Dead Boy Walking

04 - C I T Y

"I'm surprisingly very excited about this party. You know considering I died at the last one, I think I'm doing alright," Kingsley explained while sitting on the bed behind me. He used his hands in big gestures while his voice rung out loudly with amusement.

"You're not funny, you know that, right?" I frowned. I was sitting in front of my full-length mirror while applying my makeup gently. I'd thrown on a simple, red, spaghetti dress and called it a day. I wasn't in the mood to go all out tonight.

I could see Kingsley watching me through the mirror as I painted my face and his eyebrows furrowed in interest to follow what I was doing.

"Why do you insist on coming with me?" I muttered while applying the mascara slowly to my frustratingly short eyelashes. "You know none of your friends will be able to see you and I'm certainly not going to talk to you all night. You'll just be on your own which sounds boring. Can you even get drunk? Lame."

He chuckled. "I'm too attracted to you to leave you alone."

I stopped the mascara wand in place and looked at him through the mirror with a lifted brow. "Excuse me?"

He tipped his head back in laughter. "Not in that way, Quincy."

I spun around to face him. The sound he made felt almost like a rumble and it reverberated through my body though he was nowhere near me. When he finally sobered, his lips held a lingering smile.

"I'm attracted to you the way a moth is to light. There's this pull that I can't explain, it's like nothing I've ever felt before. When you left the house earlier, I just had the sudden urge to follow. I think we're connected in some way because I can feel everything you do if the emotion is overwhelming enough. I want to stay in your light forever, Quincy. I don't want to die."

I kept my eyes on him for a moment longer and wondered how this happened. If I were anybody else or Kingsley wasn't the one dead, would a ghost still be following somebody around? Or, was it something we had done specifically?

I screwed the mascara lid back on and threw it in the makeup bag along with the rest of my stuff. Then I pushed myself up onto my feet with a drawled out a sigh. It was time to go. I threw on my jacket and skipped down the stairs.

"I'm going," I called out to Dad and didn't wait for a response before I was out the door.

I'd told my dad about the party earlier, he was hesitant to let me go at first. But, like always, he agreed. It was easy to get my own way with him, he was soft like that.

I pulled my jacket closer to my body and breathed out to see the condensation in the air like smoke. As always, the weather was crappy and the chill bit at my bare legs. It was cold and cloudy while the old moon smiled down and I couldn't get away fast enough. I walked along the pavement to my best friend's house, she only lived down the street.