They also discovered their spectral bodies didn’t actually require sleep, but, as with food, it didn’t change the craving for it. Nick and Allie had agreed that they would take time to sleep, as they would have if they were still alive. It was a connection to the world of the living that they did not want to lose. The simple act of resting, however, couldn’t be done just anywhere.

“How can we sleep if we sink?” Nick had asked on the first evening. The road-shoes they wore did their job while Nick and Allie walked, keeping them mostly on the surface of the road, but if they stood still for too long, the ground began its slow swallow. They couldn’t find a way to keep from sinking that first night, and so they kept walking.

It was on the second day of their journey that the solution came. When the mountain road became treacherous, they began to find odd little patches of asphalt that weren’t like the rest of the road. They were solid! The patches were never more than a few feet wide. It was Allie who figured it out when they came across one that was marked with a small white wooden cross.

“I know what this is!” Allie said. “I saw them when we visited Mexico. They put little crosses by the side of the road where people died in car accidents. I never thought to look for it here in the States, but I’ll bet there are people who do it here, too.”

“So the passing of a spirit must leave a permanent mark on the spot where it happened, turning it into a dead-spot!” Nick had to admit it was an exciting, if somewhat morbid discovery.

They rested on one of the so-called dead-spots, close together, because the spot was so small, and as they basked in the light of their own glows, they allowed themselves the luxury of small talk. They discussed all those subjects that didn’t matter much in the larger scheme of things, like what music they liked, and who they thought won the World Series during their nine-month transition. Their conversation took a sober turn, as late night conversations often do.

“When I get home,” Allie said, “I’m going to find a way to make them all see me.”

“But what if they never see you?” Nick said. “What if they just keep on living their lives like you’re not even there?”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Why not?” said Nick. “Because you say so? That’s not how the world works.”

“How do you know? You don’t know how this world works any more than I do.”

“Exactly. That’s why I say we learn more about it before we go home. We’ve got to find other ghosts with more experience.”

“Other Afterlights,” Allie corrected, still refusing to admit she was a ghost.

The thought made Nick look at his hands and arms, studying his own peculiar incandescence; his gentle Afterlight glow. The lines that ran across his palms were still there. He could see his fingerprints—but perhaps that was just because fingerprints are what he expected to see. He wondered if he would still look the same if he had made it all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel, or if the memory of flesh would completely dissolve into the glow once he reached his final destination—a destination where his family might already be.