As Dead as It Gets (10 page)

I would have broken down in relief, except there was no part of me whole enough to break down. So I just followed the chalk mark to the next marked tree, and gradually made my way back to the car, surrounded by the miserable silence of the forest.

“H
EY, HONEY, YOU’RE GOING
to be late for school,” my father said, sticking his head into my bedroom the next morning.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and pulled the blankets up to my chin.

“It’s already seven fifteen, you know.”

He was waiting for an answer, so I croaked one out. “It’s a four-minute drive.”

“But don’t you have all sorts of elaborate beauty rituals?”

“No.” I burrowed down into my pillow. “That’s Kasey.”

“What’s me?” my sister’s voice piped up. “Lexi, you’re going to be late.”

I turned away from them to look out the window.

“Never mind,” Kasey sighed. I heard her walk away.

“Well, don’t cut it too close,” Dad said. He left too.

Could I really make myself get out of bed and go to school—just walk around like a regular person having a regular day?

I felt a gentle hand on the back of my head. “Sweetheart, you overslept,” Mom said.

I collected all of my strength and sat up.

“Oh, you’re already dressed,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”

I muttered that I was, and Mom went to the kitchen. I swung my legs—stiff in the dirty jeans I’d been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours—over the side of the bed and sat there, staring at nothing.

The fact is, I wasn’t “already” dressed. I was
still
dressed. And any paranoid parent worth his or her paranoid salt would have noticed that—and the scattered pieces of dirt on my pale beige carpet—especially
my
carpet, of all carpets, because I was a borderline OCD-level clean freak.

My parents hadn’t noticed.

But apparently my sister had.

“What happened to your carpet?”

I swung around. “My shoes were muddy.”

Kasey stood in the doorway, staring at the floor. “Why were your shoes muddy?”

“Because I stepped in some mud,” I said.

“How’s Jared?” she asked.

“He’s great,” I said. “How’s the cradle-robber?”

She rolled her eyes and sniffed, but she didn’t back away in a huff like I’d been hoping she would. “Keaton is fine. He got accepted to Berkeley.”

“No kidding,” I said. “That’s good. I mean, it’s pretty close…if you guys are still together.”

She shrugged and sort of swung on the doorframe a little. “I don’t know. I’m too young to get that serious…don’t you think?”

Kasey had just turned fifteen. I’d just turned sixteen when Carter and I started dating. And I didn’t feel like we were too young to be serious. It just felt so right with him. I mean, until Aralt and the Sunshine Club came between us, I could see myself with Carter forever. Not that we’d have gotten married right out of high school or anything, but I just never pictured us breaking up, because I just couldn’t imagine not wanting to be with him.

“I think it depends,” I said. “I think if it’s important to you to make it work, you’ll make it work.”

“Was it—” She cut herself off, and I knew she’d been about to ask about Carter—if it was important to me.

“Yeah, well,” I said.

She gave me a sad smile.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have Jared now.”

Her sad smile turned into a little grimace.

That’s when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, my cell phone. It sat on the nightstand with the shattered screen on display for everyone to see. Naturally, my life would be much easier if I could keep my sister from seeing it.

“I’d better get dressed for school,” I said.

“You’re already dressed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, did you sleep in your clothes?”

“Good-bye, Kasey,” I said, getting up and moving toward the door.

She backed away. I gave the door a push and picked up my phone to get a better look at it.

But Kasey had peeked back in. “Holy cow, what happened?”

I stepped forward, tucking the phone behind my back. “Excuse me, have you ever heard of privacy?”

“Your phone—” She craned her neck to try to see. “It looks like—”

“It’s fine,” I said, slipping the phone into my pocket. “I cracked the screen yesterday. It still works, though.”

I waited for her to ask me what I’d been doing that would crack the screen.

Stop,
I thought.
Don’t ask any more questions. Just go be normal. Be happy. One of us to has to come through this okay, and it’s not going to be me. So stop asking questions.

Her face fell. Her feelings were hurt. She looked like a little girl.

It’s for your own good.

She didn’t need to get messed up with ghosts again. She just needed to be a normal teenager.

“Sorry, Kase,” I said, and shut the door.

By the end of the day I was so exhausted from my constant fear of saying the wrong thing that I didn’t even want to go to Jared’s house. I knew they’d find the body before long—maybe even that same night. So I went straight home and got into bed.

Luckily, Kasey was off with her friends, so at least I didn’t have to justify my bedridden afternoon. I closed my eyes and let the misery sink down through my body. I could feel it going into my pores, through my skin, into the muscle and sinew, right into the core of my soul.

I was the only person in the world who knew Ashleen was dead.

How long would I have to carry that knowledge around with me while the police searched and Ashleen’s family suffered?

Lydia’s voice was clear and cold. “Warren, pity party of one, we have your table ready.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, afraid to move. But Lydia came and stood right above me. Her long ghost-hair hung down, almost touching my face. I fought the urge to try to brush it away.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I didn’t kill that Ashley chick. I didn’t push Kendra off that cliff. And I
don’t
want to be sent to the transitional plane.”

“Go away,” I whispered.

“I’m not going away until you apologize.”

I sat up, not afraid anymore. I couldn’t help it. Lydia was just too aggravating. “
Apologize?
For what?”

“For accusing me of murder,” she said, sitting on my desk, right on top of my camera. “I’m not a murderer.”

“You tried to kill the whole Sunshine Club,” I said. “Or have you forgotten?”

Her jaw dropped. “That doesn’t count! A, I was possessed, and B, it didn’t work.”

“So if you didn’t kill Ashleen, why were you in the forest last night?” I asked. “Hmm? Just out for a hike?”

