Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns the characters. I'm borrowing them.

You guys make me sing. Seriously. You're all ten shades of amazing and I love you all dearly. I'm posting this early – well, technically, it's Tuesday right now, so it's not that early – because I'm going on vacation until next week. I'm bringing my laptop, but wasn't sure if I'd have the time to actually post. So go give some love to sixeightshuffle for being an amazing beta and getting this back to me at the last minute. She's fucking awesome.

To my girls: Angie, Meg, Shae and Shelley – you girls are amazing and I love you dearly. If I've missed anyone, I'm truly sorry but my head is in a few thousand different directions. If you follow me on Twitter, most of you know why, I'm sure.

Now, enjoy!

I sat in my last period English class a week later, tapping the end of my pen annoyingly against the edge of the desk and staring impatiently at the clock above Mrs. Maria's extremely high hair. It was altogether possible that this woman hadn't realized it was now well into the 2000's.

I'd been in classes for all of three days and already, I was counting down the days until graduation. My arrival was still apparently big freaking news because there hadn't been one person in the entire school that hadn't come up to me to introduce themselves. Then they introduced myself to me and I swear to God, if one more person told me what my name was, it was highly possible that I'd start screaming.

I knew my own name. I'd had it for eighteen years of my life. I was pretty sure I had it down pat by now.

Rosalie seemed to think that our date was the shit dreams were made out of – or she was just laying it on extremely thick for the guy she was trying to make jealous – and clung to me in between classes. The guy she was trying to make jealous – Emmett – didn't seem to have a problem with it. In fact, he'd even personally invited me to some back to school bash he would be hosting somewhere in the middle of the woods this weekend.

Because, you know, the entire town wasn't anything but woods to begin with.

Since there wasn't anything else to do in this damn town, I'd agreed to show up and he'd slapped me on the back with a satisfied yell of some sort before ushering me towards the gymnasium. Apparently, everyone else knew my schedule better than I did.

None of that was the reason for my incessant tapping against my desk, though. I hadn't seen Bella since she'd been curled up on the floor of my room, and for as much as she drove me nuts when she was there, it was driving me insane that she hadn't shown up at all since then. She hadn't been doing well the last time I'd seen her and, dead or not, I wanted to make sure that she was all right.

No, it didn't make sense to me, either. Not much about my life had ever really made sense before and this was just the latest.

I'd been watching my mother like a hawk, and thankfully she'd seemed to be preoccupied with her garden and the flowerbeds that my father had finally gotten around to fixing for her at some point during the week. The past three days in school had been pure torture, however, because I couldn't watch her like I'd been able to do before. Not knowing what was going on and if maybe she was still fucking around with it and keeping Bella from being okay was not settling with me.

For wanting her gone from my life a week ago, I was sure as shit worried about what the hell was happening to her now that she was gone.

"…Be sure to read chapters one through five tonight! There will be a test on Friday!" Mrs. Maria called out to us.

I snapped out of my reverie to realize that everyone was packing up and wondered how I'd missed the school bell ringing. Shaking my head, I packed my things away and flung my back pack over my shoulder as I stood up. Rosalie was waiting outside the door for me and I barely contained a huff.

Really, all I wanted to do was go to the house and see if Bella was waiting for me.

My life was just… fucking… fucked up. End of story. I accomplished my mission of getting rid of her and now all I wanted to do was see her again. I needed my head examined.

"Give me a ride home?" Rosalie asked, linking her arm through mine.

"Yeah, sure," I grumbled, shifting my bag higher on my shoulder before walking towards my locker.

I was pretty sure that she'd driven herself to school that morning, but what the hell did I know? I grabbed my things from my locker, barely paying attention as she began to prattle on about her day like I'd asked her about it or something. But then I heard Emmett's loud mouth and shook my head, sighing as I slammed my locker door closed.

This was getting old.

"Edward! Dude! Meet me at my house on Friday night, all right? This way you won't get lost," he said, winking at Rosalie before he disappeared around the corner and out of the school.

