Lost at the Start

14.

For once, my mind woke up before I opened my eyes the next morning, and I decided to enjoy the moment.

That is, until I rolled over and realized something was very, very, very wrong.

This isn't my bed...

My eyes shot up along with my spine and I frantically jerked my head around, trying to figure out what happened. Why it happened. Where am I...? This isn't...What?!!

I had to blink, once, twice, three times, before I could comprehend where I was. And I still couldn't keep myself from looking and trying to make sense of the impossibility I'd woken up to.

Somehow, defying any logic I had managed to hold on to ever since reemerging from my demise, I had woken up in, of all places, Jackson's room.

More specifically, on his bed, on top of the covers.

And he was still fast asleep next to me, completely unaware of my unexpected drop-in.

What the fudge is going on??

I stood up so fast my head spun—more than it was spinning already, anyway—and my vision clouded over for a few seconds.

Before anything else could happen that I couldn't make sense of, I squeezed my eyes shut tight and had no trouble willing myself back home, to my room, where I belonged.

Nothing made sense anymore.

I uneasily lowered myself onto my bed, half expecting to get blinked either back to Jackson's or somewhere else that I'd been but currently had no desire to be. I was panting a little, my little more surprise having knocked the wind out of me.

Enough was enough. I had to figure out what was going on, how my new existence worked, what that meant, and how it all came together. And soon. Or else, who knew how I was going to end up next. Dead or not, I highly suspected I was still very prone to injury, and something told me that trying to heal up would be a lot more difficult without access to doctors, hospitals, or anything more complicated than Band-Aids. All because I had a feeling the medical world would collectively faint at the knowledge of a walking dead girl. Or boy, for that matter. Or a walking dead anything, really.

But...How?

That was the question I'd been asking myself this whole time. And of all the things I hadn't been able to answer, that was the one at the very tip-top of the list.

There has to be a way. There has to. This is ridiculous! Surely I'd missed something in all my overthinking. Maybe because of my overthinking? The probability that there had to be a better way to handle this couldn't have been so low as nil...Could it?

I scrubbed my face with my hands, frustrated beyond frustrated about this situation for what felt like the sextillionth time, yet not anyway closer to solving it, lest my savior fall from the sky into the room in front of me. And I didn't know how to deal with that.

I didn't know how to deal with any of this anymore.

Dead and back as a ghost for less than forty-eight hours, and I could feel what sanity I had left slipping through my fingers faster than I could desperately cling to it.

If this was what being dead was always going to be like...

I take it back.

My own thought startled me, but it was true.

Tears sprang to my eyes.

Okay, okay. Fine. I admit it. If this is what death is supposed to be like, will always be like, then fine. I regret my choice. I killed myself to escape all the confusion and stress of life. But if death is just going to be all of that kicked up to an eleven, then fine. I take it back, okay? I wish I hadn't died. I wish I'd known so I could stay alive as long as possible. Life was better than this. It sucked, but it was. I'm sorry...!