I stood there, waiting for them to lower my casket into the ground. Rather eerie, don't you think? That a person could watch as she's mourned at her own funeral. I guess it took that much for me to realize that I was, in fact, dead.
My sister was crying like baby, her body shaking with sobs. It must have be difficult for her, considering I was all she had left after my dad returned to prison. She was grasping my nephew, Alex, tightly. He's only a toddler now, so I'm sure he doesn't understand what's going on. Nonetheless, I could see that the gaggle of adults weeping is leaving him very uneasy.
I saw Jack standing behind Bessie, a hand awkwardly resting on her shoulder. He appeared stoned-faced, but I knew better. Andie had a similar face on, as I could see her staring blankly at the casket spray of flowers.
Dawson was sobbing as well, although it's with a quiet subtlety. I'm sure this is having a horrible impact on him. I can't even begin to imagine how he will react.
After all, it's only been a year since we buried Pacey. I guess you could say that we're the unluckiest class of Capeside High; burying Abby first, then Pacey, now me. I wonder if I'll see either of them here -- where ever here is.
"And now we commit Josephine Potter to the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."
I guess that's it then. As they lowered my body in the ground, I could see the people begin to break up, heading for their cars. Most of them didn't give a damn about me, so I can't say that I'm sorry to see them go.
Dawson lingered, despite his parents' pleading with him to leave. He stood there quietly, as the other people rushed off, until he was alone. I was sure that he'd have something prophetic to say, something very dramatic. This is, after all, Dawson Leery.
But he didn't say anything. It was probably the first time in his life that he didn't say anything. It seemed like he just needed that time to be alone with his thoughts. That's all he wanted. Then he walked away just like the rest of them.
I was left standing there all alone, peering into my own grave.
"I thought I'd find you here," said a voice. I didn't pay it much mind. The past few days I've become accustomed to having people not hearing me, not seeing me.
The person who came to stand beside me, though, seemed real as anything I'd seen in the past three days. I saw a cigarette butt fall to the ground, and my eyes roamed up the figure, past the worn Nikes, the faded jeans, the rumpled plaid shirt. I knew that outfit. I knew that face.
"Pacey?" I whispered. "Is that you?"
"Yeah, Jo," he said, his lips twisting into a gentle smile.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and held him tightly. He had been the first thing I'd been able to hold onto in days. "Are you okay?" he asked.
I pulled back and looked at him for a moment. This sort of made everything seem more real, or at least real in my frame of reference. "As okay as I can be... dead," I mumbled. He seemed to understand what I was saying. "I'm dead right?"
He nodded. "You were shot," he said.
"I remember," I said absently. I didn't exactly remember, but I'd heard Bessie say it when I was back at the house the first night, still trying to figure out what was going on. All I remember is walking through the park and hearing a bang. Everything after that was blank until I woke up in my house. I thank God, or whoever, that I can't actually remember being shot. I hope I don't ever remember.
"Why don't we get out of here?" he asked, pulling me toward the road. He obviously didn't want me hanging out at the cemetery. I agree, it probably wasn't the best place for me to be.
"Were you there?" I asked him.
He nodded again. "I saw it. There was nothing I could do, though." Pacey walked a bit lethargically, kicking a stone as he looked at his feet.
I wasn't really sure what to say to him. I couldn't ask what he'd been doing this last year without putting my foot in my mouth. I wasn't sure if I was ready to know about all this being dead stuff just yet either.
The way he looked left me a bit puzzled. He looked just like I remembered him, even down to the clothes I saw him in the day he died. He hadn't aged a bit. Of course he hasn't.
And just like I didn't walk around with a bullet hole in my chest, he didn't have any residual effects of his car accident. I still remember the sinking feeling I had when I found out Pacey had died in that accident. It was surreal, and I didn't know how to handle it. And when I looked at him now, I had to apologize.
"You know that I didn't come to your funeral, huh?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Because I was with you."
"You were?" I said. That just wasn't the response I was expecting.
"Yeah," he said again. "I knew there'd be nothing there for me. I needed a reality check, and somehow, I thought I'd find it with you."
"Did you?"
