Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

No, that wasn’t true. What I really wanted was for her to walk out on her own two feet.

I turned and looked at her. Her expression was sad, pleading—but she hadn’t moved, not an inch, in my direction.

She was staying.

A sea of astounded eyes watched me from the rows of seats.

“Everyone has moments of weakness,” I said. “But that doesn’t make you weak.”

I pushed the door open and felt a rush of winter air in my face.

I was walking away from more than just Brighter Path.

I was walking away from my best friend.

I STORMED ACROSS the parking lot and slammed the car door behind me, hurling my bag onto the passenger seat. “Lydia!” I called. “Where are you?”

She didn’t appear. I turned the key in the ignition so forcefully I had a moment of fear that it might break in two.

“What? What is it?” Lydia faded into view in the backseat.

“I need your help.”

“About time!” She smirked. “I’ve been waiting for you to give up on the albino Swede look.”

“Not with my hair,” I said, pulling out of the parking lot. “With something else.”

“Like what?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she batted a hand through my arm. “Like what, Alexis?”

“You’ll see when we get there,” I said.

Lydia squirmed in her seat. “Can’t you just call an exorcist? Or a tiny creepy little old lady, like in Poltergeist?”

“Lydia,” I said, “if I got an exorcist, what do you think would happen to you?”

“Right,” she said. “Never mind.”

We were parked in front of the funeral home that had handled Lydia’s services, and she was pretty jumpy. When I finally I told her that I wanted to get more information about the yellow roses, she freaked out and disappeared completely for a few minutes. Then she faded back in, looking embarrassed. I wonder if popping out of sight is the ghostly equivalent of peeing your pants.

“If there are any funerals going on, we’re not going in, right?” Lydia said. “I can’t. I won’t. I hate funerals.”

I wasn’t wild about them myself. “I promise,” I said, because the parking lot was empty. I pushed my shoulders back, held my head high, and went inside, with Lydia right at my heels like a nervous dog.

The lobby was carpeted in plush beige and wallpapered in soft olive-green paper with blue flowers. There was a small sofa, a side table with a lamp and a stack of magazines, and a desk with a small bell on it. I rang the bell.

“Hello?”

Lydia yelped in surprised, and I spun around to see a man standing between me and the door, silhouetted in the late afternoon sun.

“Can I help you?”

He moved into the light so I could see him. He had a long, wrinkled face and wore a jacket and tie.

“Hi,” I said. “Um…I wanted to ask some questions.”

He frowned.

I’d invented a few different explanations, figuring I’d use the one that seemed most appropriate in the moment. I discarded “my best friend is dying and wants me to find her a cool funeral home” and “I think I might want to be a mortician when I grow up” and went for the one that was closest to the truth.

“I’m a student at Surrey High, and I’m doing research on issues related to death and dying,” I said. “I was hoping someone here would have a couple of minutes to talk to me.”

He seemed to consider it, but was on the verge of saying no, I could tell. So I started talking again.

“What I’ve found is that our society seems to think of death as, like, this mysterious, horrible thing. When really, it happens to everyone. So I’m sort of researching the idea that death is more like a passage. And how funerals help people cope.”

He checked his watch. “Well, I guess we could chat for a few minutes. Do you mind coming back to the office? We have an appointment coming in shortly, and I’d rather they not overhear us.”

I followed him through a wood-paneled door. We passed a woman sitting at a desk, talking on the phone, and went into a glass-walled office.

“It’s good that she’s here,” Lydia said, looking out at the woman. “So you don’t have to worry about him murdering you and dissolving your body in a vat of acid.”

I couldn’t reply, so I gave her a withering glare.

“I’m Richard Henry Gordon,” the man said. “And you are?”

Uh. “Alexis Ann Warren.”

“What?” Lydia said. “Henry-Gordon is his last name. It’s on the sign, doofus.”

He gestured to a guest chair, then sat down at his desk. “Well, Alexis Ann, would you like some candy?”

“Would you like some dead-people candy?” Lydia asked. “Alexis Ann?”

“Um, no, thank you,” I said.

“All right, then. Ask away.”

“I was wondering about the ritual of having a funeral. What goes into that? Who makes all the decisions?”

He touched his fingertips together and leaned back, staring at an invisible spot on the ceiling. “Obviously, there are considerations such as religion, the wishes of the family, budget—that’s a big one. Sometimes the deceased will have expressed certain preferences, and in that case, we make those a priority.”

That was my in.

“Like—the kind of flowers?”

