Only the Good Die Young

1

It took me a while to get used to being a real ghost, and I only say that because, since my death, I guess I was in some kind of state of shock.

That’s what Amanda Lee told me, anyway.

My so-called savior was an intuitive and—well, let’s just be honest—a different lady. First of all, when she pronounces her name, it sounds a lot like that creepy house in the book Rebecca. Remember “Manderley”? That’s just about how Amanda Lee says her name, except with an a at the beginning. “A MANdaley.” I think it’s because of the years she spent living in Virginia before moving to SoCal. She told me a little bit about that after she rescued me from the woods, but we’ve basically been talking about me instead ever since then.

At least, she’s been telling me what she knows of my story.

Based on what my friends had said to the police about that night, the tale went a little something like this: a young college dropout slash Round Table Pizza waitress and her buddies went out late to frolic in the spooky old forest out of sheer boredom. Said waitress had been drying out from a bender the night before, so she’d drunk scads of soda pop because she’d been in charge of carting around her doped-up buddies, then wandered off to take a pee, never to return.

And that’s all she wrote. No body, no blood at my death spot, no trace of evidence that would help the cops to find me—not much of anything, really.

Weirdly, when I heard what’d happened to me, it didn’t surprise me all that much, because the second I snapped out of what Amanda Lee called my “residual haunting phase”—a time loop I was clearly stuck in until she yanked me out of it with the psychic mojo in her voice and the sight of the bracelets from my era—I knew just what I was.

Dead.

Deader than a doornail. Deader than a shrunken head. Deader than when video killed the radio star.

Very dead indeed. Actually, I had been living that truth over and over for a long time in that forest, so death didn’t seem like all that big an issue when I became an intelligent spirit. What actually freaked me out more than anything was the fact that I didn’t remember who my killer was. I guess I’d spent so much time in my noninteractive ghost state that I’d gone a little numb. Or maybe, as Amanda Lee suggested, I had some sort of “fright wall” erected in my brain, and that was the only thing keeping my fragile spirit psyche together.

Amanda Lee thought my memories would all come back to me, though, just as soon as I was ready to deal. And, being a total rich-lady do-gooder, she promised to help me figure out my deal. To her, I was a real live… I mean… not totally alive mystery.

I’d latched onto Amanda Lee’s offer to help me straightaway, mainly because she’d also told me I’m probably “tethered” to this plane because of being killed, and the only way my soul can find peace would be to take care of my earthly business.

Funny, huh? That word—tethered. Like I was a volleyball tied to a pole, winding around it and around it, going nowhere.

About a week after Amanda Lee found me, I felt about as aimless as that ball as I hovered in front of a computer in a teeny casita guesthouse on her property. Since Amanda Lee theorized that spirits are composed of energy—she mentioned electromagnetic radiation—you could say that I was using my connection with the electricity in the air to manipulate what she called “Web pages.” Even if the screen always futzed a bit when I got too close, I had already done a ton of research into my killing and had hit every barrier imaginable. Now I’d graduated to satisfying my curiosity about things such as whether Jane Fonda ruled the planet yet, or if there was any place you could still buy Pop Rocks.

By the way, I couldn’t get over this Internet. It was like the mind of a communal, confused, sometimes idiotic god.

Amanda Lee eased open the door and strolled into the room, wearing designer hippy-dippy boots under a flowered skirt, a long-sleeved sheer purple top over a camisole, and a clump of turquoise necklaces. Pretty hip for her age. She reminded me of the type of cool, got-it-together mom who’d lived on my suburban block when I was a kid—and her house would’ve had the swimming pool that everyone liked to visit because she was never home except to say hi. Her hair was a deep red with white streaks framing her face, pulled back in a low ponytail today. She was tall and slender, with a longish face and high cheekbones, her eyes a clear gray.

She had a way of looking at me all the time with what I’d call a “soft” tone, as if she was always thinking sympathetic thoughts or maybe even pitying my fate.

Poor Casper me, right? The eternal houseguest.

“Anything interesting on the World Wide Web on a Sunday?” she asked in a voice that a pool mother would’ve used when she poked her head out to ask kids if they wanted any lemonade.

