The Ungrateful Dead Page 2

  “So what if you didn’t have to stay dead?” Lucy asked slyly.

  Harper peeked sideways at Lucy. “As in…I could be alive again?”

  “Yep. What if I told you you could get your body back?”

  Harper paused. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. “What’s in it for you?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Can’t I just help a girl out without expecting something in return?”

  Harper hesitated. “I’ve never done that for anybody. So I guess it seems weird that a total stranger would do something like that for me.”

  “Well, you might be able to help me out with something once you’re part of the living again.”

  Harper nodded. She knew there had to be something behind Lucy’s offer. “Help with what, exactly?”

  “Nah-ah,” Lucy said, wagging her finger, her voice scolding. “First you get your body, then we’ll talk.”

  If Harper could rejoin the living, maybe she could sell her story, make it into a reality show, even! She thought of all the YouTube and Instagram personalities she followed. Sure, they had fame and fortune, but none of them had a story like this. This made her special. And it could make her rich. Popular. And extremely famous. What dead girl wouldn’t want that?

  “Deal,” Harper agreed.

  Anna groaned as another message popped up on her iPad. She had left Harper in the woods yesterday. But she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all day at school today. And now she was back at her house, getting messages from her. “They’re baaaack.”

  “Ghosts?” Anna’s friend Eden Ashbury looked up from the faux-fur beanbag she was lounging in on the floor. “They’re contacting you again?”

  “Uh-huh. And remember when I told you about that Harper girl yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, after I left her, I started getting text messages again.” She rolled over on her bed, making the old black iron bed frame creak. She held up her iPad so Eden could see the screen.

  This is so weird.

  Forests are creepy.

  I’m not sure what to dooooo­ooooo­?

  Yo

  Anna?

  Are you there???????

  “It’s so weird that it’s happening again,” Eden said. “You buried your old phone, didn’t you?”

  Anna nodded. But burying the phone hadn’t buried the problem. “Maybe this Harper girl did something to establish another connection with me. Maybe, somehow, my ability went viral in the spirit world.” She sighed, tossing her iPad on her bed. “All it took was one ghost to say, ‘Hey, Anna got a new phone! Now we can contact her again. And use her iPad too. That will really annoy her.’ ”

  “They probably aren’t trying to annoy you,” Eden said. “They just need help and you’re someone who can help them.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Anna mumbled.

  “It definitely sucks,” Eden said. “I would hate getting bugged all the time by ghosts. But you’re not the only one having phone trouble.” She shook her phone furiously. “Stupid thing. Never works when it’s supposed to.”

  “You know what will happen if you shake your phone even harder?” Anna asked.

  “What?” Eden said, shaking it harder.

  “Nothing.” Anna giggled.

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” Eden tossed her phone aside on the plush purple rug in Anna’s room. “I’m about ready to throw it at the wall.”

  Anna couldn’t help but laugh at how quickly Eden had gotten frustrated. Usually she was so calm and could handle any situation. Apparently phones were the one thing that really got to her. “What are you even looking for?”

  “I need a specific spell for something…well, specific.”

  “And I’m guessing that you’re not going to tell me what specifically it is?” Anna raised an eyebrow.

  “Not yet. But I will.” Eden retrieved her phone and turned it off, then on again.

  If anyone had told Anna a few months ago she would become friends with one of the Ashbury twins, she would’ve laughed. And if anyone had told her Eden was a witch, well, Anna might just have died from laughter.

  Anna and her mom had inherited Maddsen Manor from her mom’s uncle. At the time, Anna had thought that leaving behind their old, cramped one-bedroom apartment and the bad luck that always seemed to follow them was like winning the lottery.

  She hadn’t realized that their fresh start would involve communicating with dead people.

  Thankfully, Eden was very much alive. Surprisingly, she was a witch.

  Eden wasn’t a dark witch, though. She didn’t have a wart on her nose or ride around on a broom. She also wasn’t a good witch who wore fluffy dresses and helped people with a sparkly wand or fairy dust. She was the kind of witch who looked like a Barbie doll, lived in a mansion, kept her witchcraft a secret, and had an evil identical twin named Olivia.

  Eden scrolled through her apps. “Aha! I think I found it!”

  When Anna first learned that Eden was a witch, she expected her to have a huge black book, the cover barely hanging on and the pages yellowed with age, containing spells and witchcraft passed down for generations. Wasn’t that how witches operated? But apparently, modern-day witches were way past that. They had Spell Phones.

  Eden’s phone had apps exclusively for witches and a link to an app store, where they could purchase additional spells. There were even meet-ups for witches in the area, but Eden refused to say if there was anyone like her at their school, Winchester Academy. “The people who know about us are limited,” she had told Anna. “We are very selective. Not even Olivia knows the truth. It’s just better that way.”

  “But she’s your twin, Eden. How is that possible?” Anna couldn’t imagine having a sister, let alone keeping such an incredible secret from her.

  Eden had shrugged. “That’s just how it is. But it’s not something I can ignore about myself. Ignoring it is just dangerous.”

