Life After Theft, Page 2

  And now, instead of an inner-city school with a 62 percent graduation rate, I get to go to a spoiled-brat private school that feeds more or less straight into Yale. Lucky me.

  I really should be grateful—the lockers stay closed at Whitestone and I suspect their PE equipment is less than fifty years old, but despite the advantages, I missed my friends. Even after just a week, it was obvious I wasn’t cut out for the long-distance friendship thing. I figured I’d make new friends, but, well, these Whitestone kids weren’t really my type.

  “So how was your first day?”

  Ummmm. “It was fine.”

  “Fine? Is that all?”

  I took a breath and smiled. “I think it’s going to be a good school for me,” I lied. Well, sort of lied. It really was a great school, academics-wise. Apparently not so good if you want to keep your sanity intact.

  “I hope so,” she said, putting on her special-moment face. “You deserve to go to a great college. You have so much potential.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I don’t know why she has to be so mushy about stuff sometimes. Maybe it’s an actress thing. Still, I wasn’t above taking advantage of her good mood.

  I wasn’t sure quite how to start—maybe there wasn’t a good way—so I just dived right in. “Hey, I was thinking . . .” I paused. “Is there any history of . . . craziness in our family?”

  She looked at me with one eyebrow cocked, a smirk ticking at the corner of her mouth. “You mean before you at this moment?”

  “I’m serious,” I said. She had no idea just how serious I was. “Do I have any crazy old uncles or anything? Murderers, public nudity”—I hesitated—“schizos?”

  Mom thought about it for a second. “Well, my granddad had dementia pretty bad for the last two years before he died. And I think your dad’s uncle Fred—you know, the one with the yogurt-carton collection?—I’m pretty sure he doesn’t play with a full deck. Why the sudden interest?”

  “Uh . . . we had a discussion about mental health in . . .” Oh, great. I wasn’t in any classes that this particular subject fit into. “Lit-er-a-ture,” I finished, dragging the word out syllable by syllable.

  “Literature?”

  “Yeah, you know, Les Mis.” Whatever that meant. “I’m gonna go play some games,” I said, making my escape before Mom could ask any more probing questions.

  I went upstairs to my sitting room—no lie, I have a sitting room—and turned on the TV, lying back on my humongous beanbag. This whole Kimberlee thing had to be my imagination. Stress of the first day in a new school and all that. Or maybe I’d wake up tomorrow and realize this was just a long, very vivid dream and that I was about to start my real first day of school.

  “Okay, don’t freak, but we seriously need to talk.”

  I sprang to my feet and spun to find Kimberlee standing right in the middle of my room.

  “Listen, I know you’re wigging out, but the fact is, I have no one else to turn to, so I’m not going away.”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten before opening them and turning my head. There she was, looking far too real to be a figment of my imagination.

  “You’re not real and you need to leave me alone,” I said slowly, carefully.

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m trying to make nice here, and trust me, I understand where you’re coming from. You know how long it took me to convince myself I was real? Ages.”

  You’d think that if my head was going to make someone up it would give me someone nice. I was feeling officially betrayed. “Not real, not real, not real,” I whispered under my breath.

  “This’ll be a really long year if you’re going to walk around muttering that all the time. I am real; it’s just that no one else can see me.”

  “How convenient!” I laughed. “Give me one logical reason for that.” Why am I still talking to it? Her. No, me. I’m talking to myself; it is not real.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. “Beats the hell out of me. I’ve been screaming at every student in that school—new kids included—for ages. Apparently, you won the medium’s lottery. Wait,” she said, stepping forward. “Maybe that’s why. Do you see other ghosts?”

  I backed away from her as though she had some kind of contagious disease. A not-real contagious disease. “No! I don’t see anything. Technically I don’t see you; you’re not real.”

  “Oh,” she said, her mouth drooping. “Well, whatever. You can see me and that’s all that matters. I need your help.”

  “No! No help. No nothing. Not for fake people.”

  She shot me a nasty look and put her hands on her hips. “Fine, I’ll prove it. Get out your computer, now!”

  There is something irrationally terrifying about being ordered around by a hallucination.

  I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and set it on my messy desk. Couldn’t hurt. If nothing else, I could catch up on XKCD while she spouted her nonsense.

  “Go to Google.”

  At least my alter ego knew what Google was.

  “Type in my name.”

  I had gotten to the first of the double ee’s when I stopped. “Wait a second,” I said. “If I Google your name, all that proves is that there is some dead girl out there named Kimberlee Schaffer. You tell me about yourself first and then I’ll Google and see if you’re right.” Oh yes, outwitting my own brain. Sweet.

  But Kimberlee shrugged nonchalantly. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “How’d you die?”

  “Drowned.”

  Drowned? That’s the best my subconscious could come up with? “You drowned? Like, you didn’t know how to swim?”

  “Of course I know how to swim, moron; I live . . . lived on a private beach. The same one I drowned at, actually.” A touch of something resembling real emotion clouded Kimberlee’s eyes for an instant before she ran her fingers through her hair; whatever it was I’d seen was erased by that casual gesture. “I got caught in a riptide,” she said softly. “It happens.”

