"Girl, you really do have a death wish." Kat laughed, shaking her head. "This is getting ridiculous."

Sky blinked a couple of times. She was still lying on the floor on her back, Kat crouching by her side. Where the Hell were they? Everything was a blur except Kat's face.

"Yeah, well," Sky groaned. "Does it surprise you?"

"Yes! When did this start?"

"You know when. After Matt."

"Ahhh, that fucking asshole." Kat let out a sigh. "I should have kicked his ass when I had the chance."

Sky pushed herself into a sitting position and glanced around. The white, tiled floor was clean, there was no blood anywhere even if she could still taste it, the faint tang of copper on her mouth. She recognized this place immediately - the hallway in front of the cafeteria. To her right were the stairs she had walked down that day with Kat, right in front of her were the doors through which Matt had entered.

And here, right where she was sitting, was the spot where she had been shot.

That thought brought a vague memory of pain - she knew she should be hurting, but she wasn't. Her body felt light, her skin weirdly numb. Tentatively she flexed her arms, rolled her shoulders. Everything seemed to be okay, there was absolutely no pain anywhere and even the memory of it was beginning to fade. Taking a deep breath, Sky stood up on her shaky legs and turned her eyes back at Kat.

Kat stood in front of her, her slender arms crossed on her chest - partly hiding the picture of a fetal horse in her faded Slipknot band shirt. Sky knew that shirt. She had bought it for Kat as a birthday present when Kat had turned 15, and it was the shirt she had died in.

"So, am I dead now?" Sky asked. It seemed like the only logical explanation.

Kat shrugged. "I am."

"I know that, jeez. I asked if I'm dead."

"Who knows? But if there's an afterlife do you really think it's our old school?"

That made Sky let out a snort. "God, I hope not. But… is this a dream, then?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Kat frowned and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her black jeans. "Do I look like I have some answers?"

"No," that was true - Kat looked like she always had. There was now angelic grace or halo attached to her brow. "It's just... Have you been… here? All this time?"

"Enough with the stupid questions," Kat said and cocked her head to one side, making her straight, black hair fall over her shoulder. "We have more important things to talk about. Come on, let's get out of here."

Kat turned on her heels and started walking, and hesitating only for a heartbeat, Sky followed. Somewhere the school bell rang - the sound was distant as if it came from far away - and suddenly the halls were full of people, kids Sky knew or kids she knew she was supposed to know, but couldn't remember their names. At first Sky panicked - what the fuck was she going to say to them? But luckily no one paid any attention to her or Kat. In fact, everyone walked past them as if they weren't even there. After a couple of minutes that became annoying, and Sky tried to get someone's attention by greeting them, but no one replied. It was like she really wasn't here, like this was a dream after all, but—

"Holy shit, I am a ghost!" She had just walked straight into someone - and right through them - that sensation was like she'd been dragged through ice-cold water, and it left her shuddering.

Kat turned to look at her over her shoulder with a smirk. "Come on, you're not a ghost."

"Then what the fuck—?"

"Why do you want to put a label on everything?" Kat asked. "I've fucking missed you. Aren't you happy to be here?"

"Yes. I am, but—"

"What, don't tell me you have someplace to be?" Kat laughed. "We haven't talked in ages. Let's get high and catch up!"

"Can ghosts get high?" Sky frowned, still spooked and chilled by her ghostly experience. "And more importantly - do you even have weed?"

"Let's check my locker," Kat simply replied and kept walking. Sky followed, now doing her best to stay out of other people's way. Kat didn't seem bothered - she walked through a group of kids as if they weren't even there, whereas Sky made an extra round not to touch them.

"If you can open your locker with your ghost hands," Sky muttered, making Kat snort.

It turned out Kat could open the locker. And that there was still weed in there. Kat held the small pouch in the air with her long, slender fingers and flashed Sky a wicked smile. "See? Told you it would be here."

"This is some seriously weird shit." Sky noted, checking out the door of Kat's locker when she was locking it. The door was covered in cards, notes, and pictures. Clearly things people had taped on it after Kat's death.

"What - that I got a card from Luca DiAngelo?" Kat laughed.

"Among other things, yeah."