  “Tell me about it,” Anna had mumbled. She had tried ignoring all the texts she received from dead people, but that made it worse. Much worse. She’d quickly learned that spirits didn’t like to be ignored. That made them mad.

  The sooner she could get them to stop showing up and interrupting her life, the better, she thought now. If only she could figure out how to do that.

  “Why did you trust me so quickly?” Anna asked.

  “You’re different. And once I knew you could communicate with ghosts, I figured you’d understand and not run blabbing to the whole school.”

  Anna smiled. Eden had caught her in mid-conversation with a ghost. She had had to either tell her the truth or look like a crazy person.

  Since they’d started hanging out, Anna realized the witch stuff wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. And despite appearances, Eden was nothing at all like Olivia.

  “Have you ever thought of doing a niceness spell on Olivia?” Anna asked.

  “I have!” Eden’s eyes widened in seriousness. “I did a Sugar and Spice spell, but it didn’t really work. She acted even worse, if you can believe it. Bad side effects.”

  “Side effects?” Anna repeated.

  “Oh yeah, every spell has a side effect. Think of it as being like medication. Some people can have a bad reaction, and some can feel side effects worse than others. It’s just the probability is greater when you’re doing a spell that has a high degree of difficulty.”

  Anna thought about this. “So what you’re saying is that Olivia isn’t capable of ever being nice.”

  Eden looked sad. “Not if she doesn’t get something out of it.”

  “I’m so glad you broke away from her and her group.”

  “Me too. It was scary but it was worth it. I couldn’t have done it if it weren’t for you.” She smiled at Anna. “You’re my sister from another mister.”

  Anna smiled back. “Don’t start getting all mushy on me, now.”

  Laughing, Eden grabbed a pillow near her and threw it at Anna.

  Although Eden was
quickly becoming Anna’s best friend, Anna still thought often of Millie. Millie, aka Millicent Marguerite Maddsen, her best friend and great-aunt and a ghost. Millie had died in 1947, but she had lived for decades in denial about what had happened to her. It was a long, sad story. At last, with Anna’s help, she had accepted her fate. She hadn’t been ready to move on, and Anna hadn’t been ready to say goodbye.

  But she had moved on. And Anna had been forced to say goodbye.

  Ever since, Anna had felt lonely. She told herself she needed to make new friends. Human friends. And luckily, she and Eden had grown close. But still, every once in a while, she would talk out loud, hoping Millie would hear her if she was around.

  Deep in her heart, Anna knew Millie would find a way to contact her again.

  Millie was a ghost she wanted to hear from. She had so many things she wanted to tell her. Three things, to be exact.

  1. They had been wrong about Eden. She was nothing like Olivia. And she had stopped allowing Olivia to take over her life.

  2. Johnny. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Anna loved how the name of her crush rolled off her tongue. Poor Johnny. A few months ago, that pain-in-the-neck ghost Lucy had managed to take over Eden’s body. Lucy-as-Eden had pushed Johnny through Anna’s living room glass-top table (OUCH!). Luckily, he was okay. But he had lost any memories from that night and the months before the accident. Memories that included Anna (OUCH!). When Anna’s mom came home, she assumed the blonde was Olivia, not Eden, and Anna never corrected her. Especially since Eden didn’t remember anything either after she got her body back.

  3. Millie was right. The whole popularity thing was overrated. And since she’d figured that out, her life was much better. Anna would rather have a few great friends than a ton of okay friends who were all about the drama and backstabbing.

  The girls walked down to Anna’s kitchen to get something to eat. Anna put on the teakettle and took out some mugs from the kitchen cabinet. “I wish Johnny could just remember me from before the accident.” She rummaged around the cabinet and found a box of chocolate chip cookies. “It would make life so much easier. I hate this starting-over thing.”

  “Maybe it’s not so bad,” Eden said. “This way, you can start out fresh.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” But Johnny wasn’t the only one who had lost his memories. When Lucy supposedly crossed over to the other side and gave Eden her body back, Eden didn’t remember a single thing about what had gone down. She didn’t even know she was there when it happened. Anna didn’t want to tell her, because she knew Eden would feel responsible.

  “Hey, check out this spell!” Eden said suddenly as she stopped scrolling on her phone. “I could whip something up to help Johnny remember you.”

  “Whip something up?” Anna repeated.

  “Yeah, I could make a memory cake.” Eden made it sound like altering someone’s memories was normal.

  “Memory cake?”

  “Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”

  “Repeat everything?” Anna said, giggling.

  Eden groaned. “Okay, I know you do that whenever you’re trying to avoid something, but look, what would be so wrong with me giving Johnny back something he lost?”

  “I’ve tasted your cooking before, Eden. I don’t think poisoning him would help.”

  “Shut up!” Eden laughed. “As long as I follow this recipe, it would be safe.”

  “Yeahhhh, I don’t know. What if it did the opposite? Like removed his memories from the last few weeks? That’s the last thing I need.”

  Eden shook her head. “No, it doesn’t work like that. Worst case, nothing would happen and his memory loss would stay the same. The side effects would be minimal, if there were any at all. Now, if I gave it to someone who didn’t have any lost memories, that’d be a whole other story.”

