I'd Rather Not Be Dead (6 page)

“Drew?” Tanya Stewart scampers
behind me. Tiny, blonde, blue-eyed, and never seen without a cross
around her neck, Tanya's not someone I'm used to paying attention
to. She pushes at the bridge of her discount store glasses, nearly
dropping her books in the process. “I could help you.”

She pales when TOM's disdainful
glower hits her, but swallows and continues. “I'd really like to
help you. Please?”

“With calculus or with finding
God?” TOM asks. Tanya always dresses in clothes any preacher would
approve of and never smears a trace of sinful make-up on her skin.
Over all, she reminds me of one of those church-run homeless
shelters. Sure, they'll give you a bed and a decent meal, but
they'll make you listen to their gospel in payment.

“Either,” Tanya whispers, her
voice nearly lost in the din.

“Well, I'm good on both.” TOM
shoves by her would-be savior and walks quickly away.

Tanya shoulders droop and she
lets out a long sigh.

“No saving some folks,” Ricky
Woodman says behind her, making her jump, though she doesn't do
anything as horrible as curse. Ricky's the head of the Campus
Crusaders, a ultra-conservative group bent on annoying me as much
as possible.

“I don't believe that,” Tanya
says. My mouth almost gapes. I don't think I've ever seen Tanya
openly disagree with anyone before, let alone with Fort Jesus VIP
Ricky Woodman. And she's doing it in defense of me?

Ricky shrugs, not caring what
she thinks. “You should. It's true and she's a prime example of
unsavable.”

A day later, he's spouting
completely different lines while he harasses people between first
and second period. He beams at TOM. “Sign the pledge?”

She glowers at him and makes a
wordless grumble of annoyance. She knows the spiel already, having
overheard it twice while she searched her locker for a missing
notebook. It's put her in a pissy mood, even though she spent the
night in my bed and I spent it on the cot in the nurse's office. If
you ask me, I'm the one with a reason to be in a foul mood.

“Come on,” Ricky wheedles,
waving a clipboard in her face.

TOM narrows tired eyes at the
wannabe evangelist. “I could take this harassment to the Supreme
Court, you know. You're not allowed to shove your religion at me in
school.”

Ricky reaches behind his head to
scratch at the back of his neck and his face goes slack in what
might be honest bewilderment. “But there's nothing religious. It's
just a vow to respect yourself enough to retain your
virginity.”

“You're a moron,” she informs
him. He doesn't appear bothered by the information.

“Virginity's not a bad word!”
Ricky follows her as the other me starts to walk away from him. He
taps the clipboard against the back of his free hand in time to
their matched steps. “Come on. Sign the pledge. Everyone's doing
it!”

TOM stops in order to glare more
effectively. “A. No they're not.” She holds up one finger, then
another. “B. You're too late.” A third digit goes up. “And C.
No.”

Ricky pulls out a booklet from
his back pocket and waves it around. “Your virginity can be born
again!”

TOM and I both laugh. And so
does Cooper Finnegan.

Ricky blinks, looking to where
Copper Finnegan stands watching us in ratty jeans and a Pine Ridge
football t-shirt. “Jesus forgives those who ask it,” Ricky says
with the eerie overtone of someone who believes what they're saying
just a little too much.

The other me rolls her eyes and
moves on, not acknowledging that Cooper Finnegan just saved her
from Ricky's pathetic hounding.

“Of course, he does.” Cooper
Finnegan gives him an easy smile. “But the fact a sin can be
forgiven doesn't mean the history of it was erased.”

Ricky thinks about that and I
expect him to refute it with a quote, but Cooper Finnegan starts to
walk away without waiting for him to find one. “Hey, Finn! Sign the
pledge?”

“Nope.”

The curt answer surprises Ricky
enough that he stops walking. “But... Aren't you..?”

“None of your business,” Copper
Finnegan calls back.

I snicker as I trot after him.
“What happened to you?”

“None of your business
either.”

My mouth opens for a second
before I start to grin. “Careful. You're almost acting human.”

“Surprised you'd know about
that.”

He manages to look serious for
two steps before grinning over at me.

