Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

ASHLEEN PULLED THE DOOR OPEN, and the thudding beat of music spilled out around her. Her face lit up. “Hi, you guys!”

Being addressed as “you guys” or “you two” instead of “Alexis” was something I was getting pretty used to. It had been almost a month since Jared and I started showing up at parties together, and people at school had stopped thinking of me as single. I even stopped thinking of me as single.

“Hey,” I said, trying (but failing) to match her enthusiasm.

“Come in, come in,” Ashleen said, moving out of the way so Jared and I could pass. “It’s cold tonight, isn’t it? I think the hedgehog’s going to say six more weeks of winter tomorrow.”

Jared coughed to cover his laugh. I could only shake my head and smile. “I don’t know,” I managed to say.

“Coats in the dining room, people and food in the game room,” she said. “The pizzas just got here.”

Jared realized he’d left his phone in the car, so I waited for him while Ashleen straightened out the welcome mat and stood up.

“Jared’s really nice,” she said, looking after him wistfully. “You’re soooo lucky.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Does he have any friends?” She lowered her voice and patted her dark wavy hair. “Single ones?”

Every unattached girl, I was learning, wanted what I had—a boy whose eyes always traced her movements in a crowd, who would leave any conversation to stand silently at her side. And most of them seemed to think I was covered in magical boyfriend dust that would rub off on them if they talked to me.

Yeah, seeing Carter and Zoe together was still a shock, every single time.

But at least I could turn to Jared and lose myself in his presence—let him nuzzle my neck, talk quietly into my ear, wrap his arms around my waist and rest his head on my shoulder. We were one of those couples—the kind that are always irritatingly wrapped up in each other. Who never have much to say to anyone else.

Life was good. I’d wanted to be average, and that was what I got. My grades were better. I slept more. I saw Megan every week—even if I did have to sit through Brighter Path meetings to earn the privilege. Instead of worrying about Kasey and me making pacts with the devil, my parents were starting to worry that Jared and I were getting too serious too fast. I’d done some shoots for the yearbook, and I went to the weekly meetings. I wasn’t sure if any of the other staffers liked me, but I enjoyed being part of it—part of something bigger than myself.

And best of all by far: in four weeks, there had been no sign of Lydia. No shadows in my car, no disembodied laughter, no yellow roses, no more missing girls. I concluded that I must have dropped the glass bird in the street, where it had been pulverized by a passing car or the blessed, oblivious crunch of a mailman’s boot.

My days had a slow, steady rhythm. They still had good parts and bad parts, but there were no insanely bad parts, which was a huge improvement over my recent past.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, in some ways—in a lot of ways—it was like finding myself washed ashore after spending five months lost at sea.

But sometimes when I lay in bed at night, or happened to catch a glimpse of a picture in a magazine or on a wall, and saw a dead woman staring pleadingly from her spot next to a nail polish model, or a burned face in the middle of a family photo taken at somebody’s vacation house, I felt a stab of…

What was it?

Fear? Dread? The suspicion that I was just fooling myself and it could never last?

All of the above?

The party spilled out of the game room onto the back patio, where a group of kids were huddled around the fire pit. Over the course of the night, I caught a few glimpses of short blond hair and forced myself to ignore the subsequent soul-crunching pang. At one point, I looked up to see Carter watching Jared and me. Did his soul crunch? Did he feel the same pang?

He didn’t act like he felt it. As always, he was near Zoe, with a hand on her shoulder. I watched his fingers drift across her skin in a way that threatened to hollow me out.

So I leaned deeper into the crook of Jared’s arm. He pulled me closer and touched his lips to the side of my face, then went on talking to some random kid about a video game. I saw a girl across the room gazing at us with undisguised envy, and reminded myself how lucky I was.

Jared’s hand slipped around my body, just under my ribs. “Ready to go?” he asked, in a voice only I could hear.

I nodded. We’d only been there for two hours, but we were never the first to arrive—or the last to leave.

“Bye, guys,” he said to the whole room, giving a wave. People waved back, and we started for the dining room, where our coats were slung over a chair.

I stopped in the kitchen and put my hand on Jared’s chest. “Hang on,” I said. “I need to find Ashleen. She wanted to borrow my Spanish notes from yesterday, and I need her e-mail address.”

Jared took a deep, impatient breath. “Does it have to be now?”

“It’ll only take thirty seconds.”

“We already said good-bye.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I know those girls, Alexis. You go back to say one thing, and fifteen minutes later you’ll still be talking about some idiotic reality show.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but then I looked up at Jared’s face.

