It took me a minute to figure out I'd willed myself somewhere else about two seconds after I'd closed my eyes.
Does that mean this conscious-effort thing is a sham, or did I just want to leave that badly and didn't even fully realize it?
More questions. Still no answers.
I opened my eyes to find that...
I was in the yard.
And even if no human could see me, our pet cats clearly could, and they certainly hadn't forgotten me.
Most of them had already started wandering over to me, and a few had already gathered around my feet, looking up at me expectantly.
The urge to cry rapidly fading, I easily squatted down and put both hands to work as more and more felines came to curl around me and tickle my arms with their tails, surrounding myself with a lovely chorus of purring and happy mews.
"Glad to see you guys are handling this well," I joked.
More happy-cat sounds responded to me.
Deep down, I wondered what would happen after I left for good. When even ghost-me wouldn't be around to come out and pet the furry darlings.
Yeah, mom and dad and sometimes Riley did that too, but I always felt like I had a deeper kinship with the cats than any of them. To them they were pets, to me they were babies, children, kids. I'd never wanted actual human rugrats, but I'd always willingly accepted my given role as a cat mother.
And now I was worried about my feline family's future without me.
What mother wouldn't worry about her babies?
I scooped up on of the smaller ones and let her purr into my neck and shoulder, one hand supporting her and the other continuing to jump from cat to cat at my feet.
After so long though, I had to stand back up because my legs were getting sore, and a circle of expectant eyes followed me all the way up. Whiskered faces silently asked why I'd stopped, and I resisted the urge to laugh at them.
The not-quite-teenage kitty still cradled against my collarbone, I walked towards the back stoop and lowered myself onto the step slowly, just in case a curious cat walked behind me so I wouldn't squish the poor thing.
I let the kitty I'd been holding get down and went back to petting dual-handed for a few minutes.
If I could've been born as any animal, I would've picked a cat. Life would've been so much simpler.
Of course, I knew a cat's life would have it's own problems, but at least there wouldn't be quite as much stress or pressure on a day-to-day basis. And hopefully not nearly as much over thinking. If internet memes had any truth in a cat's mind, maybe not much thinking at all.
It occurred to me to check my watch only after my mind started catching up with me, presumably because this was the first chance I'd really had to relax since I "woke up" this morning.
For instance, it hadn't dawned on me until now: Wait. Why was Riley started dinner so so early? Say school, Jackson's house, and the bit I'd been at the house before my sister came home had taken an hour a piece—a huge overestimate by my internal clock—that still wouldn't've made it past 12:00. And seriously, what person starts a dinner-meal that takes two-hours tops at noon? (I should probably mention we as a family had never really done lunch. Ever. Lunch was a school-exclusive meal around our house. Breakfast, Dinner, and then snack on whatever when you get hungry inbetween.)
Also, the sun was hanging just a little too low in the sky for lunchtime, and I could tell by my shadow. If I had the time right, it should've been almost directly under me. Instead, the bright sun was slanted my silhouette on the grass at...I don't know, a 90 degree angle, or something. Point is: My shadow was slanted to one side, not trying to hide under my feet.
So I did check my watch.
2:59.
Um, what?!
How...?
Where had all that time gone?
By my count, if I'd left home at say 8:30 this morning, I knew I hadn't spent more than ten minutes at school, Jackson's really could not have seriously taken more than forty-five, and surely I hadn't been home more than twenty before Riley came in. And that whole affair had to have been half an hour or less.
Or even going with the hefty estimate that everything up until I willed myself outside had taken—and I'll be even more generous this time—four hours, it still should've only been about one in the afternoon.
Somehow, I was short at least an hour, and I was almost certain it was more than that.
I got up and carefully made my way up the steps to go back in the house through the small sea of cats, racking my brain the whole walk on what the heck could explain away the missing time.
The only half-acceptable idea I could come up with was that somehow I'd willed myself not through just space, but also time. But that didn't make any sense, because wouldn't that also have to be a conscious effort? Shouldn't I have to want to move forward in time in order to do so?
Also, that wouldn't make sense because I highly doubted that, even if I could, I would be allowed by physics to travel back in time. And what good was any time-travel if you couldn't go backwards? Even if you couldn't change anything and just fulfilled a pre-existing time loop.
No, I didn't think I'd actually time traveled.
That wasn't really in the Ghost Skill Set handbook, either.
So then what had happened?
