Back in my room—which was beginning to feel oddly like a pit stop and I was it's race car—I arranged myself on the arm of my favorite chair to calculate my next move.
Really, short of Riley finding the letter and my overall goal of figuring out why I wasn't resting as peacefully as the dead should (which is in, very), I'd checked off pretty much everything else on my unofficial To-Do List.
I'd seen Jackson twice, I'd see Riley, checked on Mei—and by extension, Alistair—twice, I'd see Mr. Monty at least once, and I'd even bothered to see how Sam was holding up. (See: Not Very.)
Therefore, until Riley came and found my planted message, I was kind of out of stuff to do.
I moved to my bed once the chair arm started to flatten my already bony hindquarters, and racked my brain for something I could do that would've involve something in my room that I would've done while I was alive and would now put me in danger of scaring the crap out of my family, should they happen to walk into the room. Preferably something distracting and relevant to my current situation.
My "situation" being that I was dead, of course.
Actually, that's not a bad idea, I thought.
Stretching vehemently because—even in death, apparently—I was too lazy to get up, I rustled in my desk until I came up with one of hundreds of smallish notebooks I had everywhere, then plucked a pen from the cup overflowing with them.
I flipped onto my stomach and starting writing.
I'd decided that if I was going to be in this ghostly state, I should probably document what I'd learned about my new existence and skill set, and take notes from here on out, so that I'd have the information if I needed it later. Or if I needed that much help remembering all of what I had to work with.
So what do I know about my current state, then?
Well, I knew that I was definitely still dead, because I was no longer readily visible to other pe—
Wait...
If I couldn't be seen by anyone else in my natural state except for myself—because I could definitely see my own extremities when they wandered in my line of sight—would I have a reflection if I looked in a mirror? Or, so long as I was incorporeal and therefore not really "there," would only empty glass reflecting the room around me meet my gaze?
I figured as long as I was incorporeal, even if I so much as reached out and touched a mirror, my reflection would be unseen, at least by them. Otherwise, this whole ghost thing was kind of pointless. Or just needed a serious redesign.
Wait again. Mirrors...
The things had been connected to the paranormal countless times in human history. Some believed they could capture the soul, some even went so far as to say they were potential doors to an actual other world. More than once, people claimed to see things in old mirrors or old houses. Or old mirrors in old houses. Sometimes stories—all fiction to my knowledge—surfaced about things, spirits (!!!) being trapped inside mirrors...
What did all that mean for me now?
...Was it actually dangerous for me to go near mirrors, now that I was a ghost? And as far as I knew, the equivalent of a literal walking soul?
N-no...It couldn't be...
Could it?
If the walking dead, such as myself, couldn't go near a looking-glass, wouldn't that be the kind of thing you knew about? Like when you woke up knowing you were dead?
Probably not, considering I'd had to make a very good guess about the other abilities I'd managed to figure out.
Still though...No warning about such a potential threat seemed pretty unfair to me. Especially if you could get trapped with no hope of getting back out...
Maybe that was the trick. Maybe there was a way out, and therefore no warning to be given? Or maybe there was actually a hefty trick to getting in, and getting stuck in a mirror was a rare enough occurrence it didn't seem harmful enough to need a warning?
Maybe my sudden and significant doubt about my safety around mirrors was the warning? And I wasn't smart enough—or hadn't been dead long enough—to realize that?
I blinked and sighed in frustration for the billionth time today.
More questions.
Without Answers.
I half growled, half groaned at the prospect of how not-getting-anywhere I was and rolled onto my back, away from the notebook I'd only gotten a few words written in.
Surely there had to be a better way to go about this. There had to be some way I could ask all these stupid questions and get some answers that wouldn't just breed more inquiries.
Unfortunately, the longer I laid there, the better I came to understand that even if there was, I certainly wasn't going to piece it together. Not on my own, anyway. Look how long I'd already been dead without stumbling into a solution. If there was a better way, I felt like I would've done something to figure it out, or even just bump into by accident.
No, it was looking like I was on my own for asking questions and getting answers. In spite of how overwhelmingly frustrating of a task that was becoming the longer I was dead.
Ugh. If I could just talk to someone...Besides Jackson. Only because I knew if I brought it up to him, his typical delusions of grandeur would probably make him bring out something as absurd as another Ouija board, and I was not about to go through that again.
Though the fact that that hadn't done me any harm did make the gears in my head start turning again...
If something that proved as dangerous to the living as those cardboard-boxed invitations for trouble did hadn't harmed me in my spiritual form, could I also take that to mean that something as harmless to people that still needed to breathe—as I'd slowly learned I actually didn't need to, but rather performed as a weird kind of leftover reflex—wouldn't mean me any harm, either?