  “But why—?”

  “Dude, riptide. Move on!” Kimberlee snapped, scowling.

  “Fine. Uh, what color of flowers did you have at your funeral?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Score one for me. “I didn’t go. I was so busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on that I didn’t really start going anywhere until about two weeks after the funeral.”

  “Convenient,” I scoffed.

  “What else do you want?” she said. “I drowned in a riptide, I went to Whitestone, I was seventeen, my dad’s a judge, my mom’s a CFO, I’m an only child. Good enough?”

  “I guess,” I muttered, turning back to the screen and typing the rest of her name.

  “S-c,” Kimberlee corrected from behind me.

  “Get over there!” I said, pointing to the opposite side of the room. “You are not allowed to see this!”

  “Fine!” she said, sulking away.

  I pressed Enter, fully prepared to bask in the proof of my own brilliance.

  But the first page of more than 4,000 results popped up on my screen.

  Teen Dies in Tragic Accident. Local Judge Mourns the Death of His Only Child. Prominent Prep School Suffers Tragic Loss. Teen’s Body Found on Private Beach. Missing Seventeen-Year-Old Confirmed Dead.

  I skimmed the articles, my jaw dropping as the details swirled in front of my face, complete with a number of photographs that were unmistakably Kimberlee. Not the least of which was one of her in her freaking coffin.

  “I—I could have read this last year,” I said, scrambling for an excuse—totally not ready to accept this.

  “Eventually you’re going to have to stop trying to talk yourself out of this and believe me. Besides,” she said, turning to face me now. “Who tries to convince themselves they’re insane instead of accepting the fairly rational explanation of someone being a ghost? Maybe you really are a nut job. Like a hypochondriac, but for craziness.”

  I’m agnosti
c, but that moment was the first time in memory I wished I did believe in a god. Then I would have someone to beg to deliver me from this demented undead. “Whatever,” I mumbled, clicking through website after website, skimming each for mere seconds before scrolling to the next one. It was possible, wasn’t it? That my brain had unconsciously stored the details of something I’d read and “forgotten,” then used that info to spit out a made-up person? Now I was really starting to sound crazy. About being crazy. I was double crazy.

  “Your email,” I said, coming up with one last test. “You have a Yahoo or Gmail account or something?”

  “I did,” Kimberlee said, clearly not following my stream of logic.

  “Okay, tell me your username and password. There’s no way I could know that, so if it works it would prove that you’re not some figment of my imagination.” Cool, calm, logical. I can do this.

  “Not a chance,” Kimberlee said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want you cyberspying on me!”

  “It’s not cyberspying—it’s proving your story.”

  “My email is private. Don’t go there.”

  I hesitated. “Facebook?”

  She snorted. “That’s hardly better.” After a moment of hesitation: “How about my MySpace page? I didn’t use it for, like, years before I died, but it’s still there and definitely mine.”

  I nodded. “That’ll work. What is it?”

  After a few moments’ thought she rattled off her MySpace username and I found the page. Not surprisingly, it was pink and seizure-inducingly sparkly.

  And covered with pictures of a definitely alive Kimberlee from junior high school. She looked a little different but it was definitely her. I squinted at a couple of group shots and recognized Langdon, the guy who had almost squished me to a pulp today. “Hey!” I said, pointing. “That’s Langdon.”

  Kimberlee rolled her eyes. “So?”

  I turned back to the computer and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, “this is definitely Kimberlee Schaffer’s MySpace page. What’s the password? And none of this guessing stuff. You nail it the first try, or I ignore you for the rest of my life.”

  “Fine,” Kimberlee said, leaning forward with a predatory look in her eye, “but I get a part in this deal, too. If the password works you believe me, one hundred percent. No more made-up-person stuff. Deal?”

  I swallowed hard. “Deal.”

  Three

  “UMMM,” I SAID SLOWLY AS I stared at the screen.

  “What?” Kimberlee said, tension spiking her voice about two octaves. “It didn’t work? You typed it wrong, then—do it again!”

  “You have over three thousand new messages.”

  “Oh,” Kimberlee said. Then she straightened casually, as though she hadn’t been on the verge of hysteria an instant ago. “Well, dying makes you popular.”

  I stared at Kimberlee as if seeing her for the first time. All the ghosts in movies were see-through and white and did that glowing thing. And they floated. Kimberlee looked solid and walked right on the ground like anyone else. The lights made her hair shine a little, but she definitely wasn’t glowing. “Can I touch you?” I asked curiously.

  She put her hands on her hips and pushed her chest out. “I admit, I haven’t gotten any action in a while.”

  “Not like that,” I protested, mortified. “I mean in terms of, uh, physics. Can I touch your arm, or will I go right through?”

  Kimberlee studied her arm quizzically. “Everyone else goes right through. Course, none of them can see or hear me either. You can try.” She held out her arm.

  I lifted my hand for a second before wussing out and turning back to my computer. “I don’t want to.”

  “Come on,” she said. “If you don’t, I will.”

  I felt something cold pass through my shoulder and a massive chill shot down my spine. “Okay,” I said when I could talk again. “That was the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me. And after today, that’s really saying something.”