I hadn’t heard a tone like that in… you guessed it, aeons. But it wasn’t just because I’d been dead awhile. My parents had gone on a fateful sailing trip on their catamaran a year and a half before I’d passed on. In a way, I was relieved that Mom and Dad hadn’t had to go through the pain of my missing-person case. Imagine dealing with their only daughter vanishing off the face of the planet. Ugh.

“I’ve discovered,” I said, since talking was much easier now that I’d had some practice with Amanda Lee, “that I’m still just a stranger in a strange land. One minute, I’m playing Duran Duran’s first album on a turntable. The next I’m looking out the window decades later, seeing thirteen-year-olds walking home from school with… smartphones?”

I was still getting used to all the lingo.

Amanda Lee nodded, looking pleased with me. If I were a dog, my tail would’ve been wagging.

I float-walked away from the computer. “When I was thirteen, I was utterly amazed at how a record needle picked up sound. It was magic. Now kids can hold every piece of music ever created in their palms. Hell, these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can get information chips in your brains and the mark of Satan on your foreheads.”

Once, a friend had told me to read The Late Great Planet Earth after we’d gotten into a weed-fueled discussion about how the world was going to end. It was actually the last book I’d picked up before I died. Funny how I could recall that and not the finer details of important stuff in life like… oh, who’d killed me or anything.

“I’ve already had my mark of evil cosmetically removed with a Martian laser,” Amanda Lee said.

I actually believed her until she laughed. But can you blame me for being gullible, even for a sec?

I wasn’t sure I liked this new age. The ’eighties had been much… quainter.

As if tuning in to my thoughts, Amanda Lee said, “Don’t grow old before your time, Jensen.”

“I’m not sure I have a time anymore.”

I smiled, bringing another one out in her, too. Just in the week I’d been here, I’d learned that she was the only person I knew of who could see me smile or, hell, even see my altered appearance well enough to inform me that I looked like a black-and-white TV version of a person and not so real at all.

And you know what’s also a bummer? Being barred from communicating with other humans, like the gardener who trimmed Amanda Lee’s herb and flower garden or the newspaper guy who tossed the newest edition to the porch of her Mediterranean-style house at every crack of dawn. It’s so boring to be invisible to most people. I mean, the best distractions I had going were this Internet thing and the programs and movies on the TV Amanda Lee had also left for sleepless ol’ me.

She sat on a carved-wood, leather sofa, one of many antiques in the casita, then folded her hands in her lap. “I should tell you that I didn’t exactly come here to listen to your existential crisis.”

“But I’ll bet you’re fascinated so far.”

A raised eyebrow paid tribute to my flippancy. Then, “I was wondering if you would like to take a field trip.”

My body went on the fritz, just like a TV did, but it wasn’t from excitement. Not even.

Amanda Lee lowered her voice to an understanding whisper. “It’ll be okay this time, Jensen.”

“Will it?”

“I know the first trip was rough on you. But you wanted to see Suzanne.”

Yes, I had wanted.

See, at first, I had gone a little nuts with this spirit stuff, flying around like a maniac, feeling the wind brush all over me. I’d learned right away that I could travel on electric currents and, I mean, it was totally Star Trek time—one place to another in a space-age minute.

It took me a bit longer to sober up and get to the more serious issues, though, like being invisible.

Like visiting friends who’d gone on to a life without me.

My first visit had been during a field trip to an Irish pub in the Gaslamp Quarter. “It might be healthy to get in touch with the past,” Amanda Lee had said in a gentle drawl that had somewhat been ironed out by years of West Coast living. “Suzanne was with you earlier on the night you died, before you left for Elfin Forest. Maybe seeing her will trigger a useful memory about your killing.”

So she had taken her car to the pub as I caught a current and surfed it into a dark-wooded room, which smelled of hops and cabbage. While Amanda Lee had ordered a sausage roll, I had floated to a corner of the bar, rocked at seeing my best friend for the first time in ages.

Suze was over fifty-three years old now, and she looked every second of it, with gray glinting in the long brown curls of hair, with her blue eyes as washed out as the holey jeans she used to wear. It was near the end of her bartending shift, and afterward, she had gone home to a matchbox of an apartment, eating dinner at the table by herself as she looked out the dark window at the guttering lights of her junky neighborhood.

The sight of her alienation pierced me. Earlier, she’d been surrounded by people, only to go back to a lonely hovel, almost as if she were a ghost herself.

