As they continued down the line, Charlotte scanned the smorgasbord of sweet, fried, and trans-fatty goodies on display. French fries and gravy, pepperoni pizza, mac & cheese, pancakes, burgers, corn dogs, petrified Jell-O Squares and whipped cream, potato chips, corn chips, deep fried Twinkies, Marshmallow Fluff, vats of chocolate sauce, maple syrup, and melted Velveeta. All the good stuff. It was McWilly Wonka Hut. Basically anything that caused fat around the middle was fryin’ on the griddle.
The Dead lunch ladies wore full body nets, instead of the standard-issue hair nets that the Living lunch ladies wore, in order to “keep it together,” she assumed, so that no flesh would fall into the food while doling out these decadent dishes. All of the drinks were carbonated sodas: Fresca, Shasta, brands that were rarely found anymore except on hipster T-shirts. Perfectly good, just… forgotten. Definitely a far cry from the whole-wheat pita wrap and salad bar on the Living side of the lunchroom.
Charlotte loaded up on food and guilt. What would her anorexic role models, Petula and the Wendys, think? They obsessed over their BMI index the way some people obsess over SAT scores.
Besides, who even cared anymore? What was it going to do? Kill her? Portion control was not exactly top of the list any longer.
A wave of post-mortem depression swept over her once again. Did anything matter now? She threw caution to the wind and accepted all the lunch ladies had to plop. Her whole reason for self-improvement, diet, exercise, blah, blah—everything—was Damen, and he was literally a lost cause. After all, what good was a hot bod on a dead girl?
“It’s not that nothing matters, Charlotte. It’s that you have different priorities now. A different purpose,” Pam, who was well ahead of her in line, explained telepathically.
“Which IS…?” asked Charlotte out loud, freaking out and spinning around to locate her friend.
Charlotte began thinking that she wanted all of this to stop, especially the mind-reading stuff. It was such an invasion. First Prue, then Brain, now Pam. She tried desperately not to think about it, because she didn’t want to offend Pam, and Pam’s commonsense take on the situation was welcome. But the more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t help but think that she hated Pam and all of them intruding on her private thoughts like that. Sensing Charlotte’s discomfort, Pam waved her over and lightened the mood.
“Hey, it’s your first lunch as a dead girl. My treat!” Pam joked, stopping the paralyzing, obsessive thought cycle spinning through Charlotte’s brain as Pam led her to a table in the corner. Pam took a seat, but Charlotte hesitated.
“Anybody sitting there? “ Charlotte asked of the seat next to Pam.
“Yes,” Pam said smiling. “Somebody is.”
Actually, Charlotte wasn’t used to such a welcoming response. She often found herself needing somewhere to sit, standing up for an uncomfortable amount of time, tray in hand, searching for a place. Pam sensed Charlotte’s struggle as she tried to take it all in and come to grips with everything. She decided the best way to help was to be a friend.
“Don’t worry. Eventually you’ll fit in,” Pam said as they circled the table.
“I tried that once and I ended up dying from it,” Charlotte replied.
As the girls nodded in agreement and looked up from their conversation, they noticed a girl sitting alone at the next table, hunched over and pulling up the cuff on each arm of her long-sleeve turtleneck sweater to inspect the cuts on her wrists and forearms.
“What happened to her,” Charlotte asked sarcastically. “Did she itch herself to death?”
“Suzy?” Pam explained, “She was a scratcher. You know, she’d cut herself but not deep enough to do any real damage.”
“Or so she thought, I guess,” Charlotte said.
“Yeah. A ‘cry for help’ thing that went really wrong,” Pam continued. “She gave herself too many little cuts and wound up in the hospital anyway. She died from one of those drug-resistant staph infections.”
“She seems so secretive,” Charlotte said. “And sad.”
“She’s here to learn to commit,” Pam said. “Doing things halfway can be just as dangerous.”
Both girls returned to their meals, barely noticing another girl standing in front of them. It was a stick-thin, overaccessorized “Hollypop” who wore huge dark sun-glasses, a vintage dress, and a Chanel necklace. On her tray was a child-sized cup of mixed nuts and a grande espresso.
