October Girls: Crystal & Bone (17 page)

Crystal settled into it, hoping it wouldn’t collapse. “Hello, Miss McMarkus.”

“Please, call me ‘Bev,’” she said, same as always. She didn’t understand that kids made up names for teachers but knew better than to get chummy. Bev was better known in the hallways and locker rooms as “McMack Truck” and the less-original “McFatso.”

“How’s home life?” Miss McMarkus said.

“Couldn’t be better
.” No gateways to the afterlife so far today.

“And the job?”

“Just fine. Come on down sometime and I’ll give you some tokens for a free suntan.”

Miss McMarkus giggled like the teenager she should have left behind 20 years ago. “Don’t know if my bathing suit would fit anymore.”

Crystal didn’t want to tell her the point was to sunbathe in the nude. Like first names, nudity was off limits when talking to teachers.

“I’ve finished the chapters on algebra,” Crystal said, laying her papers on the desk. “I figured out the
x
and
y
, but I’m not sure where the two went.”

With the wisdom of the knowing, Miss McMarkus tented her fingers and said. “Sometimes in life, the
x
and the
y
is enough.”

She rummaged in her desk for her big rubber stamp. She hammered it down on the stack of paper and slid the pages back. Marked in red ink on the top page was “ADEQUATE PROGRESS.”

Crystal was tired of being adequate. She’d studied hard. She deserved an ABOVE-AVERAGE, maybe even a SUPERIOR. Heck, even a hand-drawn smiley face would be a welcome upgrade.

“About tomorrow,” Crystal said.

“Halloween.”

“And all the kids will be dressed up.”

“The school can’t officially recognize Halloween, of course,” Miss McMarkus said. “This is the South, and plenty of people get uncomfortable with all these witches and ghosts running around. So we prefer to call it a ‘Harvest Celebration.’”

Crystal knew it was pointless to make a debate about separation of church and state when Christmas and Easter were good excuses for a day off. The real problem was Crystal expected to be plenty busy helping Momma plug the portals. She wondered if they would have enough fingers to plug all the holes in the dike. And she had no idea what gooey miasma was dammed up and waiting to break free.

But how do you explain that kind of thing to a counselor? Like, how can they help with REAL problems?

“I know it’s hard to feel like you fit in,” Miss McMarkus said. She rolled her eyes down to her ample bosom and said with a bitter chuckle, “Lord knows, I have a lot of trouble fitting
anywhere
. But you’re doing it your way, Crystal, and that’s the only way that matters.”

“I’m a drop-out. A statistic. And when I come to school, I can hear the whispers and feel the stares. Honestly, I wonder if it’s worth it.”

“Depression is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s chemical. You want to talk about statistics, let’s go with the three kids in every classroom who are right now thinking about killing themselves. Remember Bradley Cox?”

Of course I do. I kissed him in seventh grade during a game of spin the bottle, and Mitzi poured Sprite on my head because the kiss lasted almost a minute and was still going strong. And four years later Bradley swallowed 27 Codeine tablets.

Hopefully the two events weren’t related.

“Money doesn’t make people happy, Crystal. Good grades and popularity and dates don’t solve the problems inside your own head. The world’s a lot more complicated than when I was a teenager. Social networking, YouTube, Facebook, ‘American Idol,’ ‘Survivor.’ There’s a million ways to get humiliated or screw up where everybody can see.”

“It’s not that—” As usual, a grown-up in a rush to be helpful had no interest in the real issue.

“And you’re an Aldridge. Did you know I was a classmate of your mother’s?”

Crystal’s mouth fell open and she forgot all about Darkmeet and tentacles and Dempsey’s horror movies and Royce Dean. She’d browsed her mother’s high-school yearbook and the rows of earnest faces with awkward hair. Minerva Aldridge’s dark raven eyes stared back at the photographer and the world as if daring either of them to say a word about Roy Reed. Yet beneath the tight lips lay a secret as torrential as any burst dam.

Beneath Momma’s face was the usual list of activities to help people remember the kids who weren’t popular: Future Homemakers of America 11, 12; Volleyball, 12; Chemistry Club, 9. Minerva had been the star of the chemistry club until she’d dissected a frog and it croaked right in the middle of class. The teacher assumed Minerva mistakenly and cruelly performed the operation on a live frog when in fact she’d brought the frog back to life.