I was so lost in my thoughts, I'd already opened the screen door and had the knob half-turned before I remembered that 1.) I didn't need to use doors anymore, and 2.) Should anyone happen upon our back porch, at the moment, the screen would be oddly half-open with no wind blowing, and both sides of the door would make it appear someone was currently trying to get in or out, thanks to the knob.
Fresh panic bloomed in my chest, an all-too familiar lead-balloon feeling of anxiety creeping over my extremities, toes, to finger tips, to the top of my head.
As slowly and quietly as possible, I let the knob turn back into place, and carefully shut the screen door back.
If I was going to parade around invisible and dead, I was going to half to be more careful before I either drew unwanted attention to myself, or scared the living daylights out of someone I cared about. And after I'd already put them through so much, I wasn't exactly eager to do any more mental damage to my family and friends.
Mental damage...
My mind hitched on the words. And at first, I wasn't sure why, other than I felt like I'd forgotten something I should've remembered, regardless of how much I could or couldn't recall from my last day as a member of the living.
Then it hit me.
My eyes widened as one of the last people I wanted to find out about my death popped into my head.
Sam.
The last (and forever to remain an ex, even if I came back to life)boyfriend I'd had before Jackson. The only relationship I'd ever broken off myself. Twice, actually.
God, why did he half to keep coming up in my life? And now also my death.
I remembered too easily how hard he'd fought when I wanted to leave, and doubly how hard he'd tried to stay friends after. But at that point, I'd realized just how much we didn't have in common. Not anymore, at least. And...and...
Honestly, I couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't take him anymore.
Allow me to explain.
Towards the middle and end of Round Two of our relationship, Sam had very quickly become something of a broken record. Life sucked, he hated his family, he supposedly didn't have any friends, nobody would talk to him, school sucked, everything sucked and I JUST WANT TO DIE ALREADY.
Normally, I would've understood. I would've empathized and done my best to comfort him and tell him that death wasn't the answer—despite the bitter irony that now stared me in the face and made up my whole existence—and, I mean, you know, play "the girlfriend" part. But that was the problem.
Even after my affections for him started to wane, I did my best to do that. To say the right things, to make an effort to be there for him. But he wouldn't listen, I couldn't make him, and the next thing I knew, any conversation we ever had turned into me listening to him talk about how sucky everything was and me trying to help but apparently not being enough.
I'd hated to break up with him for the sole fact that I hated to add to the hurt he was already carrying, but after letting it go for so long, I decided I had to cut the cord before age caught up with us, he proposed, and I ended up marrying someone I didn't love out of guilt.
And besides, I'd already led him on enough by hanging around when I didn't like him anymore. We were already half-broken up because I'd tried to shut him out because I couldn't stand to listen to nothing but the same sob story over and over again, when my words to try and calm the storm did no good. It was only a matter of time and a matter of me getting over the fear that he'd do something unthinkable and irreversible if I broke it off.
Yes, like I'd done to myself.
I know, I know. Gigantic hypocrite.
But this is my story, not Sam's.
And let me also mention a few corrections to his story.
He did have friends, and I know, because he'd always have this that or the other story when we weren't alone to tell about this thing he'd done within the last week with his friends; I'd see him talk and joke with friends at school; He even invited a couple of guys (that actually showed up!) to his birthday party, and he'd seemed to have a good time and enjoy their company.
Sam also conveniently forgot to mention, BUT HEY, I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND, SO THAT'S ONE GOOD THING!
Both facts which always made it impossible for me to understand why I was the one everybody looked at when they heard a tip of the suck-iceberg.
I was his girlfriend, not a miracle worker.
You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped, and his determination to only focus on how life sucked and deliberately not-listen to me had to speak more volumes than anything else about how much help he really wanted.
Still, as I stood there on the back porch, cats staring up at me curiously, I couldn't help but try to will myself to him.
I didn't know how well or how badly Sam had been in moving on afterwards, and—of course—he'd actually gotten on a round of antidepressants after I broke with him, his home life improved (or at least so my mom said after snooping around on Facebook), and he seemed to have found some new friends at school.
There was a high chance he was just fine, regardless of whether or not he knew, but the chance that he hadn't gotten over me and wasn't taking the news well was high enough that I was worried enough to bother.
I kind of hated myself for it, because I so wanted to be done with him, but my kindred nature was stronger than my compulsion to stay away.
What can I say? The universe beats niceness into you, and it is a royal pain in the neck to get back out.
However, I noticed very quickly there was a small problem with my instincts to check on someone that at one point I'd cared pretty deeply about.
Willing myself to him wasn't working.
