I'd Rather Not Be Dead (21 page)

“Saturday?” Finn blinks,
suddenly seeming to come back to himself. “You're doing Promo?”

Promo? What's promo?

Not noticing the shift in Finn's
attitude, Bobbi slithers closer to him. “Yeah. Going to tell the
middle schoolers they need to go to Cooper Finnegan's college.” She
licks her lips slowly, drawing a line of glitter over them. Finn's
eyes are drawn along it.

“It's just spit,” I mutter under
my breath.

Finn's attention flickers to me,
though I don't think he could possibly have heard me over all the
music and chatter. He tells Bobbi, “I have to leave really
early.”

“Thanks okay. I don't mind.”
She's close enough now that he has to be careful not to touch
her.

He takes a small step back,
which is as far as he can get without knocking over the people
behind him. “I don't think there's room.”

The guy directly behind him
turns around. “Nah, there's plenty of room.” The teammate beams at
Bobbi, letting his approval of her skimpy outfit shine bright on
his face.

“You two work it out,” Finn says
quickly, darting around the guy and continuing to the door.

“Talk about mixed signals,” I
grumble as we start up the sidewalk. We're an easy walk from Finn's
house and he didn't bring his truck. Which is good because I
would've had to hurt him if he tried to drive now. That beer's
going to slam into him any second.

He doesn't respond, either
because he's mad at me and doesn't want to talk or because he knows
what I mean and sees the problem with openly devouring a girl with
your eyes then acting like you aren't interested.

He slams the door when we get to
his house and his mom comes out of her room with a frown. She's
wearing a fluffy pink housecoat and her hair's braided into
pigtails. “Honey? Are you alright?”

“Fine, Mom.”

“Alright.” She frowns at him,
but doesn't react to me at all. Guess she's medicated today.
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

“Night, Mom.”

He crashes up the stairs,
closing the door on me while I'm crossing the threshold. The
ferrets rustle in glee, but he ignores them and flings himself up
onto his bed in an incredibly athletic move. He glares up at the
ceiling while I walk over, put my feet on the upturned milk carton
serving as a footstool for the couch, and fold my arms on the edge
of the mattress. Resting my chin on my arms, I watch him watch
nothing.

“I was worried,” he says
eventually.

“I'm sorry. I don't know why I
took so long. It honestly felt like about forty minutes. An hour,
tops.”

He turns on his side, his eyes
golden as they search mine. “Tell me about it?”

“Well, first we met someone who
would be fired from the post office for being too disgruntled,” I
start. He smiles slightly. “Then we went into what could have been
a coffee house in a dungeon.”

“Nice gimmick,” he murmurs.

“Yeah.” I return his smile.
“It'd probably make a lot of money.”

“Not as much as a bar in a
dungeon.”

“Good point.” Nodding, I move
on. “There was a band. We only heard them play three or four songs
before The Shadow Lord got there. And then we were in line for
about five or ten minutes. Fray bowed. The Lord touched my
forehead.” I shiver at the memory. “And then I begged Fray to bring
me back. Next thing I knew, I was in your friend's sister's room
while she and Rain were messing with a ouija board. When I left the
house, you were outside complaining the sun had been set for
hours.”

Alright, left a little off the
end. Not going to worry about that.

“You're not much of a
storyteller,” Finn says.

“Sorry.”

His smile has turned a little
loopy. “I'm starting to feel drunk.”

“Really?” I mock surprise, then
sigh. “That was pretty stupid, you know.”

He shrugs, lays back on his
back. “It was just beer. Could've been moonshine.”

Yes, that would have been
worse...

His hand presses against my
cheek. “I was worried about you. Didn't know if you were dead
or...” He laughs softly. “More dead.”

Taking his hand in mine, I move
it back toward him with a gentle squeeze. “Go to sleep, Finn.”

“It's too early.” He rolls
quickly, something lighting his eyes. “Come up here?”

Clearly he's more drunk than I
thought.

Smiling, I shake my head.
“Someone's got to let those ferrets out before they hurt
themselves.” I jump off the carton as Juliet renews her efforts to
get out of her cage. Her clucking has long since taken on tones of
extreme offense.

