Riley? I thought. She...She was the one who found me? Really? She hadn't been at home much since starting college a year and a half ago. I mean, she still had her room at the house and everything, but...
Somehow I was having a hard time accepting she was the one to find me.
It was like...Like...
Maybe I hadn't thought she'd be the one to find me? Maybe I was planning on someone else?
Or, maybe I had been planning on Riley being the one, but doubting things would work out that way...?
For some reason, that knowledge just didn't sit right with me.
It felt...wrong.
A piece of this puzzle was missing. Maybe.
"They...None of them said where I was...found?" I asked, deciding to plow through the information, get the facts, and then worry about the empty, unaddressed question marks later.
Jack shook his head again. "Everything just says, "Luna Todd of Starstedde, North Carolina, was found de—" He stopped himself short when he realized the word his mouth was forming. After that, he clammed right up and handed me back the phone, now tuned to what I could only assume was an article for me to read, much like the one he had half-quoted.
Sure enough, the finished quote—one of the shortest articles I'd ever seen—just wasn't very telling of anything. Not of anything I didn't already know by now, at least.
"Over the weekend, a teen in Starstedde, North Carolina, known by the name Luna Todd, was found dead by her older sister, Riley Todd. Based on the condition in which she was found, along with a note that has been confirmed to be in the younger Todd's handwriting, authorities suspect Luna Todd may have been a victim of suicide."
Pray tell, I wondered if the news story had been anything more. Knowing my luck, and the fact that mine was not the typical tragic story this sort of thing came from, probably not. My life just wasn't that...I don't know, special? Grandiose? Whatever. Point was: I was an unspectacular case in an unspectacular town, in a state that only found itself in the spotlight when the media couldn't find anywhere else to talk about first. 'Tis the nature of the beast, I suppose.
Still, now...Now I had something of a choice to make.
I stood up, holding Onyx in my arms so she wouldn't take a nasty tumble onto the floor. Cinnamon jumped down and started circling my legs, tail curling around me in a possessive way. Gently, I set Onyx down, and she immediately put her front paws on my leg, like before, and meowed up at me.
Really, I didn't want to, but I couldn't decide here. "I have to go, okay? I'll be back as soon as,"—if I even could come back—"I can."
Jackson looked like I'd punched him in the throat.
For what it was worth, I may as well have. I was leaving, and this time, despite my words, there was a higher chance I wouldn't be coming back. Ever. And the chances of me making a reappearance after my death were low enough the first time.
I know how I'd feel if someone I loved came back to me after they died, only to leave—again—and of their own free will right in front of me. And it wouldn't be good.
Although...
If the point I'd thought up earlier was right—that ghosts (such as myself) exist because of something they have to do before they can move on, I.E. something still binds them to the physical/human realm—could that mean that if I ventured to make a promise, that I'd have to fulfill that promise before I moved on, even if the other reason was resolved?
Just another question I didn't have an answer for, and while I had struck some of those of the list, I'd only succeeded in adding more, and all those inquires floating around my brain were starting to get annoying. So, much like my thoughts on trying to will myself places, I decided I didn't have anything to lose by giving it a shot.
Being dead, as I was starting to find out, involves a lot of repetitive thoughts, and just thinking in general. Apparently.
I reached for one of his hands and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I promise I'll come back, okay?" Even if it's just to say goodbye...One last time...
Jackson still looked upset, but my words seemed to help at least a little. "You promise?"
"I do." I nodded.
He hesitated, but ultimately said, "O-okay."
What came next, I'm not quite sure who initiated, but somehow our mouths met in a kiss. Sadly, our first. And, very possibly, our last.
When it was over, I lingered just long enough to look him in those big brown and eyes, and smile.
He smiled back.
Moments later, I was back in my own room.
Luckily, it seemed I was starting to get the hang of this "willing" thing. Or maybe it was just easier because it was my room. I didn't know, and it didn't really matter.
Now then, I thought, trying desperately to suppress how much I was internally reeling—in the best possibly way—over how I'd left Jackson. I need to—
I stopped when I realized how that sentence ended.
Find Riley.
The only problem I had with that was, knowing my luck and the current state of everything I'd seen so far, she'd probably be...somewhere...with our parents. And, despite the newfound-importance I had to see Riley, I still had no desire once-so-ever to find out how mom and dad were reacting to my departure.
