"Come on, Ginger." Misty and Twisty stood with the rest of the squad and led Ginger before the crowd. I suddenly noticed that I was the only spectator still sitting. The entire crowd began to stamp and holler. The cheerleaders twirled and spun and ground their palms into their hips, spinning their heads around 360 degrees, whipping their hair in every direction. Too bad the crowd wasn't looking at them. All eyes were on the field as the home team broke their huddle, newly transformed into a raving band of howling wolflike demons. Matted black fur bristled through every seam in their uniforms. They howled up at the full moon blazing down on them.

The Middle Plain Lost Souls scored seven touchdowns in six minutes, plus seven two-point conversions, chewing their way through the opposing line until Inferno High didn't have enough players on the field to continue.

Ginger never stopped looking at me while she cheered. When it was all over I sought her out before the lightless vacuum of victory and popularity sucked her down for the rest of the evening. Misty and Twisty glared at me, my social ostracism forming a hideous, invisible hunch on my back which only they could see.

"Hey, can I walk you to your grave?"

Ginger stood at the stands, smiling broadly, out of breath. The air must have been gloriously thin at the top of a cheeramid. I imagined that when it dispersed and Ginger fell from the top and was caught, it must have been like the whole world was reaching out for you, wanting to make sure you're safe.

"Sure." Ginger's dead, gla.s.sy eyes caught the light of the full moon and swallowed it. Behind her, the other cheerleaders scratched behind the victorious players' ears. The crowd began to disperse.

As we left the field, Ginger put her arm around mine and put her head on my shoulder. I felt her cheek muscles tense with a smile.

"You're so warm," she said.

I looked back at the stands, at my friends studiously ignoring me, at Princ.i.p.al Grimm shaking his head. Across the field, someone else watched me. Though I didn't dare look back, I could feel a dark smile fix on me from the opposing sidelines, as the visiting team was carried off the field in defeat.

"I'm surprised you remember me, from when you were alive."

Ginger and I walked side by side through the rows of tombstones, fingers intertwined.

"Of course I remember you. Just 'cause you weren't popular doesn't mean you weren't cute." Ginger spoke to the moon, to the dead leaves at her feet.

"But I'm still not popular."

"So what?"

"So why do you like me?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not in the slightest. Just wondering why aren't you ignoring me now?"

"I don't know. Maybe vampires and ghosts don't have like, pheromones or something. And besides, you're way cuter than an aborted fetus."

"Awe shucks," I replied. "You're too good to me."

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, honey."

I could tell she'd said it before, with other guys, and that she recycled the phrase because she knew it was s.e.xy. And it was s.e.xy.

For a second, before her cold, dead tongue slid between my teeth, I thought, maybe this isn't a good idea. What about the rules of Heaven and Earth? But then my hand slid under her shirt, cupped her firm, icy breast, and I didn't care.

Let me tell you something you already know: A polite girl or woman, with whom you've never spoken of s.e.x, suddenly telling you where to go, grabbing your hand, and sliding it between her legs, admitting that she wants to feel good-in the years after that night, such a thing wouldn't seem like a big deal. Grown women can talk about what they want, what they need from you. But in high school, when girls are supposed to be ladies instead of human beings, hearing such things from a total hottie like Ginger Banks, when all I'd dared to dream of was first base and a decent view of second, was like looking for trace elements of fossilized bacteria on Mars and finding the Miss Hawaiian Tropic compet.i.tion camped out at your landing site.

Her skin was achingly cold.

"You're freezing," I said.

"I get goose b.u.mps all the time."

She stood there with her top off while we kissed. She kept her skirt on, her socks and shoes too. Half-dressed like that, that strange combination of nudity and modesty, was an intoxicating c.o.c.ktail of dream life and daily life. I'd only ever seen one or the other. In movies, they always cut from the kissing to the s.e.x montage. In p.o.r.nos, "actors" peeled off their own clothes like layers of useless, dead skin. But when Ginger lay back on a patch of hallowed earth overrun with clover, grabbed my hips, and guided me into her hidden, frozen p.u.s.s.y, it was as though we'd fallen into the crack between fantasy and reality, into that twilight of sensuality which you can visit once, the first time, but only in dreams thereafter.

Plus, I'd always thought people called out each other's names when they did it. I've since learned that this is seldom the case. I've also learned that people seldom even think of each other when they're f.u.c.king each other. But back then, that night, I could only think of Ginger-and not even all of her, just her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or her eyes, or how we tried to keep it in when we turned over so she could be on top. One thing at a time. I didn't even know my name.