“Damn ferrets,” Finn groans.

He flips on the television while
I'm releasing the fuzzies, surfs to a showing of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show, and falls asleep three songs later.

Chapter Twenty

I'm shaken awake well before I'm
ready to get up. “You shouldn't have left the ferrets out.”

Groggy, I blink at Finn until he
comes into focus. “I'm sorry, I thought I heard you apologizing for
getting drunk and passing out.”

“I didn't pass out.” He sounds
offended by the allegation.

“Of course not,” I groan as I
sit up.

There are bits of something
strewn all over the floor. Ferret food. “Shit. I'm sorry.”

He shrugs it off. “We'll let
them eat it when we get home.”

“No, I'll clean it up.”

“Oh.” Disappointment coats the
syllable, but he turns away so I can't see his expression.
“Alright.”

When he immediately grabs his
backpack, I realize he's leaving right this second. A glance at the
clock shows a time later than I'd expected and I spring to my feet.
Guess the ferrets will have pick up their own mess. “Why didn't you
wake me earlier?”

“You're nicer when you're
asleep,” he tosses over his shoulder, jogging down the stairs.

“Funny, so are you.”

The day is just as sunny and
bright as yesterday, causing my companion to wince and drag out
sunglasses. Maybe the pain will teach him something.

“Is it warm or cold, Finn?” I
can't tell from the lightweight leather jacket he's wearing. I
don't think I've ever seen him wear it before. What happened to his
letterman jacket?

“It's a little chilly,” he
says.

Before we get close enough for
people to see him talking to the air, I have to ask, because it's
going to drive me crazy if I don't. “What's up with your
jacket?”

He frowns down at it, like he's
confused about what I mean. “Oh.” Seeming to catch on, he gives me
a half-shrug. “Not a football player anymore.”

“Until next year,” I remind
him.

He takes a deep breath.
“Assuming I go.”

“But you've declared.” The
protest is instant. That was really big news just weeks ago, Cooper
Finnegan declaring for Blue Ridge State. People honestly didn't
talk about anything else for days. It was disgusting. Now he says
he might not go?

“That just means I promise not
to play anywhere else. They can't force me to go to school.”

“So all of a sudden you're just
not going to college?” I stare at him. Sure, plenty of people in
our school will be lucky to get high school diplomas and have no
shot at going on to higher education. But Cooper Finnegan?

He seems very alert for cracks
in the pavement as we walk. “I like working for my uncle. Like
building houses. Painting them. Fixing stuff. Don't need a degree
for any of that.”

“True,” I admit. He has a point.
If you want be in a construction trade, there really isn't a school
that will help you more than joining a union and getting work. “But
you can always come back and do that. Having a degree won't
disqualify you from it. And it's not like you'd be paying tuition.
Besides which, you like football. Love it, I think you said.”

He makes a small sound of
acknowledgment. “So, you think I should leave?”

I kick a leaf, spending the
energy to make it move. “I'm biased.”

Just don't ask me in which way
I'm biased, because I honestly don't know anymore. I should want
him as far away as he can get. But even when we were fighting all
the time, he was the most interesting thing in my life. Sure, I'd
still have Fray, but how long can we be left alone before we either
try to kill or sleep with each other?

“I haven't decided anything,”
Finn says.

Speaking of Fray... I wonder
what's happened to him. “We should stop by the hunting club after
school.”

Finn makes a quiet sound of
inquiry. He doesn't say anything because when we rounded the last
corner, we wound up right behind a group of kids he knows.

“I haven't seen Fray since we
left that dungeon.”

His lips press together as he
gives a very small, rather annoyed nod that makes me smile.

“We should make him come to
school with us more often,” I tease, delighting in the scowl that
Finn tries to hide behind a mask of boredom. Even with the dark
lenses over his eyes, he can't pull it off. Talk about someone who
shouldn't audition for drama. “He was listening to people's
thoughts yesterday trying to figure out who kills me.”

Finn's eyebrows go up.

“Didn't hear anything,” I admit.
“But that just means no one was thinking about plans to do it while
he was focused on them.”

My companion grunts in
contemplation.

