The Dead Romantics (39)

“Can’t we . . . I don’t know . . . ask permission or walk through a park instead or—”

“Park’s closed at night, too, and besides”—I took off my flats and tossed them over the wall—“I know the guy who owns it. We’ll be fine.” I decided not to add the part where I’d been permanently banned from the cemetery after dark after the previous owner called me in for trespassing one too many times. Seaburn wouldn’t care. Though it wasn’t Seaburn I was worried about.

“I’m suddenly second-guessing this,” he muttered.

“You’re dead—what could you possibly be afraid of?” I asked.

He gave me a level look. “That’s not the point.”

I rolled my eyes and put my feet into the old climbing holds that I’d chiseled out when I was teenager, and began to work my way up six feet to the top, where I looped my leg over and straddled it. “You coming or am I going for a walk alone?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he debated. Ran the numbers. Debated his options. His shoulders were stiff, his eyebrows furrowed, as if it were more than just breaking into a cemetery that stopped him.

I swung my leg back over. “We don’t have to, you know,” I said, softer. “We can go to a park if you aren’t comfortable. Or—the Ridge?”

I couldn’t believe I just suggested that.

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s just . . . there aren’t others? In the graveyard? Others like me, I mean.”

“Ah, other people working through a post-living experience.”

He pointed at me. “That.”

I glanced back at the graveyard. The moon was so full and so bright, I could see from the gates to the far wall, and all of the off-white mausoleums and gravestones in between. “No, I don’t see anyone—wait. Are you scared of ghosts?”

He stiffened. “No.”

He said that way too quickly.

“You are! Oh my god, you’re a ghost.”

“Supernatural things upset me.”

“I promise no wittle ghostie is going to hurt you, Benji Andor,” I teased, “and if any of them do, they’ll have me to contend with.”

“You can punch ghosts?”

“No, but I’m a really bad singer. Unleash me with a microphone on any of your enemies and they’re toast.”

He snorted a laugh. “Good to know.” Then he took a deep breath and said, “No, I don’t go back on my word. This isn’t turning out how I expected but—things rarely do, don’t they?”

It sounded like he was referring to his own predicament. He couldn’t have been much older than I was, and he was dead. He had plans—everyone has plans, even if they don’t realize it. Even the ones who go because they think they don’t have plans. There’s always something that comes up.

I wondered what he regretted, what parts of his life he wished he’d done differently.

I wondered if my dad had any regrets when he went, too.

“Then c’mon.” I nodded my head toward the graveyard, and looped my leg back over the wall. “Live a little.”

“Yes, well, would that I could.”

“Probably wrong choice of words. See you on the other side!” I pulled the rest of myself over and dropped down onto the grass. I was only 55 percent sure that he’d follow me—was he really such a stickler for the rules? He was dead. “Just walk through the wall, my dude,” I called over to him. “You’re a ghost—”

A moment later, he stepped through the wall and shivered. “That feels so weird,” he complained, dusting invisible lint from his crisp button-down shirt. “I don’t like it. It tingles. In weird places.”

I headed up toward the path that looped the whole cemetery, and called back to him, “You’re a terrible ghost.”

“It wasn’t as though I applied for this role. What if we get caught?”

“If I get caught,” I corrected, “then I’ll run. You’re a ghost. No one else can see you.”

He caught up in a few quick strides, and fell into pace beside me. Lee never did that. He always expected me to match his. “Right,” he said, “about that. I have questions.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll try to answer them.”

“Can you summon ghosts?”

“No.”

“Do you exorcise them?”

“No. Like I said earlier, most of them just want to talk. They have good stories. And they want someone to listen.” I shrugged. “I like listening—don’t give me that look,” I added, sensing his gaze on me, as if he was trying to puzzle me out. As if I had surprised him.

He quickly looked away. “Is this . . . post-living part of your life a family business?”

I laughed at that. “No. My family owns the funeral home in town, but only me and my dad can see spirits. Ghosts. Whatever you want to call them—you. I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with the funeral parlor? Who knows.”

“Is that why you left? Not to be too forward,” he added quickly, realizing that, in fact, it was a little too forward. “I just . . . picked up on it. People are surprised you’re home.”