Truthfully, I only wanted to see Riley in hopes I'd get some more answers.
And hopefully no more questions.
Sadly, the more I thought about it, the more I came to understand that there probably wasn't going to be a given time when I'd know I could see Riley, alone, (or at least without our parents) and actually awake. (I figured they'd leave her alone while she was sleeping, unless she was taking this way harder than I ever would've imagined.)
It was looking like, regardless of how badly I didn't want to see how exactly dear ol' mom and pop were acting in my absence, I was going to have to risk it if I really wanted to get a look at Riley's condition.
I sighed when I realized the other problem: Where would they even be?
Don't get me wrong, I had enough sense to know that the death of a family member—sudden, unexpected, and young, or otherwise—would equate to a funeral that needed planning, possibly a memorial, maybe a visitation to schedule, and other aspects I didn't have a clue about since I'd never been directly involved in such a process. I'd gone to funerals, sure. Even read a few books that involved them. But I wasn't about to pretend I knew every in-and-out of the the whole shebang.
Ignoring my ability to find Riley by willing myself to her, the odds were that I'd only get to really see how she was handling my being gone, especially since she'd been the one to find me, if she actually was completely alone. And if I willed myself to her, there was no telling where she and our parents would be or what they were doing. And if it was the wrong place, I wouldn't see much of anything because I didn't doubt for a second Riley would hide as much as she could of how she was feeling.
Somehow, showing of to strangers her internal pain didn't strike me as something Riley would want to participate in.
And, if any of my guesses about how mom might be reacting were right, and if dad was taking it badly, Riley would probably have her hands full trying to keep both of them from making a God-Awful scene in public. If they weren't stable, there wouldn't be any room for her to be.
Now what? I thought. I'd hit a brick wall.
Also, I wasn't exactly thrilled at how many "if"s my train of thought had been carrying. If this! If that! If everything and the kitchen sink...!
There had to be something else. Didn't there?
Maybe there's something I'm forgetting about...Which was completely possible, since I knew that I was definitely still missing most of my last day alive. Who knew what else my new state had made me forget?
After standing in the middle of my room for I don't know how long, trying desperately to remember something that would help me figure out my next move, I had finally half-caved on the inside and almost decided to just take my chances and follow my family until I was satisfied with what I saw of my sister.
That is, until I heard the back door slam and the unmistakeable sound of platform shoes on linoleum and an unreasonable number of thin metal arm bangles tinkling into one another.
Riley.
And, though I had no idea if anyone she might be with was just being slow about getting in the house, it sounded like she was alone.
Perhaps I wouldn't have to think myself back to death after all.
I approached my still-closed bedroom door and hand my hand on the knob when I remembered: Oh, wait. I'm supposed to be dead,—How on Earth had I forgotten that?—and if I open this, no matter how well she's taking my death—Or how badly for that matter—it will freak her out. I mean really, that was the biggest cliche in every horror movie ever made: Doors and windows and the like randomly start opening and shutting with no explanation.
Even without regret for my choice, I didn't want to give Riley any harder of a time than she was already having. What kind of sister—albeit, a dead one—would I be if I did that?
Yeah, kill yourself, then scare the living daylights out the one family member you want to see. Sister of the Year-worthy. Totally.
I rolled my eyes at my own mental sarcasm and dropped my hand. I'd just walk through it like I had to get to Mei and Alistair. Who, I was starting to think, I might want to check up on one more time before I disappeared for good.
Stepping through into the kitchen/dining room area, I watched Riley set the same black rucksack she'd been using as long as I could remember on the table, ditch about half of her wind-chime-sounding bracelets and shoes, and then she started bustling around the kitchen. It seemed like she was looking for something, but then I noticed she was pulling out various pieces of cutlery.
Curious. Was she going to cook?
Normally, I wouldn't've been surprised. I'd seen Riley make herself a sandwich or something else to much on at the house hundreds of times, but the pieces and number of cutlery items she was pulling out hinted she wasn't just preparing food for herself this time.
My suspicions were confirmed when she dug a bag of uncooked chicken out of one of about five plastic bags on the counter I hadn't noticed before. Then she proceeded to the fridge, completely unaware of how close she was to me, and pulled a few veggies out of the bottom drawer.