Before I could even ask myself what Suze might’ve known about my last night as a person, I zoomed back to the casita and got lost in the most welcome distraction of the TV. Amanda Lee had left me alone, probably thinking that our field trip had drained me because we’d been so far from my death spot. It hadn’t been all that bad.

“What kind of torture do you have in mind for me this time?” I asked now.

Amanda Lee could obviously tell I was being difficult. “You’ve been wondering about him, haven’t you?”

I bristled, knowing exactly whom she was talking about. “Just because I’ve been wondering doesn’t mean I should pay a visit to him.”

Amanda Lee folded her hands on her lap instead of saying anything to that. As if she’d had to compose herself for some reason, she smiled slightly.

“Seeing him was only an idea,” she said.

Had she wanted to say something else to me?

I couldn’t help myself. I float-walked to her, reaching out to touch her out of pure instinct, just like one person would’ve put her hand on another’s shoulder when she thought something might be wrong and she was encouraging the other person to talk about it.

At the contact, she sucked in a harsh breath, shivering. “Jensen.”

I flinched away.

“You know what touching me does,” she said. “You’re chilly.”

“Sorry.”

But I was confused.

Touching her had done more than make her shiver. I’d actually intuited something from Amanda Lee for the first time ever. I’d made contact with her only once before, but she’d obviously been prepared that time, and I’d only seen a field of gray in her. Understandably, she hadn’t wanted me in her head.

Yet, this go-round, I’d seen a sparkling flash in her mind—a diamond image—before it’d gone gray.

Yeah, I’d gotten something all right. At least, enough to tell me that I might be able to empathize with humans—and maybe not just Amanda Lee, either.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, brushing her hands down her skirt as she stood, then went to access the computer. She delicately typed with her manicured nails until a map showed up on the screen.

“Even if Dean wasn’t in Elfin Forest that night, seeing him might jar your recollection about what happened all those years ago.” She’d thought the same about visiting Suze.

She gestured toward the screen. “I’ve put his location up here, if you’d like to study it.”

“But…”

“Just think it over.”

After she left, I thought about how the Suze field trip had left me in a funk for days. But I had to admit it—I wanted to see my old boyfriend. The temptation was overwhelming.

I glanced at the directions on the computer. What was I going to do for the rest of the decade—just sit here and not care about solving my own crime?

Besides, the sad fact was that I did want to see Dean. I’d been wanting to ever since I was pulled out of the imprint, and now…

Now I took in the lay of the land on the computer, then went to the door, seeping through the crack under it, riding a current out of the chichi vibe of Amanda Lee’s Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood and north, toward the suburbs of San Marcos.

As I traveled, it seemed as if I was in the middle of a humming, pulsating tunnel—it felt like an artery, with me as the blood.

When I was human, I’d never realized that spirits have the ability to appear in different locations. Sure, I’d heard the stories about how Elvis haunted this house and that one, but I’d chalked all that up to kooky people seeing what they wanted to see. Elvis is a pretty popular guy, after all, high in demand, even in death. But now I know that, if the old dude is actually a ghost now, he could easily go from one place to the next if he needed some excitement. Or maybe he just has a purpose in being in more than one place.

Any way you slice it, it seems the farther we spirits travel from our death spots, the weaker we get. I’ve learned this much from my few experiences so far, and my saving grace is that Amanda Lee doesn’t live too far from Elfin Forest, and she also has batteries in the casita, which keep me healthy and glowing. If it wasn’t for those, Amanda Lee thought I might run the risk of being pulled back into that noninteractive imprint mode she found me in.

No, thanks.

As I slipped out of the current’s tunnel, I shuddered, discombobulated, hanging in the air above a street that featured cookie-cutter ranch houses. I sensed that I was in the general area of where I’d been aiming—a neighborhood with grass yards shining under a warm, spring, late-afternoon sun. I have to say that there was a sort of high I got as I floated onward, whisking close to humans who lay on lounges in their backyards or who washed the cars in their driveways, having no idea why it’d suddenly gotten chilly, only to immediately warm up again.

I tracked the address Amanda Lee had given me until I came to the one I was looking for: 297 Sajen Road. A cute white house with green trim around the windows, an old Toyota in the driveway, even a damned white picket fence. No kidding.

Then I focused in on the kids and the man behind the fence.

