Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_02 by Homecoming

Maddy got on. The kids turned and stared blankly back at the two girls.
    Charlotte looked back at them. Their expressions were sad and forlorn, and Charlotte felt badly for them.
    “I guess there isn’t room for everyone upstairs,” she whispered to Maddy, deciding their problems had to do with room availability.
    “Guess not,” Maddy said.
    As the doors closed, Charlotte watched the passengers drop their heads.
    The “up” car arrived just a few seconds later, and Maddy and Charlotte got on and rode it to the seventeenth floor. They both kicked off their shoes and got comfortable.
    “So you never really told me how you got here,” Maddy asked, quite abruptly, taking a sudden interest in Charlotte’s past.
    At last, Charlotte thought happily. Someone curious about her, willing to listen to her story.
    “Well, I was in love with this guy, or at least I thought so,” Charlotte said. “He was so beautiful. So strong and smart and funny. Gorgeous, but if he knew it, he didn’t flaunt it.”
    “What was his name?” Maddy prodded.
    “Damen,” Charlotte said, releasing his name as if it had been stored away in an old trunk for safekeeping.
    “Right,” Maddy replied, paying extra-careful attention.
    “I died because I was too busy focusing on him and his perfect girlfriend … ,” Charlotte began.
    “Petula,” Maddy said, interrupting her.
    “How did you know her name?” Charlotte asked quizzically.
    “Oh, everyone knows her.”
    “Everyone?” Charlotte pressed, but quickly let it go, figuring it was not really so unusual that Petula would be as well known in the Afterlife as she was in plain old Life.
    “… Anyway I ended up choking to death … ,” Charlotte said, stopping herself mostly out of embarrassment at having to repeat the whole thing.
    “… On a gummy bear,” Maddy said, helping finish her sentence, to Charlotte’s surprise. “Your reputation precedes you.”
    “It does?” Charlotte exclaimed with pleasant surprise, as she experienced a flashback of wanting to be talked about, to be noticed. “Anyway, I struck up a friendship with Petula’s sister …”
    “What was her name?” Maddy asked, wanting to move the conversation along, without Charlotte going off on any tangents.
    “Scarlet,” Charlotte said, the affection in her voice obvious.
    “Tell me more about her,” Maddy pleaded. “What was she like?”
    “Scarlet is the best friend anyone could ever ask for.” Charlotte beamed.
    “Oh, you mean like the other interns in the office,” Maddy said a bit snidely.
    “No,” Charlotte said, her eyes wandering and thinking out loud, “Scarlet is different. I would do anything for her, and I know she would do anything for me.”
    “Anything?” Maddy asked.
    “Anything,” Charlotte said firmly, looking her roommate straight in the eyes for maybe the first time ever.
    When times got tough, Wendy Anderson and Wendy Thomas did what they usually did to keep their spirits up — they went shopping and got their hair done. Their nails too. In fact, they went back to the scene of the crime, the same place that Petula went — where tragedy struck. They admired and secretly envied the makeshift memorial of flowers, cards, notes, and balloons that were piled up outside of the salon, not to mention the large number of girls who were turning up in droves to get their nails done in a goodwill gesture of solidarity because, in their minds, if they didn’t, the staph would win.
    The Wendys needed to prepare for the worst, and if the worst came for Petula, they had to look their best. After getting their nails done and faking fragile emotional states, they headed over to Curl Up & Dye, the most expensive hair salon in town, where they directed the stylists to use two of the greatest fashion funerals of the twentieth century as inspiration.
    “I think I’m gonna go vintage mourning,” Wendy Anderson decided, experimenting with an Aqua-Netted flip curl and pill box hat.