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REMEMBER ME by Christopher Pike

THE SHADOW

It was my first glimpse of the Shadow. It bore no resemblance to a human being, and yet, from the start, it reminded me of a person. There was no reason it should have. Its shape and color were difficult to comprehend. It seemed a dark cloud caught in a state of flux between a solid and a vapor. It also appeared to be a part of the surroundings, a dam of some sort on the plasma that continued to flow through my new world. It was painful to behold.

It was watching me.

I got up very slowly and began to back away from it. It shifted as I moved, following me.

I couldn't see its eyes, but I could feel them on me. I didn't like it.

When the concrete walkway came to an end and the asphalt parking lot began, I ran.

It ran after me.

FOR PAT

CHAPTER I

J. VA. ; MOST PEOPLE WOULD probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead.

But I don't think of myself that way. It wasn't so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. I'm told everything's going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That's what saddens me most about dying—that I'll never know.

My name is Shari. They don't go in much for last names over here. I used to be Shari Cooper. I'd tell you what I look like, but since the living can see right through me now, it would be a waste of time. I'm the color of wind.

I can dance on moonbeams and sometimes cause a star to twinkle. But when I was alive, I looked all right. Maybe better than all right.

I suppose there's no harm in telling what I used to look like.

I had dark blond hair, which I wore to my shoulders in layered waves. I also had bangs, which my mom said I wore too long because they were always getting in my eyes. My clear green eyes. My brother always said they were only brown, but they were green, definitely green.

I can see them now. I can brush my bangs from my eyes and feel my immaterial hair slide between my invisible fingers. I can even laugh at myself and remember the smile that won "Best Smile" my junior year in high school. Teenage girls are always complaining about the way they look, but now that no one is looking at me, I see something else—I should never have complained.

It is a wonderful thing to be alive.

I hadn't planned on dying.

But that is the story I have to tell: how it happened, why it happened, why it shouldn't have happened, and why it was meant to be. I won't start at the beginning, however. That would take too long, even for someone like me who isn't getting any older. I'll start near the end, the night of the party. The night I died. I'll start with a dream.

It wasn't my dream. My brother Jimmy had it. I was the only one who called him Jimmy.

I wonder if I would have called him Jim like everyone else if he would have said I had green eyes like everyone else. It doesn't matter. I loved Jimmy more than the sun. He was my big brother, nineteen going on twenty, almost two years older than me and ten times nicer. I used to fight with him all the time, but the funny thing is, he never fought with me. He was an angel, and I know what I'm talking about.