He was throwing a football back and forth with a teenage boy, probably his son, and a slightly older girl was nearby, practicing cheers with her red-and-white pom-poms, egging the team on.

Daddy sent her a fond smile, then sent a zinger to his son.

I didn’t know if a spirit’s heart could ache, but it sure felt like that’s what mine was doing, because the last time I’d seen Dean Morgan, it’d been almost six months before I bought it.

His hair had been surfer blond and cut straight to his chin back then. He’d been tan, his muscles lean on a streamlined body. His eyes were the color of a shot of whiskey, his smile enough to disassemble me and put me back together all in the space of a second.

“Don’t worry, Jen,” he’d said to me the last time I saw him while he stood in front of his beat-up Camaro, which was loaded with milk cartons full of clothes and cassette tapes. “I’ll be coming back.”

But he never did. There’d only been graduate school across the country at Columbia and phone calls filled with the same promise. I’d believed him, though, thinking it was true love.

Maybe it had been, back then.

I blew out a breath, stirring the leaves of the elm tree I was hovering next to. A bird jumped to another branch with a frantic tweet.

The sound caught Dean’s attention, and for a heart-jamming moment, he looked up.

Straight through me.

If I’d had blood in me, it would’ve stopped. That’s what this spirit version of heartbreak felt like, at least. But then, second by second, as he went back to playing catch with the son he’d had with someone else, I saw that his hair wasn’t so blond anymore. He was a little older than Amanda Lee, gray, with a paunch and wrinkles around his eyes.

He was a different person who had moved on after my death, and I couldn’t feel a connection to him anymore. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever really known him.

As I retreated away from the tree, the bird chirped, like it was relieved I was going. Damned fucking bird.

Damned fucking whoever had killed me, because maybe, if I had run a little faster or if my friends and I had gone to the forest on any other night, I could’ve been in this yard today, with Dean. But my death had taken that from me.

It had taken everything, and every time I made one of these field trips, the pain of loss just got worse.

I had to get away, but just before I summoned a travel artery, I saw Amanda Lee’s Bentley down the road. She was behind the steering wheel, her hands resting on it, just as if she’d known I would happen on by and she’d been as prepared as always.

She power-rolled down the window, allowing me to slide inside the car, and I sensed her shudder as my cool essence raked by.

The radio, which crackled in my presence, was playing a low tune—something blue by a woman who sounded like she’d been crying into her drink all night.

“It’s not fair,” she said, “is it?”

“Dean forgot me. I think they all have.”

“No, I guarantee they still remember, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they miss you, Jensen. But they went forward because life allowed them to.”

“Life allowed that?”

At my anger, the radio buzzed, almost like a chain saw, and Amanda Lee shut it off.

I calmed down. “Was it life that spared them and cornered me by that tree in the forest?”

“No, it wasn’t.” Amanda Lee turned in her seat to look at me, and it felt good to have someone on this earth who knew I was still here. “A human monster made the choice to hurt you.”

“I wish…”

“What?” She still watched me as if I were real enough to matter.

She made it so easy for all my resentment to boil out. “I wish I would’ve been strong enough to fight back that night.”

“And if you could have fought back?”

“I would’ve killed him before he killed me.”

I didn’t even know if the murderer was a “him,” but that wasn’t the point. Him, her, it—I hated whatever it was.

Amanda Lee leaned back in her seat, her gaze on the windshield, like she saw a thousand psychic things outside that I would never see. And maybe she did.

“Would you have really gone that far?” she asked. There was a tiny tremor in her voice.

I didn’t even have to think about an answer. “Of course I would’ve.”

“Good. I knew you’d be a fighter. That’s why I tried so hard to find you. I would go back to that forest night after night, attempting to find the place where you would materialize. And I did, on your anniversary.”

The crackle of my surroundings—the electricity that’s all around us, whether we’re ghosts or humans—snapped over my essence, pinching me.

“Why exactly did you want to find me?” I asked.

Amanda Lee looked at me again with that everything-will-be-fine smile. “The moment I heard your story, I wanted to bring your soul peace, dear. I still do. But there’s more to it.”

I thought of how, when I’d touched Amanda Lee the very first time, she’d been so cryptic. I’d had the feeling that she was purposely shutting me out.

“What have you been keeping from me?” I asked.