He shook his head. "You were crying just like everyone else."
"I was sad," I told him. "I didn't want to believe you were gone."
He swallowed a lump in his throat, and looked up at me sadly. "Can we not talk about this now?"
"Sure," I said. It had been a year, and he still didn't seem like he was over it. I didn't want to press the issue. "So what do we do now?" I finally asked.
He looked up at me, confused. "I thought you'd hang out with me for a while," he said.
"Well, yeah," I said, not sure what else there would be for me to do. "We've got nothing but time, right?"
"I guess you could say that," he shrugged. We stopped across the street from an old, abandoned house I recognized. We used to call it "haunted" when we were younger. Dawson had even gone home crying one night after we tried to spend the night there.
"Is this where you stay?" I asked him.
"More or less," he said. "We really don't need anywhere to stay, but it's nice to have someplace."
"So I suppose it's haunted after all," I laughed.
"We're not ghosts," Pacey told me. "Not in the conventional sense anyway. We don't haunt people. We're just . . . not alive."
"Sorry," I said. "I'm still getting used to this."
"I understand," he said. "You're actually pretty calm for the recently deceased."
I laughed. "There's not really much I can do about it, right?"
"No," he said, leading me through the front door.
"Pacey, is that you?" came a voice from a room to the right.
"Yeah, Abby," he said. "I'm here with Joey."
"Abby?" I asked, hoping it was a mistake. After all, there should be some peace in the afterlife.
Abby traipsed out of what looked to be the living room, decked out in short, black dress with flowers embroidered around the bottom. "Joey," she smiled. My first thought was that death had softened Abby Morgan. "Nothing's worse than checking out before your time, eh?" I watched her raise an eyebrow suggestively at Pacey, and he gave her an disapproving look.
"Aren't you going out tonight, Abby?" he asked.
"I'm on my way," she said. "I just wanted to say hi to Joey when she got here." She gave a scolding look at Pacey before turning back to me. "I'm glad you're here," she said. It seemed sincere enough.
"Thanks," I mumbled, watching her walk out the door. I followed Pacey, and sat next to him on an old couch in the room Abby came from. "So, we can go out?" I asked. "Are there lots of other dead folks around?"
"No, not really," Pacey said. "Abby just still enjoys wreaking havoc on the living, even in death."
I laughed. "So she hasn't changed as much as I thought."
"Abby was great to me when I crossed over," he explained.
"Is it hard?" I asked.
"It's very different from anything else," he said softly.
I nodded. Pacey worried me, because he seemed so solemn. "Is there something wrong?" I finally asked.
"You asked me earlier what we do now, right?" he said.
"Sure," I answered. "Why? Is something wrong?"
"You can stick around for a couple days max, and then you have to move on," he said. "A white light sort of thing."
"A white light?" I asked. That was awfully cliche. "Why do I have to go?"
"You've heard of purgatory, right?" he asked.
"I'm in purgatory?" I asked helplessly.
"No, no. You're in what's commonly referred to as a 'stop-over.' Just so you have time to get used to being dead. Then you go on to . . . heaven, or whatever you'd want to call it."
I thought this over for a moment, because it seemed so crazy. Just as soon as I got used to where ever I was now, I was going to be going somewhere else. And Pacey made it sound like I'd be going alone.
"Why haven't you and Abby . . ." I trailed off, not sure how to finish the question. These worlds we were talking about just didn't have names to me.
"Abby doesn't want to go," he said. "She enjoys torturing the living."
"What about you?" I asked, having the strangest premonition that I wouldn't like the answer.
"I can't go," he said.
"Why not?" I asked him.
"We don't have to talk about this now," he said.
"Why not, Pacey?" I pressed.
"I just can't," he said. "But you can go, and there's nothing stopping you."
At that moment, I wanted to smack him upside his head. "Pace," I sighed. In that moment I would've cried if I'd had any tears. I felt like this was all finally hitting me.
"This is too much for me," I finally said, my voice sounding faint and weak. "I mean, I died three days ago. And just when I'm finally coming to grips with the fact that I'm leaving behind everything that's ever been important to me, you come along and offer me hope. And now I find out that I have to leave you too."