“I can't imagine it being
planned,” I go on. “Who in our school would have the guts to plot a
murder?”

Pulling the glasses down a
fraction, he looks at me over the top of them, letting me hear the
name in his glance. “It wasn't Cris,” I tell him as he puts the
lenses back in place. “His morals are more flexible than most
people's, but not flexible enough for him to think murder's going
to be alright.”

“Flexible?” Finn hisses under
his breath, turning his face away and shaking his head.

I think it's a good word.
Everything he's done is justifiable if you just twist your brain
far enough. Except the being obsessed with Bobbi thing. That's
unforgivably bad taste.

“Maybe it was you,” I speculate.
“We never did get along.”

He turns his face back to me as
the glower breaks out again.

“I never had any problems with
you,” he whispers, his voice filled with a venom most people would
never believe him capable of. “You were the one always on the
attack. Misreading everything. Lashing out for no reason. Punishing
me for existing. You were the one who wouldn't give me the time of
day until no one else could hear you.”

I stop walking.

He doesn't.

“Finn! Finn!”

He turns for his name, looking
past me to where my sister peddles her bike up the street. “Rain?”
he asks.

Her stop is as much a crash as
anything. “Drew's going to die!”

She cowers a little, like she
expects him to laugh at her.

“Do you know when?”

“No.” She untangles herself from
the bike and props it up next to her. “But last night we had a
ouija board and she contacted us.”

Finn takes a ragged breath and
his hands tighten around the strap of his bag. “Really?”

“Yeah. But when I called her,
she was okay. Because she's not dead yet. But she's going to
be.”

“What makes you think that?” He
tilts his head as he waits for the answer.

“Before I went to bed, I asked
for a dream. And I got one.” She looks steadily at Finn and takes a
deep breath. “She's going to fall. Near one of the overlooks.
There's a wall she goes over. I think she's going to be
pushed.”

Visibly shaken, Finn takes a few
seconds to process that. “But you don't know when?”

“Late morning. Early afternoon
maybe. Still autumn.” She wipes at the tears on her cheeks. “I
couldn't see more than that. And I begged her to stay away, but
she's not going to because she thinks I'm crazy.”

His voice gentle, Finn asks,
“But you knew I wouldn't?”

She shakes her head. “No, but
the voice in the dream said to tell you.”

Which would be an insane
statement under any other circumstances.

“Can you help her?” Rain
asks.

“I'll try.” Finn lets himself
look at me and sighs. Clearing his throat, he looks back to my
sister. “I don't suppose you know what I should do?”

“No, but I'll ask for more help
tonight.”

If I'm not dead by then.

“Please. And if your informant
knows who did it...”

Pale, Rain nods. “I'll ask that
too.” She moves the bike like she's going to get on it, then drops
it and and turns to throw her arms around Finn. “Thank you. I know
she's... Drew. But she's my Drew.”

He holds her tight, pets her
hair a lot like he pet mine when I broke down on him. “I know,” he
whispers to her, his voice strangled. “I don't want her to die
either.”

“Too late though, right?” I give
him a sad smile and move my hand toward them. I put it on the back
of Finn's, wanting to touch Rain, but not wanting to chill her.

I find myself sniffling. “After
it happens, you'll tell her I love her, right? After. Not now or
she'll know the saving won't work.”

His nod is jerky.

“You better get to school,” he
tells Rain. “I'll keep an eye on Drew. Try to figure out what's
going on.”

Her lip trembling, little Rain
nods and climbs onto the bike, peddling off like she's trying to
run away from her dream.

“So... I fall.” It takes effort
not to start crying for my poor baby sister. Sensitive Rain isn't
going to handle this well at all. I can't believe I did this to
her. I'm such an idiot. I deserve to be pushed off a cliff.

“A push increases the odds of
manslaughter.” Finn's voice is quiet, contemplating. Not terribly
alarmed. “Which means Fray might never hear anyone plan it.”

“Assuming someone's really
whispering prophecy into her dreams and it's not just Rain being
afraid.” Shaking my head, I let out a sigh of dejection. “It
doesn't matter anyway. You're right. We can't stop it.”