4. Your parents have no idea what’s going on. They’re just happy you’re bonding with Grandmother.

I couldn’t sleep that first night. Grandmother and I had tea and played cards (she killed at poker; I’d never known), and once I was upstairs, I checked my homework twice and clicked through every online video I could find, trying to keep my mind off it.

I started wondering if jiang-shi ever slept. If not, I’d have to develop some new hobbies. And I’d have to find something I could eat. (Grandmother said I’d be drinking blood now. That was about the point I flipped out on her and ran to my room.)

Finally I counted the shadows of leaves on my wall. It helped more than anything else had, but whenever I spaced out, I remembered Madison laughing at her own joke and reaching for the radio to find a better song, just before the tree rose up in front of us.

(I hadn’t wanted to say yes, but it was two miles home and it was dark, and you knew things happened to girls who walked home alone. Madison was one of Amber’s crowd, but she wasn’t as vicious as they were.

She could, however, drink as much as they could, which I sort of wish I had known when I got in the car.)

I didn’t want to think about that. It was bad enough that I had died; I didn’t want to relive the moments I had been dead in the car. What if I talked myself right back into being dead?

I must have gone somewhere when I died, because I remember coming back, blooming inside my body just before I opened my eyes. And I couldn’t shake the feeling I wasn’t alone; that I had brought some darkness with me.

It must have been the first night of my life I’d ever wanted to be alone.

On Monday, I saw that Amber and Company were meeting up outside the school at the picnic tables, even though it was still coat weather.