It was a cool clear night. The moon was full. Standing in my front yard, I
could see it hanging over the earth like a light bulb- not a hundred
watter, like the sun, but maybe one of those twenty-five dealies you put in
those swivel-neck desk lamps.
I could see in the moonlight the red dome of my school's church. But just because I could see the school, didn't mean it was nearby. It was a good two miles away. In my pocket were the keys to the car, which I'd snitched a half hour earlier. The metal was warm from the heat of my body. The car, which was turquoise in daylight, looked gray as it sat in the shadow of the driveway.
Hey, I know I don't have a license. But if Dumberer can do it...
Okay. So I chickened out. Look, isn't it better I chose not to drive? I mean, not knowing how and all. Not that I don't know how. Of course I know how to drive. I just haven't had a whole lot of practice, having lived all my life in the public transportation capital of the world....
Oh, never mind. I turned around, and started heading for the garage. There had to be a bike around somewhere. Three boys right? There had to be at least one bike.
I found one. It was a boy's bike, of course, with that stupid bar, and a really hard, really skinny seat. But it seemed to work all right. At least the tires weren't flat.
Then I thought. Okay. Girl dressed in black, riding a bike on the streets after midnight, what do I need?
I didn't think I was going to find any reflective tape, but I thought maybe a bike helmet might do the trick. There was one hanging on a peg on the side of the garage. I put down the hood of my sweatshirt, and fastened the thing on. Oh, yeah. Stylish and safety conscious, that's me.
And then I was off, rolling down the driveway- okay, gravel is not the easiest stuff to ride a bike on, especially going down hill. And the whole way turned out to be downhill, since the house was perched on the side of this mountainy kind of thing. Going downhill was certainly better than going uphill- there was no way I was ever going to be able to ride back up this thing; I had a pretty good idea I'd be doing some pushing on my way home- but going downhill was pretty harrowing. I mean, the hill was so cold, that I rode with my heart in my throat practically the whole time, tears streaming down the sides of my cheeks because of the wind. And those potholes...
God! Did that stupid seat hurt when I hit a pothole.
But the hill wasn't the worst of it. When I got down the hill, I hit an intersection. This was much scarier than the hill because even though it was after midnight, there were cars there. One of them honked at me. But it wasn't my fault. I was going so fast, because of the hill and all, that if I'd stopped I'd probably have gone right over the handlebars. So I kept on going, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a pickup, and then, I don't know how, I was pulling into the school parking lot.
The school looked a lot different at night than it did during the day. For one thing, during the day the parking lot was always full, packed with cars belonging to teachers, students, and tourists visiting the church. The lot was empty now, not a single car, and so quiet that you could hear the sound of the wind rustling through the trees.
The other thing was that, for tourists reasons, I guess, they had set up these spotlights to shine on certain parts of the building, like the dome- it was all lit up- and the front of the church, with its huge arched entranceway. The back of the building, where I pulled up, was pretty dark. Which suited me fine actually. I hid the bike behind a dumpster, leaving the helmet dangling from one of the handles, and went up to a window. The school was built like a bazillion years ago, back when they didn't have air conditioning or central heating, so to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter, people built their houses really thick. That meant that all the windows in the school were set back about a foot into the adobe, with another foot sticking out into the room behind them.
I climbed up onto one of these first built-in window seats, looking around first to make sure no one saw me. But there wasn't anybody around except a couple of raccoons who were rooting around the dumpster for some of the lunch leftovers. Then I cupped my hands over my face, to cut out the light of the moon, and peered inside.
It was Mr. Walden's classroom. With the moonlight flooding into it, I could see his handwriting on the chalkboard, and the big poster of "Learning Tips" on the wall.
It only took me a second to punch out the glass in one of the old- fashioned iron panes, reach in, and unlatch the window. The hard part about breaking a window isn't the breaking part, or even the reaching part. It's getting your hand out again that always causes cuts. I had on my best demon- busting gloves, thick black ones with rubbery stuff on the knuckles, but I've had my sleeve get caught before, and gotten my arm all scratched up.
That didn't happen this time. Plus, the window opened out, instead of up, swinging forward just enough to let a girl like me inside. Occasionally, I've broken into many places that turned out to have alarms- resulting in uncomfortable rides for me in the back of a police car- but the school hadn't gotten that high-tech with their security system yet. In fact, their security system seemed to consist of locking the doors and windows, hoping for the best.