“Nothing nefarious.” Her smile dimmed. “As a psychic and medium, I used to have my share of people who invited me to dinner parties and afternoon teas. And every time, I realized I was there only because I sensed the dead and read the future.”

“And?” I still didn’t understand the direction of this chat. “Are you going to drag me to a luncheon so I can entertain your friends?”

“I don’t have many friends.” Amanda Lee offered a self-aware shrug.

I almost reached out to her, but thought better of it as she went on.

“I’d never fully connected to a spirit before you came along, Jensen. I would pick up energy from others, or I would hear their voices, but they would only give me fragments, pieces of conversation that didn’t always make sense. I also went to my share of death scenes, trying to find someone just like you.”

“A fighter,” I said.

“Yes. But none of them was nearly equipped to do what I’m about to ask you to do.”

I had a bad feeling about this. “Go on.”

Amanda Lee took a deep breath.

I had a real bad feeling.

“A while ago,” she said, “I was approached by one of the only true friends I do have, and he begged for my help.”

“Doing what?”

Amanda Lee’s voice was like a flatline in a quiet room. “Justice for a murder, just as you want justice for yours.”

I could feel myself blipping, like that TV on the fritz.

Justice?

Amanda Lee sat up, rushing on now that she had my complete attention. “I know the person my friend suspects as a killer is guilty—just as guilty as whoever took your life. And, just like your murderer, this one is getting away with it.”

“Why?” It sounded like a disembodied croak.

“Because this man thinks he’s above the law, and I have to agree. I’m sure he covered his tracks damned well.” Amanda Lee’s gray eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, brimming with her belief.

It was almost like… well, like Amanda Lee had had something bad happen to her in the past, and she was identifying with this friend all too well.

My mind spun, and Amanda Lee took advantage of that.

“The victim’s name,” she said, “was Elizabeth Dalton.”

I didn’t want to hear this just as much as I did want to hear it. I turned away from Amanda Lee, gazing down the block, in the direction of Dean’s house. I imagined myself, all happy and joyful and human on the lawn with him again.

And for the first time, I heard in my head something new from the night I’d died.

Stop! Please! Why’re you doing this?

My voice, begging.

My last words?

I didn’t like the thought of having to plead like that. I didn’t like the idea of ever letting someone evil have so much power over me or Elizabeth Dalton or anyone.

Amanda Lee took a photo out of her purse. It showed an older gentleman dressed in a gray suit, his silver hair clipped and neat. He was standing in front of a fountain in Balboa Park, his arm around a much younger woman who beamed, her teeth white against her deep red lipstick, her blond hair in a slicked-back pixie cut.

“My friend Jon tells me that Elizabeth was a good person,” Amanda Lee said. “He left the country after she died, retreating to a cottage outside London, just to forget her. He can’t stand the reminders here.”

“What was she like?”

“She smiled a lot, told funny jokes to cheer up whoever needed cheering… But about three years ago, a killer found her. And he stabbed her, once, twice… thirteen times. When that wasn’t enough for him, he cut her up in…”

As she trailed off, I felt something like a stab, too, and I glanced away from the picture of Amanda Lee’s friend and Elizabeth.

Amanda Lee swallowed. “They found her pieces by some hiking trails near the beach. And when they brought the killer in for questioning, he denied it. He had a weak alibi—said he was working late by himself—but he had all the motivation in the world.”

“Why?”

“Because Elizabeth Dalton had broken off an engagement to him, and he was jealous when she found someone else to love. My friend.”

A crime of passion?

I didn’t want to think about Elizabeth Dalton as the cops had found her, piece by piece. You know why?

Because deep inside, I suspected that’s how they would find my remains one day, if they ever did.

A burning sensation crisped the fringes of my shape, searing into me, and I knew that I was only feeling the unfairness of it all.

Amanda Lee lowered her voice to a whisper, just like the one she’d used on the night she’d rescued me from the time loop in Elfin Forest.

“It isn’t right that the killer goes on without a punishment while Elizabeth’s friends and loved ones suffer.” She shook her head. “People like him should live with the ghosts of what they do. They should literally have the truth scared out of them.”

As she waited for her meaning to seep into every bit of my essence, I thought about the unknown killer in Elfin Forest with blood on his hands.

My blood.

And I had to agree.