She came when I came, because I came, I would later find out. Apparently, what I left in her was hot and anxious and she had only the chill of death to fill her insides the rest of the time. I haven't made many women c.u.m since then.

"It's so weird just sitting here," she remarked afterwards, propped against the base of a towering, angelic grave marker. "I used to have to, you know, b.u.t.ton up while my boyfriend defrosted the windshield so he could drop me off before curfew." She sighed. "It's so weird being dead. You know?"

"Not really."

"You will."

"Thanks."

She smiled at me, straightened her clothes, and reached back to try and tuck her buzzed-off hair behind her ears.

"I heard your hair keeps growing after you die," she said. "I hope it's true. You know-" She sounded serious all of a sudden (something else I would have to get used to, and dread-a woman getting a serious tone after a sound s.h.a.g). "How do you know, for sure, that you shouldn't be here?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, think about it," she said.

But I didn't have to. Already my heart started rattling in my chest like a punching bag. She meant how did I know I wasn't dead. Did I know?

I started talking fast. More to myself than the dead girl scrutinizing my dazed expression.

"But I've gone home to my house and seen my parents and-"

"Did they talk to you? Did they acknowledge you?"

"No, but they usually don't. They-"

I stopped when I saw it. By the light of a lightning flash, I saw it staring back at me, una.s.suming, defiant, smug.

"OhmiG.o.dimdead." I knelt in front of my grave, stared down at my name and the date underneath. July fourth. I died on Independence Day. I thought back to a firecracker nearly going off in my hand. It must have gone off too soon. I must have bled to death.

"I'm dead?" The world went quiet. Long enough for a light to turn red too soon.

The cool earth snuck up and cold-c.o.c.ked me from behind. I was on the ground. Somewhere beneath me, I was in the ground. The transfer wasn't a mistake. I was supposed to be here in the land of the dead, haunting my parents at night, unable to let g- "PSYYYYYYYYYCH!"

The call resounded through the boneyard. Disoriented from my fall, I tried to stand, tried to use my own tombstone for balance as it crumbled into a lumpy ma.s.s of gray, standard-issue, soph.o.m.ore Art Cla.s.s self-hardening clay and I fell into it on my way back to Earth.

From behind the nearest mausoleum, Art, Roland, and Missy Nefert.i.ti leapt into the moonlight, the surprise causing my heart, my still-beating, magnificent, most all-important muscle to batter against its calcium housing, threatening to stop, but persevering nonetheless.

"Sha-ZAAM, son!" Roland called out, laughing hysterically before Missy nearly squashed him as she doubled over in hysterics.

"You guys are so f.u.c.king dead!" I swore to Art as he helped me to my feet. Had they been there listening to us the whole time? Did I care? No! I was alive! I was laid! It was funny, too-I'd equated those two states of being for so long, now that I got both at once, they seemed completely different.

I grinned at the smug b.a.s.t.a.r.d, punched him in the shoulder as hard as I could, which wasn't very hard. "You are so f.u.c.king DEAD!"

"I know."

n.o.body parties like the dead. The d.a.m.ned have rhythm. The entire school celebrated our victory in the cemetery that night, stamping their feet, howling at the moon loud enough to wake the dead and serve them up a tall one from the keg.

Ginger stayed close to me, getting drunk and clingy as the night spiraled down into the rosy abyss of bad breath and good vibes. Living in Limbo, a place to which G.o.d apparently turned a blind eye, was like your folks going away for the weekend and leaving the keys in the ignition and the liquor cabinet unlocked. The idea of bashing Paul Pennybaum's skull in was as distant and meaningless as Monday morning seen from the observation deck of Friday night.

"Listen!" Ginger said to me over the music sometime after midnight. She was sweaty from dancing and talked right into my face with a boozy lack of depth perception. "I don't want you to think I'm a s.l.u.t or anything because we f.u.c.ked!"

"But aren't you kind of a s.l.u.t?!" I howled and lit a cigarette.

"Well, yeah, but I don't want you to think of me that way!"

"I don't!"

"Good!" she proclaimed, then climbed on top of a broad, flat grave marker, took off her shirt, and started to dance. It was at that moment that I knew I was falling in love.

Just before dawn, things started to slow down, and my new girlfriend started to cry.

