Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 7

It was snowing. I lay on the snow-covered ground in the cemetery, staring up at the sky. The flakes were light, fluffy and quiet, and that’s what I needed—silence. Thinking silence, and what better place? No one ever came to visit these places in the winter, no matter how much they loved their dead friends.

            It’s funny how something I used to hate so much was now actually doing me a service. Since I died, I couldn’t feel extreme cold or heat anymore. No more pain. Everything was just sort of neutral and pleasant. The snow felt like cotton balls landing on my face, and even though you couldn’t have paid me to be out in the snow when I was alive, here I was, dead as a doornail and lying in it.

            Maybe when I was alive I just didn’t take the chance to really sit back and let myself enjoy snow. It was pretty enough—I guess—but there some real serenity out here that I never noticed until now, until I had a whole lot of time to do nothing. But when you’re in Limbo, like me, you have to use every second of that nothing-time, and I was making it count.

            I was finally sure I had figured out what my purpose was. Now, I just needed to figure out how to do it. When I was alive, I never had the chance to see how much I really affected my friends. I was harsh—some might even say mean, but that is neither here nor there—I had no filter and had no trouble telling someone what they didn’t want to hear, but I have slammed many people down for messing with any one of my friends, physically and verbally. Even Princess Katrina. My bitchiness somehow held us together; who knew?

            I had come back for them. For Lena, for Trey, Kat, and Garrett. For Jason.

            “Comfy?” Arthur’s voice brought me out of my own head. I sat up in the snow to see him sitting on the ground next to me, smiling.

            “Surprisingly,” I muttered, “What are you doing here?”

            “Hadn’t see you around in a while, I was getting worried. Penny said you were over here, so I thought I’d swing by.” He flashed that dimply grin, but then looked worried. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

            “I think I’ve figured out what my purpose is!”

            “Oh. So, you’re out here because…?”

            I rolled my eyes and tossed some snow at him. “Because, I’ve been coming up with a game plan. It’s a big overhaul I’m gonna have to pull off, but with nice, quiet planning time, it’s coming together.”

            “Planning, eh? Well, I’m a pretty good sounding board, yanno. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got?” I wasn’t sure what brought on my pause, but he picked up on it and quickly added, “To help you work out the kinks, I mean. They always say you catch flaws when you hear a plan out loud, right?”

            Good point. I couldn’t afford flaws. I couldn’t watch the few people on this planet that I cared about continue to suffer because of me. But at the same time, something about this whole process felt… personal. One of those journeys you were supposed to make on your own, like Penny was doing.

            It couldn’t hurt to explain the skeleton of the plan, I decided—especially if it helped me work out any possible bumps in the road.

            “Well, I’ve been checking in Jason since before I even knew I was dead. After the accident… he fell apart,” I grimaced. “My friends… the whole group just dissolved. The only one even trying to hold it together is Jason’s best friend, and even he’s hurting. He’s just better at hiding it. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, I found out that my best friend started cutting herself again. It’s been four months since the accident, and things just keep getting worse for them every single day.”