Bad Girls Don't Die (25 page)

No, it was something like the old Beth feeling. A kindred spirit kind of thing.

As the bell rang, Megan stood up with her bag slung over her shoulder and waited for me to gather my things.

We made our way down the hall side by side, and I felt like some old rusty door was opening up inside of me, releasing something that had been bottled up for years.

She chewed silently, looking blankly ahead. I swallowed the last bite of my rice pilaf and reached down to my pocket for the heart charm.

“So . . . I realized,” I said, hesitating. “Yesterday? At your house? When I said I had the same kind of necklace as you . . .”

I set it gently on the table.

“It’s the other half of yours, isn’t it?”

She reached into her collar and pulled the chain out. Hers had the letters
RA
and
GAN
.

SHARA. MEGAN.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Do you . . . want this one too?”

She stared at it for a long minute, then shook her head. “Nah. You keep it.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she said, swirling her bottled water. “How’s your sister?”

“Weird.”

“Did she hurt you again?”

“No, she’s really busy . . . making these lists of names. It’s kind of obsessive.”

Megan frowned.

“I’m sort of hoping she’ll get bored of it and, like, stop. I mean, bossing people around is fun, but clerical work isn’t that cool.”

“That’d be good,” Megan said.

We ate in comfortable silence.

When the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch, Megan reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback book with a purple cover. The title was
Things That Go Bump in the Night
.

“Take this. It might help,” she said.

I took the book and made a move to lift the necklace off the table.

“Look,” Megan said, pointing at it with a carrot stick. “It says
SHAME
.”

SHA
,
ME
. Shame.

“I never thought of it that way,” I said, scooping it back into my pocket.

“Funny,” Megan said, not smiling. “That’s what the whole damn thing is. A shame.”

After the final bell rang, I went to my locker.

Carter was waiting for me. “I’ll drive you home?” he asked.

I nodded and followed him out to his car. I made a conscious effort not to notice the curious stares in our direction, but that made me notice them that much more.

“You all right?” Carter asked as we pulled out of the lot.

I nodded again, looking out the window at the throngs of kids happy to be done with their school day.

“If you need to talk about anything, I’m here,” he said, his voice gentle. “I felt so bad yesterday. I can tell there’s something going on.”

No. He was just too nice. I could not let my horrible life leak inky black misery all over what he’d managed to rebuild for himself.

I never thought I would say this, but Pepper was so right.

“Carter,” I said, before I could stop myself, “I can’t go to the dance with you.”

“What? Why?” There was a hint of nervous laughter in his voice, and he shot me a bewildered half-smile as he reached forward to turn off the radio.

“I just . . . can’t,” I said, taken aback by the sudden shock of disappointment I felt.

“You mean you don’t have a reason?” His smile seemed plastered on, like this was just one more amusing example of Alexis’s bad-girl antics.

“I
do
have a reason,” I said. “I just . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

He laughed. “Try me. Listen, I don’t care. We can skip the dance. We can do whatever.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not about the dance. We can’t do anything.”

“Alexis . . . ?” His voice trailed off, and the smile faded from his lips.

“You should take Pepper,” I said.

He gave a confused snort. “Why would I take
Pepper
?”

“She really likes you.”

“Alexis . . . I don’t want to go to the dance with Pepper Laird—I want to go with you.”

Oh, this sucked. This was so hard. Every fiber of my being wanted to change my mind, apologize, say whatever needed to be said to get Carter to forgive me.

“Well . . .” I tried to force myself to sound nonchalant. “You can’t.”

He pulled into my driveway and braked a little too abruptly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not you.”

I unhooked my seat belt, and he reached over and put his fingers on my forearm. His touch sent shivers through my body, but I shrugged his hand away. “I have to go.” I got out of the car and closed the door.

He rolled down the window. “There’s something you aren’t telling me.”

“I’m sorry, Carter,” I said. “Please just go.”

Reluctantly, he rolled up the window and drove off.

