Lost at the Start

8.

I sighed defeatedly.

Who knew being dead could be so challenging?

Well, okay, admittedly, I was much preferring the problems death had presented me with so far as opposed to all the utter crap I'd had to deal with on a day-to-day in life. And by comparison, I'm sure many would argue that my life hadn't been all that bad.

Then again, no matter how bad things suck, it has to be said that things could always be worse.

To my knowledge, there was only one place in existence where, once you were there, you really had hit rock bottom and there was nothing you could do but accept your fate. And that was in the fiery infernos of Hades, Satan's own home.

I could only pray and beg for that not to be where I ended up once my time as a ghost expired.

Hey, I never said I was Saint.

And I was still a little concerned about what I knew my mother must've thought of my life-ending decision...

The thought sent fresh prickles on anxiety coursing through my chest and up into my shoulders, where my stress had enjoyed congealing when I was still a member of the living.

I forced myself to swallow the bubbling fear for my immortal soul. It was too late to worry about that now. The damage—potential or otherwise—had been done. And anyway, I was still biding my time in an undead state.

Who knew? Maybe I'd be like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid. Maybe I'd be granted the opportunity to work to redeem myself, if I played my cards right.

I could only hope...

But for now, I had other matters to attend to.

My eyes swept the room one more time, but nothing new jumped out and said, "Hey! Look! Perfect spot!"

Another sigh escaped me.

Running out of time and unable to think of a better place, I decided to just slip it beneath the pillows on my bed and leave enough sticking out that it would (hopefully) be noticeable without looking fishy or ridiculous.

At least there, maybe she could spot it from the doorway if she still didn't dare into the room right away.

Just as I finished replacing the pillows, the back door slammed.

The foot fall was too heavy to belong to Riley, which meant that regardless of which of our parents had come home, if I didn't want to risk seeing how they were or weren't melting down, that was my cue to either leave or start avoiding them like the plague.

Though why someone who's already dead would need to avoid the plague is beyond me, but that's sorta beside the point...

But where was I supposed to go if I left?

I'd already left Jackson, and he was the only one that knew I was still hanging around the physical world. My room in my house was the only other place—

Even as the thought crossed my mind, I realized that might not be true.

I'd been to Mei's house a couple of times before, and I had thought about checking up on her again sometime...

Would it be wrong of me to invade on her privacy and watch her though?

That didn't seem to matter when you did it to Riley and Sam. And Jackson, even if that wasn't for very long...And should I also mention earlier at the school...?

I groaned internally at my own infuriating logic.

It stung, but it was true...

And if anyone didn't deserve that from me, it was Sam. And considering I'd already broken that inhibition, I didn't have much of an excuse to follow through with Mei, now did I?