Incorporeal by asesina

a/n: I do not own the Lovely Bones.

Summary: Just a quick oneshot. Susie's POV, shortly after she dies. The absence of touch is the worst part.

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The world looks different when you're upside-down and backwards, when you're there but not. It's hard to remember that you're as voiceless as a puff of smoke when you scream at the back of someone's head and they never turn around.

I'm getting used to it, I suppose. I just wish it hadn't happened before I grew up, before I was able to develop killer Raquel Welch curves and lustrous Ann-Margret hair.

It's weird; you'd think that a place like this would be amazing, but sometimes I'm just bored. I like to lie on my back in the gazebo, and sometimes on the field. I press my ear to the ground and feel it, the humming of the other side, the heavy and peculiar joy of existing, of being alive.

I am not alive, and I'm being cheated in a way. I can whisper and wave, coaxing my family members and Ruth and Ray to look up once in a while, and they'll smile at me, or cry, or mutter my name like some prayer they forgot to mention.

I'm just another bead on the rosary sometimes.

I spend a lot of time chatting with Holly, asking her about her life and quizzing her on mine, and then we'll race across the meadow until it curves up into the sky, and we're hanging from our feet on the endless blue like bats, marveling at the upside-down sun.

The days are long and bright, but never boring. We make up songs and screech Baez and Dylan ballads into sold-out auditoriums, and it ends up sounding as mellifluous as an angel's sigh, or whatever they sound like.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going about this the wrong way. I could spend my entire days learning every language, floating over every city, skating over every ocean. I could ask a million questions and get a million perfect answers, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't.

I want to go back. I want to feel Ray Singh's kiss and hug my Dad and pet Holiday. I want to tell my Mom and Lindsey that it's ok to let go and cry once in a while. I want to hold Buckley and thank him for believing in me, for remembering me. His faith is the strongest because he's still a kid. He just accepts that I'm there, and I want to ruffle his hair. I want him to see me.

I want to go back and try Grandma Lynn's inedible Salisbury steak. I want to push Mr. Harvey off the face of the earth until he bleeds and falls apart like I did, but I'm not there.

I'm not here either. I'm stuck. I want to punch a hole in the dirt of this perfect field and break through the fabric of this beautiful, eternal place.

I want it to stop, but I know that I'll have to move across the field someday. I'll have to dive headfirst into the golden light and beam myself up to the real heaven, a place I've only dreamed of.

I don't know if I'm keeping myself here or if they are. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

I scream as loud as I can, and sometimes, they turn their heads to listen.

Even then, it's fleeting and impotent, pathetic and transitory.

I want to grab a handful of petals or sand on the real earth, but I can't do that either.

I am Susie Salmon, and I no longer have a body. It was taken from me when I was 14 years old, and I will forever miss it. I will make it back someday, I swear. I will touch and be touched.

The golden light is calling, but I ignore it and look down over the darkening Pennsylvania night.

I'm not ready to let go.

Not yet, at least.