A light sigh escaped her lips as she slid on her signature sunglasses.
Penelope Spectra was a brilliant child psychologist. Her small Montana hometown appreciated her work with their troubled youngsters, especially with all the horror they were exposed to nowadays via the news.
The schools shared her as a counselor, and she went to either the elementary, middle, or high school on any given day as an outlet for kids to just sit with someone and talk about their problems.
Penelope was a beautiful woman on top of being brilliant, and she was well aware of it as well. Thirty-five had come and people still told her she barely looked a day over twenty. She never flaunted that beauty, though, and she took pride to note that several of the more attractive girls in the high school didn't let their looks go to their heads either; instead, they followed her example and were nice to all the girls in the school.
Life was good. Until it wasn't.
She'd been selfless and decided to push a sweet little first-grader she'd been talking to out of the way of an oncoming car. He had been aware of it, but he had tripped over an innocent-looking stick jutting out into the middle of the road and was teetering as he got to his feet, and he looked up and his deer in the headlights expression almost killed her more than the actual impact.
Her last thought was who would act as a grief counselor now.
..
Spectra remembered her name, and remembered flashes of her old life, which was more than most ghosts could say. She couldn't remember what it was that killed her, but she did recall working as a psychiatrist for children.
But because her form fed on misery in order to stay stable in her human guise, she twisted her life's passion into her afterlife's obsession.
Penelope was no more. Spectra ruled now.