No matter my closed eyes and best efforts to think about him like I had everyone else, I was still firmly—or as firmly as a ghost could be, I guess—planted on my back porch, about a dozen curious feline faces watching me. They were probably wondering what their crazy human was up to now.
No! I thought, fresh panic blooming in my chest.
How else was I supposed to get to Sam?
Driving was out of the question for multiple reasons, namely that I, unlike every other seventeen-year-old on the planet, had never been behind the wheel of anything more complicated than a golf cart in my life, and that had been years ago. Also, I was dead, and probably wouldn't be able to divide my concentration into driving and making sure I wasn't invisible and therefore not at risk of causing mass chaos and putting who-knows-how-many other lives at stake on the road.
And there was also the issue of having a car to drive in the first place, of course. (Though in my current condition, if I didn't have any inhibitions of stealing one—which I most certainly did—it's not like that would've been hard to do.)
The other option would be to will myself to his house, or even walk or bike there, but I wasn't sure where he lived anymore. He'd moved twice since the birthday party I went to his house, and I'd never been to either place after.
Heck, I'd come pretty darn close to not going to the party.
Forget knowing his street address.
And we didn't exactly live in the kind of town you can just bike around until you find the right place.
As lame, humble, and relatively boring as Starstedde was, it was not exactly small, and how rural most of the land was only served to emphasize that.
I checked the time again, mentally crossing my fingers for the roots to grow on the seed of a potential backup plan.
I may have also been acknowledging that I was going to have to keep a close eye on any and all clocks to make sure I didn't lose any more time than I already had. Especially given that I didn't exactly know if my ghostly existence came with an expiration of it's own...
3:02.
Hmm...
Sam and Jackson road the same bus. If I could get there quick enough, I could watch from them and—
Jackson didn't go today, remember?
Crap.
Well...Maybe not all was lost. I could still watch for Sam. I'd just have to hope and pray I could still pick him out of a crowd.
That in mind, I willed myself back to Mr. Monty's room, only because I knew the building it was in wasn't too far off from where the buses loaded up, and I didn't have time to try and will myself to a person or somewhere else on campus and fail.
I didn't even open my eyes until I'd stepped through the nearest wall to get outside, just to make sure I couldn't get distracted by the class he was teaching that was no longer mine.
Once I was outside, I immediately started marching towards the gigantic yellow death traps, hoping I'd be able to walk the distance to them before the final bell rang. Because once that bell rang, all bets were off, as far as the school and the students were concerned.
My idiots peers had done more than enough in my lifetime to show me that in spades. More than I'd ever need. Ever.
About the time I halted, as dead center amongst the two rows of buses as I could gauge from the ground, the bell went off in it's usual vaguely-telephone-ish noise. With it came a slow trickle of students that quickly became an impending sea.
I almost started to panic again—There's too many people. It's been to long. I'll never find him. This was a mistake. What should I do now?—When, blessedly, I managed to snag on Sam.
He was walking beside some guy I wasn't even going to pretend I recognized, talking loudly enough that I could hear from a solid forty feet away over the crowd, even if I couldn't make out the words. Overall, he seemed like he was joking and happy.
If he knew about me, he certainly wasn't showing it.
Somehow, I got the impression that no matter how badly I'd broken his heart, Sam wouldn't be this upbeat if he knew I was dead.
Granted, at least two friends of his that I'd never met—and arguably had never been mentioned before—had died while we were an item, and while he had definitely been distraught, he also hadn't exactly bawled his eyes out, either.
Grief, I was learning, is a matter of perception. At least when it comes to it's weight in the external world.
I made the conscious decision to zone-out enough to not hear most of what Sam was saying. I'd spy on him enough once he was home. I hardly needed to poke around in his social life. Nor did I even want to.
Just another reason I'd broke things off—after the honeymoon effect wore of, I'd realized just how different our senses of humor were, how far apart our interests were, and my rose-tinted glasses were gravely shattered to find out how vastly dissimilar our world views were.
Biding my time, I patiently followed him, relieved when his friend took off across the lot for his bus, and I took a mental note of the number printed on the side as I followed him up the steps of his ride home.
I decided I wasn't going to take my chances with being sat...in...and, after memorizing what seat Sam settled into, walked all the way to the back of the bus and made that my post. From there, I could easily wait and watch for when he got off, without having to be right on top of him, without having to worry about the other people on the bus, and hopefully without having to worry about getting vaulted through a window or windshield by a sudden stop—something crappy school buses are just kind of known for.
It took a bit, but eventually the driver shut the bus doors and shifted the vehicle into drive.
Great. Here we go...
Now all I had to do was wait and watch.