I shake my head and smile back
until the details of his appearance click in my head. His eyes are
bloodshot and the circles under them are heavier than they were
yesterday. His skin's more pale. His hair's more unkept. In short,
he looks more dead than I do, despite the ridiculously goofy
expression in his face. “You haven't been sleeping, have you?
You're punch drunk.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs.

“You'd better start or you're
going to blow the last game of the season Friday.”

He shrugs again. “Trying to
care. Failing.”

“Who are you talking to?”
someone we pass asks.

“Blue Tooth,” Cooper Finnegan
says without missing a beat. The other guy gives him a strange
look, then seems to assume the ear piece is in the ear he can't see
and moves on.

Another schoolmate passes
through my arm while I'm busy staring at my medium. “Seriously,
Cooper Finnegan, you're acting very strange.”

“Thanks for noticing.” Halting,
he turns to look at me. “Why do you do that? Use my full name?”

“I don't know.” Which is true.
It's just what I've always done. “I think it's because that's how
you were introduced to me. People gushing about, 'Oh my gosh,
Cooper Finnegan this,' and 'Cooper Finnegan that,' and, 'Oh, Cooper
Finnegan is so cute,' and 'Cooper Finnegan is just so much more
wonderful than anyone else.' It's how they talk about you, even
though it isn't how they talk to you.”

He looks at me for a few
moments, a frown clouding his face. “No wonder you hate me. Put
like that, I hate me.”

There's not much I can say. I
could deny the allegation, claim not to hate him. But he wouldn't
buy it. He may be an idiot, but he's not stupid.

The silence between us is broken
by my sister, who rushes up to Cooper Finnegan with a hint of
desperation in her eyes. “There you are, Finn!”

“Yeah.” He doesn't take his eyes
away from me, doesn't seem to notice how low cut Bobbi's top is,
even though she's all but shoving her tits in his face.

“You look tired. Are you
alright?” she asks.

He lets out a sigh and nods.
Then he looks at her, jerking a little when he notices what she's
wearing. “I'm fine.”

“You'd better rest up.” Bobbi
leans forward to better show off her boobs, then droops when the
result of the maneuver is her prey redirecting his eyes to the
hall. “We need you at your best against Yancy.”

“Yeah, I know.” He shifts like
he's trying to figure out how to leave without running over
her.

“There's going to be a party at
Casey's afterwards.”

“Is there?” Judging by the
trapped look on Cooper Finnegan's face, I'd say he caught the
not-so-subtle hint that my sister's after a date to this party. And
judging by the continued look of optimistic adoration on hers, she
wasn't catching on to his lack of enthusiasm.

“Yeah...” Bobbi wraps a strand
of hair around her finger and bats her eyes in a vapid way likely
meant to be coy. “So... I was thinking...”

“Maybe I'll see you there,”
Cooper Finnegan says, then darts around her and rushes away as I
laugh at his panic. What happened that was so horrible it made him
border on likable?

Bobbi's friends rush over. “What
did he say?”

“He hopes to see me there,” she
says with a toss of her hair.

Not an exact quote.

The friend looks disappointed.
“So you're not going together?”

“They're meeting there,” another
one says. I should probably know their names. but they all look and
act the same. It's like they want to be stereotypes, like they take
comfort from it or something.

“Yeah,” chimes a third
bottle-blonde. “He's totally into you. Who wouldn't be?”

“Anyone with a brain?” I
suggest. For some reason, I stop myself from adding, “Oh, wait.
That wouldn't include Cooper Finnegan, would it?”

Biting the inside of my lip, I
wander away to find myself and settle into the aisle next to her.
Cooper Finnegan's across the room, slumping like he needs a shot of
caffeine. I shake my head as I watch his eyes drift closed. “Wake
up!”

He jerks in surprise and looks
over at me. His blinks imply he missed my arrival. He really is
tired. Or really not paying attention to me.

The other me, thinking he's
looking at her, flips him off.

“Sorry,” I say as he turns away.
“She's kind of strung out this week.”

Cris watches the exchange
between the living with a small smirk. I flip him off but he
doesn't know it. Oh well.

The class rustles unhappily as
Mr White hands out the tests from Monday. As I expected, TOM
bombed. Fifty nine points. That's failing for those of us keeping
score.

