7. MEGHAN

Oquirrh Mountains, Utah

1 year before

The scavengers with wings showed up after the coyotes. Crows, magpies, hornets, flies. Even a skinny eagle.

I stayed where I was because I didn't know where else to go. I wasn't eager to spend any more time weaving through the endless trees and rocks in the darkness. And I couldn't bring myself to risk getting lost in the woods again.

It didn't take as long as I would have imagined for the shock of seeing my mutilated body to wear off. I watched with interest as the scavengers did their job, jockeying for a corner of the spoils in their own way.

By the time the sun set on the second day, my body had mostly been reduced to bones. Not the white, bleached kind. More like soup bones. Red and raw and stripped clean of the skin and muscles. The animals left my clothing alone, except where it prevented them from accessing what they wanted. The gauzy pink-and-green scarf had blown into the base of a prickly bush, where it waved like a flag when the wind kicked up.

A glossy raven had taken a particular interest in one of my shoes. With some effort, she hopped and dragged it away from the rest of the mess, out of sight behind some rocks.

At first, I tried shooing the crows and the hornets away—like I had with the coyotes. But it only seemed to work when I was able to drum up a lot of feelings.

It worked when I thought about waking up in the dark, with his hands on my throat.

Or when I thought about my parents, who by now surely knew I wasn't okay.

Or when I thought about the fact that I was dead and lost in the woods while the coyotes and crows ate my body.

I tried to keep my big feelings bright for a while. There was something comforting about the idea that I could still influence the world around me. Even if it was just bees, or a bird who was interested in stripping my leg clean.

I wore myself out after a while. It was impossible to feel very angry or sad or disgusted for long—just like when I was alive. So as the days passed, I settled into a weird acceptance.

I tried flying.

It's a little embarrassing to admit, but I just assumed ghosts could fly. This was a given in every movie I'd ever seen. First, I just sort of willed myself to float. Nope. Then I leapt up and flapped my arms around like I had in dreams. Nothing. I even climbed up onto a fallen log—and then a scraggly pine—to see if a little extra height would help with liftoff. I just floated back down to the ground like a balloon that had lost all of its helium.

For some reason, this made me feel an especially strong current of despair. Which I used to scatter a couple of ravens who were picking at my arm.

When I got too bored and restless (and tired of jumping off logs and trees), I made a loop around the clearing in the opposite direction I had run before. I found the narrow dirt road he must have driven on. There were still faint tire tracks in the dust.

I tried walking down the road for what I guessed was a few miles. The path forked—and forked—and forked again until I was sure that if I kept going I might not be able to find my way back.

The one sign I came across, a wood, unofficial-looking waypost, stated "Ophir Canyon—10." The name didn't ring any bells. And I didn't hear the sound of a single car all that day.

So I stayed where I was.

The ants made their big debut after the bigger winged animals had lost interest in my remains. I watched them for days, finally willing to get closer to my bones in order to see them better as they scurried in organized chaos from their tunnels. There was something hypnotizing about them as individuals. Even at close range, I could barely tell what they were doing. Their little jaws were so tiny, they appeared to be scurrying back and forth without accomplishing anything at all; however, over the next few days, the soup bones were picked clean. It was a relief to see my remains that way. Just dingy gray and white. No more blood.

I appreciated the ants for that.

The nights still scared me. Once the sun set, I left my perch near the ants and backed myself into a rocky overhang where the ravine dipped down into the dry creek bed. A wide rock shelf hung over a couple of larger boulders, and when I lay back I could look at the stars, while knowing that nothing could sneak up behind me.

I thought about him a lot. About how warm and kind his eyes had been while we were talking at Gracie's. About how cold and angry they looked, flashing in the moonlight as I regained consciousness in the dark, in the woods, in the spot I had never gotten up from.

He'd either carried or dragged me quite a way from the car. The spot where my body lay was at least 100 yards from the edge of the dirt road. It would have been impossible to park in the rocky, tree-tied terrain. Even if another car did come up the dirt road, they weren't going to see anything unless they wandered to the right spot and noticed the bones that were becoming just another part of the landscape, more and more every day.

* * *

I didn't sleep, exactly; however, after a few days, I learned that I could zone out. And it was a little like falling asleep.

When I cleared my mind and relaxed, I could drift. It reminded me of dreaming, except I could choose what I saw. I discovered that I could call my memories up at will more easily than I ever had been able to while I was alive, in vivid detail. Everything I had ever done or seen was all there waiting for me to re-experience in a dream.

I spent a lot of time in the backyard of the house I'd grown up in. In an effort to avoid homework and bedtime, I had sometimes grabbed a blanket from the couch and slipped out the back door to the trampoline where I lay on my back, wrapped myself up, and watched the porch lights come on while the first stars twinkled to life. I could almost hear the crickets and the shuffle of our neighbor next door as he cleaned his grill, the smell of char still drifting through the air.

I thought about my last birthday, when Sharesa and I had rented an Airbnb and jet skis at Bear Lake. The way the wind felt on my face while we raced across the lake, laughing and then screaming when I stopped too quickly and the jet ski rocked then tipped us both into the freezing cold lake. We laughed so hard I was worried we weren't going to be able to pull ourselves back up onto the jet ski.

I thought about my parents, who I hadn't really been in touch with since I'd moved out on my own. I drifted through Christmas mornings, family dinners, movie nights, bike rides, and even some of the times I'd gotten lectured about my grades or getting home late. Even those memories felt comforting.

It was a good way to pass the time.

But once in a while, I felt myself drifting so far into a memory that it took a few seconds to reorient myself to the stark rocks and the blood-soaked ground at my feet, where my bones were scattered across the clearing.

I wasn't sure what would happen if I wandered too far or let myself go into those memories too long or too completely. So I explored carefully.

On day five—I think it was day five anyway, there was really no way for me to tell aside from my own memory—I heard the first car. Distantly. But definitely a car.

I ran as fast as I could. In other words, I would have impressed the crap out of myself running at that kind of speed while I was alive, but it was still sort of disappointing when compared with flying. Which I still really felt like I should be able to do.

I made it to the dirt road in time to watch it crest the switchback a little farther down the hillside. The car was headed in my direction.

I stayed where I was, right in the middle of the road. Against any kind of logic I hoped that maybe they would see me, I guess. Or that I would stop the car. Or at the very least, that I would feel some kind of sensation when the car drove through me.

None of the above happened. The car kept driving—a little too fast for the bumpy dirt road. I didn't stop the car. And it didn't drive through me. Instead, when the car hit me, the force sort of flipped me to the side of the road. Gently. Like I was a tumbleweed or a plastic bag.

I caught a glimpse of the car's passengers before the forest-green RAV4 disappeared into its cloud of dust. A woman and a man. Not him, thankfully. The couple were about my age. Mid-twenties. They were listening to their music turned up loud, their laughter even louder on top of it. I saw the way she looked at him as the car bounced over a rut in the dirt. Adoring. Safe. Happy to be alive and together.

The sadness filled me up. That feeling, that connection was what I had been chasing at Gracie's. It had gotten me here. This was where my life had ended. This was what I had left. A well full of memories that stopped at twenty-three.

And that was when I saw it.

The shoe, on the side of the road.

My shoe: the one the raven had taken.

It was half propped up in a bush, the coral color already turned a dirty tan streaked with a little bit of rust that I knew was blood.

It was lying in the dip that counted as a shoulder for the road. It wasn't exactly in plain sight. But it wasn't hidden, either. Not like the rest of me.

Which meant that if someone looked at just the right time, they could see it too.