The walk to school is easy enough. All she has to do is keep her head down and nod if anyone greets her. She doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t worry about them finding out she’s dead because she’s moving past them before they even notice her.

The walk to school is easy. Actually being there is another story.

Students chatter and laugh as they walk to their lockers or wherever they hang out in mornings. It’s loud and crowded and Jaslene is jostled as she makes her way to her locker, grimacing when a stray elbow or bag brushes against one of her wounds. She’s already getting anxious and school hasn’t even started yet.

And she’s stuck behind a group of slow-walking freshman who she’ll knock down and walk over if they don’t hurry the hell up right now.

Being dead doesn’t make things less annoying, it seems. Jaslene glares at the boy in front of her, resisting the urge to just kick out into the back of his knee and knock him down. She rudely pushes past him instead, the moment she sees and opening, and is finally able to walk faster to her locker.

“I wish I could be in a grave if it meant I didn’t have to deal with slow ass freshmen,” Jaslene grumbles as she pulls her locker open and swings her backpack of her shoulders.

“Mood,” comments an amused voice from above her. Jaslene starts, and looks up to the masked face of Aya. Jaslene prays that the dead don’t blush, because if she gets anymore obvious about her huge gay crush on her best friend, she is going to die.

Oh, wait.

“Hey,” Jaslene says, looking down and digging her math notebook out of her backpack to switch it with her AP Biology journal. “What’s with the mask? You sick?”

“Yeah. My dad wouldn’t let me leave until I put it on so I don’t infect the rest of the school. I had no idea he bought so many of these in Japan.”

“Gotta get the essentials, right?” she jokes, and can’t hold back a satisfied smile at Aya’s low laugh. It quickly turns into a small coughing fit that has Jaslene wincing in sympathy at the rough coughs that had Aya bending over under their force.

She pats Aya’s shoulders. “Sounds rough. I have a few cough drops in my bag if you need them.”

Aya waves her off, saying, “I’ll be fine, it’s just the occasional cough. Thanks though.”

For a long moment, Aya stares at her, eyes darting along her face. Jaslene shifts, awkward and uncomfortable under the weight of her gaze. With the mask covering half her face, it’s hard to see her expression, but Jaslene is sure Aya is frowning. She just doesn’t know why. There’s something dark in her eyes, the crease in her brow showing something that Jaslene doesn’t know the meaning of.

Jaslene turns her face away, feeling her stomach swoop at how close and intense Aya is. “Is there something on my face?”

“What?” Aya sounds out of it, voice low and a little slow. “Oh, no, sorry. Just zoned out.”

Jaslene smirks. “What?” she mimics, drawing out the word even more.

“Oh, yeah, fun fact: I’m actually always stoned out of my mind,” Aya jokes. The air between them lightens with their laughter; in their shadows something remains, pulling them down slowly like quicksand.

It terrifies Jaslene.

Even with her crush, it’s never been like this with Aya. But something between them has changed and Jaslene can’t figure out what it is. Maybe something happened over the weekend, the weekend she lost from her memory.

She didn’t tell Aya that she has a crush on her, right? Jaslene pales at the thought, and prays that she can somehow remember that if it happened. And if it did happen, then Aya must have rejected her to be behaving so oddly now.

Part of her heart breaks at the thought, but it’s not like it’s going to do much when she’s already dead.

The bell cuts through the silence and the hallways fill with noise as everyone rushes off for their first class.

“I’ll see you in English!” Aya calls over her shoulder as she heads upstairs.

“Bye!” Jaslene yells back, already moving towards the double doors to make her way to the language building.

It’s easy to get lost in the routine of school: go to class, sit down, pull out a notebook and pencil, take notes, leave for the next class. For once, Jaslene actually takes good notes, putting all her focus into the material the teachers go over in an effort to forget that she’s dead, even if it’s just for a moment.

French passes easily, just review on passé composé in between the dumb faces Jaslene makes with Renee, who always ends up sitting next to her through all four years of French. The language still doesn’t make too much sense, but Jaslene can confidently say she can speak with a 5 year old child in French.

Art is thoughtless doodling in her sketchbook as the rest of the class works on finish the art project due that week, and AP Bio is spent taking super detailed notes and diagrams that won’t make much sense later.

As much as she always complained about school, the familiarity gives Jaslene a sense of comfort, like it’ll always be the same no matter what happens.

It’ll never change, even after she’s died. Even after so many other students have died.

But English. The one class she shares with Aya in their senior year. The teacher didn’t assign anyone seats, so they staked their claim next to each other in the beginning of the year. It let them whisper in each other’s ears and pass dumb doodles back and forth, but today.

Today, Aya keeps her distance, sharing at the board as the teacher lectures about post-modernism in literature, and never once looks at Jaslene. The mask hides her away, closes her off. Something heavy settles in Jaslene’s gut, something that twists her insides into knots until she’s sick with the possibility that she’s messed everything up between them.

She stays silent, ducks her head, and takes meaningless notes.

Beneath her shirt, blood wells up.

It’s the least upsetting thing about the class.