"Leaving me to go onto pure happiness. Everything you've ever dreamed about, wished for, wanted--it's all there for you."
My head fell to his shoulder, and he protectively wrapped his arms around me. He held me in silence, and indulged my minor breakdown. "What do you do all the time?" I finally asked him.
"I help other people cross over," he said. "I've watched you guys."
"You watched us?" I asked. "When?"
"Different times," he said. "More recently, though. It was really hard for me at first."
"Why?"
"People were mourning me. Andie, Dawson, you. I just . . . I couldn't deal with it."
"You couldn't deal with being loved?"
"No," he said. "It was a little too late for me to start accepting it."
I nodded then, for the first time really understanding what he was saying. "Can we go look in on people?" I asked him. At that moment, it seemed like the most rational way for me to move on. When he said that we could, I decided to head for Jack's.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Pacey sort of pulled me through the door when I got there. Just like most ghost movies, we could go through walls and doors to get where we wanted to go. Inside, I was disturbed by what I saw.
Jack and Andie were involved in a heated argument. Jack sat on the sofa, as Andie stood at the fireplace.
"I want to go back, Jack," she said.
"Andie, you don't need to go back. You've had two stays in the institution, and third will not bode well with anyone," he reasoned.
"Look what's happening," she said. "First it was Tim. Then Abby. Then it was Pacey. Now Joey. Who's next, Jack? Dawson turned vigilante, shot down trying to avenge Joey's death? You taking a wrong turn on a wrong night? I'm not watching this anymore. Real life is scary!" she screamed, almost leaving Jack cowering from the boom in her voice. She sat beside him, much more collected. "It's safe in there," she whispered.
"You can't reject reality, Andie," Jack said quietly. "I don't want to see you institutionalized for the rest of your life."
"I don't care anymore, Jack," she whispered. She turned and walked out of the room, Jack chasing her.
Pacey and I did not move. I could see the dejected look on Pacey's face, as I tried to put my arm around him. "It's not your fault," I said, trying desperately to soothe him.
"You don't know, Jo," he whispered, walking toward the door.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When I found him, he was sitting on the porch steps, staring intently at the cars as they passed by. I can only imagine what it must be like for him to watch cars, the instrument of his death.
"You haven't come to grips with it, have you?" I asked him softly.
"I'm not going to," he said.
"Am I going to be haunted by my death just like you are?" I asked him, only realizing afterward that haunted may not have been the best choice of word.
"No," he said. "You're different from me." He looked up at me pausing for a moment. "Anywhere else you'd like to go?"
"Dawson's?" I asked. "Or is that a bad idea?"
"Do you think you can handle it?"
I nodded, but I wasn't quite sure if that was true. We seemed to get there so quickly, though, I didn't have time to second guess myself.
Dawson was lying on his bed, his arms tucked behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. Somehow I was hoping that I could be telepathic, but I had no idea what he was thinking about, and probably less of an idea than I had when I was alive.
Pacey stood behind me quietly, his arms crossed as he observed like I did. We both watched the transition, as Dawson's eyes grew emotional, before he rolled over and began to weep into his pillow, hiding his face as if he were shamed.
I walked over to him, and tried to place my hand on his shoulder, but my hand seemed to go through his skin like it wasn't even there. When I looked up at Pacey, I could see the silent apology in his eyes. "Help me," I told him.
"I can't," he said. "There's nothing we can do."
"He's in pain!" I yelled. "Because of me! I have to do something!"
"We should go," Pacey said, placing an arm around me. I shook his hands off of me, as I felt an eerie breeze blow through the window. Dawson's body was shaking as the sobs took over him.
Pacey left then. I guess that he knew I needed to be there alone. I fell into a chair in the corner, and sat there watching Dawson, determined to stay there as long as it took for me to reassure myself that he would be okay.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was early morning when I finally left Dawson's. I didn't get the reassurance I was searching for, but he stopped crying. He got up and tried to go on with his day. More than anything, that was what I needed him to do.
I choose to leave by the ladder that carried me to Dawson's so many times. Pacey was waiting for on the dock. He was looking at the sky like he could see something I couldn't.