“Hey, CoCo,” said Pam. “ ‘Fashionably late’ as usual, I see.”
“It’s my brand,” CoCo reminded. “Room for a third?” she asked rhetorically, with clenched-toothed affectation.
“A true fashion victim,” Pam whispered to Charlotte.
“What? Did she get trampled at a sample sale or something?” Charlotte asked.
“Hey, that’s a good one, but no, it’s much worse,” Pam said, leaning in closer to Charlotte. “She got drunk at a party, threw up in her oversized handbag, passed out in it, and drowned in her own vomit. Sometimes bigger is not better.
“Rest in Prada,” Pam said mockingly as CoCo took a seat.
CoCo immediately started devouring her daily printout of online gossip blogs as she cracked open a Red Bull and refilled her espresso cup.
“So what exactly happened to you?” Pam asked Charlotte.
CoCo appeared disinterested, hiding behind her shades, but couldn’t resist the temptation to eavesdrop on some juicy gossip, nonetheless. It had been a while.
“What happened to me was that my dreams were starting to all come true….” Charlotte began.
“And?” Pam replied.
“I got paired up with Damen Dylan, the hottest boy in school, for labs. I had this fantasy… that if he got to know me, he might, well…” Charlotte paused, feeling an urgent need to clear her throat.
“Go on!” CoCo blurted, earning stares from both Pam and Charlotte.
“… ask me to the Fall Ball instead of his girlfriend, Petula,” Charlotte continued, coughing a little.
“Oh, is that all?” CoCo said, disappointed, as she got up, leaving her tray behind for others to clean up.
Pam also gave Charlotte a “there’s gotta be more” look. But there wasn’t.
“So this dude has a girlfriend? I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” Pam said matter-of-factly.
Just as Pam spoke, Damen walked past Charlotte to dump his tray, not giving her enough time to feel the slightest bit disappointed by Pam’s crushing blow. Charlotte was immediately drawn in by the laugh that he so generously gave to his friend’s joke.
“You know, Pam, I never bought that meant-to-be crap,” Charlotte said, her voice rising with each word. “It’s just self-rationalizing BS. You couldn’t possibly be wrong either way!”
“Not exactly,” Pam replied. “Fate is not totally circumstantial. It’s pre-determined. The outcome cannot be changed. Period. That’s why it’s called… Fate.”
“That’s it!” Charlotte exclaimed, fighting to get words out between coughs.
“It is?” Pam asked, utterly confused.
“He smiled at me right before I died… we were about to connect. That was my chance for him to get to know me, and then, eventually… maybe even… ask me to the dance,” Charlotte rambled. “Fate,” she declared.
“What are you saying?” Pam asked, completely confused but still trying to understand what she was getting at.
“I’m saying that… Damen… and me…,” Charlotte said, now breaking out into a full-fledged choking fit. Pam whacked her square on the back, desperate to hear the big reveal. “… are meant to be,” Charlotte said, barely able to get the words out.
“I thought you said that meant-to-be’s were crap?” Pam reminded, trying to digest Charlotte’s outlandish revelation.
“I thought you said they weren’t,” Charlotte said, one-upping her.
Damen walked past them again on the way back to his table, Charlotte keeping him in her sights like a determined bidder watching a Chloé bag on eBay.
/> “Did you ever think that maybe Fate actually intervened to keep you apart by letting you die?” Pam interjected. “That this is your Destiny?”
Charlotte didn’t answer; she was lost in thought. Pam was becoming increasingly concerned about Charlotte’s denial of her circumstances and decided to take action.
“Besides, Charlotte, you’ve got another major problem,” Pam said, suddenly standing on her seat, and started yelling, making faces, and waving her arms in Damen’s direction.
“DAMEN!!!” Pam screamed with all her might.
Charlotte was mortified and tried to get her to sit down.
“Pam! Please!” Charlotte begged.
The more Charlotte begged her to stop, the more she carried on. The more excited she got, the more the piccolo sound radiated from her throat.