“Please,” he said. “I’m just not in the mood to be here right now.”

“All right,” I said.

“Let me help you with your coat,” he said, standing behind me to slide it over my arms.

I heard the sound of a throat being cleared, and looked up to see Carter at the door to the dining room, watching us.

How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

Even though I knew Jared had seen him, he took a second to straighten the collar of my coat, like I was a little girl, before seeming to notice Carter and asking, “What’s up?”

They’d crossed paths at several parties, but they’d never been formally introduced. And I got the distinct feeling tonight wasn’t the night to do it.

Jared put his arm around my waist and shepherded me out, not waiting for Carter’s reply.

It bugged me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. As we made our way down the sidewalk, I thought about saying something, but glanced over at Jared and saw that his expression hadn’t softened.

Whatever, I thought. Not like Carter and I had anything to say to each other anyway.

The car was silent except for the sounds of other cars passing by—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Jared’s fingers drummed noiselessly on the steering wheel.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

He glanced at me. “If it weren’t, don’t you think I’d tell you?”

“Sure,” I said.

He took his right hand off the wheel and rested it gently on my knee. A few more quiet minutes passed.

“So,” he said suddenly, “these parties.”

“What about them?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure how many more I can take.” He was smiling, but his smile was tight, forced. “You don’t really like them, do you?”

“Them? You mean the kids or the parties?”

He shrugged. “Either?”

“The kids are fine,” I said. “The parties are…okay. Good pizza, right?”

He didn’t laugh.

I sighed.

“You’re just so different from those people.” He glanced at me. “They’re not like you at all.”

No they’re not. They’re all decent people who haven’t messed up their lives.

“It’s so shallow, you know?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think people just like to have fun at parties. How are the kids from your school?”

“Not like that.”

“Kasey’s not shallow. Her boyfriend’s not shallow.” Another name rose to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. Carter might not be shallow, but that wasn’t what Jared was looking to hear.

“Two people out of fifty?” he asked.

“Never mind, then,” I said. “We don’t have to go to every party. We don’t have to go to any of them, for all I care.”

He was silent again, and I wondered what I’d said wrong.

“Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I thought you had a good time, but if you don’t, I—”

“No,” Jared said. “Forget it. You’re right. I’m wrong.”

I sighed and sat back. “I don’t have to be right. I just don’t think they’re that bad.”

He slowed for a yellow light and glanced over at me. “It’s not about the shallowness, okay? It’s about you.”

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “I just get the feeling that we’re—that you’re being…watched.”

The hairs pricked up at the back of my neck. I always felt like I was being watched.

“Or—not watched, exactly.”

I gazed out the windshield at the headlights of the cars opposite us. They began to blur into halos. My voice turned brittle. “Then what,” I said, “exactly?”

He sighed. “Judged.”

I turned my face toward the window. I didn’t want Jared to see how hard it was for me to hold back the tears that had sprung to my eyes. “Why do you say that?”

“It bothers me, Alexis. The way they look at you. It’s like you’re some kind of…”

Murderer?

He didn’t finish the sentence. He just went on. “You’re too good to be treated that way. So why do you hang around with them?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess because…I don’t know.”

But I had a pretty good idea, actually.

Because I’m weak.

AFTER JARED DROPPED ME OFF, I said good night to my parents and went straight to bed. In spite of my weariness, I didn’t go right to sleep. I lay under the covers, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about what he’d said.

I felt hotly embarrassed. If Jared, who hardly knew them, had picked up on their judgment, then it must have been completely obvious to everyone but me. When I showed up to a party, did everybody think, Oh, here she is again? Did they all think I was just a freak, trying to wedge myself into their normal social order?

Did Carter think that?

Was I the only person who couldn’t see how little they wanted me around?

My cheeks tingled with shame. My eyes burned with tears. I curled up into a ball and shut my eyes as tightly as I could.

Finally, I fell asleep.

* * *

It was the weirdest dream—almost like being awake.

I was drawn out of bed so delicately that I didn’t even remember getting out from under the covers. I just found myself standing in front of the mirror. The room was dark, and I couldn’t see myself clearly, but I could tell that I wore some kind of fancy dress, like you’d wear to a dance or a tea party. The fabric was light and flimsy. The room was cold, and my bare feet felt like ice.

I tried to stare into the reflection of my own eyes, but I couldn’t focus on them.

I felt restless, as if I had somewhere to go, somewhere to be—but I couldn’t figure out where.

