Haunted by Meg Cabot

hanging around my kitchen as part of your whole afterlife experience. You have got to move on.”
    Craig knit his dark brows. “Move on where?”
    “Well, that’s for you to find out when you get there,” I said. “Anyway, the big question isn’t where you’re going but why you haven’t gotten there already.”
    “You mean…” Craig’s hazel eyes were wide. “You mean this isn’t…it?”
    “Of course this isn’t it,” I said, a little amused. “You think after they die, everybody ends up at ninety-nine Pine Crest Drive?”
    Craig hitched his broad shoulders. “No. I guess not. It’s just that…when I woke up, you know, I didn’t know where to go. Nobody could…you know. See me. I mean, I went out into the living room, and my mom was crying like she couldn’t stop. It was kind of spooky.”
    He wasn’t kidding.
    “That’s okay,” I said, more gently than before. “That’s how it happens, sometimes. It’s just not normal. Most people do go straight to the next…well, phase of their consciousness. You know, to their next life, or to eternal damnation if they screwed up during their last one. That kind of thing.” His eyes kind of widened at the words eternal damnation , but since I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing, I hurried on. “What we’ve got to figure out now is why you didn’t. Move on right away, I mean. Something is obviously holding you back. We need to—”
    But at that point, the examination of the hot tub—Andy’s precious hot tub, which would, in less than a week from now, be filled with vomit and beer, if Brad’s party went on according to plan—ended, and everyone came back inside. I gestured for Craig to follow me, and started up the stairs, where, I felt, we could continue talking uninterrupted.
    At least by the living. Jesse, on the other hand, was another story.
    “ Nombre de Dios ,” he said, startled from the pages of Critical Theory Since Plato when I came banging back into my bedroom, Craig close at my heels. Spike, Jesse’s cat, arched his back before seeing it was only me—with another of my pesky ghost friends—and settled back up against Jesse.
    “Sorry about that,” I said. Seeing Jesse’s gaze move past me and fasten onto the ghost boy, I made introductions: “Jesse, this is Craig. Craig, Jesse. You two should get along. Jesse’s dead, too.”
    Craig, however, seemed to find the sight of Jesse—who, as usual, was dressed in what had been the height of fashion in the last year he’d been alive, 1850 or so, including knee-high black leather boots, somewhat tight-fitting black trousers, and a big billowy white shirt open at the collar—a bit much. So much, in fact, that Craig had to sit down heavily—or as heavily as someone without any real matter could sit, anyway—on the edge of my bed.
    “Are you a pirate?” Craig asked Jesse.
    Jesse, unlike me, did not find this very amusing. I guess I can’t really blame him.
    “No,” he said tonelessly. “I’m not.”
    “Craig,” I said, trying to keep a straight face, and failing despite the look Jesse shot me. “Really, you’ve got to think. There’s got to be a reason why you are still hanging around here instead of off where you’re supposed to be. What do you think that reason could be? What’s holding you back?”
    Craig finally dragged his gaze away from Jesse. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe the fact that I’m not supposed to be dead?”
    “Okay,” I said, trying to be patient. Because the thing is, of course, everybody thinks this. That they died too young. I’ve had folks who croaked at age 104 complain to me about the injustice of it all.
    But I try to be professional about the whole thing. I mean, mediation is, after all, my job. Not that I get paid for doing it or anything, unless you count, you know, karma-wise. I hope.
    “I can certainly see why you might feel that way,” I went on. “Was it sudden? I mean, you weren’t sick or anything, were