Like a lot of other people in
the room, Cooper Finnegan frowns at his paper like there's
something wrong with it. Did he do worse than expected? Because it
seemed like he knew he was fumbling without a clue.

When class ends, I get my
answer.

Cooper Finnegan approaches the
teacher's desk when the room clears and holds out his paper. “Mr.
White? There's a problem with this.”

The teacher's eyes flicker to
it, then back to Cooper Finnegan's face. “And what problem would
that be?”

“An eighty?” Cooper Finnegan
asks.

“An eighty?” I sprint across the
room to look at the test. “No way you passed.”

“I know it's not up to your
usual scores, Finn, but there's nothing I can do.”

Cooper Finnegan lets out a quick
breath. “Sir, it's at least twenty points more than I deserve.”

“More like thirty!” I fume. “Who
graded this?”

The teacher examines the paper.
“I don't see any problems here. I think you should stop worrying so
much about your classwork . Let yourself concentrate on beating
Yancy and getting us to finals.”

Whoa. Did he just say what I
think he said?

Cooper Finnegan grinds his teeth
and glowers for a second before calming down enough to speak. “Do
it right, Sir.”

Mr. White gives him an
incredulous look.

“If you don't fix this, I'll
take it to Principal Pauler,” Cooper Finnegan says, his voice
frighteningly steady. “And if she's too blinded by the fact she's
sleeping with you to do anything, I'll take it to the school
board.”

The paper crunches as Mr. White
snatches it away. His red pens slashes away at it in short, angry
motions. “Fifty five points. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Cooper
Finnegan replies, perfectly polite. He takes the corrected paper
and exits while the teacher sits there shaking his head in shock
and muttering to himself.

What was that?

Mr. White stares at the door in
shock. “Don't understand...”

Me neither. I'd have thought
Cooper Finnegan would grab a gift like that and run with it. I'd
assumed he did it all the time. Pondering that, I follow Finn to
the physics lab, but then move him to the back of my mind as I
rejoin myself. Staring at her hasn't been leading to revelations
about the end of my life, but I don't know what else to do. I don't
even know what time frame I'm trying to recapture. Do I die
tomorrow? Next week? In twenty years?

The room darkens as TOM starts
her writeup of today's experiment. Cooper Finnegan sits up slowly
and looks around, presumably seeing the ominous shadow too. He
reaches behind him to take his jacket from the back of his chair
and slip it over his shoulders. No one else seems bothered.

I shiver and rub my arms as a
wind roars to life. Voices ride on it, their words
incomprehensible. It has Cooper Finnegan looking spooked. That's
probably not good. That probably means this doesn't happen a
lot.

A face presses against the
window. A face made of fog, just like in that horror movie.

My shivering progresses to
trembling as its eyes land on me.

Cooper Finnegan leaps to his
feet, jumps over the aisle, and grabs my hand.

The other me yanks her book bag
across the lab table, pressing it against her while she gapes at
Cooper Finnegan. The whole room's staring. But the fog's gone,
completely vanished as soon as my hand was touched.

I lean over to his table and
nudge his pen, rolling it to the floor.

He bends over and picks it up
with his free hand, then, apologizing in an inarticulate mumble, he
holds the pen up and retreats back to his seat. He doesn't let go
of my hand even though people are still watching him. I reposition
myself beside him, so at least he doesn't have to sit there with
his arm stuck out.

“Thank you,” I whisper as I
settle into an uncomfortable squat at his side.

His fingers squeeze. They're so
warm... He holds onto me for the rest of class, but when the bell
rings, he lets go ever so slowly, his eyes on the window. The fog
stays vanished.

“Yo, Finn!” The other two
football players in the class approach us. “What was up with
that?”

“Dropped my pen,” he says, his
tone going for sheepish.

One boy snorts at the answer
while the other says, “And you and Devil Girl?”

Devil Girl. That would be me, I
suppose. I've been called worse.

Cooper Finnegan chooses to
ignore the question, grabbing his stuff in silence and just
leaving.

“What's up with him?” one of the
jocks asks the others.

“Game nerves.”

“He'd better get over it.
Post-season rides on this game.”

“Dude, that's why he's so
freaked.”