Undead and Unreturnable

This is how my tombstone read:

ELIZABETH ANNE TAYLOR

APRIL 25, 1974-APRIL 25, 2004

OUR SWEETHEART, ONLY RESTING

"That's just so depressing," my best friend, Jessica Watkins, observed.

"It's weird." My sister, Laura Goodman, was staring. "That is very, very weird."

"Our sweetheart, only resting?" I asked. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"I think it's nice," my sister said, a little hesitantly.

She looked like a dirty old man's dream with her long, butterscotch-blond hair, big blue eyes, and red peacoat. You know how ministers' kids will sometimes go wild when they finally get away from their parents? Laura was the devil's daughter (no, really), so her way of rebelling was to be as nice and sweet as possible. A dastardly plan. "It's a little different. Most of the people I know would have gone with a Bible verse, but your mama certainly didn't have to."

"Given how things turned out," Jess replied, running a hand over her skinned-back black hair, "it's a little prophetic, don't you think?" As usual, when she put her hair up, she pulled it back so tightly, the arch of her eyebrows made her look constantly amazed. Though it's possible, given where we were standing, that she really was amazed.

"I think standing in front of my own grave is the last place I want to be on the seventeenth day of December, is what I think." Depressing and creepy. Must be the holidays.

Jessica sighed again and rested her forehead on my shoulder. "Poor Betsy. I can't get over it. You were so young!"

Laura smirked a little. "Like turning thirty wasn't enough of a trauma. Poor Betsy."

"So young!"

"Will you pull yourself together, please? I'm right here." I stuck my hands into my coat pockets and sulked. "What is it, like ten below out? I'm freezing."

"You're always freezing. Don't bitch if you're going to go outside without your gloves. And it's thirty-five degrees, you big baby."

"Would you like my coat?" Laura said. "I don't really feel the cold."

"Another one of your sinister powers," Jessica said. "We'll add it to the list with weapons made of hellfire and always being able to calculate a 22 percent tip. Now Bets, run this by me again... how'd your tombstone finally show up here?"

I explained, hopefully for the last time. I had, of course, died in the spring. Rose in the early dawn hours the day of my funeral and gone on undead walkabout. Because my body was MIA, the funeral was cancelled.

But my mother, who had been in a huge fight with my dad and stepmom about what to spend on my marble tombstone, had rushed to order the thing. By the time it was finished, no funeral, no service, no burial. (My family knew the truth about what I was now, and so did Jessica. My other coworkers and friends had been told the funeral had been a joke, one in very poor taste.)

So anyway, my tombstone had been in storage the last six months. (My stepmother had been pushing for plain, cheap granite, with my initials and my dates of death and birth; a penny saved is a penny earned, apparently. My dad, as he always did when my mom and Antonia were involved, stayed out of it.)

After a few months, the funeral home had politely contacted my mother and asked what she'd like to do with my tombstone. Mom had the plot and the stone paid for, so she had them stick it in the dirt the day before yesterday, and mentioned it at lunch yesterday. You know how it goes: "Waiter, I'll have the tomato soup with Parmesan croutons, and by the way, honey, I had your tombstone set up in the cemetery yesterday."

Jessica and Laura had been morbidly curious to see it, and I'd tagged along. What the hell, it made for a break from wedding arrangements and Christmas cards.

"Your mom," Jessica commented, "is a model of scary efficiency."

Laura brightened. "Oh, Dr. Taylor is so nice."

"And just when I think your stepmother can't get any lamer... no offense, Laura." The Ant was technically Laura's birth mother. It was a long story.

"I'm not offended," she replied cheerfully.

"Have you two weirdos seen enough?"

"Wait, wait." Jessica plopped the bouquet of cream-colored calla lilies on my grave. I nearly shrieked. I'd sort of assumed she'd picked those up for one of the eighty thousand tables in our house. Not for my grave. Ugh! "There we go."

"Let's bow our heads," Laura suggested.

"No way. You're both fucking ill."

"Language," my sister replied mildly.

"We're not praying over my grave. I'm massively creeped out just being here. That would be the final, ultimately too-weird step, ya weirdo."

"I'm not the one on a liquid diet, O vampire queen. Fine, if you won't pray, then let's book."

"Yeah," I said, casting one more uneasy glance at my grave. "Let's."