Why he thought I knew where he lived was beyond me, but seeing as how he was already out the door and Rosalie was fuming at my side, I simply didn't have the energy to ask him about it. Plus, it was only Wednesday. I had more than enough time to figure shit out.

The ride home was uneventful and quiet aside from the radio stations that Rosalie kept changing. I was too busy thinking about Bella to be annoyed with her like I normally would've been and quickly dropped her off before parking in my own driveway.

Her Camaro was miraculously in the driveway and I shook my head before climbing out of my car and sprinting into the house. I checked the living room and found it thankfully empty, dropping my bag by the stairs and walking towards the windows that faced the back of the house. My mother was sitting in the middle of her barely-there garden, her hands in her lap with her face turned up towards the dismal amount of sunshine we'd gotten that day.

Everyone in school had been enthusiastic about the nice weather we'd been having as of late and I could only assume that it wasn't normal to see the sun on a daily basis. Not altogether concerned about that, I turned on my heel and walked back towards the stairs, staring at the step that Bella usually sat on.

Running a hand through my hair and sighing, I scooped up my bag and trudged my way up the stairs, sluggishly pushing open my bedroom door and freezing. She was levitating above my bed, her legs crossed with her hands in her lap as she looked around my room. Her black hair was spiky and short, and she was wearing this bright purple… thing that was probably visible from the moon. From what I could tell, she was barefoot as well, and unless my mother had already made a new friend that had reached some newfound level of enlightenment, it was safe to assume that I officially had another ghost in my house.

"Edward!" she exclaimed, gracefully falling to the middle of my bed before hopping off and throwing her arms out at her sides. "I've heard a lot about you."

I blinked at her.

"Not much of it has been good, really." She reached up and tapped her chin with her pointer finger. "We have to consider the source, after all. Bella can be quite temperamental when she doesn't get her way the first time."

Yep. Ghostie number two.

"Noticed," I grumbled, giving in to the fact that this was my life now.

Ghosts showing up at all hours and driving me insane was just something that I was going to have to learn to accept, it seemed.

"Oh, good," she beamed, clapping her hands together and bouncing a little on her heels. "I don't have to deal with any of that pesky, 'Yes, I'm dead and you're still seeing me' stuff. She was right about that, at least."

"Is there something I can help you with?" I sighed, dropping my bag to the floor and crossing my arms over my chest. "Is Bella all right?"

"She will be. She underestimated your mother." I eyed her and she turned on her heel, walking around the limited space of my bedroom. "She just needs a few more days to recoup."

"What the hell happened?"

"You're gonna want to sit down."

I flopped onto my bed and got comfortable, watching as the as-yet-unnamed ghost waltzed around my room like she owned the damn place.

"I'm Alice," she stated absently, walking over to my dresser and looking at the pictures I'd unearthed a few days ago.

I had called Jasper after the whole fiasco with Bella and he'd told me all the news, parties, and girls that I'd missed since I'd been gone. I'd given him my new address and he'd saved my phone number, and we'd spent about an hour bullshitting. After that, I'd gone on a mad hunt for all the pictures of me and my friends from back home, quickly either tacking them to the wall or setting up the frames on my desk and dresser.

At least that little part felt like home.

"Nice to meet you," I grumbled, propping myself up on my elbow and following her with my eyes as she moved again. "Wanna get on with this?"

"You're as impatient as she is." She finally stopped and stood completely still in the middle of my room, and I finally had the chance to see that her eyes were something close to a gold color. "Bella's death is still unsolved, Edward. In order for her to cross over and for your life to go back to normal, she needs help."

I internally groaned and flopped face first onto my comforter, peeking up at her through my hair.

"Why was it me?"

"You could see her," she shrugged, stating it as if it made all the sense in the world. "That was enough."

"She keeps trying to show me something," I grumbled, picking my head up to look at her fully again.

"You should let her. She won't hurt you. In fact, she's tied to you so strongly that she never could without doing harm to herself."

