I awoke the next morning feeling like absolute crap, but I took a resolute breath and picked up the phone anyway.

"Mr. Deetz? This is (Y/N) (L/N). I'd like to accept your offer. I'll be there first thing tomorrow."

~

I stood in the kitchen/break room with Riley and a few other employees, playing with a strand of Riley's blonde, curly locks.

Riley and I had actually dated briefly. After the both of us had learned that we weren't really right for each other, we had broken up, but had grown even closer as best friends. I smiled as I thought of al the fun times we had had together.

Made me a little more sad that I was moving.

"I can't believe you're leaving," Riley mumbled, echoing my own thoughts and playing with a random meat mallet he had found in one of the cabinets.

I sighed. "I know. I have conflicting feelings about it, but I really need to do this. For myself."

"How did your roommate take it?"

I sucked in a breath through my teeth.

"Bad, huh?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at me. Riley could read me like a book.

I nodded glumly in response. "Yeah. Rita was understandably... upset, to say the least."

Riley simply nodded silently. That was one of the things I liked most about him. He didn't try to tell me empty nothings, like "I'm so sorry", or "It'll be okay"; he just listened. And helped in any way he could. He wasn't fake. And I appreciated that.

"FOR GOD'S SAKE WHY DO YOU GOTTA BE SO DANG ANNOYING ALL THE TIME, JEN? GOSH!"

Riley's and my heads both snapped over to where Jen and Tessa had entered the kitchen.

"BECAUSE YOU'RE A SLACKER, THAT'S WHY!" Jen fired back angrily.

There were lots of "ooh"s and "yooo"s. Tessa's green eyes flashed dangerously. Her short, stringy, purple hair whipped around her pudgy face as her head snapped in Jen's direction.

"So, the crazy chick came crawling back again, huh? I was kinda hoping some good soul would give her a home, maybe a new collar, and all the treats money can buy. Oh well, one can only wish, I suppose," Riley said quietly to me, shrugging with mock sadness on his face.

I snorted. Gosh, I was going to miss him so much.

"Shut up, skank," Tessa hissed at Jen. That's when I spoke up.

"Hey, she has a point. Maybe she wouldn't be so hard on you if you acted like an adult and would pick up your end of the slack."

Riley high-fived me from behind.

"Oh, look, it's little-miss-emo. Little-miss-'I-spend-my-time-at-the-cemetery-obsessing-over-this-dead-guy-who-died-over-200-years-ago'."

I bit my tongue so hard I felt and tasted the tang of the blood seeping out of it and in between my teeth.

"I don't obsess. I just think it's sad."

"Yeah? Well, the guy shouldn't have killed himself. Stupid idiot, if you ask me."

THAT'S. IT.

I couldn't control my anger anymore.

"You wanna go? You wanna fight, you good-for-nothing slacker?" I screeched, standing out in the middle of the kitchen. You could hear a pen drop, until Tessa took the bait and responded.

"Let's go, Mario!"

"Pick up that knife!"

She did.

"Throw it at me! Throw it! You won't freaking do it! Coward!" I spread my arms wide, taunting her.

No one really knew how to respond to that.

"(Y/N)! What the heck are you doing??" Riley hissed, he and the rest of the employees behind the counter.

That left Tessa and me out in the open.

"Defending someone's honor!"

"What are you talking about??" He was so confused.

"The dead guy? You don't even know him, crazy punk! He probably deserved to die!"

I was beyond livid.

My turn.

"Yeah? Well your boyfriend is such a wimp!!" Lame, I know. But it served its purpose, regardless.

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "You leave Jasper outta this."

I smirked in a crazed sort of way. An insane giggle bubbled on my lips. "Why? big-bad Jasper gotta have his useless girlfriend fight all his battles for him because he's just a big cowar-"

I heard the knife before I felt it. It squelched with a hollow thud as it planted itself squarely in the center of my chest. I looked down, slightly dazed.

I slowly pulled the knife out of my chest, surprised to find the pain only slight, and the profuse bleeding not bothersome.

"Oh-oh my gosh," I heard Riley say, and when I looked at him, his eyes were wide with fear, tears rolling down his pale skin, and hands clapped over his mouth.

"You deserve to die. Maybe you can get that dead guy's autograph when you get to hell."

My head snapped back around to Tessa. She was staring at me with enough enmity to wilt a tree.

That was when I lost the last ounce of self-control and sanity I had left in me.

I took the bloody knife and threw it just like the palace guards had taught me in self-defense training, and it just narrowly missed Tessa's head when she ducked.