I trudged up the walk, feeling as if there were a dark veil hanging over me that would never go away. I was trying to sort out the storm of thoughts about what had just happened—I’m a horrible person; I’ve hurt him; he didn’t deserve that. . . .

But better now than later . . .

It wasn’t until I looked up and realized I was halfway up the stairs that I paused to wonder if Kasey was home.

But the house was empty, and wherever she’d gone, she’d taken all of her research materials with her, so I had nothing to snoop into. Instead, I sat on my bed with Megan’s book and the one I’d stolen from the library in front of me.

Megan’s book looked like it was written for middle school kids, maybe even younger than that. The cover art was a cartoony picture of a ghost. I looked inside the front cover and saw, in Megan’s precise handwriting:
Megan Wiley, 1026 Primrose Ave., July 2004
.

I skimmed over the first few chapters, which just gave definitions of different types of paranormal activity—ghosts versus demons versus poltergeists.

Frankly, I didn’t care what we had. I just wanted to make it go away.

Chapter four, “Haunted Houses,” explained that spirits often take on the emotions they felt as they died. So a person who died under stress or in pain would be more active and violent than one who died in his or her sleep. And the spirit could lie dormant for years before choosing to wake up and raise havoc, often on or near a significant date.

The day Shara died: October 15.

The day Kasey was supposed to make her decision: October 15.

Perfect.

I looked around the room again and felt the horror of what had happened in the house sink down like a weight on my shoulders. A woman had died. Died horribly.

And she was still here.

Something had awakened her. I remembered the story—my casual mention of Megan. Was that all it took? Did I remind the sleeping ghost of her murderous past? Did I wake her up and somehow instill a need to finish what she started?

The end of chapter four said that in most cases, avenging or solving a mystery or murder would cause the ghosts to move on. But there was no crime to solve— Megan escaped. Shara died. Not the kind of case that takes a lot of detective work.

I set that book down and picked up Walter Sawamura’s, the one from the library. This one was definitely intended for adults. I glanced over the chapter names: “Identifying a Spirit”; “Symptoms of Hostility”; “Seeking Professional Help”; “Practical Concerns of Living with Spirits”; “Anchor Objects: The Ties that Bind.” I stopped at that one. I’d never heard of an anchor object. I turned to that chapter and began to read.

According to Mr. Sawamura, some ghosts and spirits find themselves attached to a physical object. The object is kind of like an anchor holding a boat in place—the boat can drift, but it can’t go too far from the anchor. Often, all their power is tied to this object, making it a “power center.” The power center is a strong supernatural force in and of itself, but by destroying it, you could free the spirit and force it to pass along to another plane, wherever it would have gone if it hadn’t been trapped.

Was the necklace Shara’s power center? Was it evil?

Of all the possibilities I’d considered, I hadn’t even thought of that.

I mean, from the very beginning, the first night in the house, I believed it was on my side. Protecting me. Comforting me.

How could something that made a person feel so safe be so
bad
?

And Megan—she wore hers all day, every day, and nothing had happened to her.

It didn’t make sense.

My T-shirt and sweater were no match for the wind. Cool air sliced right through them and covered my skin in goose bumps.

I rang the doorbell again, and took a step backward off the stoop.

Mary wasn’t home.

I went back home and stood in the kitchen like a watchdog, looking out the front window. A half hour later, Mary pulled into her driveway. I ran to catch her as she went inside.

“Hello, Alexis,” she said, shooting me a weary glance.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to ask any more about my house.”

“Oh good,” she sighed. “Well, come in, come in; you’ll freeze out here.”

The living room was about four hundred degrees. I took off my sweater and draped it over a chair as Mary tightened a knitted shawl over her shoulders.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“I just need your help for a school project,” I said. “You’ve lived in Surrey your whole life, haven’t you?”

She smiled and nodded. “Born and raised.”

“Good,” I said, unfolding the print of Kasey’s lists. I chose one at random. “So do you know the . . . Pittman family?”