A wave of helpless loneliness washed through me, and then I burst into tears. I was crying for something…for someone. It was the most desolate emotion I’d ever felt—like half of me had been ripped away.

From behind me—from some dark corner of the room—came a soft sound: vzzzzzzzzzzz. The sound grew louder until I took my eyes off the mirror and swung around to look for its source.

That’s when I snapped out of the dream to find that I really was standing in front of the mirror. The dress was gone, but the sense of unendurable solitude still coated me like a terrible second skin.

I crept back under the covers, convinced that no one would ever again really care about me, or believe in me, or want me around.

On the nightstand, my phone chirped. The screen lit up with a text message.

Can’t sleep, Jared wrote. Thinking about you.

I grabbed the phone like it was a life preserver, and dialed Jared’s cell so quickly that my fingers tripped over themselves.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hi.”

I swallowed back tears of relief.

“Is this a booty call? Because…I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m not that kind of guy.” His voice, low and gentle, filled the emptiness in my heart like honey in a bowl.

We talked quietly for a while and finally got to the point where we were both dozing off, so we hung up.

I slept like a baby.

That Tuesday, the landline rang at six forty-five in the morning. A few seconds later, there was a knock at my door, and Mom came in holding the phone.

“Alexis,” she said. “It’s for you.”

“What? Really?” I sat up, stifled a yawn, and took the phone. “Hello?”

“Alexis, this is Laurel Evans.”

I couldn’t place the name.

“Ashleen’s mother.”

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

“Sorry if I woke you up. I’m calling everyone who came to her party Saturday. I need to know if you know of anyone she might have wanted to meet or talk to or—”

“I’m sorry?” I motioned for Mom to flip my light on. Kasey had come to the door, too. “I don’t understand.”

“Ashleen is missing,” she said. “We think she may have run away.”

“Run away?” I repeated. “Why?”

“She’s been having some problems with her stepfather.” Mrs. Evans sighed. “I thought maybe someone would know if there was a place she’d go…maybe with a boy?”

“No—I don’t know anything,” I said, feeling dazed. “I’m sorry. I hope you find her soon.”

I stared at the phone for a second until my mother reached down and took it.

“Laurel? It’s Claire again. I don’t even know what to say. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Have you called the police?” Mom shook her head. “Well, that’s shocking. But it has to be a good sign, right? They would know. I’m sure she’ll turn up. You know how teenagers are.…”

Mom glanced up at Kasey and me. I got the feeling she might have said more about how teenagers are if we hadn’t been in the room. “Maybe,” she said into the phone. “That sounds highly likely.…All right, I’ll let you go. And if you need any phone numbers, call here. Kasey and Alexis may have them.”

My sister sank onto the bed next to me.

“We’ll be thinking about you. Keep us posted.” Mom hung up the phone, then looked down at us, hugging herself. “The police won’t investigate yet, because they think she ran away. But she didn’t take her wallet. It’s just like…”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence. It was just like Kendra.

“The police won’t do anything?” Kasey said. “Even after Kendra practically died?”

“She’s not dead,” I snapped. “She’s doing much better.”

Mom sighed. “Don’t forget, there were no indications that what happened to Kendra was any kind of foul play. She just got lost.”

“Barefoot?” Kasey asked. “In the middle of the night?”

Mom shrugged. “Kase, we haven’t seen the police report, so we don’t know what happened. But there’s no point in getting paranoid. It sounds like Ashleen ran away with a boy. Would you guys know anything about that?”

“No; why do you say that—about the boy?” I asked. If Ashleen had a secret boyfriend, she wouldn’t have been so yearny over Jared.

Mom’s chest rose and fell in a sigh. “Because there was a rose on the ground just outside her bedroom—a yellow rose.”

I spun away to hide my reaction from my mother and sister.

So the bird necklace either hadn’t been destroyed…or it wasn’t Lydia’s power center.

She was still out there. She hadn’t been stopped.

Which meant my normal life was pretty much over.

But Ashleen hadn’t even been in the Sunshine Club. Had she and Lydia even known each other? Maybe Lydia had tried to recruit her at some point and Ashleen had said no. Or maybe she said yes and just didn’t have a chance to join.

Or could there be some other random reason? And now Lydia was just going to carry out revenge against anyone who got on her bad side? God knows that wasn’t hard to do. There was no rhyme or reason to this, no common link—it seemed she was just going to go around luring people into the woods and try to kill them.

Unless someone stopped her. And who else would—who else could—except me?