Kat grinned, showing all her white teeth. "That boy had a great ass. Too bad he never even looked at me twice, when I was alive. I bet he didn't even know my name."

"He always had hots for you."

"He so didn't."

"Kat - everyone did. You were just too busy to notice."

"Well, I'm not busy anymore," Kat replied, stuffing the weed into the back pocket of her jeans. She flashed Sky a wicked grin. "You think I should haunt him?"

"For the love of God," Sky rolled her eyes. "Please do, haunt the whole fucking town. It's not like I begged you to haunt me for a whole fucking year. I bought an ouija board for fuck's sake—"

That made Kat's face go serious again. The smile in her onyx eyes turned soft. "I know."

"You do?"

"Hell, yeah! I was screaming my lungs out to get through, but damn the veil is thick. I only managed once - you had that, what - aikido tournament?"

Sky's heart thumped in her chest. Weird. How come she still had a heartbeat if she was dead? But she did, and now her heart was full and heavy, and she felt like she could cry.

"Karate," she breathed. "Not aikido."

"Yeah, that one. You kicked ass." And then Kat laughed, out loud, like she had no worries in the world - and maybe she didn't. Maybe dead people didn't have to worry about anything. Sky could definitely get used to that.

"Shit, Sky! I never thought I'd see California." Kat noted. "Though I'd like to see more of it than just some karate tournament."

"I always thought we would see it together."

"Maybe we can haunt it together," Kat smirked. "Let's haunt Disneyland! That should be fun."

Sky didn't bother to reply, just rolled her eyes at her friend and followed when she started walking again. Everything was a joke to Kat, even this, even the fact that they were both apparently dead and about to smoke some ghost weed together.

Sky had always believed in the afterlife, but never in a million years had she thought it would be like this.

They left the school with the weed still in Kat's pocket and walked to a nearby park. The air was still warm, but not hot like it had been back home (it felt weird to think about the Valley as home, but at some point, it had become that to Sky) and it had the scent of fall already, of change and new beginnings. As so many times before, they took a seat on the grass under a huge maple tree and Sky leaned her back on the trunk that still held the warmth of the day. Briefly, she wondered how it was possible for her to lean on a tree without falling through, but not touch a person - but she decided to let that thought go. She felt the sun on her face, on her closed eyelids - and soon the sweet smell of cannabis entered her nostrils.

"Want some?" Kat asked, and with a silent nod, Sky accepted the joint Kat was offering her and inhaled deep.

It turned out that ghosts could get high. Hell, maybe the weed was ghost weed too - Sky was past trying to figure this out. Besides, none of it mattered anyways. She hardly cared if she was dead, if this was a dream or a hallucination. All that mattered was that she was here with Kat.

Sky opened her eyes and glanced at the girl by her side, warmth flooding her chest. Her heart swelled so that she could barely hold back tears.

She was here. With Kat. Sitting in a park next to their school, smoking pot that was probably stolen from Paulo, and if she turned to look the other way, she could see the street that led to their home. There would be the red brick building where they had lived as next-door neighbors all their life, on the first floor over the Capoeira studio Kat's dad had owned—

"You think our home is still there?" Sky asked, turning her eyes back at Kat.

The taller girl shrugged. "Wanna go and find out?"

"Not really. Besides - Dad lives in the Valley now, and your family moved too. Did you know that? Your dad sold the business."

"Sounds like him," Kat nodded and signaled for Sky to give the joint back to her, then took a deep inhale. "Sucks, though."

"Everything about your death sucks."

That made Kat laugh again, as if she hadn't noticed Sky's bitter tone, or as if she just didn't care. Sky suspected the latter. Kat was a master of avoiding topics she didn't want to talk about.

"Ahhh but didn't you meet your boyfriend because I died and you moved away?" Kat asked, giving her an amused glance. "The one with nice abs?"

Hawk.

She hadn't thought about him once after waking up here with Kat, but now his image filled her mind completely.

What would he think now that Sky was dead? Would he mourn for her?

And why did that even matter? They had broken up. She had told him to leave her alone, she had said she never wanted to see him again.

"My ex-boyfriend," she corrected and turned her eyes to her toes, to her black converse high-tops.

"Really? What the heck happened?"

"He turned out to be an asshole."

