Lost at the Start

9.

Back in my room—which was beginning to feel oddly like a pit stop and I was it's race car—I arranged myself on the arm of my favorite chair to calculate my next move.

Really, short of Riley finding the letter and my overall goal of figuring out why I wasn't resting as peacefully as the dead should (which is in, very), I'd checked off pretty much everything else on my unofficial To-Do List.

I'd seen Jackson twice, I'd see Riley, checked on Mei—and by extension, Alistair—twice, I'd see Mr. Monty at least once, and I'd even bothered to see how Sam was holding up. (See: Not Very.)

Therefore, until Riley came and found my planted message, I was kind of out of stuff to do.

I moved to my bed once the chair arm started to flatten my already bony hindquarters, and racked my brain for something I could do that would've involve something in my room that I would've done while I was alive and would now put me in danger of scaring the crap out of my family, should they happen to walk into the room. Preferably something distracting and relevant to my current situation.

My "situation" being that I was dead, of course.

Actually, that's not a bad idea, I thought.

Stretching vehemently because—even in death, apparently—I was too lazy to get up, I rustled in my desk until I came up with one of hundreds of smallish notebooks I had everywhere, then plucked a pen from the cup overflowing with them.

I flipped onto my stomach and starting writing.

I'd decided that if I was going to be in this ghostly state, I should probably document what I'd learned about my new existence and skill set, and take notes from here on out, so that I'd have the information if I needed it later. Or if I needed that much help remembering all of what I had to work with.

So what do I know about my current state, then?

Well, I knew that I was definitely still dead, because I was no longer readily visible to other pe—

Wait...

If I couldn't be seen by anyone else in my natural state except for myself—because I could definitely see my own extremities when they wandered in my line of sight—would I have a reflection if I looked in a mirror? Or, so long as I was incorporeal and therefore not really "there," would only empty glass reflecting the room around me meet my gaze?

I figured as long as I was incorporeal, even if I so much as reached out and touched a mirror, my reflection would be unseen, at least by them. Otherwise, this whole ghost thing was kind of pointless. Or just needed a serious redesign.

Wait again. Mirrors...

The things had been connected to the paranormal countless times in human history. Some believed they could capture the soul, some even went so far as to say they were potential doors to an actual other world. More than once, people claimed to see things in old mirrors or old houses. Or old mirrors in old houses. Sometimes stories—all fiction to my knowledge—surfaced about things, spirits (!!!) being trapped inside mirrors...

What did all that mean for me now?

...Was it actually dangerous for me to go near mirrors, now that I was a ghost? And as far as I knew, the equivalent of a literal walking soul?

N-no...It couldn't be...

Could it?

If the walking dead, such as myself, couldn't go near a looking-glass, wouldn't that be the kind of thing you knew about? Like when you woke up knowing you were dead?