Or was that the irony? That a thing that was dangerous to them was innocent to me and benign to them was a huge risk for me?
I reached up for my head as a dull pain from thinking in circles too much settled in behind my eyes.
On second thought, maybe I needed a distraction. Not answers.
At least for the moment...
I sat up and looked around again, briefly checking to make sure my planted letter was still in place. It was, fortunately.
However, I was also presented with the same problem that had unintentionally sent me down this thought spiral: There was nothing left for me to do until that letter got found.
I'd be to see everyone I could think of as important enough to check on, and if I went back to Jackson, there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to make myself come back. Not until bedtime when he needed to sleep and I definitely would not feel comfortable sticking around, whether he could see me or not.
Hanging around to watch someone while they slept in their own bed when I was not necessarily invited over was a line I was not going to cross with anyone that did not live in the same house as me—meaning mom, dad, or Riley.
So what was I—
"I already had this discussion with you over the phone!"
My ears twitched to hear Riley, shouting, at who I could only assume was our mother.
Too curious—and still very much in the need of a distraction—for my own good, I hurriedly stepped through the closest wall to better hear the full extent of the argument currently unfolding.
Riley was up and walking out of the living room, away from our mom, who was sitting on the couch in her "Can't Go to Wal-Mart" clothes, frowning at her eldest daughter, orange-tinted light streaming in from between the open blinds.
"Honey, please. I just want to know that—"
"I know exactly what you what to know. You want to know what stupid thing you think her boyfriend said to her to make her want to kill herself! You want to know who to blame for killing your baby girl." Riley turned on her heel in from of mom's china cabinet. I'd never seen her so heated about anything other than politics. Yet there wasn't any jealousy in her voice.
Which either meant she was hiding it, or she wasn't jealous at all and was just mad on my behalf.
Riley's accusation, however, did sound like mom.
Of course she wouldn't be able to accept that I'd made my own choice. She'd not only nitpick it, she'd go so far as a deep-rooted need to prove that something else had pushed me into it. She'd never even realize herself what was going on. The denial would blind her as much as it fueled her.
And as much as she made an effort to like Jackson because he made me happy, I wasn't so dumb as to ignore the obvious lingering apprehension she had of him.
So while I definitely was not happy about it, it didn't really surprise me where exactly her desperation for someone to blame had landed on him, unintentionally or not.
"That's not—"
"Oh isn't it?" Riley spat. "I'm sorry mom, but Luna—She made a choice, okay? And we have to accept that. Because there's no changing it." My sister took a hesitant step back towards the living room, clearly not wanting to willingly reopen the previous discussion, but fully recognizing the importance of the one she was starting. "And you know—" Knew, "—Luna. If something had been bothering her that badly, we would've known. Should have known, anyway. This was bigger than that. This had to be building for so much longer..."
Technically, Riley was right and wrong.
She was right about it not being one little thing, like me and her both knew mom was thinking, but she was wrong about them knowing.
They wouldn't've known, and hadn't known anyway, because I hadn't wanted them to.
I'd done my best to keep my problems hidden from the rest of the world, because the rest of the world didn't want to hear my problems. And after hearing about all the other bad in the world, mine felt trivial and invalid by comparison. But the reason it killed me—made me want to die—was because that no matter how trivial and dumb it seemed, even to myself, it still hurt. And you can only bottle up some much pain for so long before something's gotta give...
"Riley," Mom said slowly, trying in vain to keep her own emotions hidden. "I really think if we just looked to see—"
But Riley was already shaking her head and walking away again. She didn't want to her our mother's only half-thought reasoning to invade what little standing privacy I had left by going through my electronics before I'd—apparently—even been buried, all to find a reason I'd killed myself.
Which they wouldn't have found anyway...
Unless, of course, someone read way too much into something and turned so-called "evidence" into something completely the opposite of what it had originally been.
Considering how hard mom was already fighting for justification with Riley to go through everything, I wouldn't put it past her.
"I already told you mom, it isn't right. Even after she's buried. That was her life, she made her own choices. The least we can do is respect her memory and keep our noses out of her business," Riley said at normal volume as she marched off to her room.
"What?"
Mom hauled herself of the couch and followed after her.
Apparently Riley's bitter mood had made her temporarily forget that mother dearest was annoyingly hard of hearing.
When mom caught up to her, she reached out for Riley's shoulder, but my sister turned before their flesh could actually make contact. "I said you should respect your dead daughter and leave her stuff alone."
"She's a—" Was A "—minor, Riley. It's our responsibility to know. We are—" Were "—responsible for her. What else are we supposed to do?"
