Free This is Your Afterlife by Vanessa Barneveld Page A

time ago.” I draw in a shuddery breath. “Although…Jimmy and me, at the very end, got kind of close.”
    Mom stops stirring. “Close?”
    â€œIt’s really hard to explain. He was in my bedroom and—”
    She stands, upsetting her teacup and saucer. “He
died
in your bedroom?!”
    â€œShh! Not so loud,” I say, even though I know the neighbors are far enough away that they can’t hear us. “It’s not what you think.”
    She paces, her bunny slippers squeaking over the tiles. “I don’t even let you have boys in your room. And to have one
die
in there...!”
    â€œHe didn’t die in my room. He got hurt at the waterhole somehow and then his ghost found his way to me.” I wait for my words to catch up to her.
    Her jaw drops. She doesn’t close her mouth for the longest time. I stand up to meet her watery gaze.
    â€œMom, he’s a ghost and I saw him. Talked to him. He had no clue how he came to
be
a ghost.”
    She frowns. “What do you mean, you talked to him? After he died?”
    â€œCome on, Mom. You know it’s possible.”
    â€œNo. I mean, yes. But communicating with spirits...that was Grandie’s gift.” Mom eyes me with a mixture of envy and sadness. Many times she wished out loud that she inherited it, too. She’d use it for the greater good, like to pick winning Powerball numbers.
    â€œYou believe me, right? You don’t think this is some kind of hallucination?”
    She eyes me closely. “Do
you
think you’re imagining things?”
    â€œNo, Mom. It’s all too real.” I return her steady gaze.
    She lets out a huge breath. “Wow, this is some big news. You’ve never been able to see spirits. Are you absolutely certain?”
    Something inside me deflates. Jimmy practically bled on my bedroom floor. If there was just one person in the entire universe who I thought would believe me, I was sure it’d be Mom. Guess I was wrong. “You do think I’m delusional.”
    She grabs my shoulders. “Not at all! You know I never thought that about my mother. Okay, her predictions never failed to freak me out. But I believed she had the gift. This is just... Now
you
have it? Out of the blue?”
    â€œTrust me, I’m still getting used to seeing a real ghost.” I chew my lip. “There’s something else, Mom.
Grandie
guided Jimmy to our house.”
    â€œJesus, Keira, why didn’t you tell me?” Mom’s voice rises an octave.
    She and Grandie were close. Argued like hell’s angels a lot of the time, but you always knew they’d make up by sunset. I know Mom would give her right arm
and
a leg for the chance to talk to her mother again.
    â€œI didn’t see her.” My chest pings with that familiar sense of loss. “But Jimmy described her, right down to her perfume. Mom, Grandie sent him to me for a reason.”
    â€œWhy couldn’t Grandie help him herself?” Mom asks, echoing a thought that’s been racing in my head for a while now. What if Grandie is trapped in limbo, unable to get that backstage pass into heaven...because she took her own life?
    â€œI wish I knew.” I shake away morbid thoughts. Grandie led Jimmy to me. That has to mean she’s okay.
    If I look at the situation rationally, there’s one big advantage I have over my grandmother—I’m alive. Now I’m a go-between for the living and the dead. The only one who can listen to Jimmy. And speak for him.
    â€œDeath has been hard for Jimmy. He freaked me out when he appeared with that awful gash in his head. But...I just felt so bad for him and I forgot all about being scared.” I look out the window at my old tree house clinging tenaciously to an elm. It strikes me that Jimmy’s spirit is still gripping onto the physical world. When will it be time for him to let go?
    Mom rubs goose bumps from her arms. “Is he...is