Spree (YA Paranormal) (5 page)

The history was a long one, and not just in the last ten or twenty years. From what Zipper was researching, school violence had been with us always, with episodes of teachers killing teachers and even some kids, with episodes of students open firing on other students, and one case where Indians scalped a class of kids in the colonial era. Gangs factored in, for at least seventy years, and decades before that, some kids actually were allowed to bring weapons to school. We were a nation founded on violence, and it ran like a red, bloody streak through the history of our schools.

Zipper studied each case intelligently, and I could feel the conflict in his thoughts. Should he shoot so soon after my death? Should he wait? Wouldn’t he get caught? He wasn’t sure. Zipper had a picture of me, one he kissed repeatedly, and I realized that he imagined my voice talking to him, that he heard me telling him to avenge my death.

He whispered, “I’ll see you shortly, honey,” then kept surfing the Net.

I barely knew this kid, went out with him a long time ago, yet he seemed to have this image of me that he worshiped, an image in stark contrast to the teen drunk that I became. If Zipper ever went to the parties I went to, I’m sure he would’ve been cured of me real fast. But now it was too late. He was singing along, researching soccer games. I shook my head. It hit me. It was nearing the twelve-year anniversary of Crazy T’s attempted killing spree. And unbeknownst to the athletic director, he had scheduled a Class M championship soccer game the very night of the anniversary of the shooting, right in the same soccer fields. Zipper was going to make history by repeating it; he was going to beat Crazy T’s count, try to kill more than anyone ever had in a school shooting.

Zipper blasted the music louder, started typing a personal blog message he intended to post on Facebook and Twitter just before the game.

“To all my so-called friends:

See you in hell.

—Zipper”

I tried to think of a happy memory, of some small joy I might send this kid, might give him so that he’d let go of the hate. But all I could think of was when we once laughed and splashed as kids at the local pool. I whispered reminders to him as he typed away, but a great blackness swept over him, and I could sense that the other Takers were standing in the way.

“Not to worry,” Crazy T told me. “You’ll see your boyfriend soon enough.”

I could see Crazy T and the Takers surrounding me, could feel their darkness calling to the darkness within me. But there was one light I didn’t let go of—my love for my friends. I clung to that image of light even in the midst of the consuming darkness. I felt like I was suffocating in the all the hatred and negativity, as if the life was literally being sucked from me into a greater black hole of Takers. I fought, struggled to free myself, when a being of pure light pulled me from the devouring flock of Takers.

* * *

I looked up and saw myself surrounded by light, tiny phosphorescent gold and silver orbs that circled the sun, before one broke off and settled on a form in the woods. The form that was taken was of Belinda Tallimere, a small girl from our class who had died of cancer when she was just a young girl. It was her voice I heard earlier; it was she who must have granted me the vision of Crazy T’s killing spree. I remembered vaguely playing recess with her. She had the best laugh; it sounded like wind chimes caught in a summer breeze. Now I saw her again, running as a little girl, before she appeared, looking quite beautiful, with blond hair and green eyes, like she would look if she were my age the day I died.

“Belinda?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I thought for sure you’d be in heaven.”

“I will be,” she said in her sweet little voice, “when I grow up.”

I realized that the spirits of children made up The Keepers, that they grew up, spiritually matured, before taking the long walk to heaven.

“You’re not as I remember you, Fay.”

I looked at myself; so much shadow stood over me, swallowing what was once human. My head was gone, held in my hands. Shadow mixed with only the faint sparkle of light in my eyes. My body was more mist than mass.

“I’m a Taker, aren’t I?” I asked. “I’m going to hell, aren’t I?”

Belinda’s ghost walked among the woods she used to play in as a child. She didn’t answer me directly, but instead picked a few azaleas, smelled their petals. She was beauty in motion. I watched, saw, actual music in her steps. Her movement was like a symphony, and the other orbs gravitated towards her, giving her almost an aureole-like glow. She looked just like an angel from a Renaissance painting we saw in art class—just more luminous.