  But when I turned to her, she looked disappointed.

  “What?”

  She gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “I—I hoped you’d be different, that’s all.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. Not that I could help it. “So,” I said, feeling suddenly very awkward. “You’re a ghost, huh?”

  “Nothing gets past you, does it?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you going to help me now, or what?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Her perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed. “Look,” she began hesitantly, “you can see me. And hear me. So you’re the only one who can help me. You have to say yes.”

  I sighed. “What do you need help with?”

  “My unfinished business.”

  “Your what?”

  “In books and movies people become ghosts when they have unfinished business. That must be why I’m still here.”

  “Did someone tell you that? Did you have some, I don’t know, angel, I guess, tell you what you need to do?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I just woke up in the middle of the school and I was dead. I’m guessing on the rest.”

  “What’s your unfinished business?”

  She twisted a ring around on her finger. “I kind of stole some stuff when I was alive and I think I need to return it.”

  “That’s it? No unrequited love? Revenge unrealized?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you want me to return it so you can be on your merry way?”

  “That’s the plan. It’s the only thing I can think of. I had a great life. Pretty much everyone loved me—except the people who wanted to be me—and I had everything I ever wanted.”

  “Which forced you into a life of crime?” I have never understood rich people stealing.

  “Whatever. Will you help me?”

  I laid my arms on the desk and let my head rest against them. “I return a couple a things for you and you leave me alone?” I asked, more to the carpet than her.

  “Yes.”

  “Forever?”

  “I promise.” She laughed. “I’d pinky swear, but, you know.”

  I did know—and I didn’t want to do that again.

  I was kinda starting to miss just being crazy.

  “Jeff?”

  I looked over at her. Her smirk was gone. So was her pout.

  “Please?” she asked, her tone completely genuine.

  I’m such a pushover. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  She squealed and clasped her hands together. “Thank you thank you thank you!” and then in the same breath, “We gotta go to the cave.”

  “The cave?”

  “It’s where the stuff is.”

  “You’re in Santa Monica and you hid stuff in a cave?”

  “It’s on my parents’ private beach. I found it when I was, like, ten. It’s been my secret place ever since.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We can go tomorrow.”

  “Why can’t we go today?”

  I dug around in my backpack and held up a copy of Les Misérables, and not the abridged version. “Because I have a hundred pages of this to read tonight. Not to mention calculus homework and a history outline everyone else has already been working on for a week.” The thought of all the homework I’d had heaped on me today was almost enough to make my ghost problem seem small.

  Almost.

  “Unlike some people, I still have a life,” I muttered.

  Kimberlee’s lips pressed into a straight line and before I could apologize, she spun on her heel and disappeared through my bedroom door.

  When Kimberlee popped up silently beside my locker the next morning, I tried to apologize for my harsh comment. “I was stressed,” I said quietly, hoping no one was close enough to catch me talking to myself. Again. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Whatever,” she said, not meeting my eyes as I slammed my locker shut. “I just want to get this over with.”

  I had almost reached the stairs
that would take me up to Bleekman’s room when a flash of red grabbed my eye. I tuned Kimberlee out and my eyes tracked the redhead.

  Finally, something good about Whitestone.

  Fingers snapped in front of my face. “Hello? Focus!”

  Kimberlee. It was a testament to the sheer hotness of the other girl that I had, for ten seconds, managed to forget Kimberlee entirely.

  Hot Girl was standing less than twenty feet away, digging through her locker with her back to me. I was trying to figure out a nonlame way to approach her when she stopped and turned. I glanced away, afraid she’d been able to sense my eyes burning a hole in her back. Maybe a few inches below her back. After what I hoped was a safe amount of time, I glanced in her direction again. It took me a few seconds to find her.

  Hugging a guy in a letter jacket.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the two of them. It was like a car wreck—you don’t really want to see the guy all mangled inside, but you can’t look away. And it wasn’t some third-string nobody—this guy was majorly ripped and could probably break my neck with two fingers. Maybe one. It took me a second to realize that he wasn’t very tall—but what’s a little height when you’ve got shoulders like steel girders? The redhead leaned against the lockers next to him and smiled.

  I knew that kind of smile. It was a special smile reserved for special people. Like, boyfriend people.

  Damn.

  But really, why wouldn’t she be taken? She was totally gorgeous and—considering she was at Whitestone—almost certainly rich. Girls like that don’t just wander around single.

  “Enjoy your little trip down fantasy lane, loverboy?” Kimberlee was leaning against my locker looking totally bored.

  Oh yeah.

  But I couldn’t help glancing back at the hot girl again.

  “Trust me; leave that one alone,” Kimberlee said, following my gaze. “She was this total slut as a freshman, but she doesn’t really date now. Probably not even into guys anymore.”

  I looked over at Kimberlee with my best duh face and flicked my head in her direction. “Human tractor over there?”

  “Wait, wait,” she said, laughing. “Him? Mikhail?”

  She would think this was funny.

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Mikhail is—” Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes took on this funny look. She sighed melodramatically. “I must be wrong. After all, just because he was dating someone a few months ago doesn’t mean they’re still together. I’m so out of the loop.” She sighed again.