  “Spells can go wrong, though,” Anna pointed out, feeling a little nervous about the whole thing. Just then the teakettle started to boil, its whistle piercing.

  “True, but not in the way you’re thinking. It sounds like you’re just making up excuses.”

  That was exactly what she was doing. She really wanted Johnny to get his memories back, but that also meant he would know the truth about that night. And there were certain things that were better left forgotten.

  “At least think about it?”

  Anna nodded. “Okay.” But thinking about something is totally different from doing something.

  Harper and Lucy were in the middle of a ghost-to-ghost tutorial, and it was not going well.

  At all.

  “So how am I supposed to get back into my body?” Harper demanded, her voice shrill. She stared down at the fresh mound of dirt at her feet. “Especially since it was buried this morning?”

  Lucy let out a loud sigh. “Calm down. Like I keep telling you, you just sink into the ground and into your body.”

  “But I told you that didn’t work the first five times I tried, so why would it suddenly work now?” She felt the need to blink back imaginary tears. Standing in the middle of a deserted cemetery, staring out at moss-covered urns and headstones of long-forgotten people, was not how she wanted to spend her morning.

  Or her afternoon.

  Or her evening.

  But she didn’t have anything else to do, or anyplace else to go. She blinked faster.

  “Again, Harper. Like I keep telling you. You’re a spirit now. You gain strength every moment you stay in this form.”

  Harper glanced down at her phone. “It’s been four days, sixteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes. I can’t be that much more powerful.”

  “Yes, you can. Trust me, you’re definitely powerful enough to do this simple task.”

  Harper sniffed. “How can you be so sure this will work? And what if I do get back inside my body and I’m trapped? Underground? And then I’m buried alive?” She felt her dead heart speed up.

  “You’re already dead,” Lucy reminded her, which was totally unnecessary. “You can’t be buried alive. And you won’t be trapped. Your strength from your current form will transfer with you into your body. You have a small window of time to use that power before your energy is absorbed and you’re only as strong as your actual body.”

  “But how do you know this will work?” Harper asked meekly.

  “Because I know,” Lucy barked. “Stop questioning me.”

  “You’ve never done this before, have you?” Harper asked.

  “Well, define ‘never,’ ” Lucy said.

  “You are infuriating!”

  “Look, I met this guy named Rick on the other side and he taught me some tricks to this spirit stuff,” Lucy said. “This is one of them. Try it again.”

  Harper didn’t want to try it again. But as she looked around at the wilted flowers and gravestones, she realized that trying again was the only thing she had left.

  Anna watched Johnny and Spencer play air hockey while she sat on a couch nearby. The clubhouse next to the public swimming pool was the hangout spot in the village. And luckily, it wasn’t too far a walk from Maddsen Manor. Anna scrolled through the messages on her phone. She had a text from Eden.

  Running late. Be there in a few.

  When Anna looked back up, Johnny was gone and Spencer was playing against someone else.

  “Hey, Anna.” Johnny sat down next to her, startling her.

  She jumped a little but hoped he hadn’t noticed. “Hey.”

  “Want a soda?” He held up a Coke bottle.

  “Um, sure. Thanks,” she said, taking the bottle from him. Being here with him, in this moment, reminded her of something. “Remember that one time when—” She cut herself off. Of course he didn’t remember. He’d lost all his memories! She looked up at Johnny. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Happens all the time.”

  Another thing she loved about Johnny: He was so easygoing. Oh, and the way he pushed his hair out of his face like
that. And when he bit the corner of his bottom lip when he was thinking. And—oh, he was saying something to her. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

  Johnny laughed. “If I’m boring you, just let me know.”

  “You could never bore me,” she said, a little more enthusiastically than she probably should have. She could feel her cheeks turn red.

  “So tell me about it.”

  Anna’s hand reached up to her cheek. “Huh?”

  “Tell me what you were going to say. About what you remember. You never know. It might help me remember too.”

  After the last few months of doing this, Anna knew he wouldn’t, but she usually went along with it anyway. But not this time. Because this time it involved certain secrets that he didn’t remember about her.

  And that was the hardest to deal with. The doctor had said his memory loss was probably just temporary. Anna’s mom told her to think positive and just look at it like a fresh start. That was exactly what Anna didn’t want.

  She hadn’t had much luck with fresh starts.

  But now, the more time she spent with Johnny, the stronger her feelings for him got. And she had no idea what he really thought of her.

  “Nah,” Anna said, dismissing the idea. “It wasn’t anything interesting.”

  “Oh. Well, okay then.” He smiled at her and she practically melted. His dimples were so cute.

  Just then Eden walked into the clubhouse, and Anna couldn’t help but wonder: What if Eden was right? What if her friend’s memory cake could help Johnny after all?

  Johnny went to hang out with some of the guys from his football team and Eden took his spot beside Anna.

  “What’s up?” Eden asked, dropping her backpack on the ground.

  “Nothing,” she said, taking a swig of her soda. “The same. Mom is always gone. She quit her job at Twisted and went full-time at the funeral home. So she’s either working or with Winston. Same thing, really.”

  “Oh, that’s not creepy.”

  “Right?”