My fist hesitates inches away from the stained wood of Sarah's door. To knock, or not to knock? That is certainly the question.
"You're being pathetic," I whisper to myself. But sometimes, being pathetic is easier. Especially when it comes to an angry, vengeful spirit who would sooner murder me in my sleep than accept my olive branch.
But I remember what Death said about all of the spirits here when they were still having lunch in the kitchen, how they never knew real kindness when they were alive. Can I blame Sarah for being prickly? I try to put myself in her shoes. If someone had unexpectedly burst into my home, into my life, I wouldn't be very happy about it either.
Before I can truly lose my nerve, I rap against Sarah's door. Immediately I cringe, imagining what she might say when she opens it to see me on the other side. But she doesn't open the door. Instead, I hear her call out, "It's unlocked."
Sarah's bedroom is still as pink and frilly as it was the first night I stayed here, which makes her dark scowl all the more out of place. She stands up from the small desk chair in the corner, folding her arms across her chest. Behind her on the desk there is a fountain pen and an open book; perhaps a diary. "What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be cozying up to Death."
"I won't keep you long." I take a deep breath and ignore her barbed comment. The smile I force onto my face crumbles at the edges like old paint. "I wanted to let you know that I forgive you."
Sarah's dark brows nearly disappear into her violet hair. "You forgive me?"
"Yes, for haunting me last night." I nod graciously. "I won't hold it against you."
"I don't believe this."
"I understand that I've invaded your space without warning, but you don't have to worry about me. I'll stay out of your way as much as possible while I'm renovating the mansion, and then I'll be gone. You don't have to worry about me getting in between you and Death, okay?"
Sarah blinked once. Twice. "What do you mean 'getting between me and Death?'"
"Well..." Now it's my turn to be uncomfortable. "You have a...thing...with him, don't you? I mean, it's none of my business, but I just want you to know that I'm not trying to get in the middle of that."
I feel like the biggest fool in the world as Sarah doubles over with a wheezing laugh, slapping her palms on her thighs. Her laughter is the cruel, mocking kind. I've heard it all my life.
"What?" I demand, my patience waning.
"God, you're a real idiot, aren't you? Of course I'm not dating Death. I'm fucking gay." She gestures to her nose ring, then to her close-cropped hair, as if that should have set my gaydar on high alert.
Oh God. I really am an idiot.
"I-I'm sorry, I just..." I huff, shame turning my face beet-red. For the first time, I wish that I was dead so that I could disappear through the floor. "I don't understand why you hate me so much, then. I haven't done anything to you, and you've been nothing but an asshole."
Sarah just rolls her eyes and turns back to her desk. "If you know what's good for you, leave me alone."
"No." I stand my ground even though the warning in her eyes when she turns around sends goosebumps across my arms. "I want to understand. I...I want to help you, if I can."
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" One moment Sarah is across the room, and the next she's inches from my face, her mouth contorted into a gaping maw filled with razor-sharp teeth, her spit flying onto my cheeks. I stumble backwards with a shout, bumping into the dresser and knocking over a few ancient decorations and glass bottles filled with dried flowers. Something sharp stabs into my arm, drawing blood. Sarah snarls, "How dare you condescend to me! I don't need your help, and I don't need your fucking understanding! You could never understand! LEAVE. ME. ALONE."
I shrivel under her twisted, monstrous form, unable to speak through my fear. There's fury in those eyes, but sadness as well. Pain. Loneliness. Desperation.
I can't leave her room fast enough.
***
I press my pillow over my face, trying to block out the sound of Sarah's ghastly moans and the sight of her gory face peering through the darkness, but nothing works. Even in the quiet moments between her efforts at terrorizing me, I'm kept awake by the sound of my own pounding heart.
At some point in the middle of the night, I just sit up and cry, overcome by utter exhaustion and frustration. I swear that I hear Sarah laughing somewhere in the walls, in my bed, in my mind: it's hard to tell. But every time that I venture out of my room to find Death, to beg him to make her stop, I turn around and go right back inside. Call it madness or stubbornness, but I can't bear the thought of caving to Sarah's hateful attempts at driving me out of Death's home. I have to prove to her – to myself, to everyone – that I don't run from every single problem that crops up in my life.
Maybe most of them, but not all of them.
Sarah's reign of terror finally seems to end when the sun peeks through the curtains and paints my room with a sweet golden light, and I stumble down to the kitchen, hoping for quiet and a cup of something highly caffeinated.