“Flowers, music, the casket, the format of the service, the location…”

“But are people specific about that stuff? If I said I want daisies, you would give me daisies?” Or if I said yellow roses…?

“Provided your parents were supportive, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t.”

“What if people don’t have preferences about things?”

“That happens quite a lot. We’re often left to make certain decisions if the family isn’t feeling up to it. Usually, the more sudden and unexpected a death, the less the family is prepared to come up with specific answers. So we go with our tried-and-true standbys.”

“Sudden, like…when kids die?”

He frowned and sat forward.

“Easy, Nancy Drew,” Lydia said. “You’re spooking him.”

“Can you give me an example of your standbys?” I asked. “If a person came in and didn’t have any preferences or whatever?”

“Well,” he said, “in the mid-range, you’d have a solid pine casket, lined, with a split lid; some classical music, which we provide—”

“And the flowers?”

“Our standby flowers are yellow roses,” he said.

Bingo.

“Do yellow roses mean, like, death?”

That actually got me a smile. “No. Yellow roses symbolize joy and friendship. But we’ve always used them. They were a favorite of my mother’s. It’s just preference. Bergen and Sons uses a lot of lilies. Victor Campos likes white roses.”

I was guessing Bergen and Sons and Victor Campos were other funeral homes. “Kind of a signature,” I said.

He shrugged. “You could call it that.”

Yellow roses were their standby. Their default. That meant this ghost could be anyone.

“That sucks,” Lydia said. “My mom was too sad to even pick flowers? I would have picked black roses.”

I glanced at her to make sure she was okay. She just seemed bummed, so I turned back to Mr. Henry-Gordon.

“Do you do funerals for young people?” I asked. “People my age?”

“Of course.” He gave me a sympathetic look, like he was about to deliver some pretty bad news. “Death can come for any of us, no matter how old or young we are.”

“Ugh, he’s creepy,” Lydia said, perking up a little. “Do you think he saw me naked? I hope not.”

I stared down at my notebook, trying to ignore her and focus. “So you’ve done a lot of funerals for teenagers?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me roughly how many…in the past three years, maybe?”

He leaned toward the computer and tapped a few buttons.

I tried to catch Lydia’s eye, to get her to go around and look at the screen. But she was staring at the family portrait on the wall behind the desk. So I faked a coughing fit, stood up, and waved my hand through her body.

“God! Keep your hands to yourself!” she said, jerking away. “I’m already traumatized from being dragged here, and—”

I gave Mr. Henry-Gordon a meaningful look.

“Oh,” she said. She walked around the desk and leaned over his shoulder.

“It looks like, in the past three years, we’ve done twelve services for teenagers.”

“I can’t read them,” Lydia said. “He’s scrolling too fast.”

“Um, wow,” I said. “Do you mind telling me how many were girls and how many were boys?”

He started clicking through again, more slowly.

“Okay.” Lydia leaned over his shoulder. “Boy, boy, Claudine, Rachel, boy, Laina, boy, Quinn—is that a boy or a girl?—Jamila, boy, Grace…Lydia. Saved the best for last.”

“Seven girls and five boys,” Mr. Henry-Gordon said.

“Were they all sudden deaths?”

“I’m sorry, Alexis Ann, I don’t know that I feel comfortable going into that level of detail.” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m obligated to respect the confidentiality of our relationships with the bereaved.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Lydia said. “My screen says ‘aneurysm.’ If you can get him to scroll back, I’ll tell you what they all say.”

I only had one chance left. “Of course,” I said. “I definitely understand. But could you tell me if any of them were—”

The woman who’d been on the phone knocked on the door and opened it. She cast a suspicious glance at my white hair, then looked at Mr. Henry-Gordon. “Your five o’clock is here.”

He stood up. “I hope I’ve helped you some. I think it’s a very interesting topic for a paper. If you’d like to take my card, you could e-mail me a copy when it’s finished.”

“You bet,” I said, slipping the card into my pocket.

“SO WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING NEW,” Lydia said. She was perched on the back of the toilet, watching me brush my teeth.

“Yes, we do,” I said, dribbling toothpaste down my chin. I leaned over to spit. “We know the names of the other girls who have had their funerals there.”

“What good does that do for us?”

“We look up those girls and find the one that looks like the ghost I keep seeing.”

Lydia reached down and absently spun the toilet paper roll. “But why does the ghost seem to be obsessed with you? Do you think this town house is haunted?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “According to Mimi, that dress was two years old. This neighborhood is newer than that.”