“Oh, the Pittmans,” she said, nodding slowly. “That was old Mr. Pittman with the butcher shop. Of course, he was long dead even when I was a girl, but the shop was around until the 1960s.”

“Um,” I said, studying the names, “and who was Cora Pittman . . . Billings?”

“Mrs. Billings. That’s right, she
was
a Pittman, wasn’t she? She was a bit of a tragic figure. Her husband was killed in an automobile accident when I was very young. And it was quite sad, because she’d had a daughter who died of cancer. But there was another daughter, Jessie Billings, who married Phillip Martin, the lawyer. Their daughter Rosemary was in my class at school.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked, a little in awe. She was like an encyclopedia.

“Well,” Mary said. “Think about your friends; you know all about their families, don’t you?”

Um, not quite. I shook my head.

“Oh,” Mary said. She shifted self-consciously. “I mean, goodness, Alexis, we didn’t have television back then. We just went around and visited. It was what we did for fun.” She laughed. “I can’t tell you what I ate for dinner last night, but I know the names of all the men who were in the chamber of commerce with my father.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Who are your people?”

“Let’s see,” she said, scratching her forehead and rocking absently in her chair. “My mother was a Schmidt. My father was a Ridge—”

“Ridge?” I interrupted. That was familiar. I searched the list of names. “John Ridge?”

“Why no, he was Benedict Ridge. John Ridge was his brother.”

“And Ivy Coleman was his mother?”

She looked surprised. “Yes—how do you know that?”

“Are you related to the librarian?”

“Delores Oliver?” She rocked a little faster. “Good heavens, Alexis, what do you have there? Yes, we’re cousins, but we never spoke. Her father didn’t like the family. He was very religious and she didn’t approve of my grandfather’s fondness for whiskey. . . . I suppose it’s silly that I don’t just go say hello to her.”

My head was spinning.

“I have a picture of my grandmother,” Mary said. “Would you like to see it?”

“Sure,” I said absently, thinking I’d gotten all I was going to get out of Mary.

She shuffled away and shuffled back a minute later with an ancient black-and-white photo in her hands. It was so old the white parts had a silvery cast to them. She handed it gently to me.

“See? Second from the left,” she said.

The photo was a group of young girls lined up in their Sunday best and staring at the camera with solemn faces.

I flipped the photo over and saw a list of names:

Mildred Shore
Ivy Coleman
Patience O’Neil
Molly Saint
Cora Pittman
Mercy Bainbridge
Ann Patrick
Lucy Schmidt

“Patience O’Neil,” Mary said, lowering herself back into her chair. “She became a Michaelson. That’s your mother’s family.”

“Wow,” I said. “This is amazing.”

“Why don’t you keep it?” she offered.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“What use do I have for it?” Mary asked, waving dismissively. “It’s a piece of your family history. You should know where you come from.”

I looked at her face, creased and lined with age. Her eye shadow had been applied with too heavy a hand; the color on her lips was two shades too bright. She looked lonely and worn out and old.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks a lot. It’s really cool.”

She smiled, pleased.

“I’d better get going,” I said. “But you’ve been really helpful.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “Now, you don’t have to be a stranger. I know you have your MTV and your e-mail Web sites, but if you ever have a little time, come by and say hello.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.”

She made a move to stand.

“No, stay,” I said. “I can let myself out.”

I closed the door carefully behind me and started down the sidewalk, then stopped short.

Kasey was coming across the street, carrying a tray with a little pitcher and a box of cookies.

When she saw me, she raised her eyebrows but kept walking.

“What are you doing?” I asked, grabbing her by the elbow.

She jerked away. “Being neighborly.”

“Listen to me, Kasey,” I said. “I need to talk to you about your friend.”

“Why?” she asked, her lip twisting into a sneer. “Does
Megan
want to ask her some questions?”

“Stop it,” I said. “Leave Megan out of this.”

She stared at me intently for a long few seconds.

“Megan is on my list,” she said, looking me up and down. “And so are you.”