Being Dead Read Online Free Page B

didn't even glance up from the page I was on. I took a sip from the glass, and only then, with my arm crossed in front of me, did I see a red spot on the back of my forearm.
    Why am I not surprised that something is dripping rust in this old bathroom?
I asked myself: But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn't rust. Rust is more orange. And the wine I had poured myself was blush, not nearly that red.
    I looked up.
    A little girl was standing there.
    My heart felt as though it stopped for a second, then it began to thud. The wineglass dropped from my numb fingers into the bathwater.
    I tried to jump to my feet, and my heel slipped before I'd gotten more than a couple inches up—so that I sat down heavily, smacking my butt and sloshing water over the sides of the tub. I was incredibly lucky that I didn't come down on that wineglass.
    My heart was racing, but the little girl was just standing there, looking as though she herself had just stepped out of the bath, clothes and all. She couldn't have been even ten years old, and she was wearing shorts and sneakers, and a T-shirt with a unicom on it, and she had a bicycle helmet on her head, all dripping wet.
    "What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded, surprised that my voice worked, thinking
Damn country manners...
    But then I
really
looked at her face.
    It was gray, and there was a smear of blood around her nose and mouth despite how wet she was.
    Nobody could be that gray, I realized, no matter how badly she was hurt Nobody
alive
could be that gray.
    I had just yelled at a dead girl. A dead girl was standing in my bathroom.
    I backed up as far away as I could, into the corner of the tub. If I could have fit down the drain, I would have tried that. Instead I grabbed the shower curtain and tried to wrap myself in that. (Fat lot of protection a vinyl sheet would provide.)
    I fought my inclination to just sit there and scream. I could barely get my voice above a squeak. "Who are you?" I asked. "What do you want?"
    She stood there a moment longer, water running off her hair, a drop of blood quivering on the end of her chin, then she turned and walked out of the bathroom.
    Go, go, go,
I mentally urged her.
    But once she was gone, I thought,
Where did she go?
and
What's she doing?
    I wanted to stay in the bathroom. I wanted to get out of the tub and lock the bathroom door and wait for my parents to get home.
    A locked door might keep Danny out, or even Norman Bates, but what good was a locked door against a ghost?
    I got out of the tub carefully.
    I grabbed a towel and poked my head out the door. Wet footprints went down the hall and into my room. Should I try running past my room, down the stairs, outside? Should I stand in the street trying to flag down traffic with only a towel wrapped around me and explain to whoever stopped that there was a ghost in my house?
    She's just a little girl,
I told myself.
She's a ghost, but she's a ghost of a little girl
That was more sad than scary.
    I followed the wet footsteps down the hall and into my room, where they showed up even better on the wood floor. They stopped in front of the closet. And she was not there.
    Did I really want to open those doors?
    The girl, I told myself, was obviously dead. What harm could she do me? And she had asked for help. I was sure it had been her on the phone the day before. A dead girl was asking me for help.
    I put my hand on the door handle. Still, I hesitated, bracing myself for ... I didn't know what.
    Just do it.
    I flung the door open.
    My clothes hung exactly as I had set them up the day before.
    Or, at least, they
seemed
to.
    I took one step in, but then I took a hasty step out.
Yeah, right,
I thought,
go inside, and she might slam the door shut, trapping you in there.
    At the same time I chided myself for being a coward.
    As well as overly suspicious—the closet doesn't have a lock.
    Still, I got my desk chair and propped one of the doors open. Since she was substantial enough to leave wet