The loneliness was intense. Tristan feared that he would always be alone this way, wandering and never seen, never heard, never known as Tristan. Why hadn't he seen the old lady from the hospital after she died? Where had she gone?
Dead people went to cemeteries, he thought as he crossed the hallway to the stairs. Then he stopped in his tracks. He had a grave somewhere! Probably next to his grandparents. He hurried down the steps, curious to see what they had done with him. Perhaps he'd also find the old woman or someone else recently dead who could make sense of all this.
Tristan had visited Riverstone Rise Cemetery several times when he was a little boy. It had never seemed a sad place to him, perhaps because the sites of his grandparents' graves had always inspired his father to tell Tristan interesting and funny stories about them. His mother had spent the time trimming and planting. Tristan had run and climbed stones and broad-jumped the graves, using the cemetery as a kind of playground and obstacle course.
But that seemed centuries ago.
It was strange now to slip through the tall iron gates-gates he had swung on like a little monkey, his mother always said-in search of his own grave. Whether he moved from memory or instinct, he wasn't sure, but he found his way quickly to the lower path and around the bend marked by three pines. He knew it was fifteen feet farther and prepared himself for the shock of reading his own name on the stone next to his grandparents'.
But he didn't even glance at it. He was too astonished by the presence of a girl who had stretched out and made herself quite at home on the freshly upturned dirt.
"Excuse me," he said, knowing full well that people didn't hear him. "You're lying on my grave."
She glanced upward then, which made him wonder if he was shimmering again. The girl was about his age and looked vaguely familiar to him.
"You must be Tristan," she said. "I knew you'd show up sooner or later."
Tristan stared at her.
"You're him, right?" she said, sitting up, indicating his name with a jab of her thumb. "Recently dead, right?"
"Recently alive," he said. There was something about her attitude that made him want to argue with her.
She shrugged. "Everybody has his own point of view."
He couldn't get over the fact that she could hear him. "And you," he said, studying her rather unusual looks, "what are you?"
"Not so recently."
"I see. Is that why your hair is that color?".
Her hand flew up to her head. "Excuse me?"
The hair was short, dark, and spiky, and had a strange magenta tinge, a purplish hue, as if the henna rinse had gone wrong.
"That's what color it was when I died."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Have a seat," she said, patting the newly mounded earth. "After all, it's your resting place. I was just crashing for a while."
"So you're a… a ghost," he said.
"Excuse me?"
He wished she'd stop using that annoying tone.
"Did you say 'ghost'? You are recent. We're not ghosts, sweetie." She tapped his arm several times with a long, pointed, purplish black nail.
Again he wondered if this was from being "not recently" dead but was afraid she'd puncture him if he asked.
Then he realized that her hand did not pass through his. They were indeed made of the same stuff.
"We're angels, sweetie. That's right. Heaven's little helpers."
Her tone and tendency to exaggerate certain words were starting to grate on his nerves.
She pointed toward the sky. "Someone's got a wicked sense of humor. Always chooses the least likely."
"I don't believe it," Tristan said. "I don't believe it."
"So this is the first time you've seen your new digs. Missed your own funeral, huh? That" she said, "was a very big mistake. I enjoyed every minute of mine."
"Where are you buried?" Tristan asked, looking around. The stone on one side of his family plot had a carving of a lamb, which hardly seemed right for her, and on the other side, a serene-looking woman with hands folded over her breasts and eyes lifted toward heaven- an equally bad choice.
"I'm not buried. That's why I'm subletting from you."
"I don't understand," said Tristan.
"Don't you recognize me?"
"Uh, no," he said, afraid she was going to tell him she was related to him somehow, or maybe that he had chased her in sixth grade.
"Look at me from this side." She showed him her profile.
Tristan looked at her blankly.
"Boy, you didn't have much of a life, did you, when you had a life," she remarked.
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't go out much."
"All the time," Tristan replied.
"Didn't go to the movies."
"I went all the time," Tristan argued.
"But you never saw any of Lacey Lovitt's films."
"Sure I did. Everybody did, before she- You're Lacey Lovitt?"
She rolled her eyes upward. "I hope you're faster at figuring out your mission."
"I guess it's just that your hair color is different."