Which certainly suited me fine.
Once I was inside Mr. Walden's room, I closed the window behind me. No sense alerting anybody who might happen to be manning the perimeter- as if. It was easy to maneuver between the desks, since the moon was so bright. And once I got the door open and stepped out into the breezeway, I found I didn't need my flashlight, either. The courtyard was flooded with light. I guess the school must stay open pretty late for the tourists because there were these big yellow floodlights hidden in the breezeway's eaves, and pointed at various objects of interest: the tallest of this, the biggest of that... The breezeway was empty, as was the courtyard. No one was around. All I could hear was the chirping of crickets hidden in the garden. It was a sort of restful place, actually, which was surprising. I mean, none of my other schools had ever struck me as restful. At least, this one did, until this hard voice behind me went, "what are you doing here?"
I spun around, and there she was. Just leaning up against her locker-
excuse me, MY locker- and glaring at me, her arms folded across her
chest. She was wearing a pair of charcoal colored slacks- nice ones-
and a gray cashmere sweater set. She had an add-a-pearl necklace
around her neck, one pearl for every Christmas and birthday she'd been
alive, given to her, no doubt, by a set of doting grandparents. On her
feet was a pair of shiny black loafers. Her hair, as shiny as her
shoes in the yellow light from the flood lamps, looked smooth and
golden. She really was a beautiful girl. Too bad she had blown her head off.
"Ayame," I said, pushing the hood of my sweatshirt down. "Hi. I'm sorry to bother you..."
It always helps me at least to start out polite, "... but I really think we need to talk, you and I."
Ayame didn't move. Well, that's not true. Her yes narrowed. There were pale eyes, gray, I think, though it was hard to tell, in spite of the flood lamps. The long eyelashes- dark with mascara- were tastefully ringed in charcoal liner.
"Talk?" Ayame echoed. "Oh, yeah. Like I really want to talk to YOU. I know about you, Kagami."
I winced. I couldn't help it. "It's Kagome," I said.
"Whatever. I know what you're doing here."
"Well, good," I said. "Then I don't have to explain. You want to go sit down, so we can talk?"
"Talk? Why would I want to talk to you? What do you think I am, stupid? God, you think you're so sly. You think you can move right in, don't you?"
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Into my place." She straightened, and stepped away from the locker, and walked toward the courtyard. "You," she said, tossing me a look over her shoulder. "The new girl. The new girl who thinks she can just slip right into the place I left behind. You've already got my locker. You're on your way to stealing my best friend. I know Ayumi called you and asked you to her stupid party. And now you think you can steal my boyfriend."
I put my hands on my hips. "He's not your boyfriend, Ayame, remember? He broke up with you. That's why you're dead. You blew your brains out in front of his mother."
Ayame's eyes widened. "Shut up," she said.
"You blew you brains out in front of his mother because you were too stupid to realize that no boy- not even Kouga Prince- is worth dying for." I strolled past her, out onto one of the gravel pathways between the garden beds. I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself, but it was making me a little nervous, standing under the breezeway after what happened to Kouga. "Boy, you must have been mad when you realized what you'd done. Killed yourself. And over something so stupid. Because of a guy."
"Shut up!" this time she didn't just say it. She screamed it, so loud that she had to ball her hands up in fists at her sides, close her eyes, and hunch up her shoulders to do it. The scream was so loud my ears were ringing afterward. But no one came running from the rectory, where I saw a few lights on. The morning doves that I'd heard cooing in the eaves of the breezeway hadn't uttered a peep since Ayame had shown up, and the crickets had cut short their midnight serenade.
People can't hear ghosts- well, most people, anyway- but the same cant be said for animals and even insects. They are hyper alert to the presence of the paranormal. Buyo, the Higurashi cat, wont go near my room thanks to Inuyasha.
"It's no use your screaming like that," I said. "No one but me can hear it."
"I'll scream all I want," she shrieked. And then she proceeded to do so.
Yawning, I went and sat down on one of the wooden benches.
"Are you listening to me?" Ayame screamed.
I looked at her. "Do you know what the word abnegation means?" I asked.
She stopped screaming and just stared at me. Then she strode forward, her face a mask of livid rage. Listen to me, you bitch," she said, stopping when she stood a foot away from me. "I want you gone, do you understand? I want you out of this school. That is my locker. Ayumi is my best friend. And Kouga Prince is MY boyfriend! You get out; you go back to where you came from. Everything was just fine before you got here..."
