Clouds smother the sky that night, turning the color from deep blue to nearly jet black. The stars are invisible tonight, due to the thick layer of clouds above that surely hold a storm within them. As if to confirm this, a rumble of thunder bellows through the sky, cueing a flash of lightning. A raindrop hits my window, then another. More and more splat against the glass panes until the sky lets out a full on downpour, as if drowning its sorrows on the Earth so that the sun may shine tomorrow.

Rain has always soothed me. Storms especially. I was never scared of the thunder and lightning as a child. My parents always wondered why. To a child, storms are supposed to be scary. The deafening thunder and blinding lightning seems like an unexplainable act of sorcery or magic to a young kid. Where does it come from? Why does it happen? A child can't wrap their mind all the way around that. But somehow, I did. My mother would always ask if I'd like to sleep in my parents' room for the night when a storm would hit, but I would decline and wrap myself in blankets in my room, sleeping peacefully. Of course, my father would always attempt to educate me on the story behind thunder and lightning the morning after the rain had stopped and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds again.

This storm is no different for me. It's past ten o'clock, and I sit quietly in my room, watching rainwater slide down the cold glass of the window. Lightning flashes and illuminates the dark silhouette of a figure outside the window, and I almost lose my shit right then and there.

Laughing, Harry steps through the window, little droplets of rain on his skin.

"Oh my God," I breathe, pressing a hand to my chest, trying to soothe my racing heart. "Holy shit, you almost gave me a heart attack."

Harry continues to laugh, shaking water from his hair and smiling teasingly at me. "You should've seen your face. Priceless."

I glare at him for a moment before shaking my head and starting to laugh with him. "Alright, you got me good," I admit.

"Took your breath away?"

"Gave me asphyxia."

We laugh again.

"We should stop with the strangulation jokes, really," I say.

"You're right." He pauses.

I look at him expectantly.

"What?" He asks.

"You were supposed to make another joke right then. It was a perfect opportunity."

"What're you going to do about it? Strangle me?"

"Homicidally."

Harry closes his eyes and shakes his head, laughing. I laugh with him at our morbidly funny humor.

"Man, it's really raining out there," he says once we finish laughing, looking towards the window.

"I hadn't noticed."

"You're just brimming with wit tonight, aren't you?"

"Hell yeah."

Harry smiles at me, shaking his head.

"Look, I know you can't feel the cold rain or anything, but do you want to borrow, like, a t-shirt or something? You look soggy."

He raises an eyebrow. "Soggy?"

"Yeah. Soggy." I push myself out of bed and walk over to him. "Your sweater's all damp and...soggy."

He looks down at me, smitten. "Sure, Jane. If it'll make you happy."

"I'm sure my dad has a shirt you can borrow until your sweater dries out, or something," I say, moving towards the door. I pause. How exactly would I explain that to my father?

"Nonsense," Harry says. "My parents didn't take a box of my old clothes with them to Vancouver. I'll take something from there."

I raise my eyebrows. "Why haven't you changed before, then? I mean, how long have you been wearing this sweater?"

He frowns. "I like this sweater."

I laugh lightly. "Of course."

"You don't like it?"

"Yeah I do. It's very cuddly."

"I like cuddly."

"Well, you've achieved cuddly."

"Good. I was aiming for cuddly." He smiles at me, and I mirror his expression. "Also," he says, his tone turning slightly serious. "The population in the in between...we don't like to change our clothes. They don't get dirty, anyway, because we don't sweat or anything. It's like an unspoken law. You stay in the clothes you died in because it's like holding onto another piece of your life and who you were. After you die, you stay true to yourself. There is no one left to impress. Plus, we can't exactly get any other clothes...unless you've got parents that left behind some of your stuff." He frowns.

"Well, once your sweater dries, you can put it back on," I say. "You can just change until the rain stops."

He smiles. "All right."

I push at his shoulder. "Go find some clothes, you soggy ghost."

He laughs, moving toward the door. "The box is in one of the guest room closets, I think. I'll just walk through a few walls until I find it."

"You have way too much fun with that."