This time, I facepalmed for someone other than myself. My mother's infuriating logic was, well, infuriating as usual.
And by infuriating, I mean not that it couldn't be argued with, but rather, there were so many arguments to be made against it...
"Shut up and respect the dead!" Riley was yelling again, and this time all three of us heard the crack in her voice.
This either had to end, or she was going to end up crying.
Please don't make her cry...You're her mother, you're supposed to be the one that makes her feel better, not the one that makes her more upset...I silently pleaded with my mom to have a little mercy on her remaining, grieving daughter.
"Don't do this to her," I whispered, surprising myself.
Mom sighed. "Riley, I know this is hard on all of us. But we can't just leave all her stuff in that room forever."
"I know that." My sister's blue-hazel irises rolled in spite of the pinkening whites around them. "But moving or going through or packing her stuff doesn't mean digging into her texts and messages and reading them all, trying desperately to find someone or something to blame for her own decision."
Can you hold off on the packing-up, actually...? I still needed someplace to sleep until I was sure of how much longer I'd be around. Even though I was starting to wonder if I actually needed sleep anymore...
Mom looked wounded by the accusation, but she conspicuously didn't deny it. Something Riley and I both noticed. "Well, I don't know what else I can do," She said finally. "There's got to be something—"
Her words died on her tongue to Riley's glare.
"Please, just think about it, okay?" My sister asked softly, a huge clash to the expression her features refused to let go. "This whole thing is already screwed up enough."
With that, Riley went to tend to a tall pot on the stove I'd seen her pull from a cabinet earlier. And I gave myself a second to wonder how I hadn't noticed it again until now.
Maybe a third visit to Jackson wouldn't be such a bad idea...Even if I didn't let him see me at first. Again.
I just knew I didn't want to be here. Because now that the show I wanted to see was over, it was only a matter of time before I accidentally let my guard down and got too close of a look at how mom was holding up. So far, I'd managed to keep my focus on Riley, because she was the one doing most of the talking, and also because I was genuinely more interested in watching her.
Give it enough time though, I'd notice my mom and not have something else to use as a mental distraction.
And I still had no desire whatsoever to see her grief. Or dad's.
However, I still had my concerns about going back to see Jackson a third time in one day, so I slipped into my room instead.
Immediately, I remembered one of the things I'd been tumbling over in my head before my surviving family unintentionally interrupted me.
Mirrors.
Granted, I knew I'd had a whole lot more on my mind than just reflective glass, but that was what came to me first and seemed to be the most easily dealt with issue out of the ones I'd dreamed up.
While I stood close enough to my room's threshold that, if I was corporeal and someone opened it, the door would've hit me, battling the indecision of whether or not to walk into the attached bathroom and test my luck, a new half-theory presented itself to me.
People sometimes mentioned eyes being windows to the soul, right? If that was the truth, maybe the trick to not getting trapped inside of a mirror was as simple as not looking myself directly in the eye, particularly at close-range or actually touching the glass.
Which, of course, would probably only make it next to impossible for me to not touch, and not look. Because isn't that always how it goes when you know you're not supposed to do something? Whether you mean to or not, you often end up doing it anyway...
On second thought, maybe I'd just wait until I walked by a mirror without thinking and see what happened. At least then I could blame lack-of-foresight for any ill effects.
I mean, really. Ignorance is bliss, and I wasn't particularly eager to get myself stuck in some alternate dimension forced to stare out at my previous one all because I was too curious for my own good and performed a test that had no indication of what the results would be.
Getting myself trapped semi-on purpose wouldn't've been manageable for me in the slightest. And accident I could take. Maybe. Hopefully.
Looks like Jackson's it is. If I stayed here, I'd end up going stir-crazy from trying to sit and do next to nothing so I wouldn't give myself away.
At least I could talk to Jackson.
Even if I ended up having to write my responses on a piece of notebook paper. Maybe he could help me figure out some more about what all exactly I could do.
Although I'd have to make sure I kept my mouth shut about checking up on Sam...
Or would that be wrong? I really just didn't want to upset Jackson, because I didn't want to spend whatever time I was going to have walking around as a spectre with him either mad or depressed—or both—because I'd done something wrong in trying to do what seemed right, at least at the time.
But was keeping secrets from him any better?
What did my inability to choose an option say?
Why can I not stop asking questions!
Jeez, being dead was not being kind to my psyche.
I decided to quit dawdling and do something, because the longer I stood around thinking, the more trouble I was borrowing for myself, so it seemed. And much more of that would have my sanity snapping like an acapella choir.
So I closed my eyes and called to mind the one person I'd let know I was dead, but that being dead is much more complicated than it seems...