I had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, Ayame, but everything was not just fine before I got here. You know how I know that? Because you're dead. Okay? You are dead. Dead people don't have lockers. Or best friends, or boyfriends. You know why? Because they're dead."
Ayame looked as if she was about to start screaming again, but I headed her off as the pass. I said, smoothly and evenly, "now, I know you made a mistake. You made a horrible, terrible mistake..."
"I'm not the one who made the mistake," Ayame said flatly. "Kouga made the mistake. Kouga is the one who broke up with me."
I said, "Yeah, well, that wasn't the mistake I was talking about. I was talking about you shooting yourself because a stupid boy broke up with..."
"If you think he's so stupid," Ayame said with a sneer, "why are you going out with him on Saturday? That's right. I heard him ask you out. The rat. He probably wasn't faithful a day the whole time we were going out."
"Oh," I said. "Well, that's just great. All the more reason for you to kill yourself over him."
There were tears, sparkling like those rhinestones you buy and glue to you fingernails, gathered beneath her eyelashes. "I loved him," she breathed. "If I couldn't have him, I didn't want to live."
"And now that you're dead," I said, tiredly, "you figure he ought to join you, right?"
"I don't like it here," she said softly. "No one can see me. Just you and Mother Kaede. I get so lonely..."
"Right. That's understandable. But Ayame, even if you do manage to kill him, he probably isn't going to like you for it much."
"I can make him like me," Ayame said confidently. "After all, it'll just be me and him. He'll have to like me."
I shook my head. "No, Ayame. It doesn't work that way."
She stared at me. "What do you mean?"
"If you kill Kouga, there's no guarantee he'll end up here with you. What happened to people after they die- well, I'm not sure, but I think it's different for everyone. If you kill Kouga, he'll go to wherever it is he's supposed to go. Heaven, hell, his next life- I don't know for sure. But I do know he wont end up here with you. It doesn't work that way."
"But..." Ayame looked furious. "But that isn't fair!"
"Lots of things aren't fair, Ayame. It isn't fair, for example that you have to suffer for all eternity for a mistake that you made in the heat of a moment. I'm sure if you'd known what it was like to be dead, you never would have killed yourself. But, Ayame, it doesn't have to be this way."
She stared down at me. The tears were frozen there, like little tiny shards of ice, "it doesn't?"
"No it doesn't."
"You mean... you mean I can go back?"
I nodded. "You can. You can start over."
She sniffled. "How?"
I said. "All you have to do is make up your mind to do it."
A scowl passed over her pretty face. "But I already made up my mind that that's what I want. All I've waned since it happened.... Was to get my life back."
I shook my head. "No, Ayame," I said. "You misunderstood me. You can never have your life- your old life- back. But you can start a new one. That's got to be better than this, than being here all by yourself forever, storming around in rage, hurting people..."
She shouted, "You said I could get my life back!"
I realized, all in a flash, that I'd lost her, "I didn't mean your old life. I just meant a life..."
But it was too late. She was freaking.
I understood now why Kouga's parents had sent him away- before the whole suicide incident. I wished I were there, really, if it would get me out of the way of this girl's wrath.
"You told me," Ayame screamed, "you told me I could get my life back! You LIED to me!"
"Ayame, I didn't lie. I just meant that your life- well, your life is over. Ayame, you ended it yourself. I know that sucks, but hey, you should have thought of that..."
She cut me off with an unearthly- well, of course- wail. "I wont let you," she shrieked. "I wont let you take over my life!"
"Ayame I told you, I'm not trying to. I have my own life. I don't need yours..."
"Ayame," I said, from my bench. "Ayame listen to me. You've got to calm down. We can't talk when you're..."
"You... said..." Ayame's eyes, I was alarmed to see, had rolled back into her head. "I... could... start... OVER!"
Okay. It was time to do something. I didn't need the bench beneath me to start shaking so violently that I was nearly thrown from it. I knew it was time to get up.
I did so, fast. Fast so that the bench wouldn't hit me. Fast so that I could reach Ayame before she noticed, and deck her as hard as I could with a right beneath her chin.
Only to my astonishment, she didn't even seem to feel it. She was too far-gone. Way too far gone. Hitting her had no effect whatsoever- except that it really hurt my knuckles. And, of course, it seemed to make her madder, always a plus when dealing with a severely disturbed individual.