"Hey, can you blame me?"

"Not at all."

I sit back on my bed as he disappears through one of my walls, lightly laughing. I notice he leaves no puddle of water on the ground as a live person would, having been out in the rain that long. Well, obviously, my mind says. He's dead, you fool.

I'm glad that my parents went to bed early and that their room is across the house from mine, on the west wing. The vastness of the house comes in handy now. They couldn't possibly hear talking in my room from all the way in the west wing.

Before I know it, Harry comes walking back through the wall holding a box of clothes. He hasn't changed from his wet white sweater.

"Why didn't you change?" I ask him.

"I couldn't decide on which shirt to wear," he says, setting down the box on the floor.

I get off the bed and move over to the box, looking down into it. T-shirts of all colors are piled inside.

"You choose one," he says.

I raise an eyebrow and begin pulling shirts out, looking at the logos on them or feeling the fabric between my fingers. Most of them have the logos of various bands on them-some that I'm familiar with, and others that I've never heard of.

"Rolling Stones, Queen, the 1975," I read as I look through the shirts. "Arctic Monkeys, Fall Out Boy..."

"What can I say, I liked bands." Harry shrugs.

I throw him the Arctic Monkeys one. "I like that band," I say. "Wear that one."

He smiles. "Good choice."

I half expect him to move to the closet to change, but am not all that surprised when he stands and pulls his white sweater right off, throwing it off to the side. It lands in a damp heap on the floor.

My eyes shamelessly run up Harry's torso. His muscles are defined, his skin smooth like that of a porcelain doll. With the delicate smile upon his lips, he looks like an angel minus the wings.

I avert my eyes as he pulls on the shirt, bending down to pick up his wet sweater from the ground.

"I'll hang it over the shower rod," he says, obviously satisfied with the fact that I was staring.

Damn it.

I sit back on my bed and let out a long breath. Harry walks back into the room, taking a seat beside me.

"Your funeral's on Wednesday, you know," I say. "Your parents are burying your actual body."

"Hmm."

"They invited me."

"Did they."

"I won't go if you don't want me to."

"I don't mind. I'll be watching it, anyway. There's a spot in the trees where we all like to watch funerals."

"You mean you-"

"Sit with all my ghost friends and watch funerals like movies? Yes. That's exactly what I mean."

I let out a short laugh. "Wow."

"You're welcome to join us if you want. We've got a good spot where no one can see us."

"I'll think about it."

We fall silent for a few moments, listening to the rain.

"Hey, Jane."

"Yeah."

"Tell me about yourself."

I look at him, furrowing my brow. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know you as well as I should for someone who's helping me cross."

"Oh, really."

"Yeah. So, go on." He stretches out on my bed, resting his arms behind his head. "Talk."

"I don't know where to begin."

"Start from..." He pauses, thinking. "Why you moved here in the first place."

"You know that already," I say. "I tried to kill myself."

"Why?" I open my mouth to answer, but he puts up a hand quickly, silencing me. "And you can't say because you wanted to die. Tell me why you really did it."

I sigh. I play with the hem of my pajama pants. "Do I have to?"

"Jane," he almost laughs, trying to hide a smirk. "Who the hell am I going to tell? I'm dead!" I fight a smile.

"That rhymed," I say quietly. "And you'll tell all your dead friends."

"Come on. They all love you, anyway. If I did tell them, which I won't, they wouldn't judge you or even really care." He sits up, raising his eyebrows at me and trying to hide a smile.

I take my bottom lip into my mouth, looking up at him. What's the harm in telling him? I trust him. He's been a better friend to me than anyone else in Castle Hill.

"Fine," I say, and Harry moves to sit in criss-cross-applesauce position, resting his chin in his palm childishly.

I chew on my lip, struggling to find a place to begin. "Well," I say before I can talk myself out of it. "I guess it really began a little over a year ago. I had a few friends, and they began to change. So I guess I changed with them. Not good change, either. Like the change that you see in all the movies where girls become stuck up and bitchy and do nothing but flirt shamelessly and drink.

