She perched on the edge of the armchair and rested her arms on her knees, looking directly at me with that hot-as-hell smirk plastered on her face. She really was beautiful. Tilting her head slightly to one side, she spoke to me again and I committed her voice to memory. "So, how'd you do it then?"
I laughed and studied her face in awe. I had just told her that she was dead – and had taken her own life, no less – yet here she was, asking for my suicide story as if it were normal chit-chat. "I think that's a story for another time," I plastered a smile on my face, hoping it looked sincere. I felt my chest itch a little. Her eyes turned devious.
"Who said you'd see me again? This is a big place, I imagine," she raised her eyebrows matter-of-factly. "There are probably millions of tortured souls who offed themselves."
I shrugged nonchalantly. "Just a feeling." She stood up, smoothed her wrinkled dress in an attempt to look dignified and began to walk away, her heavy leather boots creating an enormous racket on the solid stone floor. "Wait!" I called and she stopped in her tracks, turning to face me with her eyebrows raised. She was so fierce; like a lion trapped inside the body of a teenager. "What's your name?"
Her lips pulled up on one side of her face in a smirk. "I'll tell you another time."
My expression matched hers. "How do you know you'll see me again?"
She turned thoughtful. "Who knows," she shrugged. "If we meet each other again, I guess it's fate. If not, then we both just go on like we never met." She flashed a smile that showed all of her perfect little teeth and with a flick of her hair and heavy, determined footsteps; she slipped out into the crazy, unknown world we had been spat into.
The next week, Odessa had decided to venture out of the library, as it was her birthday and she wanted to celebrate. I hadn't a clue how she even knew it was her birthday, as times and dates didn't really serve a purpose here. Nonetheless, I agreed to join her at the bar a few towns over, which she requested specifically because she was frightened of her father catching her drinking alcohol. I didn't know what she was talking about half the time so I just nodded and said I would be there.
I wasn't much for heavy social interaction, so I slipped into the bar and kept my head down (not that I would run into anybody that I knew.) I spotted Odessa almost immediately; her flamboyantly coloured hair made her stick out like a sore thumb. She turned on her stool at the bar and smiled as I approached. "Hey, happy birthday!" I said with as much enthusiasm as I could and she kissed me lightly on the cheek. She slid a bottle of beer over to me and a curled my hand around it.
"Thank you. Can you believe I'm a year older? I don't feel it." Her face was dreamy and I wondered sometimes if she was constantly inebriated or if it was just her general nature.
"You don't look a day over sixteen," I joked, taking a swig of my beer and relishing the cool liquid running down my dry throat. The heat lessened during the night but it was still uncomfortable. I also wondered how old Odessa really was; her demeanour was so childlike but I couldn't place how old she might be. I made a mental note to ask her one day if the conversation ran dry. Odessa smiled at me, stretching her thin lips over her teeth and chugged her entire glass of clear liquid. I couldn't tell if it was water or vodka but she didn't even flinch as she glugged the whole lot. I laughed to myself and turned, leaning my back and my elbows against the bar and observing the rest of the people around me.
It was a quiet bar that reminded me of what I imagined an English pub to be like. When I was alive, I had taken to reading tons of British literature and had become infatuated with the lifestyle. That was before the darkness took over. I took a long drink from my bottle and felt the coolness slosh right down to my stomach. Odessa and I didn't talk much for the following hour or two, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. She was happy in her thoughts, drinking her vodka-water-mystery and I was throwing back bottle after bottle of the cheap beer that kept appearing by my elbow on the bar.
It was a few hours later, through my drunken, hazy vision that I saw her appear in front of me. I squinted and tried to regain focus and failed miserably. But I was eighty percent sure that she was right there in front of me, grinning and smirking sexily in front of my face. She shook her head, laughing to herself. "You're a mess," she raised an eyebrow.
"I've only had a couple of beers," I waved her off, evidently slurring my words. She glanced at the generous collection of empty beer bottles by my side and nodded sarcastically.
"Come on," she spoke like one would address a small child. She linked her tiny arm through mine and guided me out of the bar. I didn't look back for Odessa mainly in fear of tripping over my own numb feet. We walked down the street for a while, her supporting most of my weight and me screaming in my head to sober the fuck up.
"So I guess this is fate, then?" I concentrated very hard on getting my words out correctly. I wasn't too sure how successful that was. I heard her musical laugh flow through the channel of my left ear.
"I don't believe in that bullshit," she scoffed, still dragging me along the sidewalk because my feet refused to cooperate in the way that I wanted them to. Her hands felt strangely warm against me – impossible, as we were both dead – and I could smell her vanilla scent with every warm breeze that fluttered past my nostrils. After guiding me across an unknown street, she took me under the barrier of a dark, unfamiliar stretch of land. The combination of the dark and my beer goggles made me completely disorientated and I couldn't even tell which way was up or down. Suddenly, my feet went out from beneath me and my backside landed heavily on a pile of warm bricks. I frowned, blinked a few times and then looked up to see her standing only an inch or two away from me, judging my face.
"Was that your girlfriend back there?" the question surprised me. I shook my head unsteadily. "Do you want her to be?"
I frowned at her. "I don't think so... I never really thought about it..." I was slurring less now. Good; it was about time I sobered up and stopped being an embarrassment.
"That probably means no, then," she said matter-of-factly and seated herself snugly beside me. This girl obviously wasn't fazed by the notion of personal space. Truthfully, I didn't mind. I hadn't had this much human contact since I was alive. Barely even then. "Do you think she's pretty?" She looked at my face expectantly.
I nodded truthfully. "Yeah, I do. But not in that way." I saw her nod in my peripherals. "It was her birthday today."
"What's the date?" she asked interestedly. She sank back when I shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't think she knows, either. She's... Not all there." I watched her smirk. "I didn't catch your name."
"That's because I didn't throw it," she smirked harder. I laughed loudly and suddenly, like a bark. What a lame joke.
"Tate," I stuck out my hand to her and she eyed it with interest. She placed her hand in mine, which was tiny in comparison, and shook it firmly.
"Violet," she replied. She looked at my face with an expression I couldn't quite decipher and she still didn't let go of my hand. I relished the feeling of her soft skin in the palm of my hand. My chest scars itched like hell and for the first time in half an eternity, I began to miss being alive.