"You," Ayame said, in a deep voice that was nothing like her normal cheerleader chirp, "are going to be sorry now."
I had a funny feeling Ayame was serious. What's more, I had a feeling she could do it too. Without even lifting a finger.
And I had a confirmation of that fact when the head of a statue of a Buddha was whipped from the body. That's right. It just snapped off, as easily as if the solid bronze was made out of was actually spun candy. Noiselessly, too, she broke it off. The head hung in the air for a moment, its look of sympathetic compassion transformed from the bizarre angle at which it hung over my face into a demonic sneer. Then, as I stood there, transfixed, staring at the way the floodlights winked against the metal ball, I saw it dip suddenly...
Then plunge toward me, hurtling so fast it was only a blur in the night sky, like a comet or a...
I didn't get a chance to think what else it reminded me of because a split second later something heavy hit me in the stomach and sent me sprawling to the dirt where I lay, looking up at the starry sky. It was so pretty. The night was so black, and the stars so cold and far off and twinkly...
"Get up!" a man's voice sounded harshly in my ear. "I thought you were supposed to be good at this!"
Something exploded in the dirt just an inch from my cheek. I turned my head and saw Buddha's head grinning obscenely at me.
Then Inuyasha was yanking me to my feet, and pulling me toward the breezeway.
A/N:
Okay, here's a little preview for the next chapter. ENJOY!
"Cadaver breath." Inuyasha turned his head to look down at me. His chest was rising and falling. "Do you realize that's what you called me? That hurt, you know, aisuru. It really hurt."
"I told you..." something heavy was buffeting against the door. I could feel it knocking against my spine. It didn't take a genius to guess it was the founder of a certain statue's head. "...Not to call me that."
"Well, I would appreciate if you didn't make disparaging remarks about my..."
"Look," I said. "This door isn't going to hold up forever."
"No," he agreed, just as the metal head managed to smash its way partly through a spot it had weakened in the wood. "May I make a suggestion?"
I was staring, horrified, down at the head, which had turned, halfway in and halfway out of the door, to look up at me with cold, bronze eyes. It's crazy, but I could have sworn it was smiling at me. "Sure," I said.
"Run."
I wasted no time in taking his advice.
I could see in the moonlight the red dome of my school's church. But just because I could see the school, didn't mean it was nearby. It was a good two miles away. In my pocket were the keys to the car, which I'd snitched a half hour earlier. The metal was warm from the heat of my body. The car, which was turquoise in daylight, looked gray as it sat in the shadow of the driveway.
Hey, I know I don't have a license. But if Dumberer can do it...
Okay. So I chickened out. Look, isn't it better I chose not to drive? I mean, not knowing how and all. Not that I don't know how. Of course I know how to drive. I just haven't had a whole lot of practice, having lived all my life in the public transportation capital of the world....
Oh, never mind. I turned around, and started heading for the garage. There had to be a bike around somewhere. Three boys right? There had to be at least one bike.
I found one. It was a boy's bike, of course, with that stupid bar, and a really hard, really skinny seat. But it seemed to work all right. At least the tires weren't flat.
Then I thought. Okay. Girl dressed in black, riding a bike on the streets after midnight, what do I need?
I didn't think I was going to find any reflective tape, but I thought maybe a bike helmet might do the trick. There was one hanging on a peg on the side of the garage. I put down the hood of my sweatshirt, and fastened the thing on. Oh, yeah. Stylish and safety conscious, that's me.
And then I was off, rolling down the driveway- okay, gravel is not the easiest stuff to ride a bike on, especially going down hill. And the whole way turned out to be downhill, since the house was perched on the side of this mountainy kind of thing. Going downhill was certainly better than going uphill- there was no way I was ever going to be able to ride back up this thing; I had a pretty good idea I'd be doing some pushing on my way home- but going downhill was pretty harrowing. I mean, the hill was so cold, that I rode with my heart in my throat practically the whole time, tears streaming down the sides of my cheeks because of the wind. And those potholes...
God! Did that stupid seat hurt when I hit a pothole.
But the hill wasn't the worst of it. When I got down the hill, I hit an intersection. This was much scarier than the hill because even though it was after midnight, there were cars there. One of them honked at me. But it wasn't my fault. I was going so fast, because of the hill and all, that if I'd stopped I'd probably have gone right over the handlebars. So I kept on going, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a pickup, and then, I don't know how, I was pulling into the school parking lot.