I blinked at her, slowly shaking my head. "What?"

Alice sighed heavily, her shoulders sagging forward as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Trust her, Edward. The both of you," she grumbled, throwing her hands in the air before turning on her heel and pacing my room again. "I don't know which one of you is actually worse."

"Will you be getting to the point sometime soon?"

She sighed heavily and placed her hands on her hips, stopping at the end of my bed. I sat up straight and backed away a little, wearily eyeing her. Just because I'd accepted the fact that ghosts were roaming freely around my house didn't mean that they didn't scare me on some level that I'd never admit to anyone. Two words: light and bulb.

"You want your life back to normal and Bella wants to get on with her afterlife. She's got family waiting on the other side for her and they all want to see her pretty badly. She's been in between for three years now and contrary to popular belief, you can't stay here forever."

"Why are you still there?"

"That's my job."

"Ghosts have jobs?"

"Some do, yes. Not the point." She pointed at me before placing her hand back on her hip. "Will you help her or not?"

"I'm not left with much of a choice in the matter, am I?"

"Not really, no."

"Then why does it matter what my answer is?"

"Things run much more smoothly if you're open to it."

"Well, I'm not."

"You're just making this ten times harder for everyone involved."

"Will you tell me what happened a week ago? Why she was so…?" I shivered. "And how does it tie to my mother?"

"Your mother needs a lot more practice in the things that she seems to be so fond of. Most of all, that Ouija board is the absolute worst thing that she could play around with. You never know who you might get to come through that thing!" she huffed, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head.

"Okay, great, fine, I'll find a way to hide the damn thing." I tilted my head to the side. "Bella."

"For someone who's hell bent on not helping her, you're definitely interested in her."

"When you see a ghost that looks like she's dying… again… and is starting to disappear, it tends to stay with you."

"Mhmm," she mumbled, nodding and smirking at me. "Bella is tied to you in ways that you won't let her explain and I'd spent about an hour in your time holding her back from the portal your mother opened up for her. She was, quite literally, being ripped in half. You were the only way to stop your mother from forcing Bella to cross over against her will and it took her a lot of energy to show herself to you during that. I'm thankful that you showed up when you did because I couldn't have held her back much longer." She sighed heavily. "You are the one to save her, Edward, in more ways than you can possibly understand."

"Bella knew about the board before my mother did all of… that." I shook my hand in the direction of my door. "Which leads me to believe that my mother had used it before. How come nothing happened to Bella then?"

"She just happened to hit the right portal that time."

"I don't…" I shook my head and reached up to run my hands through my hair. "This doesn't make sense."

"If you let her explain," she said softly, and I looked up at her once more, "maybe things will make a bit of a difference."

"What do I have to do?" I sighed.

"Leg work!" she chirped, clapping her hands again.

"What?"

"She can't really tell you what needs to happen because in all honesty, she isn't sure, either. All she knows is that things aren't lined up the way they're supposed to be, but she couldn't do it on her own. All she can really do is maybe try to put things into perspective for you so that you can figure it out."

"I don't have time…"

"You have all the time in the world, Edward. Bella is the one that doesn't. Time goes by much quicker for us than it does for you."

"So what time frame am I looking at here?"

"She has another year."

"Oh, well…"

"In our time." I pursed my lips at her and raised an eyebrow. "In your time, that's about six months."

"I have six months to solve her death?" I deadpanned. "Without any prior knowledge, with just moving in to this house… you know, I didn't ask for this!"

Alice crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her chin out.

"You think that Bella did?"

I was really beginning to hate that statement.

"What about the police? I'm sure that they did something to…"

"Everything led to a dead end about a year and a half ago. Her parents were fueling the investigation for a while, but eventually, they just…"

"Gave up?"

"Accepted it."

"This is… this is bull."

"Think about if it was you, Edward. If you were in Bella's shoes and you needed the help. If you finally found the one person in the entire world that could actually help you, wouldn't you want them to?" I glared at her and she smiled smugly, nodding once. "That's what I thought."

