2. BRECIA

Boulder, Colorado

2 Years Before

I first realized I was dead the same way you realize you've been dreaming. Except backwards, I guess. Because the bad dream was real.

I didn't know it had happened at first. Not for a few seconds. Not until I stood up—while my own body stayed put. I looked at the soft chambray pajamas I'd changed into after getting home from work, now dirty and damp. One of my slippers was kicked off, so you could see the chipped peach polish on my bare toes. My long, dark hair was streaked with something darker and sticky. I couldn't feel the throbbing in my head or the awful pressure on my neck anymore.

He was looking at me, too. Not at me, me. At my body. At my unblinking, bloodshot hazel eyes. He was breathing hard, expressionless. He was still holding the extension cord.

He'd grown out a Joaquin Phoenix beard that nearly—but not quite—obscured the dark mole on his cheek. It made him look ten years older than the last time I'd seen him. If he'd been sporting the beard back then, we probably wouldn't have gone out in the first place. Don't get me wrong: I'll swoon for a good five-o-clock shadow, but this thing was fully bird-nest material. It took him from a comfortable nine to a very solid three.

A year earlier, we had dated for exactly one week. How do I know that? Because he was upset when I spent our "one-week anniversary" with my girlfriends. I couldn't understand why it bothered him so much. It was Lanelle's birthday. And like I said, we'd been dating for one week. Still, I talked about him the whole time. I hadn't dated much since my last breakup a couple years earlier, and it felt good to say the word "boyfriend" again. It felt good to answer all the juicy questions over watermelon margaritas about whether he was a good kisser (yes), good in bed (no idea, early days), and how we'd met. That one, I fudged a little. I wasn't proud I'd finally gotten desperate enough to make a profile on MatchStrike. So I dodged the question. I decided that if we lasted, I'd fess up.

When I ran into him on my way out of the restaurant after Lanelle's party, I didn't know what to think at first. He smiled his pretty smile and acted like it was a wild coincidence. That's how I played it off to Lanelle and the rest of my friends. I could tell that they thought he was cute. That I'd done well. So I pushed aside the uncomfortable feeling in my gut as I tried to remember whether I'd mentioned the name of the restaurant to him earlier. I was pretty sure I hadn't.

I let him drive me home, even though that meant leaving my car in the Barbacoa parking lot. At first, he just seemed happy to see me. But when I asked who he'd met up with at Barbacoa, he sort of dodged the question. So I asked again. That was when he just kind of blew up.

He went on and on about me brushing him off to hang out with my friends. Then he ranted about me not even being glad to see him at the restaurant.

I texted him later that night to tell him I thought we should break up. He tried to call me immediately. When I didn't pick up, he called again. And again. And again. I put the phone in airplane mode and went to bed, still feeling the watermelon margs and wishing I hadn't told Lanelle or the girls about him yet.

When I woke up the next morning, I had twenty-two text messages waiting for me. They started out sort of sweet. He'd had a terrible day yesterday and just really wanted to see me. He understood why I was upset. Could he have another chance? By the last text message, I was a fat bitch. A fat bitch who had wasted his time. As soon as I had finished reading that one, another text came through. He could see that I had read his texts, so why wasn't I responding? I'd wasted his time, broken his heart, and now I wouldn't even write back.

The texts trickled in for the next three days, even though I didn't respond. I finally blocked his number and reported his profile on MatchStrike, figuring that maybe I'd save other girls the trouble.

When the texts stopped, I pretty much forgot about him.

I redecorated my duplex. I got a new job and a raise. I got bangs and highlights in my hair. I deleted MatchStrike after a handful of duds who didn't even make it past a second date. And I adopted a cat: a fire-point named Frank.

So when I took the recycle bin out to the side yard in my pajamas that night, he was the last person I was expecting to see.

I didn't even recognize him at first with that awful beard. He was standing there almost casually, like maybe it was some kind of coincidence. Just like he had that night at Barbacoa. Except this time he was standing in my side yard. Behind my fence.

I almost screamed. I only caught myself when I recognized his eyes. Honestly, I was a little relieved that he wasn't a stranger.

Then I got mad. It had been an entire year. What the fuck was wrong with him, showing up like this? Scaring me like this? Did he think I was going to take him back now?

That was when he pulled out the extension cord. My extension cord. I recognized it in slow motion as he came toward me. I hadn't bothered to bring it inside yet after using it to plug in the Christmas lights I'd finally goaded myself into putting up.

If you want to know, it takes a long time to strangle somebody. I'd heard that on an episode of Investigation Discovery once. I can tell you it takes even longer when you're the one being strangled. My throat was on fire. My head was on fire. My chest was on fire. Even my eyes felt like they were burning. I couldn't make a sound. I couldn't even see, as the tears poured down my cheeks.

I guess it was taking too long for him, too. Because in the end, he smashed the side of my head against the pavement. After that, everything went dark. The unbearable fire was suddenly gone, along with the chill in the air and the feel of the wet, rough pavement.

When I caught my first glimpse of, well, I still didn't know what to call it—my soul? My spirit? My echo?—it was sort of like looking at my reflection in a mirror. I wasn't wafting in the breeze or anything. I wasn't see-through. I just wasn't alive anymore. I was still wearing my pajamas and slippers, but they looked clean, the way they had a couple minutes earlier.

As soon as he realized I was dead—which was a hot minute after I realized I was dead—he booked it through my back gate. I was left standing beside my own body and the recycling bin I'd just wheeled out of the garage.

