So what was it that began? Thanks, guest reviewer.

It was only when I was finishing off some weekend homework on Saturday night. As I wrote a few more words, a familiar voice rang out behind me. "So Little Miss Not-Scared-Of-Me is more scared that what she did wasn't the right thing."

Great. First I had to die to find a reason to live, and now it transpired that even when she was dead, Heather Chandler was still around and still had to give me a hard time.

Without a second thought, I got up, turned and glared at the apparition in front of me. What was she even doing here? I supposed that if being in a fictional musical was real, ghosts were, too. But I wasn't wracked with guilt like Veronica had been, so why was I still being haunted by the ghost I'd helped kill?

I scowled. "Drop dead, Heather. Oh, wait. You can't. You're already dead."

Heather Chandler's ghost scowled right back at me. "Because of you and your psycho boyfriend," she reminded me. She coughed a bit, and scowled harder. "You could have at least chosen something less disgusting. I'll be spitting up drain cleaner for eternity!"

Heather didn't look all that different than she had in life. When I tried to shove her away, my hand went right through her, but apart from that, she looked solid, pretty much the way she had when I last saw her alive. She was still wearing her dressing-gown kimono and red fluffy slippers, her hair messy and her scrunchie absent. Her lips were stained blue from the drain cleaner. I knew without being told that if anyone else had been there, I would still be the only one that could see or hear her.

The only positive thing is that I really wasn't scared of Heather as a ghost. She couldn't destroy my reputation. She couldn't prank me. She couldn't even speak to anyone other than me. There was no way I was going to let her push me around when all she could do was talk me to death.

"FYI, that wasn't even my choice," I snapped. "Get your story straight, Heather. Killing you wasn't my idea. I wasn't going to get you a prairie oyster and I don't even know how to make one, but it was JD's idea to poison you with drain cleaner, and at least it was over quickly. It was your own fault, planning to kill Veronica and I, even if it was just socially. Kill or be killed. Isn't that the motto of high school?"

"Spare me the justifications, please," Heather said, rolling her eyes. "You knew what he'd want to do and you helped him. Besides, I died a lot slower than you think. I may have collapsed in front of you, but I wasn't dead yet – I was just paralyzed and not properly conscious, but I could still feel it. Don't you know how poisons work? It took at least an hour, if not longer. If Veronica had found me an hour earlier, I might still be alive – and I might even have let her back into the clique for that."

I rolled my eyes at Heather's superior tone. Like I knew anything about poison. I didn't take Chemistry as soon as it stopped being mandatory.

"Anyway," Heather went on, "The afterlife told me a few interesting things about you. Like how you know a lot more than you let on. Like how you already changed or stopped a bunch of events you knew would happen if you did nothing. Like how you knew that psycho would get you to murder me, and you just went along with it like a good little robot. Like how you know some of the things that will happen tomorrow night."

I rolled my eyes. "Prove it."

Heather smirked. She quoted, even getting the rhythm right, "Dear Diary, here we are in the dark, fifty yards from my car…now do you get it?"

No way. She knew. She really knew that I knew the way this story went. Even the songs. Even the ones that only got added in the West End version (I knew the original song and preferred it, but I knew both of them pretty well). More importantly, although I knew Veronica wasn't in danger tomorrow because she got out alive and, more importantly, untouched, I couldn't just leave her to the mercy of two jocks who would make up rumours about her because they were angry the rumours weren't true. I still wasn't scared of Heather, but the fact that she knew about me and the musical was unsettling, to say the least.

Another thought hit me. "How do you know this? I get you knowing about me because I'm dead, but how do you know the future? Or what the songs said?"

Heather glared at me, frustrated. "How do you think? I'm dead and you killed me, so your life told me everything. I get to know about all the different eras, and you killing me gives us a connection. If I know you know this stuff, then you know I know what will happen with things you're not going to get involved in. How this so-called musical of our lives goes. I don't know what's going to happen if you keep getting involved, but we both know exactly what happened when you didn't, and that includes the lyrics. I mean, you quoted some of them in that suicide note you wrote for me – yeah, I got to read it too. But you can't make the others not go out on dates or not call Veronica to bail them out. And you can't stop the guys, either. I could control them, but you decided you don't need me, so it's up to you to try. And fail."