For a few minutes, all I did was stand with my arms folded and watch her. She was maneuvering around in a manner I'd never seen before. It was like she couldn't let herself be still, even for a moment. Defrosting the chicken and then preparing a pan of spices and seasoning to roll it in for when it was finished, mixing up her own special touches on two jars of Alfredo sauce, and then washing and prepping the vegetables almost aggressively.
But when she went to grab a knife from the block to go at some veggies on a cutting board that had seen better days, Riley's apparent resolve shattered.
Her hand stopped just inches short of wrapping around the blade's hilt. Her back was to me, but I highly suspected a grim realization—or perhaps a dark inner conclusion—was clear on her face. Especially in the eyes.
Slowly, Riley drew her hand back, and almost squished a bell pepper with her elbow as both hands came up to her face and she cradled her head.
As she turned around and slid down to the floor with her back resting against a row of cabinets, I walked over so the kitchen island wouldn't block my view.
For some reason, I felt like I shouldn't let her see me. It didn't feel right. It was one of those things where a voice in my head was practically shouting, I don't care how upset she is, you can't. Don't do it—It's a bad idea. And since not listening to that voice had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, as proven by the almost-seventeen years of life I'd had with it, I shoved my hands under my upper arms to help resist the urge to reach out and touch my sister.
It didn't take me long to figure out why the knife would've done this to her. She found me, and was probably the first person to read that note. For all Riley knew, one of the knives in the block had gotten a little too friendly in my arm, as was the case with some incidents of depressed teens. Or even just depressed people in general. For all she knew, my lack of physical evidence on my skin just meant I was good at hiding it.
I could practically feel her survivor's guilt.
She hadn't seen; she couldn't save me.
While I was standing there trying to figure out what to do, Riley got up on shaky legs, sniffling and trying to dry her eyes without smearing her makeup, and walked towards...My room?
Why...?
Actually, she brushed past me in such a hurry that, had I not seen to move out of the way and been corporeal, she would've knocked me down by ramming into my shoulder.
She opened the door and stepped inside, but didn't dare past the threshold. Something was holding her back, and that would probably explain why nothing in there had been touched. Yet. In both her and our parents, that feeling was almost certain to pass eventually. It was only a matter of how long.
"Oh Luna..."
I knitted my brows in confusion. How does she know I'm here...?
"I keep dreaming you're still here..." Oh. She doesn't. She just...Wants to talk, evidently. Well, that made more sense.
"A ghost by my side, crystal clear—"
On second thought, maybe I should have been worried about exactly how good I was at controlling how "there" I was...
"—like nothing happened. But then...But then I wake up, and you're gone again, but into the cruel shadows that've taken you."
...Or not. Confusing wording. Maybe I hadn't been the only one in the family with a flair for eloquently-worded fiction...
Riley audibly choked back a sob. "My little sister that meant so much to me...And I can't stop dreaming you're still here..."
The tears fell freely from her eyes, but she oddly didn't make much noise. She didn't start out right bawling or screaming, she didn't bang anything against a wall, she just cried, plain and simple. A few sniffles, and that was about it.
Standing close enough I would've touched her if I reach out a hand, I frowned at her. "I'm so sorry Riley..." I whispered without thinking.
But when my sister didn't react, I remembered I could only be heard if I wanted to, and it (apparently) had to be a conscious effort.
Still, I could've sworn that was the moment she started to regain her composure.
"I...Oh who am I kidding?" Riley wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, a black streak appearing to match the giant smudges on her face. "You probably can't hear me. I'm standing here talking to nothing." Except arguably the walls. She sniffled, but didn't leave. She stayed where she was and just looked around the room like she'd never seen it before. "I wish..." She sighed and took an overly long blink. "I wish we'd known what you were thinking...What was going on...Even if we couldn't have saved you, maybe it wouldn't have ended like this..."
I knit my brows in confusion again. That sounded like something I would say, even more so than what she'd said earlier. My favorite book series, Guardian Makers, had presented an in-universe ideology that just as everyone has a birthday, everyone has a death date, and only extraneous, extremely rare circumstances can change it. Meaning, regardless of the circumstances in which you met your demise, you were still going to meet it, one way or another.
While I wouldn't say I believed in that system 100%, I wouldn't say I believed it to just be fiction, either.