The school looked a lot different at night than it did during the day. For one thing, during the day the parking lot was always full, packed with cars belonging to teachers, students, and tourists visiting the church. The lot was empty now, not a single car, and so quiet that you could hear the sound of the wind rustling through the trees.
The other thing was that, for tourists reasons, I guess, they had set up these spotlights to shine on certain parts of the building, like the dome- it was all lit up- and the front of the church, with its huge arched entranceway. The back of the building, where I pulled up, was pretty dark. Which suited me fine actually. I hid the bike behind a dumpster, leaving the helmet dangling from one of the handles, and went up to a window. The school was built like a bazillion years ago, back when they didn't have air conditioning or central heating, so to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter, people built their houses really thick. That meant that all the windows in the school were set back about a foot into the adobe, with another foot sticking out into the room behind them.
I climbed up onto one of these first built-in window seats, looking around first to make sure no one saw me. But there wasn't anybody around except a couple of raccoons who were rooting around the dumpster for some of the lunch leftovers. Then I cupped my hands over my face, to cut out the light of the moon, and peered inside.
It was Mr. Walden's classroom. With the moonlight flooding into it, I could see his handwriting on the chalkboard, and the big poster of "Learning Tips" on the wall.
It only took me a second to punch out the glass in one of the old- fashioned iron panes, reach in, and unlatch the window. The hard part about breaking a window isn't the breaking part, or even the reaching part. It's getting your hand out again that always causes cuts. I had on my best demon- busting gloves, thick black ones with rubbery stuff on the knuckles, but I've had my sleeve get caught before, and gotten my arm all scratched up.
That didn't happen this time. Plus, the window opened out, instead of up, swinging forward just enough to let a girl like me inside. Occasionally, I've broken into many places that turned out to have alarms- resulting in uncomfortable rides for me in the back of a police car- but the school hadn't gotten that high-tech with their security system yet. In fact, their security system seemed to consist of locking the doors and windows, hoping for the best.
Which certainly suited me fine.
Once I was inside Mr. Walden's room, I closed the window behind me. No sense alerting anybody who might happen to be manning the perimeter- as if. It was easy to maneuver between the desks, since the moon was so bright. And once I got the door open and stepped out into the breezeway, I found I didn't need my flashlight, either. The courtyard was flooded with light. I guess the school must stay open pretty late for the tourists because there were these big yellow floodlights hidden in the breezeway's eaves, and pointed at various objects of interest: the tallest of this, the biggest of that... The breezeway was empty, as was the courtyard. No one was around. All I could hear was the chirping of crickets hidden in the garden. It was a sort of restful place, actually, which was surprising. I mean, none of my other schools had ever struck me as restful. At least, this one did, until this hard voice behind me went, "what are you doing here?"
I spun around, and there she was. Just leaning up against her locker-
excuse me, MY locker- and glaring at me, her arms folded across her
chest. She was wearing a pair of charcoal colored slacks- nice ones-
and a gray cashmere sweater set. She had an add-a-pearl necklace
around her neck, one pearl for every Christmas and birthday she'd been
alive, given to her, no doubt, by a set of doting grandparents. On her
feet was a pair of shiny black loafers. Her hair, as shiny as her
shoes in the yellow light from the flood lamps, looked smooth and
golden. She really was a beautiful girl. Too bad she had blown her head off.
"Ayame," I said, pushing the hood of my sweatshirt down. "Hi. I'm sorry to bother you..."
It always helps me at least to start out polite, "... but I really think we need to talk, you and I."
Ayame didn't move. Well, that's not true. Her yes narrowed. There were pale eyes, gray, I think, though it was hard to tell, in spite of the flood lamps. The long eyelashes- dark with mascara- were tastefully ringed in charcoal liner.
"Talk?" Ayame echoed. "Oh, yeah. Like I really want to talk to YOU. I know about you, Kagami."
I winced. I couldn't help it. "It's Kagome," I said.
"Whatever. I know what you're doing here."
"Well, good," I said. "Then I don't have to explain. You want to go sit down, so we can talk?"
"Talk? Why would I want to talk to you? What do you think I am, stupid? God, you think you're so sly. You think you can move right in, don't you?"
