Free Dying For You by MaryJanice Davidson Page A

anything.”
    “You mean,” Nikki said, “if they’ve stumbled across my rotting corpse.”
    Jack got up again. “You stay here and try to relax.” He rested his hand on her annoyingly flat stomach, and Nikki thought,
The true, awful irony of death: I still have cellulite.
“I’ll go check.”
    “Hurry back,” Cathy practically begged.
    “I will. Rest.”
    He walked through (yeesh!) Nikki, making her windmill her arms in surprise, opened the door, and was gone.
    She rushed to the bed. “Cathy! Cath, it’s me.” She waved frantically as her friend sighed and gulped and sniveled. “Comeon, we’re—we were—best friends. There’s a bond! There was a bond. Argh. Fucking past tense. You’ve got to see me.”
    Cathy groped for a tissue and noisily blew her nose.
    “See me!” Nikki yelled. “Dammit! People are scared shitless of ghosts! You’re supposed to see my bad dead self and freak out!”
    Cathy sighed and stared at the ceiling, tears leaking from her big blue eyes and puddling in her ears.
    “Okay, remember this? I was too tall for cheerleading and you were too lame, but we learned the cheers anyway.”
    She threw her arms up in a V for victory.
    Cannon, Cannon, loyal are we.
    Red and black we’ll shoot you to victory.
    So fight fight fight our motto will be.
    Rah-rah-rah and sis-boom-bah!
    Fight fight fight fight!
    Go for the red and black!
    She leapt in the air, limbs akimbo. “Yaaaaaaayyyyy!”
    Cathy cried harder. Not that Nikki could blame her.
    “Dammit,” she said, and plopped into the chair recently vacated by Jack. She had so much momentum she slipped through it, through the floor, and a good four feet into the ground, which really gave her something to swear about.

Chapter 4
    She had prowled every inch of Little Cayman (or maybe
haunted
was the word) and except for the resort guests and the iguanas, there was nothing but sand and nauseatingly gorgeous beaches.
    Nothing had changed. Cathy had been crying on and off, Jack had been stoic, the cook had produced magnificent meals, and the coast guard boats kept chugging up and down the beaches, sometimes very close to the dry sand (she was amazed the boats didn’t beach themselves, like whales), sometimes little dots on the horizon.
    Morbidly, Nikki wondered how much longer they’d search. And where the hell was her body, anyway? Probably in the gut of some damn great white.
    She had tried talking, yelling, screeching, cheering, walkingthrough them—nothing. Nobody else on the island could see her, either.
    Was this it? No bright light? No afterlife? Just stuck watching her best friend’s misery? Even Patrick Swayze got the bright light, after a while. This—this was unbearable. She had never dreamed being dead would be so bad, but watching your friends suffer was hell.
    Due to the tragedy of her untimely death, she, Cathy, and Jack were the only guests at Pirate’s Point. Everyone else couldn’t get back to the small airport fast enough. Nobody wanted to go scuba diving, either—and who could blame them? Everyone was afraid of stumbling across her body.
    The iguanas, usually fed fruit by indulgent guests, were getting bad off—certainly Cathy and Jack weren’t in the mood to toss grapes at them. The boats stayed tied up; the snorkeling equipment stayed in the shed.
    If this went on much longer, the tiny resort would really be hurting.
    But Jack and Cathy wouldn’t go home. Nikki had no idea how to feel about that. Relieved? Annoyed? If they left, she’d be by herself. But they couldn’t keep hanging around Little Cayman until…until. That was just…
    She walked through the south wall of cabin 3 just in time to see a naked Jack climb on top of her (naked) best friend. She had a horrifying glimpse of hairy ass and Cathy’s pale flailing limbs before she gagged and lurched back out the wall. Not fast enough, unfortunately, to drown out Cathy’s “Jack, Jack! Do it now!” and Jack’s rumbly “Ah, my sweet fragrant