“What did you do?” Kate shrieked.
“Nothing!” Nitro said. “It was the tree-”
“You killed me!” Kate shouted. “I’m literally dead!”
“Stop yelling! Someone’s going to hear!” Dahlia hissed.
“Oh, that would just be the worst thing to happen today, wouldn’t it?” Kate screamed.
“Okay okay!” Fenella held up her hands. “I get that you’re mad.”
“I'm furious!”
Dahlia covered her ears. "Stop screaming you deadweight! Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be flying away to Heaven?”
“Trust me, Little Clothes, I have a lot of unfinished business here,” Kate snarled. “The first being my revenge!”
Kate leapt forward and tried to grab onto Fenella's neck, but her hands passed right through her. Kate stumbled forward and hit the ground.
Fenella breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh thank God, you can’t hurt us.”
“Maybe not physically. Hey Dahlia, remember how your childhood sucked?”
“Bite me, you bedsheet.”
“Guys, stop! We have more important things to worry about.” Polar pointed to Kate's corpse lying on the ground. “We have to call the police.”
“No!” Nitro said. “They’ll never believe we didn’t do it! A group of kids who just so happened to hate Kate invited her out in the middle of the night? And she just coincidentally died when her neck broke totally by accident by some snow falling on her? They’re going throw us in prison!”
Kate looked over to her body. “Is that what happened? It happened so fast, I just assumed one of you came up behind me and did it.”
“We would never!” Fenella cried.
“I might,” Dahlia said.
Kate huffed. “I’m still mad at you, even if it was just an accident.”
“What can we do to make it up to you?” Fenella asked. “Actually, strike that. What can we do to help you complete your unfinished business so we don’t have you floating around us for the rest of our lives?”
“I just got killed and you’re only concerned about getting rid of me?”
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“What are you so concerned about that you’re sticking around here for it?”
Kate scowled and crossed her arms. “I want to be buried on Icy Island with my parents. I want white, pink, and red tulips to be brought to our graves.”
“Tulips?” Nitro asked. “Why not some heather or Japanese quince? They’re easy to get.”
“I want tulips,” Kate snapped. “They don’t grow in the Winter Territory. I’ve only ever seen them on my poster. I want those on our graves. I want a lot of them, too. Not just a handful each. I want entire armfuls of them.”
Fenella took a breath. “Okay, we’ll do what we can.”
“‘What you can’ is not good enough. No tulips no passing.”
“We can’t-”
Nitro elbowed her. “We'll do it.”
“Good. You do those for me and I’ll leave quietly.”
Dahlia rolled her eyes. “The lengths we go to to get rid of the competition.”
Fenella pointed to Kate's body. “That still leaves us with a really big problem.”
“Hey!” Kate said.
“Sorry. That still leaves us with a skinny, in-shape problem.”
Dahlia scoffed. “What, did her spirit weigh fifty pounds?”
“At least my throat isn’t coated in stomach acid and this morning's breakfast!” Kate snapped. She turned to Fenella. “Just take it to Icy Island.”
“How? How are we going to get a corpse clear across the Winter Territory without anyone noticing?”
Kate shrugged her ghostly shoulders. “Sunglasses and a story of narcolepsy?”
“She's so boring she puts herself to sleep.” Dahlia shook her head.
“Dahlia, you’re so middle child I bet your birthday is in August.”
“What about school?” Fenella cried. “What about our classes and First Round?”
“Hey, yeah, so I’m dead, but go ahead and worry about your grades.”
“I can’t skip school for that long without Principal Principal SnowHills throwing me out! A wig broom can only get us so far!”
“Calm down!” Nitro said. “All we have to do is dress some people up like us and we'll be set! Who do we know that has enough time on their hands to pretend to be us all day?”
----------------------------------------
A short while later, Fenella, Polar, and Dahlia were trying to figure out a way to get Kate's body over the fence surrounding Winter Academy. Nitro was talking quietly on the phone, trying to pull a few strings to get help with their eventual departure.
“Maybe we can catapult her somehow?” Polar said halfheartedly, looking up at the tall fence.
“That’ll take forever!” Dahlia whined. “I want to go home!”
“Trust me, we want nothing more than for you to go away,” Kate said. “Just hide it somewhere. Pile a bunch of snow on it.”
“What if someone finds it?” Fenella asked.
“They won’t. I’ll scare them away. No one will go near a haunted area.”
“They’ll recognize you and know you’re dead!” Fenella said. “You made almost as big a commotion when you transferred here as I did. They’ll know who you are.”
“Guys,” Nitro cut in. “I got some volunteers to pretend to be us while we're gone. Trustworthy, too! They-”
A bright light suddenly flashed on the group and they covered their eyes in pain. Kate’s form vanished in the glow.
“What are you kids doing out here?” the man demanded.
“Oh no,” Polar whispered. “It’s the security guard!”
Nitro spoke first. “We were out partying because that’s what teenagers do and our friend drank too much because that’s also what teenagers do. We’re trying to get her to the school nurse.”
“That does sound like something teenagers would do.” The security guard shone the flash light’s beam down on Kate's corpse. “She looks pale, but the school nurse already went home for the night. You should take her to a real hospital.”
“We can’t!” Nitro said. “She, uh, she's allergic to penicillin. You know how much those real doctors love their penicillin.”
The security man chuckled and shook his head. “They sure do. Alright, pick her up. I’ll let you guys in through the front gate.”
“I’m just going to climb over,” Fenella said. “Not because I’m trying to avoid being seen by someone who forbade me to leave school grounds or anything.”
“What an oddly specific thing to say. Okay, suit yourself.”