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Then I sat down where I was, letting myself sink to the carpet as I listened to her snuffling sobs until she finally turned off the light.
Growing up, I didn’t get noticed much. To be honest I preferred it that way. I was the quiet Latina girl who never raised her hand in class. The one who avoided eye contact at all costs on the bus. I was pretty content to let people look right through me. She was the one exception.
Not anymore.
7. MEGHAN
Oquirrh Mountains, Utah
1 year before
The scavengers with wings showed up after the coyotes. Crows, magpies, hornets, flies. Even a skinny eagle.
I stayed where I was because I didn’t know where else to go. I wasn’t eager to spend any more time weaving through the endless trees and rocks in the darkness. And I couldn’t bring myself to risk getting lost in the woods again.
It didn’t take as long as I would have imagined for the shock of seeing my mutilated body to wear off. I watched with interest as the scavengers did their job, jockeying for a corner of the spoils in their own way.
By the time the sun set on the second day, my body had mostly been reduced to bones. Not the white, bleached kind. More like soup bones. Red and raw and stripped clean of the skin and muscles. The animals left my clothing alone, except where it prevented them from accessing what they wanted. The gauzy pink-and-green scarf had blown into the base of a prickly bush, where it waved like a flag when the wind kicked up.
A glossy raven had taken a particular interest in one of my shoes. With some effort, she hopped and dragged it away from the rest of the mess, out of sight behind some rocks.
At first, I tried shooing the crows and the hornets away—like I had with the coyotes. But it only seemed to work when I was able to drum up a lot of feelings.
It worked when I thought about waking up in the dark, with his hands on my throat.
Or when I thought about my parents, who by now surely knew I wasn’t okay.
Or when I thought about the fact that I was dead and lost in the woods while the coyotes and crows ate my body.
I tried to keep my big feelings bright for a while. There was something comforting about the idea that I could still influence the world around me. Even if it was just bees, or a bird who was interested in stripping my leg clean.
I wore myself out after a while. It was impossible to feel very angry or sad or disgusted for long—just like when I was alive. So as the days passed, I settled into a weird acceptance.
I tried flying.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I just assumed ghosts could fly. This was a given in every movie I’d ever seen. First, I just sort of willed myself to float. Nope. Then I leapt up and flapped my arms around like I had in dreams. Nothing. I even climbed up onto a fallen log—and then a scraggly pine—to see if a little extra height would help with liftoff. I just floated back down to the ground like a balloon that had lost all of its helium.
For some reason, this made me feel an especially strong current of despair. Which I used to scatter a couple of ravens who were picking at my arm.
When I got too bored and restless (and tired of jumping off logs and trees), I made a loop around the clearing in the opposite direction I had run before. I found the narrow dirt road he must have driven on. There were still faint tire tracks in the dust.
I tried walking down the road for what I guessed was a few miles. The path forked—and forked—and forked again until I was sure that if I kept going I might not be able to find my way back.
The one sign I came across, a wood, unofficial-looking waypost, stated “Ophir Canyon—10.” The name didn’t ring any bells. And I didn’t hear the sound of a single car all that day.
So I stayed where I was.
The ants made their big debut after the bigger winged animals had lost interest in my remains. I watched them for days, finally willing to get closer to my bones in order to see them better as they scurried in organized chaos from their tunnels. There was something hypnotizing about them as individuals. Even at close range, I could barely tell what they were doing. Their little jaws were so tiny, they appeared to be scurrying back and forth without accomplishing anything at all; however, over the next few days, the soup bones were picked clean. It was a relief to see my remains that way. Just dingy gray and white. No more blood.
I appreciated the ants for that.
The nights still scared me. Once the sun set, I left my perch near the ants and backed myself into a rocky overhang where the ravine dipped down into the dry creek bed. A wide rock shelf hung over a couple of larger boulders, and when I lay back I could look at the stars, while knowing that nothing could sneak up behind me.
I thought about him a lot. About how warm and kind his eyes had been while we were talking at Gracie’s. About how cold and angry they looked, flashing in the moonlight as I regained consciousness in the dark, in the woods, in the spot I had never gotten up from.
He’d either carried or dragged me quite a way from the car. The spot where my body lay was at least 100 yards from the edge of the dirt road. It would have been impossible to park in the rocky, tree-tied terrain. Even if another car did come up the dirt road, they weren’t going to see anything unless they wandered to the right spot and noticed the bones that were becoming just another part of the landscape, more and more every day.
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