. “Will this work?”

“Oh, thank god.” She lunges for the stick and smiles deliriously as she rolls it over her red lips. She sighs and hands it back to him.

He laughs and sets it in her palm without letting go of her hand. “You clearly need this more than I do. Keep it.” He leans forward. “You still haven’t told me what’s really bothering you.”

“I don’t…” Aimée stares at Mica’s tan hand wrapped around hers for a moment before tightening her fingers around his. “Do you know where Caleb Turner lives?”

My head snaps up at her unexpected question.

“Yeah,” Mica says slowly. “I’ve been to a few of his parties. Who hasn’t?”

“Me,” Aimée answers. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

Mica peers over his shoulder, scanning the parking lot. “I’ll do you one better and drive you there.” He reaches for Aimée’s bag.

“Give it back.” She grabs for her bag, but he’s already tossed it behind his seat. “I don’t need a ride.”

“This is about what happened to Cassidy, isn’t it?”

“Stay out of this, Mica.” Aimée tries to push past him to retrieve her bag, but he’s too big to get past.

“No way. If you’re right about her death not being suicide, someone is obviously hiding something dark. Asking questions might get dangerous. Besides,” he says, adopting a lighter tone as he steps out of the truck, “you’ll definitely get caught skipping if you’re alone.” Aimée begins to protest, but Mica silences her with a raised hand, waving his fingers. “Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”

Aimée hits his hand away. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

“For now, right?” Mica teases. Aimée laughs despite herself and lets him hook his arm with hers as he leads her to the passenger-side door.

A thousand repetitive memories flicker behind my eyes. Aimée and I walking to English together, sharing a blackberry frozen yogurt at the mall, both of us sprinting for the elementary-school door after the rest of our class was already inside after recess. Our arms were always hooked. Now she can’t even tell she’s walking through me.

I try to follow her into Mica’s truck, but my legs won’t move. I call out to her that it’s not worth it—revealing the truth, clearing my name. None of that’s worth anything if she gets hurt—but as my lips form the words, I know they’re not true. It’s how I feel deep down, but keeping her safe isn’t why I’m here.

I’m here because I lied. To everyone. I even lied to me. Somehow I managed to convince myself no one would get hurt, that I had control, that Caleb was nothing more than a friend, that kissing another guy wasn’t wrong.

No.

I never convinced anyone that what I did was right. But I did it. I let it happen, and now I’m dead. Does that mean it was all my fault?

The éclairs, the leaning closer, the kissing, the lying, the avoiding, the fighting, the schnapps, the falling …

My skin burns cold from the regret building inside me. No matter what Madison did to push me into Caleb’s arms, I shouldn’t have fallen. This is my fault, and it’s up to me to fix it. I close my eyes and welcome the hurt that’s rooted in my unreal bones. It holds me to this place, this life that’s no longer mine. The pulse throbs beneath my chest, and for a second time, I let go of everything else and allow it to guide my path. I sense this time it will finally lead me to where I need to be—to answers.

When I open my eyes, I’m on the bridge. With Madison. She’s wearing a rose-pink peasant dress with tiny blue flowers and loose sleeves that are being ravished by the wind tunneling through the bridge. She must be freezing. Her hands are cradling her cell in front of her face. Aimée’s text is illuminated on the screen: We need 2talk!!! The screen changes, alerting her of an incoming call from Drew. She hits ignore.

I stand with her in the cold, watching her hair twirl wildly around her face and stick to her cheeks in places where tears have fallen. She looks so young, so small and alone. From under her sleeve, she pulls out one of the pictures I saw in her room. It’s a random group shot from the party with the bridge looming in the background. She looks at it with this strange longing.

“I’m sorry I took Ethan, Madison.” The apology slips out before I can stop it, but once it’s said I realize I mean it even though taking him wasn’t so much a choice as an inevitability. I can’t count how many times I hugged Ethan in front of her or talked about some romantic gesture he’d made when her heart must have been silently breaking. It’s not that I think she was justified in plotting to break us up—especially since it landed me in the morgue—but it’s too late for grudges; I know that now. For me, there is no point.

As she tucks her long bangs behind her ears, I realize the toes of her tan cowboy boots are dangerously close to the exposed edge where the caution tape used to be. A flash of yellow catches my eye, and I see the torn tape gripped in her left hand.

I turn my head toward Aimée’s house. The lights are off. Her family isn’t home yet and Aimée’s at Caleb’s house with Mica when she desperately needs to be here.

Madison rocks back on her heels, then onto the balls of her feet. I want to stop her, but there’s nothing I can do if her balance wavers. I don’t know exactly how much she had to do with my death, but I can’t let anything happen to her. Especially not here, like this.

I rub the spot where my horseshoe pendant rests, hoping for some otherworldly luck. She steadies herself with a hand on the broken wall for a moment. Then she lets go.