"WHAT THE HECK?? CRAZY HOE WHY AREN'T YOU DEAD YET??"

She was cowering in terror on the floor now, and my insane self grinned at this picture.

I grabbed the meat mallet and lunged. Everything was a blur. I just remember that I was suddenly on top of Tessa. I was hitting her with the meat mallet repeatedly. Over and over again. There was blood. Oh, so much blood.

People were screaming. Trying to pull me off of Tessa, who was trying to shield her head with her arms, but quickly losing consciousness. People were hitting me, kicking me, but I didn't feel anything. Not until there was a tingling sensation near the back of my head. I turned around, seeing Riley, tears streaming down his face, face dirty, and hands bloody. I looked past him at the wall, to see glass broken, and the emergency axe missing from its shattered case.

Mio dio.

Riley just planted a freaking axe in my skull.

"Riley?" I asked, coughing up blood.

He looked a wreck, but his voice was steady, so he was holding it together better than I was.

"I'm sorry, but I had to get your attention. Payton called 911. The cops are on their way. We have to get out of here. Like, NOW."

He grabbed my hand and drug me out of the back door and shoved me into the back of his Jeep.

He jumped into the car, started the ignition, and floored it, all while sobbing very loudly.

"I'm... I'm s-so sorry I p-put.... an axe in y-your... head!" he said in between sobs.

"It's okay," I said, extremely disconnected from the entire situation. "Thank goodness you knew about my curse."

I had told Riley about my curse shortly after we had started dating. I didn't want what had happened with Lawrence to happen all over again. And in regards to that situation, I hadn't told Riley about it. I couldn't. It hurt too much.

"So," he asked after a while of driving through the dark back streets, now calm. "What exactly happened back there?"

I looked down, blood dripping down my face and onto his leather seats. I felt a little bad about it. Blood was covering the entire right side of my face, and an axe was still embedded in my skull. Quite a picturesque scene.

"I don't know, I guess I just lost it."

Riley was clearly extremely dissatisfied with that vague excuse of an explanation, but he didn't push me any further.

"So we're gonna stop by your place first, and then head to that address in Connecticut, okay?"

I nodded. Then a familiar feeling hit me.

"Oh, I said, laying down in the back seat. "Time to die."

"Oh my god are you seriously gonna just die in my Jeep? Like, I'm just gonna be riding around on the Interstate with a dead body in my car??"

"Relax, dude. It'll only take me a little while to recover. I've learned that with stab wounds, I'm only dead for an hour or two before I come back around again."

In a minute, we pulled up to my apartment. I had my eyes closed, but I still listened to the scene unfolding around me.

I heard the car door open, and I noticed that Riley left it open. The corner of my mouth twitched upward slightly. That sly dog. He knew I was listening.

"Hi, are you Rita Gonzales?" he asked.

"Yes, you must be Riley McBride, Stella's coworker."

"Yeah, that's me."

"I got your message. Is she okay?"

Rita sounded worried, and I felt a pang of guilt at the thought of our argument the day before.

"Um.... well yes and no."

I heard him open the door on the passenger side up front, and Rita's horrified gasp after that.

"OH MY GOSH. SHE'S DEAD!" she wailed. "SHE'S DEAD! YOU KILLED HER!! YOU PSYCHOPATH!!"

Riley sounded frantic.

"No! No! She's not dead!! (Y/N), give her a wave, please!"

I slowly raised my weak arm and jiggled my wrist around a bit, my hand flopping limply everywhere. I didn't have the energy to do much else.

"She's got an axe in her head!" Rita responded, her voice thick from crying.

"I know."

The way they were talking honestly sounded like two disappointed parents. If I hadn't been... you know... dying, I would've laughed.

"We have to get her to a hospital!"

"She'll be fine. But we have to leave now. Come on."

"Are you kidding me? I'm not going anywhere with you! You drive up with my roommate's seemingly-lifeless body with an axe buried two inches deep into her cranium in the back of your car, and you just expect me to hop in??"

"Look, you can trust me. Right, (Y/N)?"

I nodded and gave a big thumbs-up.

Apparently Rita still wasn't convinced, because Riley let out an exasperated sigh.

"Look. Do you really wanna be here when the cops start pouring in and asking truck-loads of questions?"

I heard the sound of footsteps retreating, and a door being slammed shut.

So much for Rita, I guess.

But it was only a moment later when she came back out, threw both her luggage and my luggage into the back, and hopped into the passenger seat up front beside Riley. All she said was "Drive."

I remember smiling slightly before greeting death and its cold, familiar embrace.