I mean, for all I knew, the cause of death could also be predetermined, or decided two seconds prior. I wasn't a deity, and I certainly wasn't going to pretend I was to answer questions I probably didn't want (or need, for that matter) answered anyway.
Still, to my knowledge, Riley had never taken me up on my offer to let her read Guardian Makers, so...Was she just wording things confusingly again? Had she come to that kind of conclusion on her own? What?
What would lead her to say something like that?
Was there a chance she just meant maybe they couldn't've saved me from killing myself? No...If that was the case, why things not have ended like this?
My thoughts started going around and around in circles over that one sentence so fast, my head started to hurt. I needed to stop thinking about it before I missed something important, because Riley was still talking.
"...A world so proud and vain, only to be blind when something's wrong when it needs to notice the most..."
What, had she read the diary I never kept?
Why was she suddenly sounding so much like how I thought?
Surely this wasn't a normal part of death. Or grief. This had to be something else, but what?
Even more questions I didn't have answers for. Great.
And I still hadn't gotten very far answering the ones I'd already had...
Slowly, hesitantly, Riley took two forceful steps forward. Then another. And another, and then she was in front of my knick-knack shelf.
Gingerly, Riley brushed her fingertips over the front sides of the little plastic boxes where I kept a total of four butterfly carcasses I'd found in relatively nice condition in the yard over the years.
To me, they were beautiful, and the poor things deserved better than to be blown away and ripped apart by the wind. They were already dead, so who said I couldn't give them a little more peaceful of resting place inside? At least that way, the could continue to be admired and would be protected from the elements.
In my eyes, keeping them and displaying them like I had was a way to give them a little bit of life after death.
"Is that why you liked these so much?" Riley whispered so softly, I almost didn't hear her, and we couldn't have been further than three feet from each other.
What can I say? Once you put all my stuff in there, my room wasn't left with much floor space otherwise.
For the life (death?) of me, I couldn't understand what she was getting at.
As much as I'd thought I didn't understand Riley when I was alive, I doubly couldn't figure out her out now.
Before she could say anything else, the house phone rang, and I could feel myself bristle at the noise. I'd hated having to answer the phone when I was alive, and I hadn't been awake-but-still-dead long enough to kick those kinds of habits.
Although now, I hated the ringing because it was keeping me from continuing what I was starting to think of as my own private investigation.
Riley sniffled one more time, sighed, and turned around to get the phone off the hook on my nightstand.
"Hello?" Any sign in her voice of her tears dissipated surprisingly well. "Hey, mom...That's okay, I picked some stuff up and started some Alfredo...Chicken...Don't mention it."
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. We all knew mom wouldn't want to cook when she had to work and I'd just died. And, if I knew her at all, she probably wouldn't even want to go out of her way to pick something up, either. Riley cooking—because dad could really only cook stuff he alone liked to eat—was just easier.
Actually, come to think of it, where is dad?
My eyebrows hadn't budged from their confused position. I actually had forgotten mom probably still had to work until now, and if that's where she was, dad definitely wasn't there with her. And Riley was obviously alone...So where in the world had he gone off to?
If it was Tuesday, I would assume errands, but it wasn't, so...?
I shook my head and tuned back into mom and Riley's conversation. All the questions I had bouncing around my brain, that one could wait, and might actually answer itself if I was patient enough.
"You want me to what?" Riley walked out of my room, and I followed. She didn't sound overly shocked or offended, but she did sound very confused. "Mom, I can't. It hasn't even been—I mean, she's not even buried yet. Isn't that disrespectful?"
My ears twitched and I bubbled with apprehension. That did not sound like something I'd approve of. Not that that had ever stopped mom before, but still.
As she cradled the phone in the crook of her neck, Riley went back to the raw veggies and now, apparently, had enough of a distraction to not think twice when she plucked the knife she almost had earlier and went to chopping. "Mom, I'm not going through her computer or rooting through her stuff. It's too soon..." Riley sighed after pausing to listen to the half of the conversation I couldn't hear. "You and I both know what was in that note was what she wanted us to know. If she wanted us to know more, she would've told us."
Hearing Riley say that honestly kind of surprised me. She'd always been the more politically minded family member, and wasn't quick to give in to a statement at face value until she'd done her own research on the subject.