Lydia glanced up. “Unless…maybe she died here before construction started. Or during it?”

“Hm,” I said. “That’s worth looking into.”

“Alexis?” It was my mother’s voice. “Who are you talking to?”

“I’m on the phone!” I called.

“In the bathroom?” Mom asked. There was a longish pause. “Well, okay.”

Lydia cackled, so I grabbed my hairbrush and swung it lightly through her head. She recoiled, pressing her hands against her ears. “Not cool.”

She followed me into my bedroom and sat on my dresser while I pulled the covers back and got ready for bed. I looked up at her, wondering why she was still around. Before, she’d never stayed longer than an hour or two, but today she’d been hanging out all afternoon. And from the looks of things, she planned to stay the night.

I tried to keep my voice light. “So what is this—a slumber party?”

“Ha,” she said. “You wish you could have people as cool as me at your parties.”

I almost pointed out that she didn’t fall into the “people” category anymore, but I bit my tongue. No point in hurting her feelings. And then I realized—why should I care if she slept in my room? It was a billion times better than waking up to the superghost.

“All right, suit yourself.” I climbed under the covers and turned off the light.

A few minutes later, I still hadn’t fallen asleep. I was huddled under the blankets, covered all the way up to my eyes. I didn’t want any more rose petals brushing against my face.

I lifted the blankets away from my mouth. “Lydia?” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing.” I flopped over and shut my eyes.

When I woke up in the morning, she was curled up asleep, hovering a foot above my dresser.

Lydia rode to school with me and split off once we got there, talking about some classes she wanted to sit in on. Apparently being dead can get a little dull, because Lydia hadn’t exactly been academically minded when she was alive, and now she was all over the curriculum.

I actually thought it was a pretty decent idea. Maybe she’d learn something useful.

After that afternoon’s yearbook meeting (twelve minutes long, for the record), I went to the parking lot and sat in my car, expecting her to show up. After waiting for ten minutes, I went home and gave the empty house a brief once-over, looking for her. She was nowhere to be found.

Well, no big deal. It’s not like you’re dying—no pun intended—to hang out with Lydia Small, I told myself.

As I pulled my phone out of my bag to charge it, I saw that I’d missed a call from Jared. I went into the kitchen and called him back from the landline, turning on the speakerphone and setting it on the counter while I made myself a snack.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Hello to you, too,” I said, getting bread and peanut butter out of the pantry.

He sighed. “Hello. I called a few minutes ago. What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just got home.”

“I wanted you to come over tonight. Dad’s working late.”

“I can’t,” I said, pulling the jelly out of the fridge. “I have plans.”

“What plans?”

“Nothing special. Just some research stuff I have to do.”

I’d noticed that Jared made this impatient little sniffing noise when he was aggravated.

Sniff.

“Jared,” I said, “I have to get this done.”

“What is it? Look it up online. Or maybe I can help you. What’s the topic?”

A list of dead girls and a ghost that hisses at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, spreading peanut butter on a slice of bread. “I can’t.”

“But you’ll definitely come over tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Come on.”

“I don’t know if—”

“Say yes.”

Fine. Whatever. “Yes,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Sure, I promise,” I said. “Now I have to go.”

“Okay,” he said. “Work hard.”

I hung up the phone and leaned down, burying my face in my hands for a moment.

“Lexi.”

Kasey stood in the hallway, hand on her hip.

“Oh, hey—I didn’t know you were here.” I studied her face. How long had she been there? Long enough to hear me calling for Lydia?

“I just got home a minute ago. I was quiet because you were on speakerphone.” Her voice was carefully even. “We need to talk.”

I assembled my sandwich and started cutting it into quarters. “About?”

I expected her to say something about ghosts.

But she said, “About Jared.”

“Or we could talk about you minding your own—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “I should mind my own business. But I’m not going to. So what’s he mad about this time?”

“It’s complicated. I don’t expect you to understand.” My head was starting to throb.

“Lexi,” Kasey said, softer, coaxing, “do you think…maybe there’s a chance he’s a tiny bit…controlling?”

“No,” I said, rubbing my temples.

“But the way he talks to you—I mean, the way I hear you talk to him—”

“No,” I repeated. “You know, if you would spend more time cleaning up your dirty clothes and wet towels in the bathroom, and less time eavesdropping, you could save both of us a lot of trouble.”

I meant it as a joke, but she gave me a wounded look. “It’s just…when you talk to Jared, you sound like you’re trying to pass a test or something. You never sounded like that with Carter.”