"Shoot. Seems like you have a type." Kat stated. "Maybe I should haunt him. Let's make his toilet explode with ectoplasm."

That made Sky laugh - or maybe it was just the effect of the ghost weed - but suddenly everything was funny. She was dead but she had never felt this alive in her life. Soon she was giggling so that tears ran down her face.

"Let's make his fucking walls bleed," she suggested in between giggles. "I saw that in a movie once, it was wicked."

"We can put a severed horse's head in his bed."

"Not a real one, I like horses."

"We can make him see one and then make it disappear?" Kat smirked. "And then make the walls bleed."

"That'll scare him so that he'll shit his pants–!"

They giggled at that thought for some time, coming up with even crazier ideas of how they could haunt Hawk, but finally, the laughter wore off and they fell silent. They had finished the weed, the sun was going down, and the air was growing chillier. They lay in the grass side by side now, looking at the branches of the huge maple, the dance of leaves in the evening breeze. The silence felt good. It always had with Kat.

"Just a thought," Kat said softly after a while.

Sky turned to look at her. "What is it?"

"You could get back together with him."

"Yeah, right," Sky let out a laugh. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to have a ghost for a girlfriend."

And suddenly Kat's eyes were sad, they were like endless, black ponds. "You're not a ghost."

"What… what do you mean?"

"You're my best friend, you are my sister. And you always will be, but Phoenix—"

And suddenly Sky felt a weird tug in her gut, like a hook in her inner organs, pulling her away from Kat. She gasped, the pull was so strong it was hard to resist, and she sat up, panicking.

"No!"

"You're not dead," Kat said gently. "I've known it all this time."

"No—!" And suddenly she was crying. Angry tears fell to her cheeks in hot streams, they blurred her vision and made her choke. "No, I don't wanna go back! I wanna stay here, with you! What happened to haunting Disneyland—?"

"It was just a joke," Kat said with a sad smile, and Sky felt so stupid, she was an idiot, a stupid, stupid fool.

The pulling sensation was getting stronger every moment, she felt the reality slipping out of her grasp and only her anger kept her grounded. "Just— no! I am nothing without you! My life is nothing! I miss you all the time, so much that I don't wanna go on anymore! You asked if I have a deathwish—" She paused to take a trembling breath "—well, I fucking Hell do. And I won't go back!"

She couldn't put it in words, but the truth was that Kat had always been the sun, so bright, so brilliant, she had lit up their lives, and Sky had been the moon, perfectly happy to orbit the sun and reflect its light. But what was a moon without a sun? Nothing but a dead, lonely piece of rock in the cold darkness of space, spinning out of orbit.

She never wanted to be that again.

Kat let out a long sigh. Suddenly she looked tired, thin, stretched - as if staying here was taking a toll on her.

"You know, I wasn't always here."

"So you were floating around, invisible, stalking me?"

"Jeez, your life isn't that interesting." Kat snorted. "No, I was somewhere…"

"So there is Heaven?"

"There is a place," Kat said silently, trailing the path of branches against the sky with her long, slender index finger. "A river. And I was waiting for you there. And I always will be. But now I gotta go back, and so do you."

Sky clenched her jaw, gripping dead grass in her fists. "I fucking won't."

"It might not be up to us," Kat said with a sigh. "Can't you feel it? The wind is changing."

But Sky didn't feel any wind. Even the branches of the maple tree had stopped moving, as if the world had gone still and the only living things in it were her and Kat. But she did feel the pulling in her gut, the hook that was trying to drag her away, and she heard voices too, voices that weren't from here, voices calling her name and she had to fight the part of her that wanted to listen more closely.

"But—" she started, pushing away the calling of the other reality, gripping onto this one with all her might. "But there is so much I want to talk to you about! We've done nothing but smoked pot and talked shit all day! This can't be it, I wanted to tell you—"

She didn't know how to finish the sentence. The words failed her, but with Kat, she had never needed words anyways. She turned to look at Kat, who was still lying there by her side in the grass, her shiny, black hair falling around her head in a beautiful halo.

"Fine," Kat said softly. "Screw the rules. They were made to be broken anyways."


Ah, I could write about these two forever. They have my heart!

But what do you think, is Sky ever going to find her way back home?