Bad Girls Don't Die (9 page)

I
DIDN’T SLEEP WELL.
Can you blame me? I kept having those falling dreams, where you jolt yourself awake just before you hit the ground.

After waking up and checking the clock every half hour or so, at 5:30 a.m. I decided to get out of bed. I’d be sleep-deprived, but at least I’d have time to work in the darkroom.

Walking to the tiny guest bathroom at the end of the hall, I tried not to think about my ruined film, which left plenty of mental space to think about all the other strange things that had happened the previous night. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I passed Kasey’s door, but when I reached the darkroom, a sense of calm washed over me. A sense of well-being.

As soon as I turned on the safelight (don’t be too impressed—it’s just a red lightbulb) and snapped the black curtain into place to keep light from leaking through the cracks around the bathroom door, all thoughts of boiling water and unstable sisters and absentee parents melted away.

A lot of people shoot digital pictures now, which is fine—it’s just not for me. To me, taking digital pictures is like finding something. But working with film is like
making
something.

Besides, I cherish the time I get to spend in the darkroom—away from my family.

It’s a pretty decent setup: an old enlarger (bought used from the junior college) and a table Dad and I built over the bathtub to hold trays of chemicals. Rolls of film and finished prints hang to dry on a clothesline behind the table.

What’s funny is that when we moved in, the tub was already dotted with chemical stains, and we found darkroom supplies under the sink. So somebody else had had the same idea once upon a time. I guess a house like ours brings out people’s creative tendencies. Maybe, in its own wacky way, Kasey’s doll collection could be seen as an expression of creativity, not just a passive consumerist obsession (which is what I call it when I want to get a rise out of her).

I rolled the film into the coiled silver cage and filled the cylinder with film-developing chemicals. While that processed, I carefully took my camera apart and cleaned the lens.

When the timer dinged, I unrolled the film and clothespinned it to the cord hanging over the tub. I turned Mom’s old hair dryer to COOL and spent a few minutes drying the film off. It had to be totally waterless—handling it when it was just mostly dry or a little tacky would ruin the images.

Next I cut the long strip of film into rows of five frames and made a contact sheet. That means you lay the film right onto the photo paper (so they’re in “contact” with each other) and get a whole page of little tiny blackand-white photos. You use that to choose the pictures you want to make larger prints of. You can’t just print everything or you’ll waste a lot of photo paper, and photo paper is expensive. Not every picture is worth blowing up.

I hit the button and reached for the negative sleeve, then leaned down and held the negatives to the light— expecting to see a whole lot of nothing, after Kasey’s disastrous actions last night.

A huge breath I didn’t know I’d been holding escaped from my lungs.

They weren’t ruined.

I got a piece of photo paper out from the triple-sealed black bag under the sink and set the page of negatives down directly on it, then hit the expose button. The light shined on them for a few seconds, then went off. I grabbed the paper and dropped it into the first tray of chemicals—the developer, which is where the images start to show up on the paper. I love watching this stage, seeing what comes out first.

I lifted the contact sheet out of the developer and put it in the next tray, the stop bath, which stops the emulsion from reacting to the developer chemicals. From there they go into the fixer, which gets rid of any extra light-sensitive materials left on the paper, and from there they go into a tray of cold water. Then they get inspected by me with my little magnifying glass.

I set them on the enlarger and turned the timer as far as it would go. I leaned in to look at the photos.

They were beautiful. You could see black sky, a big white moon, and the pinpricks of tiny stars. The house loomed in the foreground, glowing a kind of milky gray. The whole thing was slightly hazy—which I could assume was Kasey’s fault. Never mind that it was kind of a cool effect . . . I was still totally annoyed.

Finally I got to the pictures I’d tried to take of the strange light. The image was slightly shaky, thanks to my inability to stand completely still, but there was definitely
something
there. And the motion blur even helped a little.

Hmm.

I leaned in for another look, and noticed a little white dot in the frame—a circle of light that seemed to be floating near the house.

I’d cleaned my lens right before I went outside, but a spot of dust could have snuck in.

Well, it was a good picture anyway, and I could fix that white dot if I enlarged it.

The last couple of photos, the ones close to the end of the reel, were actually ruined. One picture was half clear and half overexposed—you could just see the bay window in the study and part of Kasey’s bedroom window before it faded to bright white. The mysterious glow near the tree was just barely distinguishable from the light leak. And of course, that was the only one where I’d managed to hold still enough that the picture wasn’t blurred.

I studied the blob of light. In this particular frame I could see that it wasn’t completely shapeless. It was oblong, and had stripes down the sides, and toward the top it got a little narrower and then rounded back out.

It actually kind of looked like a really vague silhouette of a person.

But that was impossible. Not only impossible, but silly too. If you stare at anything long enough, you can make yourself see whatever you want to see.

And there was a dust speck on this one too, but it looked even bigger. You could see it clearly—a little sphere of light, smack in the middle of the frame.

Well, you can’t win ’em all.

At least I’d managed to get a few eerie portraits of the house. Not bad for a roll that should have gone to the great darkroom in the sky.

I
WAS ON MY WAY back
to my room when I heard a noise from downstairs.

Shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle.

It stopped abruptly.

Gophers. The pipes. The house settling.

As I turned toward my door I glanced back at Kasey’s room. For the first time I noticed a tiny bit of light shining through a crack. Her door was open. Only slightly, though. I craned my neck to see if I could see her outline under the covers. I couldn’t tell, so I turned back around.

She was behind me.

I gave a little shriek and did that really embarrassing terrified hand-wringing thing.

Kasey just looked at me, completely calm.

It took me a second to catch my breath. “What are you doing?”

“Getting a drink of water.”

“How did you get up the stairs without making any noise?”

She looked at me like I had a screw loose. “Socks,” she said. She lifted her foot to show me. The underside was covered in a black coating of dirt, in the shape of a foot.

“Those are filthy,” I said.

Something occurred to me.

“Did you just go outside?”

Kasey looked puzzled. “Why would you think that?”

“I just . . . heard—thought I heard . . .” I shrugged.

“Lexi, are you feeling okay?” She studied me intently.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Okay, because last night you got a little”—she considered carefully—“overexcited.”

I couldn’t keep my cool any longer. “Well, maybe if I hadn’t had to follow you into the basement and then cook for you
and
do your homework
and
have you ruin my pictures—”

“Oh,” she said. “Are they ruined?”

There was no regret in her voice, only mild curiosity.

“No,” I replied. “Lucky for you.”

“Sorry,” she said, her eyes wandering up to the ceiling. “But you were acting really weird. It distracted me.”

Was
I acting weird?

The story, the tree, the basement door, the cold air . . . all things that, in the light of early morning, seemed a lot more explainable than they had last night.

Maybe a
little
weird.

“See you later,” Kasey said, padding away down the hall.

“Oh,” I said. “Wait.”

She stopped and turned around.

“Do you need any more help with your report?”

She shrugged. “It’s cool. I finished it last night.”

Oh. “Good for you,” I said. “Can I see it?”

“Um, no . . . not right now,” she said. “It’s six thirty.”

I nodded. “Right.”

I hurried through my shower and getting dressed.

For some reason I was highly disinterested in seeing my sister again that morning.

All this time I’d thought Kasey was kind of on the verge of something, and suddenly it hit me that what if, you know, it wasn’t
her
? What if it was
me
? Can you go crazy without knowing you’re crazy?

I mean, most crazy people do, right?

See, times like these make you really wish you had a best friend. Someone you could go to and be like, “Am I nuts, or . . . ?” and they would just tell you flat-out.

It was way too much to think about at seven fifteen, without even a Pop-Tart in my stomach. Mom was in the kitchen already, watching her coffee brew. She leaned against the counter, mesmerized.

She didn’t look up when I came in, which was totally okay by me. I got a glass of juice, stuck my Pop-Tart in the toaster, and dropped a plate onto the counter with a clatter. Then I had to stop and wait, and the kitchen was quiet except for the electric buzz from the toaster and the soft, rhythmic bubbling of the coffee machine.

“Thanks for doing the dishes.”

I looked up in surprise to see Mom staring at me.

“And helping Kasey with her schoolwork,” she said.

I shrugged.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but I have a huge interview on Friday. For a vice presidency. But if I don’t get the job . . .” She shook her head. “I’m so tired, Alexis. I want to be more involved with you girls.”

My head swam. “Yeah, but . . . what would you do, quit?”

She stared at the coffeepot.

“Then how would we afford . . . ?” I let my voice trail off. Somehow it didn’t seem to be the right thing to say. I laid my palm flat against the counter. “Does Dad know?”

“No,” she said. “I guess I have to talk to him about it.”

“Will you tell Kasey?”

“Tell me what?”

We both jumped at the sound of Kasey’s voice. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, clutching her report.

Mom took a deep breath. “Don’t worry, Kase. Right now I think it should be between your father and I.”

“And
me
.”

“Yes, and you and Alexis too, and we’ll talk about it as a family if it becomes an issue. I promise.”

“No,” Kasey said. “Your grammar is wrong. ‘Between your father and
me
.’” She walked to the sink and filled a glass of water. After drinking the whole thing in one long series of glugs, she set the glass down on the counter and looked at Mom, who had frozen in place. “Just my opinion, but I don’t think you’d make a great housewife.” She glanced down at her watch. “I have to go. I’ll walk.”

She turned and left.

Mom stood speechlessly by the counter, staring at the spot where Kasey had been.

All of the temporary closeness between Mom and me escaped out the front door with Kasey, making everything suddenly seem wrong, embarrassing. I reached over and flipped the toaster switch up, grabbing my half-cooked Pop-Tart out of its slot. I dropped it on my plate and walked out without another word.

I
WANTED TO FINISH UP AT MY LOCKER
before Lydia arrived to pick another fight with the cheerleaders. After the past twelve hours, I couldn’t handle any more drama.

So when a shadow fell over me as I searched for my copy of
Their Eyes Were Watching God
, I braced myself.

“Good morning,” said Carter Blume.

My math textbook slipped out of my arm and landed on his foot with a painful-sounding thud.