Oddly enough, he was smoking a cigarette, and I remembered he had been when he came for me at the cemetery. "Smoking'll kill you," I said, standing beside him.
He laughed as he looked over at me. "How's Dawson?" he asked.
"I think he'll be okay," I told him. Right now I understood what he meant about it being so hard to hang around when everyone was still mourning over you.
His eyes were fixed on the mystical spot in the sky again. "You know, Abby won't come near the water," he said.
"That makes sense," I said.
"I suppose so," he said. "I just always figured that after I got to the other side, there wouldn't be anything left for me to fear." He turned his head and smiled softly. "I'm going to miss you," he said looking back at the sky.
"What are you looking at?" I finally asked.
"The light," he said. "You're leaving already."
"I don't want to go yet," I said. "I want to stay here with you."
"You can't."
"Then come with me."
"I can't."
"Why?" I asked. I was angry when he refused to answer. "Pacey, why are you doing this to me?"
"I can't go, Joey," he said. "If I could, I would. But I can't." I pleaded with my eyes. He wasn't giving me the answers I wanted. "I died in a different way from you. I can't go."
"I don't understand," I said. "You should be able to go where ever I can go. Just because you were in a car accident--"
"It wasn't an accident," he said. I was floored by that comment, even though I didn't know how to interpret it.
"What do you mean?" I asked, my voice sounding anything but steady.
"Do you know how many times I rode around that curve?" he asked, his tone strangely soft. "I knew to slow down, but I didn't do it."
I shook my head, wanting the image he was painting to leave my mind forever. "On purpose?" I asked, my words sounding stuck in my throat.
"I guess you know where all the guilt comes from," he said. "And I can't go until my life would have finished. But you can, Joey. You need to go."
"How could you kill yourself?" I asked him. There were so many thoughts swirling around in my head as I tried to understand him, to understand why. I was angry for having mourned him, sad for not knowing.
"Things went wrong, Jo," he said. "Lots of things. And that night, I wanted it all to go away. I know it was a mistake. But I can't take it back. It was a permanent one."
I wrapped my arms around him then. I needed to hold him. It all made a strange sort of sense to me. Just as I couldn't go back and take a different route home, he couldn't go back to that road and slow down.
Almost immediately, I felt blinded by a bright light. "It's time," he said in my ear.
I shook my head. "I don't want to go."
"You'll be happy there."
"Is this my only chance?" I asked.
"No," he said. "But you never know when your next chance will be."
"I want to stay," I said.
"Joey, you--"
"Please, Pacey. Don't make me let go all over again."
"I can't make you do anything."
"I'm staying."
"Jo--" he began.
"I want to stay," I said firmly, watching as the light dimmed, slowly disappearing.
He sighed, and wrapped his arms around me. I thought he was relieved. "You're so stubborn, Josephine. For once, though, I'm glad."
I pulled back and smiled at him. "I'm glad to be here just a little while with you. I want to make sure that everyone left behind is okay too."
"Hanging around the living isn't all it's cracked up to be. There's not much to it."
"I think that it'd be fun to go everywhere you can't when you're alive," I said, as we began walking back to the abandoned house. "Bedrooms, locker rooms, anywhere."
He smiled at me. "That gets old after a while."
I laughed at first, before I realized what he was implying. "Did you ever spy on me?" I asked.
"I wouldn't call it spying . . ." he trailed off.
"Where, Pacey?" I asked, as I stopped, placing my hands on my hips. By the look on his face, I could almost tell. "You watched me shower, didn't you?"
"Just once," he shrugged, as he continued to kick the stone down the road.
I slugged him in the arm. "How could you?!"
"I was curious," he said, his mouth twisting into a grin. "And I wasn't disappointed in the least."
Even though it was a compliment, I kept scowling at him. "I'm going to pay you back for that one, Pacey."
A Whisper on the Wind by Kilby
Notes
I forgot to mention this in my original posting of this story, but this vignette is heavily based on 'Remember Me', a novel by Christopher Pike, which is hands down one of my favorite books. So yes, completely stolen.