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Into my place." She straightened, and stepped away from the locker, and walked toward the courtyard. "You," she said, tossing me a look over her shoulder. "The new girl. The new girl who thinks she can just slip right into the place I left behind. You've already got my locker. You're on your way to stealing my best friend. I know Ayumi called you and asked you to her stupid party. And now you think you can steal my boyfriend."
I put my hands on my hips. "He's not your boyfriend, Ayame, remember? He broke up with you. That's why you're dead. You blew your brains out in front of his mother."
Ayame's eyes widened. "Shut up," she said.
"You blew you brains out in front of his mother because you were too stupid to realize that no boy- not even Kouga Prince- is worth dying for." I strolled past her, out onto one of the gravel pathways between the garden beds. I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself, but it was making me a little nervous, standing under the breezeway after what happened to Kouga. "Boy, you must have been mad when you realized what you'd done. Killed yourself. And over something so stupid. Because of a guy."
"Shut up!" this time she didn't just say it. She screamed it, so loud that she had to ball her hands up in fists at her sides, close her eyes, and hunch up her shoulders to do it. The scream was so loud my ears were ringing afterward. But no one came running from the rectory, where I saw a few lights on. The morning doves that I'd heard cooing in the eaves of the breezeway hadn't uttered a peep since Ayame had shown up, and the crickets had cut short their midnight serenade.
People can't hear ghosts- well, most people, anyway- but the same cant be said for animals and even insects. They are hyper alert to the presence of the paranormal. Buyo, the Higurashi cat, wont go near my room thanks to Inuyasha.
"It's no use your screaming like that," I said. "No one but me can hear it."
"I'll scream all I want," she shrieked. And then she proceeded to do so.
Yawning, I went and sat down on one of the wooden benches.
"Are you listening to me?" Ayame screamed.
I looked at her. "Do you know what the word abnegation means?" I asked.
She stopped screaming and just stared at me. Then she strode forward, her face a mask of livid rage. Listen to me, you bitch," she said, stopping when she stood a foot away from me. "I want you gone, do you understand? I want you out of this school. That is my locker. Ayumi is my best friend. And Kouga Prince is MY boyfriend! You get out; you go back to where you came from. Everything was just fine before you got here..."
I had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, Ayame, but everything was not just fine before I got here. You know how I know that? Because you're dead. Okay? You are dead. Dead people don't have lockers. Or best friends, or boyfriends. You know why? Because they're dead."
Ayame looked as if she was about to start screaming again, but I headed her off as the pass. I said, smoothly and evenly, "now, I know you made a mistake. You made a horrible, terrible mistake..."
"I'm not the one who made the mistake," Ayame said flatly. "Kouga made the mistake. Kouga is the one who broke up with me."
I said, "Yeah, well, that wasn't the mistake I was talking about. I was talking about you shooting yourself because a stupid boy broke up with..."
"If you think he's so stupid," Ayame said with a sneer, "why are you going out with him on Saturday? That's right. I heard him ask you out. The rat. He probably wasn't faithful a day the whole time we were going out."
"Oh," I said. "Well, that's just great. All the more reason for you to kill yourself over him."
There were tears, sparkling like those rhinestones you buy and glue to you fingernails, gathered beneath her eyelashes. "I loved him," she breathed. "If I couldn't have him, I didn't want to live."
"And now that you're dead," I said, tiredly, "you figure he ought to join you, right?"
"I don't like it here," she said softly. "No one can see me. Just you and Mother Kaede. I get so lonely..."
"Right. That's understandable. But Ayame, even if you do manage to kill him, he probably isn't going to like you for it much."
"I can make him like me," Ayame said confidently. "After all, it'll just be me and him. He'll have to like me."
I shook my head. "No, Ayame. It doesn't work that way."
She stared at me. "What do you mean?"
"If you kill Kouga, there's no guarantee he'll end up here with you. What happened to people after they die- well, I'm not sure, but I think it's different for everyone. If you kill Kouga, he'll go to wherever it is he's supposed to go. Heaven, hell, his next life- I don't know for sure. But I do know he wont end up here with you. It doesn't work that way."
"But..." Ayame looked furious. "But that isn't fair!"
"Lots of things aren't fair, Ayame. It isn't fair, for example that you have to suffer for all eternity for a mistake that you made in the heat of a moment. I'm sure if you'd known what it was like to be dead, you never would have killed yourself. But, Ayame, it doesn't have to be this way."
