Free I Woke Up Dead at the Mall by Judy Sheehan

turned to me. “You should stay here, Sarah. I’ll come for you next.”
    The fact that we all watched Alice lead Declan out into the mall just added to her self-consciousness. I tried to look away, but Declan had a lot of swagger. A. Lot. Poor Alice.
    “Lacey? Nick? Are you ready?” Bertha summoned our attention back to her. Lacey practically jumped out of her seat. Bertha led the two of them away.
    I could still hear the click-clack of her shoes (really, were they shoes, or were they a cry for help?) and her babbling of instructions and advice. I heard Nick’s voice cut in.
    “I forgot something. I’ll be right back!” he shouted.
    Bertha made indignant noises and a crack about how “it’s unseemly to be late for your own funeral!”
    I stood up to see what Nick could have forgotten, but then he came dashing into the food court and right up to me. He quickly wrapped one arm around my waist, which felt incredibly intimate. With his other hand he touched my face, brushing my hair aside.
    And then he kissed me. Just a little. He looked at me, as if asking for permission to do that again. Yes. I melted into this second kiss, breathing him in, feeling his arms tighten around me. I was weak and strong, giddy and completely sane, all at once and maybe for the first time ever.
    Our bodies were aligned and electric, just like all the songs say they should be. For a dead girl, I felt pretty damn alive. Idraped my arms over and around his shoulders and leaned in to this kiss. So did he. Yes.
    “Sarah,” he said, finally letting go, a faint smile in his eyes. And then he was off to his funeral.
    Yes.

chapter twelve
thornton wilder was wrong about everything
    In the last scene of
Our Town
, Mr. Wilder has dead Emily revisit her life and proclaim that it’s all too beautiful. But. She only said that because (a) she died of natural causes, and (b) she didn’t stay for very long. Oh sure, it started out all kinds of pretty for me. But then I realized and accepted for absolute sure that I was murdered. And then I figured out who killed me. And then it got worse, if a situation like that actually can get worse.
    Bertha was skeptical when I told her that I wanted to revisit my last birthday. “Why that one?” she asked, with supersize worry in her voice.
    “If I went to a day when my mom was alive, I don’t think I could handle it. What if I saw myself be mean to her?” I began. Bertha nodded. In spite of her approval, I went on.
    “My last birthday was a good day but not a big deal. I didn’t have a party or anything. As birthdays go, it was pretty low-key. I went to study at a coffee shop and met up with the Mathletes. Did some homework. Ordinary stuff.”
    That didn’t win Bertha over. I kept going.
    “That night, I went out to dinner with Dad and Karen. We ate at a place way out in Brooklyn that Karen had raved about, and the food was amazing. And that was when I first noticed that things really were better between my dad and me. And that was thanks to Karen. It was a good day. I felt…hopeful.”
    Bertha looked super-skeptical. “Your funeral will take place tomorrow. Perhaps you should stay here at the mall and choose your day later?” she proposed.
    “This is the day I want,” I insisted. “After all, I died from food poisoning, so it just makes sense that I’d like to revisit a really spectacular meal.”
    That did it. Bertha undid her worry face. Now if we could just do something about those shoes.

    We walked at a brisk, click-clack pace along our floor of the dead to the Bed Bath & Beyond elevator. I felt a jumble of excitement in my fingers and toes. I dodged around the mall walkers and realized that Bertha was studying my face pretty closely. Could she see Nick’s kiss lingering there? Did I look too happy? Did she have some way of knowing that I had dreams? I tried extra-hard to look neutral and normal. (A throwback to when I was alive.)
    “Um, a question for you,” I said to Bertha, to change