“BLOW ME!!!” Pam yelled to Damen, pointing at her larynx.
Charlotte waited for Damen to walk over in a huff, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t react at all. No one did.
“Things are different now, Charlotte,” Pam said as she sat back down in her seat. “It’s not about him dating you. He can’t even see you.”
With that, the frustration in Pam’s voice morphed into a more soothing tone.
“You’ll just have to accept it,” she said as she reached for her friend’s shoulder. “There’s a reason why they call it a love life. Love is for the living.”
Instead of being disappointed or deflated, Charlotte got a wild look in her eye, as if Pam had just solved the Riddle of the Sphinx.
“You’re right…,” Charlotte proclaimed as she grabbed Pam and kissed her on the cheek in sheer gratitude. “He can’t even see me!”
7
He Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive
This is going to take a long time… Can’t take no more Wonder if you’ll understand it’s just the touch of your hand Behind a closed door.
—Vince Clarke
Being in love with someone who doesn’t even know you exist isn’t the worst thing in the world.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Almost like passing in a term paper that you know sucked, but having that period of time where you haven’t gotten your grade back yet—that kind of exhale where you haven’t been rejected, although you pretty much know how it’s going to turn out. When it came to Damen, Charlotte wanted to wait as long as possible for that paper to come back. But waiting until you’ve just died is, well, maybe waiting a little too long… or maybe not.
Charlotte decided to use this “grace period” to her advantage. The lightbulb moment she’d had in the cafeteria with Pam was motivational, to say the least. She planned to turn her greatest disadvantage—being dead—into a positive and use it to get closer to Damen. If he couldn’t actually see her, he couldn’t object to her invading his personal space. She could basically go and do whatever she wanted without being detected. She could “get into” Damen in the most literal sense of the word.
“His classes, his locker, his car, his drawers!” she shouted, and then stopped suddenly. “Well, not his drawers… as in his underwear… but his actual drawers… in his bedroom dresser… or somewhere.” She blushed, as much as a dead girl could, surprised and the tiniest bit ashamed to find how calculating she could be. She was bursting to tell someone about her ingenious plan, but she couldn’t.
Charlotte was feeling powerful in a way she never had before. She felt “reborn.” In fact, the endless, albeit stalker-ish, possibilities were almost overwhelming, almost being the operative word. She beat back the momentary crisis of conscience over the creepiness of this invasion of his privacy, and decided selfishly, shamelessly, to work her plan as Damen turned the corner in the hallway.
Everywhere that Damen went, Charlotte was sure to go: to his locker, where she was perched inside (not as uncomfortable as one might think); to study hall, where she watched him drift off to sleep from the next seat, resting her head on his shoulder until he was awakened suddenly by the slight chill he felt at her touch; to the locker room—the inner sanctum for all guys. She knew this was how he finished each day, with a football practice and a workout and, God willing, a shower. She made sure to get there before him, to get a good seat. Death was definitely looking up in terms of instant gratification.
Charlotte waited patiently outside the gym for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. She could have floated in through the metal vent, or even passed right through the locker room door for that matter, but she didn’t. Instead, she followed close behind a few jocks who had turned up early for practice. She stepped in the locker room with a mixture of fear and curiosity. This was, after all, virgin territory for her.
She didn’t necessarily want to see him stark naked, per se, but she did want to see more of him. Damen arrived and plunked down his black-and-white Adidas gym bag on the bench. Charlotte sat next to it, waiting like a first-timer at a rock concert for the show to begin. She wanted to see his arms, his shoulders, his chest, up close.
The cringe factor was almost off the chart by now, but she stayed put. She just wanted to experience him in a less formal and more intimate way.
“What’s wrong with that, anyway?” she wondered aloud. “It’s not like he would ever know.” And they had already “slept together” in Study Hall. “Sort of…,” she felt obliged to note for the record.
Not even the smell of steamy mildew, dirty socks, and sweaty pits was enough to deter her, though it came pretty close.
