[Thursday, 1:26 p.m.]
Puck managed to run faster than Kurt could, but he finds him anyway. Puck is sitting on the bleachers, his head in his hands, mumbling to himself.
"I can't believe you, of all people, can see me."
Puck looks up, glaring, and just stares at him, silent.
Kurt stares back.
"What the fuck, dude?" Puck stands up, pacing across the bench he's on, and Kurt watches him, "What happened to you?"
Kurt blinks.
"Hummel, what–"
"I don't know," he breathes, "I don't know how I died."
"This means you're dead! How the fuck is this fair, Hummel?" Puck tries to shove him, and his hands go through Kurt's shoulders, "Fuck!"
"Fair!" Kurt repeats, loud and shrill. He follows Puck up the bleachers, "This isn't fair for you! I'm dead, Puck."
"Shit, I know, Hummel," he sits down, running a hand over the stripe of new Mohawk, "Why the fuck you haunting me for?"
"I'm not haunting–I didn't choose this!" Kurt can feel his voice cracking, can feel the rush of tears, "Why does it have to be you?"
He sits down heavily on the bench, hoping that Puck will just leave him alone, but he hears the thud of Puck on the bench next to him. "Sorry, dude."
Kurt brings his hands up to press his face into his hand, and Puck tries to put his arm around him awkwardly. His arm goes right through Kurt and he nearly falls forward. Kurt lets out a pathetic laugh and then starts crying: loud, gasping sobs.
He hasn't cried, not when he woke up on the side of the road or when he walked into the house to see his dad freaking out, but he's crying now.
[Thursday, 4:30 p.m.]
"Stop fucking following me, Hummel."
"I need to know where you live," Kurt says, examining his nails and wishing he could change his clothes. Puck is hunkered down against the cold, walking stiffly, and Kurt is trying to pretend he can't feel it too. Why can I still feel cold? He isn't entirely sure that this is how the whole "being dead" thing is supposed to work.
"You're not haunting me." Puck stops on the sidewalk and Kurt doesn't stop in time. He stumbles through Puck, who swears and shivers, "Don't do that!"
Kurt stares blankly at him, "You can feel it?"
"Well, no," Puck rubs his eyes, "It just creeps me out, dude." He sighs and starts walking again, "It's not fucking fair that everybody else still has hope and I have to listen to you whining about being dead." Kurt figures that Puck is saying that he wishes Kurt weren't dead, in his own roundabout way. Neither of them talk for a while, and then Puck adds, "Stop following me around."
"No can do," Kurt chirps; he's been trying to pretend he's okay with this, even though all he wants to do is break down and cry, "You're the only one I can talk to and not feel completely certifiable. Therefore, I need to know where you live so I can stalk you when I get sick of following my dad."
Puck stops, turning into a walkway, "Fine. This is where I live. Go the fuck home, freak."
Kurt winces, but he doesn't follow him up.
[Thursday, 6:31 p.m.]
Burt sets four places, even though the police have now put out a missing person's report and have apparently found Kurt's cell phone on the sidewalk a few blocks away.
Carole lets out this tiny little sigh and puts a hand on his arm, "Burt, sweetie, we only need three plates..."
Finn looks up, staring at Kurt's plate, and then Burt swears.
His dad moves back to the table and pulls the place mat off the table, throwing the whole mess of dishes and utensils. The plate and a fork fly through Kurt, and the plate and glass shatter against the floor.
"Burt!"
Kurt flees.
[Thursday, 7:18 p.m.]
"Fuck." Puck tosses the video game controller down, and the word "Pause" floats up and down on the screen.
"I'm sorry," Kurt pleads, "My dad set four plates and then started throwing things. I couldn't–I don't want to see it."
Puck stares at him.
"I'm sorry," he repeats.
[Thursday, 11:33 p.m.]
"Can you stop crying for like, five seconds?"
[Friday, 6:04 a.m.]
Puck rolls out of bed and steps right in Kurt's chest. The other boy doesn't move, just stares unblinkingly at the ceiling. Puck swears.
"What the fuck is happening to me?" he wonders aloud, and then wanders into the bathroom, stripping as he goes.
In the shower, he lets the water run cold near the end, soothing his headache and letting him think, just for a moment, that Kurt might not be there when he gets out.
But he is, sitting cross-legged on Puck's bed and staring straight ahead.
"Don't watch me change, pervert."
Kurt starts to scoff, and then crosses his arms, "Why not?"
Immediately, Puck threatens, "I'll kick your fucking ass, that's why not."
Kurt deflates, "You can't." He almost seems disappointed, "I'm dead."
Puck changes with his back to Kurt, and when he turns around he lets out an involuntary sigh, "Fuck, don't cry again."
[Friday, 8:47 a.m.]
"Mr. Puckerman, you're late."