In this case, shouldn't that have meant she'd want to go through my stuff and see if there was anything to further explain my choice? Normally, wouldn't she be distrustful that my little message wasn't the full story, and there was more that needed to be heard?
"I said no, mom."
I frowned while Riley dumped chopped veggie bits into a bowl with a hefty amount of spices and seasonings, then mixed it all with a hand she rinsed and then towel-dried off, now holding the phone with the other. "You're not going to either," She spat at the window over the sink. "No, you aren't. Not yet. At least wait until she's buried..."
Somehow, I got the impression this conversation wasn't going to be over anytime soon, so I settled into the chair at the island that didn't have counter overhang in front of it, as quietly and inconspicuously as I could. I held my breath until I was sure Riley hadn't noticed, and propped my elbows on the counter while I observed.
"You and I both know you can't. You need me or her just to log into Facebook." Which was true. Mom was hilariously inadequate at tech stuff. As unlikely as it seemed, dad was actually much better at it than she was. I mean, compared to me and Riley, that wasn't saying much, but still.
Mom cared to much about the why as opposed to the how. And forget about her getting anything learned through intuition alone.
Hmm...Maybe that was her problem now, actually.
Our mother raised her voice enough I could hear the sound, but I still couldn't make out the words.
Riley smiled shallowly. "That's better. I'm surprised at you for even asking, though." Asking to go through my things, I guessed. "I know it's hard to swallow mom, but there's no changing it. We just have to learn to live with what happened. You know that."
That was my sister. The calm, level-headed, future first female president. Her dream since she was five, and honestly pretty well-suited for her.
Riley wasn't and never had been overly popular, but she had a certain charisma she was good at channeling, and her debate skills were some of the best I'd ever seen. She wasn't attractive in the way the girls she'd grown up with were—Riley managed to be too cute for her age and also eccentrically sophisticated in a way most twenty-two-year-olds usually wouldn't dream of being at the same time, and it worked for her.
Also, she hadn't been valedictorian, but her grades never skimmed below a B, and it was just kind of hard to argue that she wasn't intelligent if you knew her at all.
Despite what my position as the younger sibling might entail, I wouldn't say I envied or wanted to be Riley—far from it. But I did admire her overall character. And besides, she was my sister. I'd been stuck with her my whole life.
They say you don't have to like your family, but you do have to love them. For me, whether or not I liked Riley was never really an option. I didn't have any excuse not to like her.
I'd said it more than once while I was alive, and something told me even in death I wasn't done saying it—Riley was my sanity. The rest of our family may have very easily driven me up the wall, but even our five-year age gap hadn't been enough to turn me and Riley into your typical rivalling siblings.
"I'll check."
Tearing me from my thoughts, Riley abandoned the hand-mixture, wiped her hand on the towel mom kept hung over the oven door's handle, and walked off towards mom's room at the back of the house.
I was tempted to get up and follow her, but even as I slowly stood up to do so, something kept me glued to my spot.
That's why, I though inadvertently. With Riley not really being home anymore, with your sanity not being around anymore, you had no other choice...
A small epiphany, of sorts.
Admittedly, that was the closest I was ever going to get to blaming Riley, and already I had a dozen different ways to correct myself and backpedal over that thought.
Yes, Riley had been more absent than present at home lately, but she wasn't doing so out of malice. She was just trying to do what seemed right; go to school, get a job, move out. And that was perfectly acceptable and normal to do at her age. Who was I to try and stop her?
Moreover, even with Riley gone, if she really had been all of my sanity, surely I would've ended up in the nearest Mental Health Ward before I could strike myself down.
And the most important thing—I hadn't let her or anyone else in. I'd kept even those closest to me at a distant with how bad things were in my own head. I didn't want to be a bother, or a burden, or waste anymore time—my own, or someone else's—if it was all going to be for naught. It was just easier to put on a brave face and pretend everything was okay. Society turned away from anything less than pretty on the emotional spectrum, and I'd already been shunned into the ugly shadows so much already...
My eyes watered and I only realized I'd been gripping the counter when I felt the edge start to dig into my skin a little too much.
I looked down to see my knuckles were even paler than usual from my grip, and released the plaster before I either sprained a muscle or somehow otherwise injured myself.
Before any tears could fall, I sniffled and did my best to swallow the pre-crying ache in my throat.
Luckily—or sadly—I'd managed to get pretty good at that before I died.