I followed him, finding that I could keep pace with him easily—something I never could have said of myself while alive. I actually grabbed his arm and watched as my own fingers rested lightly on top of his shoulder. I sort of expected them to slide right through.

He didn't react, exactly. However, he did walk faster, down the dark driveway, down the sidewalk, until he reached the blue Kia he'd left at the end of the street.

When he opened the driver's side door, I dove inside the car headlong with him. I wasn't going to risk letting him go if that car door slammed shut in my face.

As I watched him hurry into the car, I knew that I couldn't do anything for the girl who was lying on the pavement with blood in her hair. I couldn't do anything for Frank, who was probably still asleep on the big tufted chair in my bedroom.

Nobody else was looking out for me tonight. Nobody else was going to realize that I was missing, let alone dead, until I didn't show up for work tomorrow. Nobody could do anything to help me now.

Before he drove away, he used a packet of wipes to clean his hands. Carefully. Almost lovingly. Like he hadn't just used them to wrap a dirty extension cord around my neck by my recycle bins in my side yard until I finally stopped fighting.

In hindsight, that was when I decided I was going to haunt him.

I studied him from the passenger seat while he drove. His amber eyes, black in the darkness of the car, stayed fixed on the road while we made the twenty-minute drive back to his place.

It wasn't the apartment he'd told me about last year—down to the roommate who left his socks in the kitchen. Instead, it was a little brick 70s-style rambler in Broomfield with one porch light burned out.

I followed him up the front walkway of the house, past a Big Wheel bike tipped over into an overgrown flower bed and a tangle of half-naked Barbies on the steps.

The lone porch light flickered a little as he turned the knob and went inside the house, shutting the door behind him and leaving me standing on the porch for a little while longer, staring at the toys and the riot of azaleas in the flowerbeds I just knew he hadn't planted.

I found that I couldn't just walk through the front door, once he went inside. So I was glad I'd gotten into the car when I had the chance.

I stood outside on his porch for a while. Because despite all the scary movies I'd watched, I had learned zero useful information about being dead. Could I make the doorknob move if I focused really hard? No. What would happen if I screamed? I tried it. I could hear myself just fine, but based on the reaction of the guy walking his dog across the street, nobody else could.

Well, that's not totally accurate. The dog—a little gray schnauzer—stopped walking and looked straight at the front porch.

I got my hopes up. "Hey, buddy! Hey!" The schnauzer growled a little. He sniffed. Then he kept walking. The owner didn't even look up from the blue glow of his smartphone.

I turned away from the useless dog and sat down on the porch. I studied my hands—the reflection of my hands. I watched the way they rested on the reflection of my knees. The way my feet rested on the cracked concrete. Barely touching, as if I were made of something just heavier than air.

I swiped hard at a leaf on the step and watched it move so imperceptibly it was impossible to tell whether it had been the night air.

You're dead, I told myself firmly. Feel sad.

When my favorite aunt had died in a car accident, the cushion of denial lasted a solid hour. It was too big. I couldn't take it in. When it finally hit me, I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. It felt like that. Only this time, the impossibly awful thing had happened to me.

I could see blurry shapes moving behind the pebbled glass of the kitchen window above the flowerbed. I stepped into the azaleas and watched my reflection scatter through the spaces between the leggy blooms. The plants didn't move. I did.

It would have been completely fascinating if I hadn't just been murdered; however, it did give me an idea. I couldn't walk through walls. Or grab anything. I seemed to have had all the power of the night air. Not the wind, even. The air.

I sat with this idea for a while, watching the azalea leaves shiver in the slight breeze. I lifted my hand toward the nearest flower and reached for a cluster of blooms. This time I watched more carefully as my hand slipped, sort of like smoke, between two large magenta blossoms.

I wasn't wind: I was air. But air could go places. And that gave me an idea.

I walked around the house until I got to the side gate, which was closed. I could see the side yard—and his recycle bins—through the slats. I focused on the air between the slats and moved forward.

Easily enough, I scattered right through the fence.

My gaze settled on a cat door, slightly ajar, leading into the garage. I went through that too. No problem.

The light was on, illuminating a neat garage and a few rows of stacked boxes on one side, a minivan on the other. I gave the boxes a cursory glance. They were labeled with kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc. A stack of labels and a permanent marker sat on the topmost box.

He was moving.

I heard a clattering noise behind me and turned in time to see a little calico cat scurry into the garage through the cat door.

"Hi, kitty," I said softly, and I swear he sat down and stared right at me for a few seconds—then settled in front of a bowl of cat food. I followed him and crouched beside him as he ate. I thought of Frank with his chirping meow. He was probably tearing up the carpet at the bottom of the stairs in protest that I hadn't fed him yet.

I knew I couldn't cry actual tears. Even so, I felt the familiar prickling feeling in the back of my eyes and sadness that spread through the center of me. I wouldn't ever feel the downy fur underneath Frank's chin or his rumbly purr as he flopped down on the bed beside me with his eyes closed again.

As the feeling got bigger, I heard a quiet pop that plunged the garage into sudden darkness.

I froze, listening to the quiet tinkling of the filament in the bulb.

"I think I did that," I whispered to the cat, who continued crunching away.

There were little pinpricks of light surrounding the door to his house. I moved toward them and the sound of the muffled voices inside.

An hour ago, he had taken everything I had.

I didn't know how, but I planned to return the favor.