Puck ducks his head and ignores the fact that Kurt's already sitting on his desk, looking relatively composed. "I know, I'm sorry. Slept in."
He didn't, and Kurt smiles apologetically at him. He spent an hour trying to calm Kurt down, because apparently he still hadn't accepted his own death.
"I'm sorry I kept you from school," Kurt teases, "I know how important it is to you."
"Fuck you," Puck spits. The boy next to him tenses, obviously assuming Puck is just throwing his threatening voice around.
"I'm going to go follow Mercedes for a while. See how she's coping." Kurt says, pushing himself off the desk with a prim sweep of confidence that he doesn't feel.
"You do that."
The boy next to him moves his desk about an inch further away.
[Friday, 9:16 a.m.]
"I don't want to go to school, mom."
Kurt has to walk the block and a half to Mercedes house when he realizes she isn't at school.
"You have to get up, sweetie. Kurt will turn up."
Mercedes lays flat on her stomach with her face pressed into her pillow, and she shakes her head feebly, "I don't want to."
Her mom sighs, "Alright. I'll call you in." Kurt watches painfully as her mom leaves and closes the door softly behind her. Mercedes waits until the footsteps are in the kitchen before rolling over, onto her side.
She draws her arms around herself and whispers, quietly, "Where are you, Kurt?"
He starts crying at the same time she does, "I'm right here, 'Cedes."
[Friday, 9:28 a.m.]
"You have to help me find my body."
"Fuck off," Puck hisses, trying to push him off his desk without looking like he's trying to push an invisible person off his desk.
"No." Kurt crosses his right leg over his left, pressing his palm to his knee impatiently, "You have to help me."
"If I fucking help you, will you get off my test?"
Kurt blinks and slides off the desk.
[Friday, 10:01 a.m.]
Puck walks briskly through the hall, obviously trying to lose Kurt in the crowd, but Kurt just drifts through people and lockers.
"Why the fuck do you want to find your body?" Puck mumbles, "That's fucking sick, dude."
"Everybody needs closure!" Kurt yells. Puck looks around as if Kurt's embarrassing him, but nobody else looks at him, "I'm dead, and if I'm just missing nobody can move on."
"You're fucking crazy, Hummel."
"You're the one talking to yourself," Kurt fires back, nonplussed.
"Do you even know where your body is?"
Kurt falters, "No... But maybe that's why I'm still here." Puck turns away, opening his locker, "Maybe if you find my body, I'll go away."
Puck lifts an eyebrow, looking intrigued. Kurt tries to pretend that doesn't hurt, that is doesn't twist something in his gut when he realizes that Puck is only going to help him if it means he won't be here anymore.
[Friday, 11:20 a.m.]
Kurt taps his foot impatiently on the floor, standing in the back of Mr. Schue's second period Spanish class.
Puck turns around in his seat, "Would you fucking stop that?"
The kid behind him looks terrified, squeaking "Stop what?"
Puck glares at Kurt behind him, and Kurt grins at him, "Nothing. Never mind."
[Friday, 11:36 a.m.]
"Just get up and go, Puck. Mr. Schue won't care," Kurt whispers, leaning down too close to his face.
"Get away from me," Puck hisses.
"You have to go look, Puck. Since when did you start making an effort in class, anyway?"
"Look, Hummel, you may be dead, but I'm not. Good grades might not be important to a walking corpse, but this is kind of my ticket out of here."
"I'm a ghost," Kurt straightens up, smoothing his hands over his jacket–the same one he was wearing on Wednesday, "I look nothing like a corpse."
Puck doesn't reply, but Kurt stops bugging him.
[Friday, 12:10 p.m.]
Puck nearly sits down at the jock table, but he winds up following Kurt to the usual Gleek table and sitting next to Quinn. Finn, Rachel, and Mercedes are all absent.
Tina looks like she probably should be staying home too.
"Did they find his body yet?"
"Puck!" Kurt scolds, and everybody else looks at Puck like he's the scum of the earth, "They still have hope, asshole."
Puck shrugs, "Sorry, just being realistic."
Quinn shrugs off his shoulder and leaves the table.
"Smooth, Puck."
[Friday, 12:54 p.m.]
Puck takes off while Kurt is watching Artie mutter something to Tina, and it takes him nearly the rest of the lunch hour to find him again.
He's sitting in his car, and Kurt hops into the seat, sliding through the wall of the car door without so much as a wave of greeting.
"Why'd you take off?"
"It sucks, dude. Everybody thinks you're going to come back, like some guy is going to find you and bring you home, like you're not lying somewhere, dead, because some asshole beat you up or ran you over and then hid your fucking body like a coward."
Kurt stays silent throughout Puck's rant, and the other boy slams his fist into the middle of his steering wheel, causing a loud honk to sound in the empty parking lot.
The bell to signal the end of lunch goes, and Puck turns the car on. "Let's go find your body."
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