Lost at the Start

6.

Twenty minutes later, the moment I was waiting for came.

Sam half-stood up in anticipation for his stop, the bus lurching forward as the driver hit the brake as gently as possible. Which still isn't very gentle, but whatever.

Despite my best efforts, I'd fallen on my butt twice during the ride and stumbled more times that I care to admit. Although it was probably a good thing I had, because I was bored out my mind. Much longer and in much less stress-inducing conditions, I probably would've managed to fall asleep standing up.

For the very reason, I'd almost missed him getting off, but I glimpsed his short, cropped hair cut headed down the steps and darted down them myself just in the nick of time.

That did make me wonder, though: As a ghost, did I need sleep? Or was that just an old hangover from living?

With any luck, I wouldn't have to find out because I wouldn't have to worry about sleeping. I'd find out why I was a ghost—my reason for being a ghost at all—and I'd move on to whatever was out there waiting for me.

But right now, I had one task at hand.

Keeping my distance out of courtesy, I trailed behind Sam around a block in a neighbor I wasn't the foggiest bit familiar with to a pretty plain little brick house.

His little brother, Nick, was already waiting on the front porch, thumbs tapping away at his cell phone.

Wordlessly, Sam pulled a key from somewhere and slid it into the lock, turned in, and pushed the door open.

Sam got the key out of the lock while Nick walked inside, without so much as a glance at his brother, still completely engrossed in his phone.

A minute later, Sam slammed the door shut behind him, and even though I was at the bottom of the front steps, I could've sworn I heard a deadbolt click into place.

Good thing I was dead, because otherwise, I would not have been getting in. At least not by conventional, legal ways.

Then again—How legal was it for a dead girl to just walk into someone's house, invisible and uninvited?

I guess probably Not Very.

Still, I hadn't come all this way for nothing, so I forced one foot after the other up the steps, and half forgot I didn't need to knock before I just walked through the door without a single impact on the physical world.

The house was honestly just really plain. Boring, unextraordinary. I mean, it was furnished, which was something, but it almost didn't look lived in. All the fixtures were devoid of any really evidence of life. Too new, too clean.

Dare I say it was a bit surreal.

I tried my best to ignore that fact and started looking around for Sam, who I could not believe I'd already misplaced. And in his own house, no less.

Lucky for me, there were only two rooms off one wing of the smallish-but-not-tiny house that had noise emanating from them, so I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right on the first try.

I stepped through the first of the two doors I came to and found his brother lying flat on his back on his bed, still engrossed by the phone in his hands.

Is he always like that?

Mildly disappointed, I quickly stepped back into the hallway and went to the other door.

On the other side I heard muffled, canned gunshots and various grunts that didn't match Sam's voice at all. Video game sounds if I'd ever heard them. Probably Call of Duty. That was the only game he ever really talked about, and the one he'd played at the party, too.