"It's not like I was as bad as the rest, but my parents were very disappointed in what I was becoming. I'd come home really late drunk out of my mind on weekends and they'd yell at me and I'd talk back. I was horrible. I made my mother cry a lot, but I didn't care at the time. I was stone cold.

"Around January of last year, I met a guy." I pause. "This is where it gets cliche."

Harry shrugs. "A little cliche isn't so bad."

"Anyway," I say. "We dated for a little while. I didn't really like him, you know. It was all for the image. My friends liked him and so I put up with him. I was sucked into this world where...popularity and being cool and pretty was the priority. Over time, I got tired of it, and my friends picked up on that. They'd start to ignore me, or talk about me behind my back. It got worse and worse, but I didn't do anything about it. I was naive, really naive.

"Then one day, they stopped talking behind my back and started talking shit straight to my face." I lift a shoulder. "I acted like I took it as a joke. They thought it was funny. I broke up with the guy I was dating and that's when it all went downhill.

"My friends pestered and pestered my why I dumped him, and I told them again and again that he just wasn't my type, but they wouldn't let it go. They continued to tell me I was worthless and a bunch of other shit that I don't care enough about to remember word for word, and I began to believe them. My parents didn't understand why I was angry all the time. I didn't really have anyone to talk to, or to trust. I felt alone-really, really alone.

"I felt like I should tell my parents or a counselor or something that these people were tearing me apart, but that's hard to do. It's really hard. I almost said something to my mom a few times, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was a coward. I had a stupid excuse to kill myself. I hated that I even considered ending it all, but as time went on and things with my friends got worse, it sounded increasingly appealing."

Harry watches me with curious eyes, his chin still resting in his palm. It's almost unnatural to see him in anything but his white sweater, but I can't lie and say that the t-shirt doesn't look good on him. He's rolled up the short sleeves a little bit, and the dark of the t-shirt provides a pretty contrast to his smooth pale skin. "Go on," he urges softly.

"Well," I say. "My outlook on life got worse and worse, and finally I decided that I wanted to do it. It all sounds so silly now, all the stupid reasons.

"I hated myself so much. I lost all motivation for everything. I didn't know what was happening to me. I became someone that I didn't even know, and someone that I didn't like. I don't remember when I started cutting myself. It was a little at first, and then it became a lot worse. It was almost like I was addicted to it in a sick, twisted way. Remembering it is painful and something that I don't often like to do." I frown.

"My mom found me in the bathroom a little while after I tried to end it. I was almost gone. There was a lot of blood, everywhere, over everything. She started crying, but I didn't get why-I thought I would have been better off dead. 'Oh my God, Jane,' she kept saying, over and over. 'Oh my God, Jane, what have you done to yourself?' I blacked out a little bit after she found me and woke up in the hospital."

Harry's eyes are wide. I look down at my lap and continue.

"That was my low point. After that, I was diagnosed with depression and was put on medication. I still have to take it every morning. My parents had a long discussion about it, and we finally decided to move away from all of it, to Castle Hill. My father said it would be a good fresh start for all of us. Plus, he got a job offer. It was a slow recovery, and for a long time it was hard for me to push away all the suicidal thoughts. Things got better, though. I'm still taking my medication, and the chemical imbalance in my brain is kind of starting to balance again, maybe. Things are better."

I shrug. "There you go," I say. "That's the story."

He nods slowly, brow furrowed. "Wow."

"Yeah." A loud clap of thunder sounds outside.

He shakes his head slightly. "I've never known anyone that's been like you," he says. "I grew up around these trust fund babies that had everything. I was one of them, I should know. Everything I complained about in my life seems stupid, now."

"That's not true," I say. "I mean, sure, some of the things we complain about in our lives are stupid, but just because our problems aren't as bad as someone else's doesn't mean we can't have problems at all."

Harry looks at me. "You're right."

I shrug.

"You're right about a lot, you know that, Jane?"

"I am?"

"Yeah."

Lightning flashes, bathing the room in a pale glow for hardly a split second. The rain begins to fall harder, slapping and splashing against the house with no mercy.

