Free Wherever You Go by Heather Davis

hard wooden seat in English and tried to focus on the lesson, but his mind was swimming with pos Cminge sibilities and responsibilities and, above all, with Holly.
    ***
    You're still reeling from visiting with the old guy. All day, you've been halfheartedly haunting the halls of North Seattle High, keeping tabs on Holly and your friends, wondering if it's weird that suddenly you'd rather be hanging out with somebody's grandpa. But the fact is—he saw you. Aldo acknowledged you existed. You had some beginnings of a conversation, even.
    You decide to drop in on the senior center for a few minutes this morning, because that's where Aldo will be. You don't have any problems getting there. That's one nice perk of the whole dead thing. There's no need to take a bus across town—you just think about who you want to be with and you go there. You wonder if that means you could think about famous people or the president or something and you'd go there—but it doesn't work like that. You test it repeatedly and never end up on the White House lawn. It seems that you have to have had a connection in your lifetime. Aldo Santucci is no problem, though.
    At the Seattle Senior Day Center, wheelchairs and plush recliners are circled near a bank of windows. The white-haired folks occupying them chat about what's on the lunch menu for the day or argue over a game of checkers, some of them with one eye on the daytime buffet of talk shows blaring on the TV in the corner of the room. One lady is on a laptop. You peer over her shoulder and see she's shopping at Victoria's Secret. Yikes.
    You find Aldo in a blue chenille chair, his feet up on an ottoman. He seems distracted by everything going on around him, but after a few seconds he sees you and waves. You smile and move closer to the circle of chairs.
    "How're we doing over here? Are you waving at me, Aldo?" Some kind of nurse in a flowery top and navy slacks takes a seat beside Aldo. Her name tag says
GINNY.
"How're we doing?" she repeats in a louder voice.
    Aldo gazes at you, almost like he's looking right through her.
    "Buzz off, lady," you mutter under your breath.
    "Buzz off," Aldo tells Ginny.
    "Excuse me?" The nurse looks taken aback, but then the surprise smoothes itself from her face. "Are you saying you want to be alone? Should I go?"
    You giggle. You don't want to blow Aldo's cover, so you move away. If there's a way to disappear from people who can actually see you, you haven't figured it out, since Aldo is the first one.
    "Juice?" Aldo has lost track of you and is suddenly distracted by a dude pushing a cart loaded with snacks.
    "Sure." The woman gets up from the chair and pats Aldo on the shoulder. "I'll be right back."
    You hang out for a while, but you never really get a chance to be alone with Aldo. The place is making you depressed. That many TV court shows are not good for any C goroman">one, and you lose interest in the card games happening at the other end of the room. The online shopper has moved onto QVC. com and is browsing through juicer machines. Aldo conks out in a recliner after lunch, a splotch of tomato soup decorating his clean white shirt, and you finally decide to bail. You'll wait until tonight. You never thought death—or old age, for that matter—would be so lonely.
    ***
    Gazing out at Lake Union, Jason basked in the afternoon sun on the bow of the
Lucky Lucy.
He wanted out on the water, to ride the wind coming from the north. The sailboat rocked gently as another seaplane landed at the Kenmore Air dock across the lake. It was prime time for the planes to circle back to Seattle with their passengers from the San Juan Islands and British Columbia. Since the lake borders the north end of downtown, it was ideal for those flights, and the lake traffic always got bad in the afternoons. Checking his watch one more time, he lay back on the deck, his irritation growing.
    Just as Jason was about to give up and go home, Peter Markham pulled up in the marina parking