Once Dead Twice Shy Page 0,16

to the air, I'd definitely end up in the weirdo clique when school started back up. Not my senior year. I didn't have time to work myself out from that again. You come to school one day with bat wings for Halloween, and you never live it down. A faint smile curved my lips up. Wendy, my friend back in Florida, had worn them too. It had almost made the batgirl-twins jokes funny.

The ball of light made a burst of indignant sound. "You're really short, for a mortal."

"Look who's talking," I shot back, then swung my leg over my bike. I shoved on the pedal, and the wheels made a pained sound, resistance keeping me from moving. "Hey!" I exclaimed when I realized my front tire was flat. The guardian angel was laughing. It had to be; its color was wildly shifting through the spectrum. "What did you do to my bike?" I said, though it was obvious.

"I'm protecting you!" it sang merrily. "Don't you feel safer already?"

My thoughts went to the five-mile walk home. "Protecting me from what?" I snapped. "Me being thought of as anything other than a dweeb?" Ticked, I pushed my bike across the hot pavement toward the distant exit. Stupid guardian angel. What the devil was wrong with it?

I spun around at the sound of the metal school door crashing open, and saw a guy wearing running shorts come out. Two more people followed him. Track practice in August? "There once was a girl with blond hair, whose tresses were short like a mare," G.R.A.C.E.S. one-seventy-six sang, hovering by my ear. "She brushed and she preened, like she was a queen, till I laced her shampoo with some Nair."

"Charming. It sings," I muttered, and the angel giggled, seeming to send a wash of cool air over me. Behind me, voices rang out amid the thumping of car doors and starting engines. The first truck roared by me, and I turned to the right to avoid the exhaust, pulling my bike past the end of the wall and dragging it up the hill to the main road.

Someone blew their horn, and I ignored it. The hill was steep, and when a line of erosion bushes appeared in front of me, I angled into the water runoff ditch full of rocks the size of my head. But the moment I found the ditch, my front tire got stuck and the handlebar jammed into my gut. My breath came out in a pained huff, and I looked up to find a truck stopped at the top of the hill. Great. I had a freaking audience.

"There once was a girl with a bike, who thought she'd go off on a hike."

"Shut up!" I shouted, then looked up to the sound of a door slamming. My shoulders slumped and I felt weary. It was Josh. Prom-date Josh. The same guy who'd only gone out with me because my dad and his dad worked together and had set it up. I'd been a "favor." And when Josh accidentally let this slip at the prom, I'd left in a huff - with Seth/Kairos. Swell. I hadn't seen much of Josh since I'd died except for passing him in the hall. Now, leaning against my bike, I watched him recline against his truck door with his ankles crossed, smiling at me.

Oh, for cripe's sake. Looking back down, I laboriously unstuck the wheel and pushed forward, but the memory of the night I died filled my thoughts. Josh had followed me to make sure I got home okay even after I'd ditched him. He'd seen the car crash, had slid down the embankment to try to save me. I think he'd even held my hand as I died. Barnabas assured me he didn't remember a thing. Except perhaps that I'd been a bitch to him at prom and left with someone else.

"You need some help?"

I looked up to find Josh still leaning against his truck. He looked good, his wet blond hair dark from a shower, blue eyes squinting in the sun as he pushed a new pair of trendy glasses back up his narrow nose. I'd seen him talking with the drama club geeks at school and sticking up for the smart kids in the hall, but he usually hung with the jocks. Not quite the popular crowd, but close enough not to matter in a town this size. He was nice to everyone, which was not the norm for what I'd call