Instead, I'm met by chaos.
"This is highly disorganized," Paul drawls, his face still buried in a newspaper as he trudges into the kitchen.
"Where are the balloons?" Lisa screeches, running around the foyer like a little barefoot ant. When she sees me descending the stairs, her face lights up. "Cara! We need your help!"
That's the last thing I want to hear when I've been kept awake all night and there's no sign of coffee. But I'm not a selfish asshole like Sarah; I'm a good person. So I force a semi-pleasant expression on my face and crouch to Lisa's level.
"What's going on?"
"Shh! Come with me." Lisa lowers her voice like she's telling the biggest secret in the world and motions me towards the kitchen. "It's supposed to be a surprise. Death is bringing him down any minute."
"What? Who?"
But Lisa doesn't answer my question. It's totally forgotten, anyhow, as I behold the mountain of books that fills the space that used to be a working kitchen. There are books on the table, books in the sink, piled on the counters – even in the freaking cabinets. All of the chairs have been shoved to a far corner, and Paul sits calmly in one of them, reading his paper with a casually crossed leg.
"What the hell?" I gasp, rubbing my eyes. It's way too early for whatever this is. Lisa shoves a bag of deflated, multi-colored balloons into my hands and says, "Now blow."
"What?"
She rolls her eyes in an expression that seems way too exaggerated for someone whose head barely reaches my waist. "Blow up the balloons. None of us can do it. Hurry!"
Because I'm the only one that has breath. Right. Hoping to avoid Lisa's wrath, I fall silent and start to blow up as many balloons as I can, no questions asked. I'm not the greatest at tying them, but soon I begin to fall into a rhythm and the floor slowly starts to fill up with rainbow-colored balloons. Lisa urges me to go faster, so I do, starting to grow lightheaded.
Right when the floor starts to warp and shift in my vision, Sarah drifts through the closed kitchen door. I feel my chest start to burn, and I do everything in my power not to acknowledge her existence. She makes it pretty easy, silently drifting over to one of the chairs that was pushed away from the overcrowded table. As much as I want to confront her for making my last two nights miserable, I just don't have the energy. Though, as much as I try, I can't forget the razor-sharp teeth crowding her mouth or the bottomless hopelessness in her phantom eyes.
Before I can change my mind about confronting her, Death comes barreling into the kitchen. For the first time, he's not wearing a novelty t-shirt, and the effort is not wasted on me. The sleeves of his pressed shirt are rolled up along his bulging forearms, the top buttons undone to reveal the tantalizing crest of his chest, and the longer strands of his midnight-dark hair fall over his forehead like tendrils of the night sky. His dark pants only help to showcase the strength of his calves and thighs.
Maybe I'm super lonely and single and confused, but damn. If the form Death takes really depends entirely on my own mind, I silently pat myself on the back.
"He's coming!" Death hisses, trying to keep his voice down, and the rest of the spirits explode into motion. Even Sarah joins the others as they duck behind the teetering piles of dust-covered tomes. Still utterly confused, I join Death behind his book stack, inevitably peering at the cracked spine that's nearly pressed against my face. It reads Claiming Allison: An Erotic Fantasy. My face burns. Sarah smirks at me from her hiding place as if sensing my discomfort and glances suggestively towards Death's muscled arm, which is suddenly way too close for comfort.
He's all yours, she mouths, raising her eyebrows, which does nothing to calm my fluttering stomach.
"Who's coming?" I ask Death, my voice wobbling. Get it together. "Are we safe?"
Death chuckles deep. "Of course we are. This is a surprise party for–"
Suddenly, the door opens ever-so-slowly, revealing Louis's ancient, hunched form. His mouth falls open a little at the sight of the books, and then Death launches up to his feet beside me and screams "HAPPY DEATH DAY!"
The others jump out from their hiding places, screaming the same and congratulating their fellow resident, and I remain crouched on the floor. My breath becomes tight. Death Day. They are celebrating the day that Louis died.
"My word!" Louis holds a wrinkled hand to his chest, his mouth falling open wider as he discovers more and more book stacks. "I don't know what to say!"