"Think you know it all, don't you?" I grumbled.

"It's my job to know it all."

"Mm. When's she coming back?"

"She'll be out for a few more days, I think. She was pretty torn up and it's gonna take her a while to get her strength back."

"Your time or my time?"

"Both."

I blinked at her and shook my head.

"You two make absolutely no sense. None!"

"We're not supposed to." She cocked her head to the side when the door downstairs slammed shut and winced a little. "Your mother's on a hunt for the Ouija board. Please…"

"On it," I grumbled, sliding off my bed and stretching my arms over my head. "Tell her that I hope she's okay."

"Sure thing!"

I blinked and literally, she was gone. Shaking my head and grumbling that I was surrounded by dead crazy people, I made my way downstairs to find my mother pulling the top off the box for her board.

"Mom," I said quickly, biting the inside of my cheek. "Why don't you show me the garden?"

She looked up at me and grinned, immediately snapping the top back into place before holding her hand out to me.

"I knew you'd come around," she beamed.

I sighed and met her halfway, forcing myself to smile as I grabbed her hand and let her lead me back outside. I eyed the box and mentally tried to figure out a place to hide it where she'd never find the damn thing as she led me down the small path towards her even smaller garden in the corner of our property.

I really hoped this was all worth it.

"Edward."

My eyes popped open when I heard the raspy voice and I slowly turned on my side, my heart pounding out of my chest when I didn't see anyone there.

Okay. You're fine. You're fine. This is just… you had to be dreaming. Go back to sleep.

I caught a glimpse of my alarm clock and sighed, untangling one hand from my sheets to rub my face. Three-fifteen in the morning and I was hearing random voices that I'd rather not hear at all.

"Edward."

I jumped and moaned, closing my eyes tightly and shaking my head.

"Please tell me that you're Bella or Alice," I whispered into the darkness of my room.

"It's Bella."

I wanted to curse myself for the way my heart immediately slowed back to its normal pace but only managed to bite my tongue.

"Are you okay?" I asked slowly.

"Can I just… can I just lay here with you? I won't touch you, I promise," she whispered and I jumped when I felt the edge of my bed dip down a little bit. "I just need to lay here with you for a little while."

Odd request, but then again, what about this situation wasn't odd to begin with?

"Yeah, sure," I said quietly, swallowing hard and moving over even closer to the edge of the bed.

I opened my eyes when I felt her climbing onto the other side of my bed and struggled to make out her figure, swallowing hard when I felt her stop moving and didn't see her.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "About my mom."

"It's not your fault," she whispered back. "You didn't know."

"I still feel…"

"Don't, Edward. Just go back to sleep."

"I hid the board."

"Thank you."

I smiled softly when I heard the one in her voice and turned towards where her voice was coming from.

"I had to suffer through an entire lecture about the benefits of growing our own herbs in order to do it, too."

She laughed softly and I curled one of my arms underneath my pillow, stretching the other one over my head.

"I do appreciate it."

"You're welcome. Why are you here tonight, Bella?"

She sighed quietly and I felt her shift a little.

"I needed you," she admitted softly.

I blinked.

"Oh."

"Go to sleep, Edward. You have to go to school soon."

I continued to blink when I saw her starting to actually flicker in front of me. Huh. Interesting.

"I'm starting to see you," I whispered.

"I'll explain it to you when you're ready."

"But I want to know."

"When you're ready, Edward. Get some sleep, okay?"

"Will you be here tomorrow?"

"Maybe."

I continued to watch as she flickered in and out before my eyes started to feel heavy and I finally stopped fighting them.

"I was worried," I whispered sleepily, yawning and bringing my other arm down to my side again.

I felt some sort of electrical current run through me, starting at the top of my head and reverberating down to my toes. It wasn't unpleasant by any means and I hummed in content, burying my cheek even further into my pillow and yawning again.

"Goodnight, Edward," she whispered.

I hummed again in lieu of a response before I fell asleep.