“We’re ghosts,” Felix said. “We’re all ghosts. And now, so are you.”
Starting from the beginning – or, rather, this beginning at least, which I think is probably the one that will be the most useful – there are signs of it all. You can see it in her behaviour. It’s just like his.
When Rima first realized that she was a ghost, she closed off completely. She said later that she wasn’t angry or panicked or sad, but guilty, like she’d wasted what little time she’d had. She could have done so much more, if she’d known that those eighteen years were going to be all that she’d get. She didn’t cry or shout or try to leave the building. She just sat down and wished and wished that things were different.
It’s always fascinating, watching someone when they think they’re alone. They sink inside their own heads and perform intricate little rituals that make sense only to them, that they’d never even dream of showing another person.
It says a lot about Harriet that she didn’t pause to grieve like Rima. She started looking for a solution to the problem instead. If only she wasn’t so good at finding them.
HARRIET
“I’m a ghost. I’m dead. I’m … dead.” Harriet held up her hand and looked at it, trying to work out how it could possibly be the hand of a ghost. It looked just like anyone else’s hand, but somehow it wasn’t made of flesh and bone any more. Experimentally, she tried to pick up a lump of brick from the floor. Her hand passed straight through it.
It was impossible. How could she be dead and feel so alive at the same time?
She was only eighteen. She couldn’t be stuck here for ever, with no way to return to her old life. She’d had so many plans for her degree and career … her life. She’d only just started gaining followers on her YouTube channel. She’d been diligently posting make-up tutorials every other Monday. The hard work had finally started to pay off, and now all that effort had been wasted.
“I barely did anything with my life,” Harriet said. “I’ve never even left the country. Oh God, I only had sex once. I wasted so much time in freshers’ week!”
The blond boy stepped forward and patted her consolingly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re here for you. I’m Kasper, and this is Rima and Felix.”
“What do I even do now?” she said, ignoring him. “Who are you all? Are you the welcoming committee or something? Please say you aren’t angels.”
He shook his head. “We died here, too. A long time ago, now. You don’t have to go through this alone. There’s loads of us here.”
“Loads. Of ghosts?”
He grinned and pointed upwards with both forefingers to where dozens of figures were standing motionlessly on the floors above, peering over the balcony at her.
“No. Freaking. Way.” Harriet squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she opened them again, the people were still there. They were all staring intently at her. None of them were moving. None of them were speaking.
It was too much. Harriet turned back to her body.
“Is there a way we can close my eyes?” she asked. It hit her all over again how awful it looked, a lifeless corpse lying there in a pool of blood and cracked bone. “I keep making eye contact with myself, and that is not something I ever imagined doing.”
“There’s no way to move your body,” Rima said, as another girl appeared. This one was carrying a baby and looked very young and very tired. All the ghosts here seemed to be teenagers, around the same age as she was.
Had this new girl been a student parent when she was alive? In some of the halls there were special rooms with kitchens and en-suite bathrooms for parents.
“Leah!” Rima and Felix said together, looking delighted.
“Where have you been?” Rima asked. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I was sleeping, like the rest of you.” Leah let Rima hug her, and then said to Harriet, not unkindly, “Congratulations, new kid. Welcome to the afterlife.”
Trying to hide the dart of pain that rippled through her at the words, Harriet made lazy jazz hands at her. “Thanks! I’m hyped that I never have to pay off my student loans now.”
Leah shrugged at that.
“I’m Leah. This is Claudia.” She peeled a curl of blanket away from her baby’s face. The girl’s blue eyes slid over to focus on Harriet.
Leah was standing right under a drip of water, which kept falling through her left shoulder in a way that made Harriet feel dizzy. It was like watching an optical illusion. Her body looked completely solid right up until the moment the water droplets touched her and then her shoulder went kind of … fuzzy. That – combined with her deathly pale skin, cream linen dress and slightly lanky hair – was the most obvious indication that she was dead. The rest of them looked alive, if you didn’t pay close attention.
“Do you know how to leave the building?” she asked Leah. “They’re saying I can’t get out, but I have to go home.”
Her gran couldn’t drive with her broken ankle. She would be trapped at home if Harriet wasn’t there to take her around. She wouldn’t even be able to go food shopping until Harriet got back. And they were nearly out of milk.
“You might as well quit now. You can’t leave the place where you died,” Leah said. “Trust me, I’ve tried. Our souls are connected to the land or building or something.”
“But I have to go home. My gran is all on her own. She’ll worry about me if I don’t turn up.”
“Even if you went home, your gran wouldn’t be able to see you anyway,” Kasper said.
“You can’t know that for sure,” Harriet said. “My gran could be a psychic or something. Are those even real? I hope they are.”
She was very aware that she was pretending to be upbeat and calm about this whole thing. If she stopped smiling, she would break down, and that wasn’t something she could do in front of strangers. She’d always been taught never to show anyone a sign of weakness, because someone would try to use it against her.
“You can’t go home. Forget about it, kid,” Leah said, a little more harshly.
Harriet picked at her nails, miffed. “Why do you keep calling me ‘kid’? You’re, like, seventeen.”
“What part of ‘ghosts’ don’t you understand? We’ve all been here for years. Long before you were even born. You are a kid to me.”
“How did you die?”
Leah sighed heavily and looked down at her baby. Apparently, Harriet had just made a severe breach of etiquette.
“Oh, dude, you’ll never get how Leah died out of her,” Rima replied. “She and Claudia had already been here for ages when we all died. Even I don’t know how she got here, and we’ve been best friends for dozens of years.”
“We’re not best friends,” Leah muttered.
“Sure. Tell that to your half of our Best Friends Forever necklace.” Rima tapped a pink locket hanging around her own neck.
“I told you – I’m not wearing that thing,” Leah said, glaring at the jewellery.
Harriet ignored their bickering. Her brain was too full to find room to care about whatever kind of fight was going on there. If it wasn’t about her death or her gran, she wasn’t interested.