Existing (13 page)

She raises her eyebrows. “Wow. Um, okay. Have you ever been kissed?”

I nod.

“Good,” she says, “for a minute there I was worried. Have you ever had sex?”

I
freeze. I can’t answer her. If I answer her, then everything starts to crumble. Thankfully, she’s not even looking at me. She’s too busy rummaging around in her drawers. I hold my hand out and notice it shaking. I tuck it back underneath my thigh when Charlotte leans up to me.

“Okay
,” she says, “we have some work to do. When did you last shave your legs or pluck your eyebrows?”

I take a deep breath and clear my throat
. “I’m not that bad. My eyebrows and legs were waxed the last time I went to the salon.”

She sticks her hands on her hips. “And how long ago was that?”

I think back to the last salon trip I took before I moved here. “About five weeks ago, I think.”

She strides over toward
me and pushes my jeans up my shin.

“What are you doing?”
I ask, embarrassed that she’s touching me.

She rubs her hand up my legs and wrinkles her face up. “They’re going to need shaving.”

“What?” I ask, pulling my leg toward me. “They don’t!”

“They do,” she says
, standing up. “Especially if you’re going to wear this.”

I look up through my lashes and laugh.
“No way.”

Her eyes twinkle as she plucks a pair of shoes from off the top shelf.
“And these!”

I walk slowly up and down the wooden floored kitchen and into the hallway. The house isn’t anything like I imagined it would be. When we were younger
, we would sit and talk about the sort of house we would live in when we were older and Gina’s house would always be in the middle of the desert, or on the top of a mountain with lots of glass windows, a pool, and a small barn with lots of animals in it. I can’t help but wonder what she’s done with her life for her to end up in a house that resembles a shoe box.

“I can see you walking up and down
, you know. You’re annoying the bones off me,” she snaps.

I stop. “Sorry.”

Her face doesn’t show any recognition of hearing me. I feel my shoulders slump.

“What happened to you?”
she whispers.

“I died,” I say slowly. I still haven’t got used to saying that and it make
s no difference how loud or softly I say it because Gina clearly can’t hear me.

“I can’t hear you and won’t be able to until you channel it through someone else. I’ve told Roisin that I need to talk to her.”

I nod, making her smile. “You’ve been here for a while,” she says, and I know that what she means is that I’ve been dead for a while.

I nod again.

“I’ll help you,” she says quickly, “even though my daughter will disown me and hate me even more than she already does.”

I smile. This is what I’ve needed.
When I floated around Roisin and Lance’s house a few months ago, I noticed Lance on his computer, looking up real estate in various different states. I followed him to work one morning and overheard a conversation he was having with one of the partners about the possibility of relocating to a different office. I knew he was doing it because he thought it would be good for Rose, but I couldn’t believe my luck.

I remembered Oregon and Cannon Beach and kept muttering those same two words over and over to Lance and Roisin. I said i
t when they were sleeping. I said it when they were at work or school. When Lance gathered the family around the table in the dining room, I screamed it over and over in Roisin’s ears. And when Roisin muttered those words during the vote, I did excited cartwheels around the room. I laughed at the shocked expression on her face, but when Lance beamed back at her, I knew that I had done all that I could. The rest was up to Roisin.

My luck struck again when Roisin
made friends with Charlotte. Of all the people I had hoped she’d meet in Cannon Beach, she happened to make friends with the perfect person.

“She’s breathtakingly beautiful.”

I look up at Gina and frown.

“Rose,” she says, “she looks a lot like you.”

I nod and smile.

She sighs and lights up another cigarette. I frown, trying to remember if she used to smoke.

“I know,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “It’s bad for me. It’ll kill me.”

I shrug my shoulders.

There’s a knock at the door. I follow her as she walks slowly to her purse to retrieve some money.

“Girls,” she shouts up the stairs, “your pizza is here.”

I watch her thank the man and take the huge cardboard box from him before shutting the door and locking it again. I hear Rose chatting away when the door is opened upstairs. A few seconds later, Charlotte comes tearing down the stairs with a smile on her face. “Thanks, Mom.”

“What are you smiling at?”
Gina asks Charlotte.

Charlotte takes the over-sized box from
her and I wonder how two thin girls plan to finish off a pizza that size. “Rose,” she says with a giggle, “she’s never been to a party, never had her hair done, and never really worn a face full of make-up. She’s panicking up there.”

Gina clicks her tongue
. “Be careful with her Charlotte. You don’t know anything about her.”

“Chill out
, Mom. Rose is nice.”

Gina taps her foot impatiently on the floor and glances at me. “You don’t know what’s gone on in her life before here though
, do you?”

Charlotte frowns. “I guess we haven’t had that conversation yet.”

“Right, well there must be a reason why they moved from Utah to here. I’m just saying you know nothing.”

Charlotte stops and looks up into Gina’s warm brown eyes and blinks. “
Er, okay Mom.”

“Does her Mother know she’s here?”
Gina pushes.

Charlotte shrugs her shoulders. “I assume she’s told someone she’s here.” I watch her eye
s flick to the top of her head. “Actually, she mentioned her Dad, so yeah, they know she’s here.”

“What about her Mother?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Charlotte says, starting to look annoyed. “Can I go now?”

Gina smiles and nods her head.
We both stand at the bottom of the stairs and watch Charlotte bound up them two at a time. Gina looks at me and smiles sadly.

“Even I think it’s weird that she’s never been to a party before
, Nola.”