Regardless, that was the end of her academic science career and she was quickly shuttled off into the “homemaker” track where the highest aspiration was to become a hairdresser.

“This isn’t about my mother,” Crystal said.

Miss McMarkus leaned back with a mighty squeak of her chair. “The school can’t do it all, and who can trust the community? So it ends up coming down to the parents. I only get you an hour a week, and she has you 24 hours a day.”

Tell me about it. She’s ruining my life.

Crystal recalled Royce’s ham-fisted quote: “
I coulda been a contendah
.”

“What’s my mom got to do with me?” she said. “You just said yourself our generation has a whole new playing field.”

“She was an outsider. The sort of person kids played tricks on. You know, slipping stinky sardines in the cracks of her locker, pouring yogurt in her bra while she was showering after volleyball, stealing her homework so she’d get a zero.”

Even lamer than I figured. Don’t go making me feel sorry for her.
“At least she graduated.”

“You’ll graduate, too. You’re right on schedule.”

“Except I get my diploma in the mail while the rest of my former classmates cross the stage and shake hands with the principal. Then they go out and get liquored up and crash their cars.”

“You’re special, Crystal.”

That’s the same Kool-Aid Momma’s been serving me. But if I keep on like this, McMack Truck will think I need an extra counselor or two.
“Sorry for whining.”

“We all understand.”

Crystal wondered who the “all” were. Maybe they sat around and talked about the girl who’d missed seventeen days in a row after her friend died. And how she lost interest in her studies. And how they found the note in her locker. And how all the do-gooders pitched in and saved her.

As a failure, she was quite a success story.

Crystal reached for her papers. “Well, I better get to work.”

As she was sliding the sheaf of pages into her backpack, she heard a moist
plooosh
and thought Miss McMarkus had unleashed a stray bodily function. This called for a hasty retreat.

“Did you hear that?” Miss McMarkus said.

“Uh…what? Did the bell ring?”

“No. Something squishy.”

Crystal glanced at the wall clock to further the illusion of haste. That’s when she saw it.

An Orifice had opened on the wall just behind Miss McMarkus’s head and it glistened with dark intent. It was barely large enough to swallow a stapler, but these things tended to get bigger the longer she waited around.

“
Crystal
.”

Bone’s voice.

Miss McMarkus apparently hadn’t heard, because she stared straight ahead with that inquisitive, trained smile.

“What?” Crystal shouted, not sure how far away from the Orifice Bone was, or if sound even traveled at all in Darkmeet.

“What?” Miss McMarkus said.

“Bone.”

“I know it’s hard when you lose a friend—”

“I didn’t lose her.”
Though sometimes I wish I had.

“If you ever want to talk, you know where to come.”

“In Royce we trust,” Bone said.

Oh, no. She’s gone over to the dark side. Fallen for those brooding eyes. Or maybe…

She recalled Rance and Snake’s vacant-eyed incantations and remembered the subliminal messages in
The Darkening
.

Bone had watched one of Dempsey’s movies.

“Anything else, Crystal?” Miss McMarkus said.

“That math problem? I think I know where the ‘two’ went.”

“Excellent. We’re making progress.”

The portal narrowed down to the diameter of a rotten plum, and then vanished with a final
splurp
.

“Pardon me,” Miss McMarkus said with a giggle.

“Later.”

“W
ell, I did it,” Bone said. “I hope you’re happy.”

“I’m never happy,” the Judge said.

Which made him the perfect hammer in this crazy land of midnight moonlight. After the little stunt with the owl and the bloody grin that followed, the Judge had laid out the ground rules for their new relationship:

A. Royce was going to be a star.

B. Bone was going to help by tricking the Aldridge family.

C. They, along with the Judge and some of his producer buddies, would channel the Royce worship and become solid and alive again.

D. She would be Royce’s arm candy and the whole world would be jealous. Plus—the beauty part—she’d get to be flesh and bone again.

E. Or else the Judge would have her reincarnated as Paris Hilton’s purse pooch and she’d be a virgin all her days—
after
the operation.

Now that she’d followed his instructions, they stood in the silence of the mausoleum, listening to leaves skitter against the granite. Tim stood near the wall, looking like he was late for dinner and would be getting a spanking.