“Yeah, and that landed me in ‘happily ever after,’ didn’t it?” I said. “Besides, your boyfriend is three years older than you. If anyone has control issues, wouldn’t it be Keaton?”

She looked hurt. “Keat’s only sixteen. He skipped fourth grade. And he would never make me feel bad for not wanting to spend every waking moment with him.”

“Kase, I appreciate that you care,” I said. “I really do. But you’re totally wrong.”

I slipped my sandwich onto a plate and started for my bedroom without even putting the peanut butter and jelly away.

Before I could close the door, she said, “Wait!”

I stopped.

She took a deep breath, then said, “Why did you have those bruises?”

Instinctively, I turned my face away.

“Last month. There was one on your neck and one on your face. You tried to cover them up, but I saw them.”

I blurred my eyes and stared at the dim rectangle of sky visible through my window.

“Tell me the honest-to-God truth, Lexi,” she said, suddenly hoarse. “Is it Jared?”

“No.” I cleared my throat. “I swear.”

I wanted to make her feel better, but what else could I say? If I hinted at a ghost, she’d insist on knowing everything. She’d want to be part of it. And then she’d be in danger.

“Kasey, please,” I said. “It was nothing—I just fell. You worry too much.”

Then I reached out and ever so gently closed the door in her face.

Fifteen minutes later, Lydia and I were in the car, headed to the library to look up the names from the funeral home. She leaned away from me, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She’d been quiet for the whole drive, shooting me weighty glances.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but your sister’s right.”

“Seriously, Lydia. I’m not going to talk about this with you,” I said. “You know nothing about relationships. You’re dead, remember? Anyway, I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “You’re totally in control, as always, right?”

I couldn’t reply.

“I’m just saying, check yourself before you wreck your emotionally vulnerable little self, Alexis.” Lydia shrugged and looked at herself in the passenger-side mirror. “It’s obvious you’ll take affection from whoever’s willing to throw it at you right now.”

“Can we not do this?” I asked. “Please?”

She threw her arms in the air like I was the one being stubborn and frustrating. “Have it your way.”

“Thank you.”

“Or, you know, just have it Jared’s way. As usual.”

I gritted my teeth and pulled into the library parking lot.

As great as the free office supplies were, having a mom who worked at a place that sold computers and software was actually a major hindrance to my ability to get any research done at home. Mom had access to the best software consultants—and the best internet monitoring software. That is, when she left her laptop home instead of carting it around with her.

It seemed everybody’s parents were clueless but mine. We had an old computer that we could use for typing papers, but internet access was highly restricted. Sometimes I wondered what on earth Mom thought we’d do if she didn’t stop us—order ourselves some Russian mail-order brides? Send money to fake Nigerian princes?

It’s not that I thought she was so wrong—and not like I was dying to create an online life for myself (just another place to not have any friends)—but it was inconvenient, to say the least.

If I ever had kids—which I wouldn’t—I would make it a point to stay a little clueless about technology. Just to be nice.

Lydia hovered over me as I sat at one of the public computers. “I can’t believe you didn’t write them down.”

She meant the names of the other girls whose funerals had been held at Henry-Gordon. To be honest, I couldn’t believe it, either.

“I was a little stressed out,” I whispered. “I had to carry on a conversation with him. Why can’t you remember them?”

“That is not my responsibility,” she said. “You know, technically, I don’t even have a brain.”

“I am definitely going to quote you on that at some point.”

The guy at the computer next to me glanced over in mild alarm.

“Not you,” I said to him.

So far, between the two of us, we’d come up with four of the seven names.

“Claudine, Rachel, Quinn…Lydia, obviously…” Lydia’s voice trailed off.

I stared at the monitor. Something with a G. Gabrielle?

No—Grace.

I typed “Grace + Henry-Gordon Funeral Home.” The first result was an obituary. Lydia leaned in closer to read.

“Twelve,” Lydia said. “Too young.”

And she didn’t look anything like the superghost, either. Dark straight hair, not blond.

Out of all the girls, the only one who came close was Rachel. She was seventeen and had medium-length blond hair. But I didn’t see how Rachel could have become a ghost. According to the news articles, she was driving along when she was blindsided by a truck that ran a red light. Witnesses said she never saw it coming. Doctors said she died instantly.

No time to be afraid or angry or traumatized. Just here one second, gone the next.

Not a good recipe for a ghost.

