Haunting Zoe Read Free Page B

in
years.
    She flops into the old chair and kicks her
feet over the arm.
    “This is exactly why I don’t go to funerals,”
she mutters.
    My eyebrow arches again, this time in
disbelief.
    “ This is why you don’t go to
funerals?”
    She shrugs, brushing her hair over her
shoulder with a flip of her hand.
    “Fine, not this exactly. But nothing
good ever comes from funerals. People are always like, you
should go, get some closure . But that’s all a load of crap. All
it is, is another way to traumatize yourself.”
    I don’t want to stop her and tell her that I
disagree, so I just let her rant.
    “Just more bad memories to heap onto the
pile,” she says finally, her voice small at the end. I know from
her far away expression the funeral she’s thinking of, and it isn’t
mine. We’d been young when her dad died. Zoe’s mother had given her
a single red rose to put on his coffin. Though I was sitting across
from her, I watched her clutch the stem so tightly, that tiny
crimson drops leaked from between her clenched fingers. But her
face was always placid, clam, as if she were a million miles away.
I thought it was brave. It wasn’t until much later that I
recognized the expression for what it really was.
    Broken.
    I sit on the edge of her bed and relax into
the soft mattress. Her black cat Brimstone, which had to be a
million years old by now, arches her back and hisses right at me
before leaping off the bed and darting from the room.
    “Looks like you aren’t the only one who can
see me,” I say jokingly.
    “That bi-polar cat is not proof that you
aren’t just a figment of my over caffeinated, over Poe’d
imagination.”
    I shake my head.
    “This is getting old. How can I prove I’m
really here?”
    She sits up, looking at me like she wants to
shoot darts into my face.
    “I don’t know. Being haunted is new to me,
can you give me a minute to come to grips, please ?”
    I lean back, “Fine. One minute. Clock starts
now.”
    Sitting up in the chair she grabs a small
pillow from behind her back and lobs it at me, only instead of
impacting me, it just passes right through.
    “Well, I suppose I should have expected
that,” she mutters with a frown.
    I roll my eyes.
    “What are you in such a hurry for anyway? You
kind of have, forever, right?”
    She pauses, a look of utter terror crossing
her face.
    “Oh my God. You aren’t going to haunt me
forever, right? I mean, this isn’t going to be my life now. Being
followed around by an arrogant, pain in the ass ghost?”
    I grin.
    “Keep up the flattery and I just might.”
    She leans back in the chair.
    “I hate my life,” she complains.
    Her words are like a swift slap in the face,
sharp and quick.
    “You know, that’s a pretty bitchy thing to
say in front of a guy who no longer has one.”
    She sits up quickly, her eyes snapping open.
I see the guilt wash over her. Maybe it’s just because I’ve known
her so long, but her face is an open book, every emotion raw and
expressed in the tilt of her chin or the curve of her mouth.
    “Sorry,” she says quickly.
    I shrug, though the sting of her words
linger.
    “Are you cold?” she asks, her head cocked in
a funny angle.
    I look down at myself trying to figure out
what would make her ADD little brain wonder that.
    “Nope. I don’t really feel temperature at
all.”
    Her puzzlement continues.
    “Why are you wearing clothes?” she asks out
of nowhere.
    It takes me a minute to recover. I smile
provocatively. “Why? Were you hoping for a naked haunting?”
    She huffs.
    “Please, you don’t have the figure for
nudity.”
    I snort. I may not be a Hollister model, but
even I knew better than that.
    “Oh, I really do.”
    She bristles uncomfortably.
    “Well, I see your ego is still intact.”
    I lean to the side, stretching out across her
bed, staring at her playfully.
    She glares. “No offence, but would you not do
that on my bed?”
    I grin again. “What? Be sexy?”
    Her words are quick, a knife to