The thing was, I did believe her. Taking even a fraction of a moment to think about it, I realized that luring girls to a miserable demise in the woods was way too subtle for Lydia. If she wanted to kill people, she’d do it in the mall food court or something.

“I was there…” Her voice trailed off, like she really didn’t know why, and then she reloaded. “I was there because I…” She was staring at the floor, as if trying to remember something that bothered her.

“And you were out there when Kendra was hurt, too!” I said. “And you were in my car that day at the nature preserve—”

“No, I wasn’t,” she said. “That wasn’t me. And yeah, I was there when you found Kendra—I mean, when
I
found her
for
you, you’re welcome very much—but I’m not the one who hurt her.”

“Honest to God?” I asked.

“I swear on my own grave,” Lydia said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Excuse me, my grave is pretty important to me.”

I leaned back against my pillows and covered my face with my hands, suddenly exhausted.

“I’m telling the truth,” she said.

I opened my eyes. “I know. But if you didn’t attack Kendra and Ashleen, then who did, Lydia?” A giant sigh forced its way out of my lungs. “And why are you always around?”

I would never have thought ghosts could blush, but Lydia was actually blushing. She pursed her lips and stared out the window. “I’m not telling you.”

“Tell me,” I said, “or I’ll find another copy of that book, and it’s off to never-never land you go.”

She flounced and huffed and folded her arms and gave me the dirtiest look in the history of dirty looks.

“All right,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to go check eBay.”

“You won’t send me to limbo?” she asked. “If I tell you? You promise?”

Technically, I’d promised the night before. Not that there was any reason to remind her of that.

“Fine. I promise.” As much as I wanted Lydia to go away, I knew I had a really unique opportunity, and I had the presence of mind not to squander it. I’d met ghosts before, but always in battle. Never just in a regular conversation. “But…Lydia, ghosts aren’t natural. You shouldn’t even be here to begin with. Why wouldn’t you want to move on? Isn’t it lonely for you here?”

“I do want to move on,” she said, swinging her legs through my desk chair. “I guess. But not to a transitional state—for all eternity. I mean, think about it, Alexis. No matter how much you hate me, do I deserve to be in a gray void for the rest of time?”

I sighed. And I really did think about it.

If Lydia didn’t kill Ashleen—and if that wasn’t her in my car…

Then, no, of course not. Yeah, she tried to kill the Sunshine Club—but to be fair, when I was possessed, I tried to kill my family in their sleep. If Kasey hadn’t stopped me, I could easily have been a mass murderer.

I leaned my head forward and rested it in my hands. Of all the things I didn’t need.

“Ha!” Lydia said. “I’m right, and you know it.”

“Okay,” I said. “If you
didn’t
hurt Kendra or kill Ashleen, you don’t deserve the gray void. Now tell me. Why are you always around when these things happen, if you’re not causing them?”

“You know what?” She raised her chin haughtily. “I’m tired of your accusations. I’ll see you later. If I feel like it.”

And she disappeared.

When I heard my mother’s car pull into the garage, I strained my ears to listen to her—the way she walked, the way she hung her keys on the hook—for any indication that she’d heard something about Ashleen. Overcome by my need to know if
she
knew, I stuck my head into the hallway.

Mom stood by the garage door, head down.

“Mom?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me, a magazine open in her hand. “Hi, honey. How was your day?” Her voice sounded normal—light, but with an undertone of tension. Still, nothing that hinted at an awareness of Ashleen’s death.

“Fine,” I said, going back into my room.

Later, I went out into the living room and turned on the TV, slumping in the corner of the couch with the remote in my hand.

Behind me I heard the front door open. Kasey’s voice called, “See you tomorrow!” and the door closed.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over the couch. “What’s up? What are you watching?”

It was some lame Judge Somebody show where the judge works herself up into a lather trying to be funny while she messes with people’s lives.

“Nothing,” I said.

Kasey dumped her stuff behind the couch and came around to sit next to me. I moved my legs to make room for her, but I turned up the volume a little, too—just enough to hint that I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. My sister caught the hint, so we watched the rest of the show in silence.

“If we ever end up suing each other over a rowboat,” Kasey finally said, “just shoot me, okay?”

“You got it,” I said.

The trumpety music that announced the start of the six o’clock news sounded, and suddenly I didn’t want to know if there was any news about Ashleen. So I flipped to a show about misbehaving dogs and leaned back with my eyes closed.

A minute later, Mom came out into the kitchen. “What do you girls want for dinner?”

Before we could reply, her cell phone rang.

My whole body tensed. It was like the energy in the room spiked before she even answered it.

“Hey, Jim.…What? No. What? Okay. Thanks. Bye.” Her phone hit the counter with a clunk. Her voice was like a clear tube made of glass so thin it would shatter if you touched it. “Alexis…turn to the news.”

My fingers were like stumps. I fumbled with the remote until Kasey took it from me and switched the channel.

A reporter stood on location at Ashleen’s house, wearing her sad face. “Although police aren’t releasing details about the location of the body, they did confirm that it
was
missing teen Ashleen Evans. Autopsy results will be available later this week, but an anonymous source inside the police department told us there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of assault. The family has declined to speak to reporters, but they have released a statement asking for prayers and information that could lead to the arrest of whoever is responsible.”

Mom’s face was gray. She came up behind the couch and put a hand on Kasey’s and my shoulders.

They went to a split screen with the reporter in the studio. “Have the police compared this to the Kendra Charnow case at all?”

The field reporter adjusted her earpiece. “No, Dana, not officially. But obviously that’s something that we’re hearing a lot of from neighbors.”

Their chatter blurred together like squawking birds in my brain.

I searched the trees for a flash of Ashleen’s ghost or the purple dress. But what I saw, right behind the reporter, was a blast of white light.