Dinner was silent. Mom had apologized in advance; she had to make a presentation to the board later in the week and couldn’t think about anything else. Dad was mellow and in a good mood, but he was never the driving force behind conversation. And Kasey and I didn’t seem to have anything to say to each other.

I was finishing up, getting ready to take my plate into the kitchen, when Kasey tensed.

“Your phone’s ringing,” she said.

I sat still and listened, and made out the soft ringtone coming from my bedroom.

“Probably Jared,” I said, about to push my chair back and stand up. Then I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that Kasey was watching me.

So I stayed in my seat.

A second later, Lydia came wandering out of the hallway. “Who do you know with a 703 area code?”

I thought for a second.

Agent Hasan.

It took a huge effort not to rush away from the table.

Feeling like I was moving at quarter speed, I took my dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them and stuck them in the dishwasher, and was about to hurry down the hall to my bedroom—

When the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Kasey said, from her place at the table.

“No!” I called. “I’m right here.”

I peered through the peephole, and my stomach knotted.

Lydia had stuck her head through the door. She pulled it back, eyes wide. “She looks mean.”

Agent Hasan did look mean. She had dark hair in a severe cut that hung halfway between her chin and her shoulders. And every strand was perfectly in place—not even her own hair would test her authority.

Her eyes were brown and almost almond-shaped, and her eyebrows seemed to be perpetually raised in annoyance.

“Stay away from her,” I whispered to Lydia. “I don’t know what she could do to you.”

Lydia took a step back from the door and disappeared.

I braced myself, then called out, “I’ll be back in a few minutes!” to my family.

And I slipped out the door—out of the frying pan…

Straight into the bonfire.

* * *

Just like I’d sensed that she was there to see me, Agent Hasan seemed to sense that I didn’t want my family to know she was there. So when I started walking down the sidewalk, away from the house, she followed me.

“Sorry to barge in.” The hint of amusement in her voice told me it was a lie. She enjoyed knowing that she had freaked me out. “It’s just that you didn’t answer my call.”

She must have already been in the neighborhood when she called. Which meant she’d gone to the trouble of coming all the way to Surrey—just to see me?

“What do you need?” I asked.

“I kept thinking about our conversation,” she said.

I held my breath.

She turned to look at me, squinting her eyes a bit. “About how interesting it was that you would call me and suggest that there was something out of the ordinary going on—when you had no concrete reason to think so.”

My lips were glued shut. If she thought she could trick me into incriminating myself, she was dead wrong.

“And I’m not a patient person,” she said. “So when something like that gets in my head, I don’t want to sit around and see if anything comes of it.”

It was a breezy night, and Silver Sage Acres is a wind tunnel. I stuck my hands in my pockets and raised my shoulders up to my ears, hunching my chin down to warm my neck.

“I’m sorry to waste your time,” I said. “You were right. I was just being paranoid.”

“That would definitely be the more satisfactory outcome.” She didn’t say more satisfactory than what—or for whom. “But I do appreciate that you called me. It shows that you understand my role. And it gives me a chance to show you how important it is to me to help you stay out of trouble.”

Right. Help me stay out of trouble. There was a threat in there, and you couldn’t even say it was a veiled threat. It was loud and clear: I’m watching you.

“All right,” I said. “Well, thanks.”

She stopped and looked down at me, smiling like she’d just won the lottery but wasn’t planning to tell anyone. “You’re so welcome.”

What had she seen? What did she know?

We started back toward my house.

You’re almost there, I told myself. Just stay cool for a few more minutes and you’ll be fine.

At last, we reached my front walk. I glanced up at the front window, anxious to get rid of Agent Hasan before my family noticed her presence.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m going.”

She made a half turn away from me, then spun back.

“By the way.” She reached into her pocket. “I think you dropped something.”

Her fingers uncurled, revealing my missing lens cap.

We both stared down at it for a moment, then she reached over and tucked it into the pocket of my jeans.

“You should really keep better track of your things, Alexis,” she said. “You never know where they might end up if you don’t.”

I wouldn’t let myself be scared speechless by her, so I forced out an abnormally loud “Thanks.”

“That, for instance, was found fifty-four feet from Ashleen Evans’s body.”

I didn’t answer. My throat tightened.

“But I’m sure you don’t know anything about it.”

I had to stay strong, or I’d crack into a million pieces. “No,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Well, good.” Agent Hasan wiped her hands on her jacket. “Because I would really hate to think that you were part of the problem.”

I started for the stairs.

“See you ’round, Alexis,” she called.

I walked inside, afraid to look back over my shoulder.