I sigh and follow Gina and the glow of her cigarette back into the kitchen.

Gina used to be my best friend and next-door neighbor. We were friends for more than ten years before she and her family moved to Oregon. I remember crying the whole night after watching their moving van pull away from her house.

As far as I knew
, I was the only person who knew that she could see and hear ghosts. She’d been able to see them for all of her life. I could never see them, but every time she tensed when I was near her or she seemed to be staring at something that I couldn’t see, I knew she was watching and listening to one of them.

I’d thought about Gina and her family the morning of the day I had died.  It was Gina’s idea to start writing
in a journal when we were eight years old and I had written in one every single week for the rest of my life. When I was thirty years old, I picked up my journal and wrote in it for the very last time.

I watch her grind her fourth cigarette into the ashtray and lean my head against the table. I hear her chair scrape across the floor but don’t bother to look up to see what she’s doing. I hear the stovetop flicking on and the refrigerator door opening and then the same horrible screeching noise as she sits back in her chair.

“I
wish I could hear you. I’ve haven’t met anyone that I can’t hear before.”

I look up and make
a sad face at her.

“I’m so sorry
, Nola. I never dreamed that I would see you again and to be honest, I’m not even grateful that I can see you now.”

I nod.

“You’re younger than me. You don’t look a day over thirty. I can see your face as clearly as you can see mine. There’s not even a single crow’s foot at the side of your eyes.” She breathes in deeply and pinches the skin at the top of her nose. “I’ve always thought of this as a curse.”

I frown at her.

“This,” she says, pointing to me and then back to herself, “me being able to see the dead.”

I say and do nothing.

“It pains me to see someone that I used to be friends with in the other world. God shouldn’t take us so young and he certainly shouldn’t let us get stuck in the in-between.”

Before I can let her know that I agree
, we hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

We both stand up and wait in the doorway of the kitchen. Charlotte comes around the corner first. A huge smile is encased in a set of shiny, bright pink lips. Her long black hair is tied up high on her head in a knot and trails down her spine. She wears a very short but flattering emerald green dress, the color an exact match to her eyes. She looks beautiful. Gina smiles and tells Charlotte that she looks wonderful.

“Me?” Charlotte says with a grin. “You should see Rose.”

At the mention of her name
, I make myself invisible as my daughter appears from around the corner. If I could cry, I would have tears streaming down my face right now as I look at my little girl all grown up. I don’t know what Charlotte has done but she’s transformed my cute, little girl into a sexy, vibrant and beautiful young woman. Her dark chocolate-colored hair is parted in the center of her head and falls in gentle waves, shining more brilliantly than the sun. I’m sure people will be able to see their own reflections in it. I stare at the way it skims over her bare, bronzed shoulders until it falls gently down the middle of her spine. Her already ridiculously gorgeous long, dark lashes have at least two coats of mascara, making them appear almost fake as they flash up and down when she blinks. She has skin-colored gold eye shadow on that twinkles gently in the light, which I like because it doesn’t make her look like she’s got make-up on at all. The gold and the black mascara make her eyes look like she has swirls of light and dark chocolate inside them. Slashes of light brown, almost amber, and rich, deep brown colors explode around a perfect black iris. Her already tanned skin is flawless, especially now that the bruise has faded and Charlotte has covered it up. I notice a tiny hint of bronzer on the top of her cheekbones, making her look like she’s just come back from vacation where the sun shone down on her the whole time. Her strapless, deep pink dress snuggles into the gentle contours of her body. My eyes trail down her toned, smooth legs until they fall on a pair of silver stilettos. They’re pretty, with tiny, intricate diamantes sewn into the straps, but they’re far too high for Roisin. I know she won’t be able to walk around in them for very long.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper. I watch her smile and see the set of perfectly straight teeth that she suffered so much pain to get shine at me against the gently pale pink lip gloss.

“Rose,” Gina says, sounding as flabbergasted as I feel. “You look wonderful, sweetie.”

Roisin smiles shyly. “Thank you
, Gina. I can’t believe how different I look.”

“Different is good,
” Gina says.

Roisin grins at Charlotte.

“You both look gorgeous,” she says, suddenly walking toward the sideboard in the kitchen. She rummages around in the drawer and pulls out a camera. “Let me take a picture of the two of you.”

“
Mommm!”

I smile at Charlotte and the way she moans at her Mother, even though she links her arm through Roisin’s and poses for a picture. The camera flashes twice.

A car horn honks from outside.

“That’s our ride,” Charlotte says
, stepping forward to kiss her Mother.

“Midnight, Charlotte.”

Charlotte nods, picks up two beach bags, and waves as she unlocks and opens the door.

“Bye
, Gina. It was nice to meet you and thank you for the pizza,” says Roisin.

Gina glances at me and then back to Roisin. “It was lovely to meet you too
, Roisin.”

I sit silently in the back seat of an Audi TT and listen to Charlotte chatting easily to the two bo
ys in the front. I hadn’t realized how small TT’s were until I was asked to fold my long legs up and climb into the back while trying not to reveal my panties to the whole world. I had no idea that two boys would be picking us up and hadn’t thought to even ask Charlotte about it as we were getting ready.

Ashley and Ben
are twice as wide as Charlotte, making their round shoulders poke out at the sides of their seats. I keep glancing at Charlotte in hopes that she’ll give me some sort of indication of how she knows Ben. He’s the one driving the TT and I can see his face more clearly. He’s definitely a player of some physical sport, judging by the sheer size of him and his muscles.