I spent the whole school day in a haze, knowing that the clock was ticking and the odds of Ashleen being found alive were decreasing by the minute.

I’m weak. It had become almost a mantra, and I had a headful of anecdotal evidence to back it up. If I went out looking for Lydia, she could kill me. How on earth could I possibly win?

What right did I have to fight her?

But then, walking down the hall toward lunch, seeing a poster on the wall for the silent auction being held to help with Kendra’s medical bills, it struck me:

What right did I have to fight Lydia…?

That was the wrong question.

What right did I have not to fight her—even if I knew I’d lose?

But I still needed a plan.

By the time the final bell rang, I’d exhausted all of my mental energy trying to come up with a way to stop her. And I still had nothing, no magical ghost-fighting scheme.

Then, when I least expected it, I got the next best thing:

A lucky break.

SAVANNAH, SAVANNAH, SAVANNAH.

She’d backslid with a vengeance since her virtuous tarot card–burning days. For three weeks in a row, she’d come to Brighter Path with new stories of her paranormal adventures and new trinkets for the box.

As Savannah walked to the podium that day, Megan leaned toward me conspiratorially and whispered, “I’m starting to question her commitment.”

In the old days, that would have been a joke. And I would have had to pinch myself to keep from laughing and getting into trouble. But Megan was deadly serious, which made it about as funny as a funeral.

“Hello. Savannah, again,” she said, tossing her long ponytail and practically grinning. “Um…this week it was a Ouija board, levitating—”

“Levitating?” Ben repeated, aghast.

“Well, we tried. And we made a chanting circle, and we found this book of charms and tried some of them.”

She held up a small blue paperback and shrugged. “None of it worked. I think it’s because my cousin wasn’t pure of intention, but—”

Savannah’s voice blurred in my mind as I stared at the paperback, grateful for once that Megan always wanted us to sit right up front so I could see the title of the book: Charms for Containment of Hostile Spirits.

But more important, I could read the author’s name: WALTER SAWAMURA.

Walter Sawamura was the real deal. He’d written the book that helped me save my sister from the evil ghost that lived in our old house.

“Thank you, no need to go into detail,” Ben said hastily. He got up and held out the box, and Savannah piled her latest contraband—including the book—into it.

I was starting to think she might have a real problem, the kind of thing Brother Ben couldn’t fix. She was like a snorkeler throwing pork chops around in shark-infested waters. Eventually, some evil spirit was going to take a chomp out of her. I was even tempted to talk to her outside of Brighter Path.

One problem at a time, Alexis.

For the rest of the meeting I focused on thinking of a way to get to that book. I was so distracted that I didn’t even listen to Megan’s weekly testimony, and when she came back and sat next to me with that shiny hopeful look in her eyes, I didn’t have the energy to seem apologetic.

“Not this week,” I said.

She sighed and gave me a tiny smile. “Maybe next time.”

Yeah, sure. Not likely.

After Brother Ben delivered his closing “Choose the Brighter Path!” pep talk and said good-bye for the day, Megan gathered her things and looked at me expectantly.

“Um, hang on,” I said. “Wait for me outside, okay? I need to talk to Ben.”

Her eyes burned with curiosity, but she headed for the door.

Ben was packing up his plastic crate. He wasn’t even looking at the contraband box, which was unattended on a chair in the first row of seats. If I were slightly braver, I would have just opened it, grabbed what I wanted, and run out.

But I cleared my throat, and he stood up and turned to face me. “Lex! What’s up?”

I tried to look uncomfortable. It wasn’t much of a stretch. “I sort of have something to turn in. I couldn’t do it, you know, in front of…”

I was going to say everyone, but Ben said, “Megan?”

“Um, right.”

He clasped his hands in front of his stomach. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

His tiny eyes gave me a long appraising look. “This makes me feel a lot of hope for you, Alexis. I think you should be really proud of yourself.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“May I see it?” he asked.

Um. I hadn’t actually planned to produce an item. I was just going to pretend I had one and filch the book of charms. But I gave him a brave smile and dug around in my bag until I felt my fingers close around the first remotely suitable object—a Sharpie.

Ben’s expression was understandably confused when I held up a permanent marker.

“I’ve been, um, using this,” I said, “to create pictures. Of symbols and signs…and stuff.”

He nodded slowly.

“It’s more kind of…what it represents?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “Well, that’s very conscientious of you. Why don’t you go ahead and put it in the box?”