How many times was she going to actually go on repeating her accusation? I mean, it was true, I did help kill her, but it didn't make hearing it any easier.

I gave a sigh. "So what am I supposed to do? Tell Veronica why the other Heathers want her out at the farm? What are you expecting me to do?"

Heather shrugged. "You figure it out. I'm not here to advise you. I've got other stuff I can do instead of hanging around you. Maybe I should go haunt a younger you for kicks. I don't live in a specific time period anymore so I could go see you next century right now if I felt like it. I just thought you might actually like to help Veronica out, since you seem to genuinely want to be friends with her."

I frowned. "Wait a second. Haunt a younger me? Does that mean I didn't die in 2019, because wouldn't you be able to find my ghost from there? I thought that was why I ended up here."

Heather just shrugged again. "I'm not your little spy girl. All I got was that you're here at age seventeen thirty years too early. No idea if you died or not, but I haven't found a dead clone of you floating around."

I gave a sigh. "Why are you here, anyway? Can you just get lost?"

Heather rolled her eyes. "I'm here because you clearly don't quite think you were supposed to kill me. You know those ghost stories where we have unfinished business? I wasn't ready to die and you're the only one who was involved and feels guilty. The only one who can even respond to me. I can't even talk to your boyfriend because he thinks he was doing the right thing – if you think you were right, your crimes can't haunt you. And you can't tell me to do anything. I'll hang around as long as I want to."

Heather said that, but I started ignoring her, and she left me alone after that. When I next looked up, I didn't see her anywhere. Maybe I'd imagined her. Still, she'd left me one thing to think about – Veronica's safety and the Heathers calling her out to save their own skin. I couldn't leave them to get assaulted, same as Veronica. I didn't like Heather Duke, but she didn't deserve that, and even if she did, Heather McNamara certainly didn't. That only left the options of letting things play out the same way…or putting myself between the boys and Veronica in some way.

I called Veronica, since it wasn't that late. "Do you have anything on tomorrow?"

"Nothing," Veronica answered dully. "Why, do you want to hang out?"

"I know it wouldn't be the same without Martha, but we could do a movie night," I suggested. "Or just do typical girl things. We could even make it a sleepover."

Veronica sounded brighter. "Yeah, we could do that. You can come over here. I mentioned you to my parents a few days ago, and they'd like to meet you. We don't have to stay up too late or anything, and then I can drive both of us to school-"

"Or I can," I interrupted. "I'll be taking my car to your house anyway. Point is, I'd love to. What time?"

"Five?" Veronica suggested. "Then we'll have a few hours, even if we go to bed on time. We can order a pizza, my treat. I'll let my parents know."

As soon as I hung up, I told my parents. They weren't sure about letting me out when I had school on Monday, but let me go as long as I promised not to stay up too late and that I wouldn't do anything too strenuous beforehand. Then I called JD to let him know I wouldn't be able to give him a ride on Monday, but we could still hang out after school as usual.

"Sure," he said. "I have to keep the motorcycle in shape by riding it frequently, anyway. We can talk on Monday. Love you, Indie."

"Love you too," I said without thinking as I hung up. We'd spoken lightly, but that was still the first "I love you" from both of us. Whether it meant anything this time, I couldn't be sure. I knew that I cared about JD a lot and that he'd given me a new lease on life just by being there. But that didn't necessarily mean love, not yet. Whether me, just ordinary me, meant love for him at this stage, barely a week, I couldn't be sure. He told Veronica he loved her just as she dumped him, and I was not sure when that was – maybe three or four weeks? We'd moved fast, just as they did in the musical. I'd known JD so much longer than he'd known me that it didn't feel totally new to me, but he just moved fast – and I knew why, too, because he'd been starved of affection for so many years that it didn't take long for him to get attached, so I didn't mind. It was why we ended up being the sickeningly cute couple that was almost always cuddled up together, clothes off or on. But love? Well, it was an easily forgotten way to say it. I could say it another time, when I was sure.

Yep, I had to do it. Ana is being haunted by Heather's ghost, and I'm going to exploit the hell out of her and anyone else who dies. I liked Heather Chandler's character a lot better after she died. The thing is, Ana most likely feels more guilty about causing Heather's death than she realizes, than she even admits to herself. Let's move on.