You Had Me at Halo(10)

“Just pretend you didn’t see that,” Holly advised as she sat back down on the bed.

“It’s forgotten,” Gemma readily agreed. “Anyway, the good news is that Todd seemed to believe I’d made a mistake, which means we can now get down to working out a plan. What should we do first?”

Holly paused for a minute and rubbed her chin, trying to ignore Vince’s one-day stubble. He could’ve at least shaved for her funeral. “Well the sooner I can find out just how I really died, the sooner I can start convincing everyone of the truth. Especially Todd, so I suppose we’d better start with trying to figure out how those pills got in my system. Mind you, I would’ve quite liked to see myself as a bride as well, but I guess that’s out of the question in this body.”

“Yes, I don’t think that can do any of us any good.” Gemma blanched as she reached for a diamante-studded diary next to her bed. “So pills it is. We need to work out if someone purposely gave them to you, or if you took them by accident. Or perhaps they just did it as a joke that went wrong?”

“Very wrong.” Holly sighed. Not that she really remembered too much of it at the time, but when she’d first arrived on Level One, disjointed images had started to come back to her. Dying wasn’t really that much fun. And it sort of hurt.

“Your stepmother told me they’d found Dimenhydrinate in your system, which is most commonly used in motion sickness pills. Here.” Gemma ripped the page out and handed it to Holly. “These are my notes. They couldn’t be certain of the dosage, but thought it was probably the equivalent of about four pills—not enough to kill you, just enough to make you drowsy. Oh, and they’re not prescription so anyone can get them.”

“Great.” Holly shoved the piece of paper into Vince’s jacket and thumped the love heart pillow she had been hugging, in frustration. “This narrows it down to just about anyone.”

Gemma reached over and grabbed the cushion from Holly’s tight grip. “I better take this. Now that you have all of this man-strength, we need to be careful with you.”

Holly looked at the now misshapen cushion and blushed. “Sorry, it’s just so frustrating.”

“I know. I mean you’re dead. You’ve got every right to be pissed off. And it’s not really all doom and gloom since the person who gave the pills to you—either intentionally or otherwise—might still have them. After all, why would they get rid of them when there’s no need to? It’s not like CSI are going to come crashing through their door with rubber gloves and fingerprint kits.”

“Good point.” Holly brightened up. Okay so it was a long shot, but at least there was still a chance, and if she had to search everyone’s desk to find the pills then she would do it. She sent her friend a grateful smile. “And Gem, thanks for this. It’s so nice to be around someone who’s on my side. The people in heaven were saying I’d killed myself and I guess I was starting to believe it. Especially after, well...”

“Hey,” Gemma said firmly. “It’s got nothing to do with this. For a start it was six years ago. A lot of kids do weird stuff when they’re teenagers. It’s just the hormones. Try t just forget about it.”

“I thought I had,” Holly admitted as she looked down at the smooth skin on her wrists. Well that was one advantage of being in Vince’s body, she didn’t have a constant reminder of a past she would rather forget.

The shrinks had called it self-harming, but to Holly it had been the only way that she could get out all the frustration trapped in her body. The worst thing was she’d worked so hard in the last few years to make amends for her lapse in wisdom, and now all her hard work had been undone in one foul swoop.

“It’s true,” Gemma insisted.

“It was hard enough convincing people that I didn’t do it intentionally then. This time the evidence is sort of compelling, and people start to think, Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

“For a start hardly anyone knows about what you did back then anyway. When you were alive you couldn’t even see the scars unless you were looking, so enough of the self-pity, here. Of course it’s going to work out. It always does. Remember what we always do when things look bad?”

“Accessorize?”

“No.” Gemma glared. “We rise above it. We’re going to work out how the pills got in your body, figure out a way for you to make up with Todd and then you can prove all those people up on Level One wrong.”

“You’re right.” Holly perked up at the idea. Okay so perhaps revenge wasn’t the best of motives, but it had a certain amount of satisfaction attached to it. She was sure even Dr. Alan Hill would approve. In fact it might be a legitimate part of her therapy.

“Okay.” Gemma chewed on the end of her pencil for a minute. “The first thing we need to do is find out how long the pills were in your system for before you died, and then we need to retrace your steps to work out who you came in contact with.”

Holly stood up and padded across to where Gemma’s laptop was perched. “That’s a great idea, I’ll get on the Internet and see what I can find.” But before she even powered it up, the door opened and Gemma’s roommate, Irene, poked her head in.

“Hey, Gem, I know you’ve just come back from the funeral, but I was wondering...oh, I didn’t realize you had company...” Irene trailed off in a mournful voice.