"I was sooooooo f.u.c.king popular!" she lamented, tears streaming down her face. The moon was down and all was dark. All around us, drunken kids and bilious abominations stumbled back to their graves. "I was about to get my license! And just 'cause that dumb-a.s.s zombie ate my brains I wound up here. I should totally be in Heaven!"

"At least you didn't wind up in h.e.l.l."

"My cell phone doesn't get any reception here!" she shouted to the black sky. "I am in h.e.l.l!"

She sobbed. I held her close. Her nipples were hard under her shirt. Her tears were cold.

"What the f.u.c.k is a last rite anyway? Is that like, the directions to Heaven? They couldn't give me directions before I died, so I got lost and ended up here? I don't even believe in G.o.d!"

I struggled to find the right thing to say that would either make her feel better or at least make her stop crying.

"Yeah, but, you know, He believes in you."

"Really?" she asked, teary-eyed and hopeful. "You think so?"

"Um . . . not really. Sorry. I just said that to make you feel better. I stopped believing in G.o.d before I stopped believing in Santa Claus."

In the next plot down, Brutus Forte, our school's star quarterback, slid down into his grave, drunk with victory, beer, adoration of the ma.s.ses. Peering over the lip of his grave, I watched him fluff up the dirt where his head would rest, then reach up to the surface, and in a single, sweeping motion draw a pile of loose earth on top of him as he fell back, already sound asleep before his head touched the cool, wormy terra firma.

"Do you love me?"

"Huh?" I turned back to Ginger. She propped herself against a headstone, watching me like a mirror while she wiped away her smeared eye shadow. Dead leaves clung to her scalp and clothes. The last of the alcohol had left her body, leaving her more sober than she was before she started drinking, the way you get when you've stayed up late enough for the booze to find its way back out, temporarily flushing out the drunkenness of everyday self-denial.

"I know they want you to kill Paul Pennybaum," she continued. "If you do, you won't ever come back."

"Well, I could come back," I swallowed. "I mean . . . I'd have to do it like Art di-"

"But you wouldn't." She looked up at the moon, saw herself in it, pursed her lips, drew a finger around them to erase a smudge. "You're not that kind of person."

"What do you mean?"

"You're the kind of person that makes good decisions. That's why girls don't like you-as more than a friend I mean." She sighed, eyes focused on a leaf stuck in the front clasp of her bra. "You'll never break my heart," she said. She sounded a little surprised, and a little disappointed.

She looked up at me, caught my expression.

"I'm not stupid," she replied to my thoughts. "Girls understand boys. It's just that most of the time, we don't have to, or we don't want to."

"I don't wanna kill Paul. I want to keep coming to see you."

"Then don't kill him," she pleaded softly. "He'll probably get killed some other way, anyway. People die all the time. Look at me."

A cold wind rustled through the cemetery, a parent checking up on their child after lights-out. It found us and we huddled together. Ginger's skin made me even colder, but I didn't want to let go.

"I should get to bed," she said at last, and lowered herself into the empty grave beside us. Once in, she paused and peered up at me. Her head just barely came up above ground level. "Will you tuck me in?"

"Sure," I replied, and got down on my knees. As I worked the dirt into her grave, I thought about the times my father would wake me up and tell me I was having a nightmare. I never remembered having a bad dream, but I believed him and felt better with him there.

"When you're done," Ginger said before I covered her face, "you have to go."

"What do you mean?"

"You can't spend the night here, or you can never leave again."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know, I just know. It's just one of the rules. Your parents are probably worried sick."

"But I wan-"

"n.o.body worries about me anymore," she interrupted.

She leaned forward, crawled her fingers through the hair on the back of my head, kissed me, then fell back to the dark earth, the dirt around her body caving in as she fell. Behind me, I could already hear the black bus idling at the side of the road.

"Where have you been?"

"Have you been drinking?"

"We've been so worried!"

"You have no idea!"

It's funny how quickly relief can turn to anger. It's like we keep both emotions spring-loaded inside the same little tin can inside our chests and when we let one feeling out, the other must inevitably follow.

"Did you drive drunk?" my father demanded to know, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Who have you been out with?"

"Zombies."

"Zombies? What is that, some kind of gang?" The old man inquired, exasperated from running every drug overdose and child-kidnapping scenario imaginable through his head while waiting to hear my key in the door. "Are you in a f.u.c.king gang now?"