She stared down at me. The tears were frozen there, like little tiny shards of ice, "it doesn't?"
"No it doesn't."
"You mean... you mean I can go back?"
I nodded. "You can. You can start over."
She sniffled. "How?"
I said. "All you have to do is make up your mind to do it."
A scowl passed over her pretty face. "But I already made up my mind that that's what I want. All I've waned since it happened.... Was to get my life back."
I shook my head. "No, Ayame," I said. "You misunderstood me. You can never have your life- your old life- back. But you can start a new one. That's got to be better than this, than being here all by yourself forever, storming around in rage, hurting people..."
She shouted, "You said I could get my life back!"
I realized, all in a flash, that I'd lost her, "I didn't mean your old life. I just meant a life..."
But it was too late. She was freaking.
I understood now why Kouga's parents had sent him away- before the whole suicide incident. I wished I were there, really, if it would get me out of the way of this girl's wrath.
"You told me," Ayame screamed, "you told me I could get my life back! You LIED to me!"
"Ayame, I didn't lie. I just meant that your life- well, your life is over. Ayame, you ended it yourself. I know that sucks, but hey, you should have thought of that..."
She cut me off with an unearthly- well, of course- wail. "I wont let you," she shrieked. "I wont let you take over my life!"
"Ayame I told you, I'm not trying to. I have my own life. I don't need yours..."
"Ayame," I said, from my bench. "Ayame listen to me. You've got to calm down. We can't talk when you're..."
"You... said..." Ayame's eyes, I was alarmed to see, had rolled back into her head. "I... could... start... OVER!"
Okay. It was time to do something. I didn't need the bench beneath me to start shaking so violently that I was nearly thrown from it. I knew it was time to get up.
I did so, fast. Fast so that the bench wouldn't hit me. Fast so that I could reach Ayame before she noticed, and deck her as hard as I could with a right beneath her chin.
Only to my astonishment, she didn't even seem to feel it. She was too far-gone. Way too far gone. Hitting her had no effect whatsoever- except that it really hurt my knuckles. And, of course, it seemed to make her madder, always a plus when dealing with a severely disturbed individual.
"You," Ayame said, in a deep voice that was nothing like her normal cheerleader chirp, "are going to be sorry now."
I had a funny feeling Ayame was serious. What's more, I had a feeling she could do it too. Without even lifting a finger.
And I had a confirmation of that fact when the head of a statue of a Buddha was whipped from the body. That's right. It just snapped off, as easily as if the solid bronze was made out of was actually spun candy. Noiselessly, too, she broke it off. The head hung in the air for a moment, its look of sympathetic compassion transformed from the bizarre angle at which it hung over my face into a demonic sneer. Then, as I stood there, transfixed, staring at the way the floodlights winked against the metal ball, I saw it dip suddenly...
Then plunge toward me, hurtling so fast it was only a blur in the night sky, like a comet or a...
I didn't get a chance to think what else it reminded me of because a split second later something heavy hit me in the stomach and sent me sprawling to the dirt where I lay, looking up at the starry sky. It was so pretty. The night was so black, and the stars so cold and far off and twinkly...
"Get up!" a man's voice sounded harshly in my ear. "I thought you were supposed to be good at this!"
Something exploded in the dirt just an inch from my cheek. I turned my head and saw Buddha's head grinning obscenely at me.
Then Inuyasha was yanking me to my feet, and pulling me toward the breezeway.
A/N:
Okay, here's a little preview for the next chapter. ENJOY!
"Cadaver breath." Inuyasha turned his head to look down at me. His chest was rising and falling. "Do you realize that's what you called me? That hurt, you know, aisuru. It really hurt."
"I told you..." something heavy was buffeting against the door. I could feel it knocking against my spine. It didn't take a genius to guess it was the founder of a certain statue's head. "...Not to call me that."
"Well, I would appreciate if you didn't make disparaging remarks about my..."
"Look," I said. "This door isn't going to hold up forever."
"No," he agreed, just as the metal head managed to smash its way partly through a spot it had weakened in the wood. "May I make a suggestion?"
I was staring, horrified, down at the head, which had turned, halfway in and halfway out of the door, to look up at me with cold, bronze eyes. It's crazy, but I could have sworn it was smiling at me. "Sure," I said.
"Run."
I wasted no time in taking his advice.