Free The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade

lap.
    In the front seat, Joonie relaxed, letting out her breath in a loud rush. “You were starting to scare me there.”
    Um, starting to?
    “You were talking to people who weren’t there … again,” she said with a shaky laugh. “Anyone we know?” Her gaze flicked to the rearview mirror as though she were expecting him to sit up and have a chat; desperation flashed through her eyes. “Will? Are you awake?”
    “Yes, he’s just doing a lot of intense staring at the back of his eyelids,” I muttered.
    “Dammit,” she said.
    I sighed. “Chill out, psycho. If you’re not going to take him to the hospital—which is probably not the brightest choice you’ve ever made, but then again you’re wearing deliberately shredded tights, so whatever—can you please take him home where he might have a chance of waking up and helping me? Seriously, I’m having, like, the worst day.”
    As if she’d heard me, Joonie turned the Death Bug off the main drag in Groundsboro—called, believe it or not, Main Street—and back into the neighborhood behind the post office. Little boxy houses with even tinier lawns lined both sides of the street.
    I’d been in this neighborhood before. Ilsa, our cleaning lady, used to live over here, and a long time ago, before the divorce, my mother would drop me off to play with Ilsa’s daughter when my dad was on a “business trip” and she needed “an afternoon.” A “business trip” translated to a weekend away with Gigi, his assistant then and his wife now. “An afternoon” meant a little quality time with Jim, Jack, and Smirnoff. Sometimes I felt I lived my whole life between invisible quotes.
    Ilsa always had fresh snickerdoodles, and her house perpetually smelled like cinnamon. My mouth watered at the memory, but my stomach didn’t make so much as a peep. The good news about being dead was I could probably eat whatever I wanted and not get fat. Finding food that I could touch, and therefore eat, might be tricky, though. Something else to ask Killian about when he decided to rejoin the land of the living … or wherever we were.
    Mumbling under her breath like a true psychopath-in-training, Joonie slowed about midway down the block, pulling into the gravel driveway of a cute but worn-looking brown one-story house, with white shutters and a red door. The garage, almost as big as the house, stood off to the right. A rusted and bent basketball hoop hung over the dented and battered door.
    I braced myself against the Bug’s side window, which felt surprisingly solid given my previous experience passing through metal and glass, and wiggled out from under Killian. His head hit the seat with a muffled thump.
    “Thank God,” I muttered, though, honestly, standing half crouched in the backseat of a VW Bug was no picnic, either.
    Joonie slowed the car to a crawl, pulling behind the house. Uncomfortable and impatient, I shuffled around, taking tiny steps on the floor, until I faced the passenger-side door. I stepped forward, fully prepared to do the whole cold tingly passing through solid objects thing … and my elbow caught on the headrest of the passenger seat.
    What the hell?
    “The car is not solid, the car is not solid,” I repeated over and over again. But the plastic, metal, and let’s face it, probably asbestos, held me back just as it would have if I’d attempted this in my prebus days.
    Joonie jerked the gearshift into park, popped open her door, and jumped out of her seat, flipping it forward to be able to reach Killian.
    “Will.” She leaned into the car, bracing her hand on the edge of the seat, and shook him gently. “Come on. Let’s go.”
    This is ridiculous. I did it once. I can do it again. I concentrated, imagining the feel of the gravel beneath my shoes, the smell of the fresh air instead of burned oil and old pot. Just one confident step forward and I’d be …
    My knee connected solidly to the side of the car, shaking the whole thing. I stumbled back,