"We all knew there was only one thing you really wanted." Death grins and pats Louis on the back, nearly causing the old man to stumble over. It's then that I remember what Death told me about the end of Louis's life, and his unfinished business: to read every book in the world. Suddenly, everything around me makes sense. The party, the insane amount of books ... Little by little, Death is trying to make his residents' grandest wishes come true. He's trying to move them to the other side, to the mysterious garden that only he can enter.
Finally, I stand from my hiding spot and smile sheepishly at the old man. "Happy Death Day, Louis." He grins back at me and dips his chin in acknowledgement, his eyes shining at the sight before him.
Even so, the words taste like acid in my mouth. There is nothing happy about death. At least, that's what I always thought. Now, I have no idea what to believe.
"Where's the cake?" Lisa asks.
My ears prick up. Suddenly, Death Day parties don't seem so morbid anymore.
***
If I felt sleepy before, now I'm positively delirious. I suppose I've learned the hard way that eating your weight in cake will do that to a person.
The spirits, with their mysterious anatomies, seem totally unaffected as they lounge on the couches and settees in the foyer. I try not to be jealous of them.
Death sighs beside me as he reclines on the couch, his eyes scanning over his residents in a contented sweep: Sarah boredly running her fingers over the crushed velvet that she sits upon, Paul scratching furious notes on a legal pad about the chemical composition of chewing gum, Lisa bouncing one of the balloons in her hands so it doesn't hit the floor. Louis went upstairs a long time ago, laboriously carrying every single book up to his library as if they were trophies.
"You made him really happy," I tell Death, remembering the twinkle in the old man's eyes.
He shrugs, his gaze sliding over to me. "I do what I can."
"How did Death Day parties start? Does everyone get them in the afterlife?"
Did my mother get one? I wonder. But no: she never would have ended up here, at a place for souls who were lost and angry. She was neither of those things. She was brave.
She was nothing like me.
"No, it's just something I started doing here. Like I said, some of my residents stick around for a while, Louis included. It's always hard for them when their Death Day comes around each year, so I wanted to make it special. Distract them from less happy memories."
"That's...Wow." My heart melts at the tender way he gazes at each of the spirits, and I think of how I've always seen Death portrayed in the regular world. A monster, a cloaked demon, a cold, indifferent creature that rips you away from everything you've ever loved without remorse. How did we get it so wrong?
"What are you thinking about?" Death's glacial gaze is positively boring into me, and I'm not sure I'm strong enough to handle it, to handle the words that I really want to say to him. The real thing I've been wanting to ask.
So instead, I say, "Where the hell did you get all of those books? And why is Louis reading porn?"
Death tilts his head back and laughs, and the other spirits raise their heads at the sound. Sarah's gaze bores into me and she lifts her eyebrows suggestively. I do my best to ignore her as Death says, "That was all thanks to Mem, believe it or not. Since we can't leave the house, she brings a few books every week with our groceries: whatever she can find in discount racks or library sales." He tilts his head, his lips curling into a dangerous grin. "And yes, every book in the world does include erotic fiction."
I feel like we shouldn't be having this conversation in front of the others, especially when he looks positively erotic, reclined on the couch like the model I originally thought him to be. So I clear my throat and shrug. "I don't know. I feel like, if Louis wanted to read every book – to really attempt it, at least – you should get him an e-reader."
Death and all of the other spirits look at me like I'm speaking a made-up language. All except Sarah, who claps her hands and shouts, "That's what I've been TRYING to tell them!"
"An e-reader?" Death asks, obviously confused.
Of course he wouldn't know what that is. I fight against the urge to roll my eyes, adding it to the long list of human concepts that I should explain to him in depth at a later time. "It's a device that connects to wi-fi. You can access as many books as you'd like, all from the comfort of your home."
Death scratches his neck. "Wi-fi?"
"Don't even attempt it," Sarah interrupts, speaking directly to me. "Trying to explain the internet to immortal beings is about as useful as wearing sunscreen in Alaska. Trust me. I've tried a million times."
I bite my lip to keep a laugh – an actual laugh – from tumbling out. Since when do I laugh at Sarah's jokes? She dips her eyes, the ghost of a smile falling over her lips as Paul interrupts to explain the wonders of dial-up.
But later, when the morning sun is high and everyone trudges off towards their rooms to start the day, Sarah passes me near the bottom of the stairs and whispers, "If you convince Death to get wi-fi, I'll leave you alone. Deal?"
I immediately text Mem and ask her to drive me to Gary's Fix-It Spot.