A Ghost at the Coffee Shop

I tried to focus, squinting at her over Carter’s shoulder. Come on, brain, work with me. Her voice, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear—it tugged at something in the back of my mind. Dying does weird things to your memory; it’s like living in a fog, every detail slipping through your fingers no matter how hard you try to hold on. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever really remember who I was, or if I’d just fade into some bureaucratic afterlife drone forever. Wild.

This time, I had one goal: figure out how I died. Our office was about to hold the annual Miserable Life Contest, and the afterlife’s version of a consolation prize for the top three was pretty generous.

Yeah, you heard that right—a Miserable Life Contest. I swear, only in the Underworld would HR come up with something like that. What’s next, a “Best Tragic Love Story” bake-off? Still, the prizes were worth it: extra vacation days, free upgrades to your afterlife apartment, maybe even a shot at reincarnation if you played your cards right. But I couldn’t enter unless I knew what actually happened to me. The rules were strict. No sob story, no entry. Makes you wonder who comes up with this stuff.

I mean, sure, life wasn’t perfect, but nothing that would land me in the Miserable Life Hall of Fame. So I could only start with how I died. The Book of Life and Death just said I committed suicide.

Suicide. The word sat heavy in my chest, cold and unfamiliar. It didn’t fit with the fragments of laughter and sunshine I remembered. I needed answers—badly. If I couldn’t remember, maybe I’d never find peace, not even in the land of endless paperwork and Lethe lattes. Or maybe I’d just be stuck here, forever.

"Lila’s death anniversary is coming up, right? Time flies. She’s been gone almost three years now," Carter said, smiling but not really.

His voice was soft, almost reverent. Like he was talking to a ghost. Which, I guess, he was. He swirled his coffee, staring into the foam as if he could find me there. For a second, I wanted to reach out, to touch his hand and tell him I was right there, closer than his own breath.

"Yeah. If only she hadn’t... ah, never mind, let the dead rest in peace."

The girl’s voice pulled me back to the present. I recognized the way she bit her lip, the way her eyes flickered away. Guilt, maybe? Or just that awkwardness people get when talking about the dead in front of the living. I watched her, searching for a hint of the friend I used to know.

When I heard the girl’s voice, it clicked. She was someone I’d met at a college mixer—a girl named Sierra Alvarez. Back then, she was big on Instagram and already had tens of thousands of followers.

Sierra. That’s right. She always had a phone in her hand, always chasing the next viral trend. Some things never change. I remembered her laugh—loud, infectious, the kind that drew people in. She’d DM me about meetups, tag me in group photos, make me feel like I belonged, at least for a little while. I guess I never really thought about how much of that was real.

She went to a college across town. I never knew how she got into our school’s mixer. She came up and started talking to me, and we exchanged numbers. Over time, we became casual friends.

She always seemed to pop up at the right time, like she had a sixth sense for where the fun was. We’d text about random stuff—classes, boys, the best places for late-night pancakes. I never let her get too close, but she was always just there, orbiting my life like a persistent satellite.