I look at the rain sliding down the window. "I guess there's not much left to know about me now," I say, letting out a dry laugh.

"That's not true," Harry says. "I still don't know your favorite color, or your favorite ice cream flavor. I don't know your favorite season or who your favorite bands are, or what your favorite candy is or what your favorite animal is. I don't know what your favorite movie is, and I don't know what you like most about yourself. You can't let what you've been through define who you are."

"Who would want to know all that stuff, though?" I ask, wrinkling my nose. "It's boring."

"I want to know all that stuff," Harry says, shrugging. "And I'm sure that our little friend Wesley would, too." I crack a smile, blushing. He smiles too.

"Damn you," I say. "Why'd you have to be dead?"

He shrugs, eying the color in my cheeks and half smiling. "Someone decided I should go permanently out of print."

"What a grave situation."

"It's a bucket kicking carnival!"

I laugh. "That last one just about killed me."

His jaw drops and he laughs, covering his mouth with his hand so he doesn't laugh too loudly. I laugh along with him, our shoulders touching lightly.

Our laughing quiets after a while and only the sound of the storm is left in the room.

"Jane, I want to talk to you about something," Harry says seriously.

I look at him.

"I know that you've had a close encounter with death before, and I know you're better now," he says slowly. "But since meeting me, I feel like death has been sort of...glamorized for you. I know we've become close in the time that you've lived in this house, and I want you to promise me that you won't think of dying as an answer to anything again. It might sound like peace and bliss, and maybe that's what the afterlife is-but life is also beautiful. Life and death have different versions of beauty, but one does not outweigh or outshine the other. Unfortunately, you never truly appreciate that until you're dead."

I hear the rain against the glass of the window and my heart pound against my ribcage. I feel the weight and meaning of Harry's words seep through me along with whispers of cold as he moves his arm to rest around my shoulders. I lean against him, still processing his words.

"We always want what we can't have," he says. "That's true, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I agree. "It's very true."

I rest my head on his shoulder, breathing in the clean laundry scent drifting from his t-shirt that hasn't been worn since he was alive, feeling his coldness prickle my skin. I remember how shocking his gelid touch was to me at first, and now it has become so custom and ordinary to me. Here we are, together, listening to the same storm, life and death sitting side by side.

And I see how Harry is right-death seems beautiful from afar, and maybe the afterlife does bring beauty and peace-but how will we know how peaceful the afterlife is if we have never truly lived? Life is beautiful, life is powerful, and it is not something we should toss around like nothing.

I listen to the rain against the glass of the window and feel Harry's fingers gently run through my hair. I am falling in love with him, my mind whispers. I am falling in love with someone who is dead.

"What are you thinking about?" Harry asks, his voice cutting through the melodic patter of the rain.

"You," I answer truthfully.

I hear him chuckle softly, his fingers trailing down my arm. If only he was living, if only his heart could beat. I look up at him, taking in the sharpness of his jaw and the pleasantness of his smile.

"Jane," he says.

"Yeah?"

I turn my head to look him in the eye, straightening up. He looks at me for a moment before moving closer, so that our lips brush ever so slightly.

I am overcome by his cool lips brushing against my warm ones, my heart beating rapidly. Despite his chilling proximity, my skin is hot like it's on fire. We barely touch, his eyes moving to meet mine.

"Well," I say against his lips. "Are you going to kiss me or not?"

He smiles widely, his dimples appearing before he pulls me closer until he's kissing me. I wrap my arms around his neck and the chill of his skin is relief to the hotness of mine. I feel euphoria build in the pit of my abdomen at being so close to him, and it amazes me how he is able to make me feel happier than I have been in what seems like forever. In a selfish moment, I disregard that he can't feel any of this; he isn't feeling anything that I am. But when the selfish moment ends, I quickly pull away.

"Wait," I say, pushing myself back every so slightly. I look up at him, my arms still around his neck. "You're numb."

"I know," he says, leaning down to rest his forehead against mine. "But you're not."

And he kisses me again, twirling my hair gently around his fingers, his freezing aura clashing with the warmth of my living body with the rain still pattering against the glass of the window panes.