Damen unzipped his gym bag, reached over for his combination lock, spun the dial around a few times, and pulled it open. Maybe it was the sound of the zipper opening, but she suddenly got extremely nervous as he proceeded to cross his arms in front of his body and lift his hoodie over his head, revealing the wifebeater underneath. The tee was so fitted she could see every fold of his beautifully sculpted six-pack abs.
He was tall, slim, and tight, with a chest and shoulders just wide enough to make a girl swoon. His arms were strong but not bulky, the kind you could feel safe and comfortable in. She wanted more than anything just to lay her head on his chest, but she was afraid that if she did, he might feel her chill again and put his hoodie back on prematurely. Damen, unaware, continued undressing, much to Charlotte’s wide-eyed delight. She’d been so used to fantasizing about him, she almost needed to close her eyes to experience what was going on right in front of them.
Damen took off his shoes, and as he bent over, his shoulder muscles flexed in a way that made her want to be wrapped up by them. He took his track pants out of his bag and undid his button-flys. Charlotte was totally gone.
“Boxers or briefs?” she wondered, anxiously bouncing her legs up and down rapidly from the balls of her feet.
It didn’t take long for her to get her answer. As his pants dropped to the floor and he lifted his left leg and then the right out of the crumpled loose-fit denim that collected around his ankles, his tartan plaid boxer shorts were revealed. Slightly oversize but thankfully not hip-hop big. They were unpretentious and modest, conservative even. Just like Damen.
The mood was broken when she saw a couple of jocks approach the locker next to Damen’s and heard a loud groan.
“Cup check,” she heard Bradley Grayson, an arrogant freshman lacrosse player, yell as he slammed his forearm, without warning, into Sam Wolfe’s groin.
Sam, naked, bent over and clutched himself, thrusting his large, pale, Sasquatch-like hairy, pimply ass right in her face.
This was every girl’s greatest fear come to life. The Gates of Hell had opened. She would never, she thought, be allowed to enjoy even a moment’s pleasure without an eternity of pain in exchange. For a little Damen, she’d have to endure a LOT of Sam. The metaphor was not lost on Charlotte.
And it got worse. As Sam clenched, a tiny, involuntary puff of sulphurous gas escaped. For the first time ever, she was glad to be dead, for no other reason than his butt smelled as bad as it looked…. Was it even possible to die twice?
She felt really bad for Sam; so did
Damen from the look on his face, but Brad just kept on walking and laughing. Charlotte, gagging, bolted out the open window above Damen’s locker, disturbing the humid vapors in the room just enough for Damen to notice. Slightly spooked for a second, he blinked, shook his head, and figured the apparition he thought he saw was just the after-burn of Sam’s gas. He grabbed his mouthpiece and headed for the gym.
Charlotte was disgusted, but not discouraged. She waited outside for practice to end, hoping to catch a lift home with Damen. His home. Damen walked out of the gym toward the parking lot, slung his bag over his shoulder, and reached into his pocket for the keys to his bright red Viper Convertible. Before he could get his door unlocked, Charlotte had jumped right into the passenger seat. She began to put her seatbelt on, realized that she didn’t need one anymore, and flicked it back with total abandon.
“The upside of mortality,” she reasoned. “So, my place or yours?” Charlotte asked Damen sarcastically as he buckled himself in.
Damen obviously couldn’t hear her, but the fact that he didn’t answer still stung a little. Regardless, she was having fun with the whole thing. She was riding shotgun in Damen’s sports car, and under any circumstance, the jealousy quotient among the other girls would have been astronomical. In Petula’s case, quite possibly homicidal.
Yes, any girl would die to be sitting where she was—the only difference was, in her case, she literally had to die to get there. Charlotte put this most painful realization aside for the moment as she continued to play “girlfriend.”
“Yours it is!” Charlotte said as Damen pulled away from his “Reserved” spot.
Damen stretched and extended his right arm, the one she’d admired in the locker room, across the back of the passenger seat as he drove. Imagining that he was putting his arm around her, Charlotte straightened up slightly and leaned toward him. This was really happening. As she inched closer, his forearm and hand appeared to hang even lower, draping over her shoulder and onto her chest. She’d never been so close to him or so intimate with anyone ever before.