I smiled and turned away from him, blocking his view of the box with my body. I dropped the pen in with exaggerated loudness. But there was no way to slip the book out without his noticing.

“Good girl!” he said. “Now, want to help me carry this stuff out to my car?”

“Of course,” I said, picking up the box.

He lifted the crate and led the way. I followed a few feet behind, finally summoning the burst of daring I needed to open the cover of the box and remove the book, sliding it into my bag.

And then we were outside, where Megan was waiting on a bench, smiling bigger than she’d smiled at me in a long time.

Universe, 9 bazillion. Alexis, 1.

Then there was the question of how to actually find Ashleen. I turned on the local news as soon as I got home, hoping they would show a view from a helicopter. But Ashleen’s coverage was lighter than Kendra’s had been. They had a quick update about her—apparently the police had finally decided to get involved—and put her picture in a little on-screen graphic, but they didn’t go into much detail about the investigation.

The only way I’d get any information was to go after it myself. I grabbed my car keys and hurried out to my car before I could lose my nerve.

I stopped at the grocery store, bought a small vase of flowers, and drove across town to the Evanses’ house. Someone was home—there were cars in the driveway, so I walked up the front path and rang the doorbell.

Mrs. Evans pulled the door open. She looked at me vacantly for a moment, then blinked in recognition. One of the advantages of having white hair—people tend to remember meeting you. “Alexis?”

I held up the flowers. “Um, I brought you these.”

I’d intended to use the flowers as a reason to go there. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that they made it seem like I thought Ashleen was dead. But from the way Mrs. Evans stared down at them, I realized my mistake.

“They’re to cheer you up,” I said stupidly, and she reached out and took the vase. She stepped back into the house, probably not intending to invite me in, but I followed her anyway.

We went all the way to the kitchen, where two boys, one older than me, one younger—both of whom looked like Ashleen—were moping at the table. They raised their heads when we came in, then slumped again.

“I wanted you to know how sorry I am,” I said, and Mrs. Evans startled and turned around, not expecting to see me behind her. “I’m sure she’s all right.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you know something? Something you want to tell me?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry. I’m just worried, and I thought coming here might…”

How to jump into the topic of where she might have gone?

Mrs. Evans went hazy again. But one of the boys at the table, the older one, looked at me.

“Did Ashleen like to hike?” I asked. “I’m just thinking if she had, you know, wilderness skills…”

The boy raised his eyebrows. “She didn’t hike. She rode horses. And she had plenty of survivalist experience. She did this ride last summer—one of those ‘live off the land’ things. She was gone for two weeks.” His voice swelled with pride.

“That’s great,” I said. “Where did she ride around here?”

“Mostly the trails over at Wyndham Forest,” the boy said. He leaned forward, his interest waning. “But they’ve searched it already.”

The younger boy looked up at me suddenly, his eyes burning. “Do you know how hard it is to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”

“Shh,” the older boy said, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “That forest ranger didn’t know what he was talking about.”

Then the younger boy started crying, and the older one glanced up at me.

“Thanks for coming by,” he said. “And thanks for the flowers.”

It’s time for you to go, he didn’t say.

“You’re welcome,” I said, grateful for the opportunity to leave.

* * *

An expedition to a deep dark forest in the middle of the night wasn’t exactly my first choice, but there was no other way to get out the door without concocting an elaborate web of lies for my parents. So I passed the rest of the afternoon thumbing through the book of charms and marking the ones I hoped would be useful. I had a lot of faith in Walter Sawamura, so when the paragraph on the back of the book claimed it would help “send the lingering spirits of the dead onward to a state of permanent transitional resting,” especially since he promised “a minimum of trouble and danger to the executor of the spells,” I believed him. His work had saved a whole town full of women from my sister’s evil doll.

After my parents and sister went to bed, I slipped on a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and my Converse. I took a piece of chalk from the chalkboard that hung over my desk and dropped it into my pocket. Then I grabbed my coat, car keys, and wallet, and slipped silently out the front door.

It was weird. You’d think it would have felt like more of an event—giving up everything I’d spent a month trying to build for myself, jumping back into the fight.

But instead, it felt more like I was starting a really hard project for school—something I didn’t want to do but didn’t have a choice about.

As much as I hated the idea of having anything to do with ghosts, I couldn’t just sit back and let Lydia rampage around Surrey, hurting people. Until I found a way to stop her permanently, I might just have to stop her on a case-by-case basis.

Unless she stopped me first, of course.

As my headlights swept over the empty roads, I thought, So much for normal.