“What happens now?” Crystal said.

“It depends,” the Judge said. In the flickering candlelight, the hood hid his face, and the gap of darkness seemed to roil and slither. “We can’t predict the future.”

Where have I heard that before? Aren’t any of these dead know-it-alls omniscient?

“You got to Dempsey, didn’t you?” she said. “That whole horror-movie thing.”

“Dempsey was easy. Almost as easy as you. You see, Bonnie Whitehart, you don’t have to be a fortune teller to know how weak, desperate people will react. All it takes is a little understanding of human nature.”

“I’m not human anymore. I’m dead.”

“You’re a Tweener. You haven’t let go. And I can use that.”

“Why don’t you leave her alone, you big bully?” Tim balled his fists. It was cute but not very threatening.

“Tim McFarland,” the Judge said. “Your affection for Miss Whitehart is quite endearing. But it makes you vulnerable. And I eat ‘vulnerable’ for breakfast.”

He belched for emphasis, and another feather flew out.

“You’ve been watching me the whole time,” Bone said.

“Actually, little dumpling, I’ve been watching Crystal. Those Aldridges have been a thorn in my crown for centuries. When you had your—
er
, accident—I saw an opportunity I couldn’t resist. In this market, timing is everything.”

“What? The end of the world was like, more than a decade ago. And the whole 2012 thing was overrated.”

“The apocalypse is always in fashion. The world is already dying a little at a time but refuses to accept it. I’m merely putting it out of its misery.”

Bone eyed the mausoleum entrance. She was young. She could knock him over and be out of the graveyard before he even untangled his robes. But Tim might not be so lucky. He’d already risked his neck to save her from Royce, for all the good it did. But she owed him anyway.

Tim’s eyes flicked to the corners of their sockets and back, indicating something in the corner of the chamber. Bone nodded, as if agreeing with the Judge’s assessment.

“Okay, so you tricked Dempsey into putting subliminal messages in his movies,” she said. “Probably promised he’d be the next Steven Spielberg. And Royce got some bit parts so you could feed off his ego, too.”

“Creative types,” the Judge said, in his somber, stentorian cadence.

“What, you’re an executive producer?”

The laugh shook stones. “My ego is too large to settle for that. I, my dear, am the
agent
.”

“So you get a cut of the action no matter how it plays out,” Tim said.

When the Judge shifted his obscured face to Tim, Bone took the opportunity to glance into the corner. She understood.

“I suppose you never reached Latin,” the Judge said to Tim. “
Ergo
—thus—you likely don’t know the root of ‘agent’ is from the root ‘
agere.’
To drive, act, do.”

Just keep on with the lecture, Professor Ego Ergo
.

The candlelight bobbed as a breeze blew in from somewhere, carrying the aromas of permanent autumn—sweet grass, dead leaves, and allspice. She wouldn’t have put it past the Judge to open up a can of Almost Heaven just to taunt them. Bone eased a step toward the corner.

“The only Latin I know is ‘
Et tu, Brute
,’” Tim said, springing forward and kicking the Judge in the shin. His foot plunged into the fabric of the robe and kept going until he lost his balance. As he fell, he reached for the robe to keep from falling and managed to grab a sleeve.

The Judge reached out a gloved hand and snared Tim by the wrist. Tim’s eyes opened in surprise but he didn’t yell in pain. When you were dead, the physical sensations may have passed but the expectation and memory still existed. It was one reason Bone hoped she’d eventually have a real boyfriend and embrace the pleasures of the flesh—even if she had to sell her soul to the Judge to do it.

“
Now
,” Tim shouted, and Bone sprinted for the corner and scrambled in the leaves for the object Tim had hidden. She grabbed it and thrust it toward the Judge, making sure the candlelight glinted off its silver sheen.

The Judge kept his grip on Tim and the hood’s black oval opening was directed right at her. She couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, or if the Raybans were hiding their red sparks.

Heck, I can’t even tell if he HAS eyes
.

“Uh,
et tu ergo
,” she said, waving the object. “Latino mumbledy-jumbledy-oh.”

The Judge sucked in what might have been a breath, or maybe it was a hiccup of laughter. “You,” he said, with a dramatic pause.