Lost at the Start

4.

Riley? I thought. She...She was the one who found me? Really? She hadn't been at home much since starting college a year and a half ago. I mean, she still had her room at the house and everything, but...

Somehow I was having a hard time accepting she was the one to find me.

It was like...Like...

Maybe I hadn't thought she'd be the one to find me? Maybe I was planning on someone else?

Or, maybe I had been planning on Riley being the one, but doubting things would work out that way...?

For some reason, that knowledge just didn't sit right with me.

It felt...wrong.

A piece of this puzzle was missing. Maybe.

"They...None of them said where I was...found?" I asked, deciding to plow through the information, get the facts, and then worry about the empty, unaddressed question marks later.

Jack shook his head again. "Everything just says, "Luna Todd of Starstedde, North Carolina, was found de—" He stopped himself short when he realized the word his mouth was forming. After that, he clammed right up and handed me back the phone, now tuned to what I could only assume was an article for me to read, much like the one he had half-quoted.

Sure enough, the finished quote—one of the shortest articles I'd ever seen—just wasn't very telling of anything. Not of anything I didn't already know by now, at least.

"Over the weekend, a teen in Starstedde, North Carolina, known by the name Luna Todd, was found dead by her older sister, Riley Todd. Based on the condition in which she was found, along with a note that has been confirmed to be in the younger Todd's handwriting, authorities suspect Luna Todd may have been a victim of suicide."

Pray tell, I wondered if the news story had been anything more. Knowing my luck, and the fact that mine was not the typical tragic story this sort of thing came from, probably not. My life just wasn't that...I don't know, special? Grandiose? Whatever. Point was: I was an unspectacular case in an unspectacular town, in a state that only found itself in the spotlight when the media couldn't find anywhere else to talk about first. 'Tis the nature of the beast, I suppose.

Still, now...Now I had something of a choice to make.

I stood up, holding Onyx in my arms so she wouldn't take a nasty tumble onto the floor. Cinnamon jumped down and started circling my legs, tail curling around me in a possessive way. Gently, I set Onyx down, and she immediately put her front paws on my leg, like before, and meowed up at me.

Really, I didn't want to, but I couldn't decide here. "I have to go, okay? I'll be back as soon as,"—if I even could come back—"I can."

Jackson looked like I'd punched him in the throat.

For what it was worth, I may as well have. I was leaving, and this time, despite my words, there was a higher chance I wouldn't be coming back. Ever. And the chances of me making a reappearance after my death were low enough the first time.

I know how I'd feel if someone I loved came back to me after they died, only to leave—again—and of their own free will right in front of me. And it wouldn't be good.

Although...

If the point I'd thought up earlier was right—that ghosts (such as myself) exist because of something they have to do before they can move on, I.E. something still binds them to the physical/human realm—could that mean that if I ventured to make a promise, that I'd have to fulfill that promise before I moved on, even if the other reason was resolved?