“You’re still so pretty,” I told her.

She smiled. Belinda always loved compliments—before she lost her hair.

“You stopped coming to visit me in the hospital,” she said.

It was true. A group of us, Preggers and Aliya included, saw her when her illness became somewhat of a fad in the school. Whoever brought the best gifts to Belinda earned social status in our school; whoever had a video of the encounter earned more. It was like going to see a teenaged Buddha or something. But when the fad passed, so did my interest. No kid wanted to be around a kid that was sure to die. It reminded me of the rather inconvenient truth of my own mortality.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I was too…selfish.”

“Too drunk is more like it,” she told me.

I didn’t deny it—though I would’ve had to be a very young drunk at that point. Just saying.

“But in death there is only sobriety,” she told me. “There are no drunks in hell, only those who feel every tongue of flame. And there are no drinking parties in heaven—just those who feel the ecstasy of their own souls.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“But you can know—that’s why I’m here. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for before I go to heaven.”

I nodded, though I was confused.

“I loved my classmates,” she told me, “and I was sworn to watch over them. I am their Keeper, and I’ve chosen you to be their champion.”

“But I’m a Taker.”

She touched me, told me to listen.

I heard a hundred laughs, cries, thoughts rushing through me, the laughs of my classmates.

“I didn’t know Tom had a crush on Preggers,” I said.

Belinda giggled.

“Other Takers can’t feel what you feel,” she told me. “And Keepers can’t see the darkness you gravitate towards in Zipper.”

“So I’m neither. But Crazy T told me—”

“Crazy T has been working to make you a Taker since he died.”

“Why me?”

Belinda waved her hand. An image of Zipper staring at me on a middle school field came up.

My friends noticed, rolled their eyes, and whispered. I was too busy looking some other way.

“My death set off Zipper,” I said plainly enough.

“It will—next Friday.”

“So that’s when the five days are up. That’s soon. I thought I might have one more day.”

“The Takers want you to think that. They want you to lose,” she said.

I thought for a moment. “My alcoholism. Did Crazy T plant that on me too?”

Belinda looked sad for a moment; her light diminished ever so slightly. “Crazy T only influenced you to make the wrong choices so that he could use you to get revenge, to finish the job that he started,” she suggested. “You made the choices yourself. You alone are responsible, and you will find your place in the afterlife based upon who you were and what you do now.”

“There’s a chance I may not go to hell?” I asked.

“There’s a chance you may save your classmates, my classmates,” she said. “That’s all you need to concern yourself with.”

“But how?” I asked. “Crazy T has so much more power. I have none.”

“You’ll find the power when the time is right,” Belinda told me. “And I and my Keepers will stand with you. You will not fight the last battle alone.”

“There’s no time for me to find the power. I need the power
now
.”

“It’s the afterlife, Fay. There’s time enough for everything.”

Belinda started shrinking, transforming into a butterfly of pure white light, then into an orb.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t at your funeral,” I told her.

“Then make it up to me. Make sure no one else in our class has one this week.”

I nodded, until the light blurred and I was left standing alone, with neither light nor darkness, by an old oak within the empty woods.

THREE DAYS LEFT

Chapter 4

Hours before my funeral the kids went in to a bit of a surprise.

It was lunch. Outside the cafeteria, Steph, the girl whose mother I killed, was there, standing, staring at the murals that had been covered with well-wishes for me and my friends. She still bore the abrasions from the crash. Hundreds of signatures, of comments like “We’re pulling for you,” or “It could’ve been any of us,” infuriated her. The red and black swirled in her aura, and I could sense the colors building in her, all around her, in a storm of activity. Steph went up to the first covered wall and tore violently at the paper. She took the pages signed by my closest friends first, reducing them to pieces and spitting on the pieces as she hurled them to the floor.

The gesture angered Sue, one of my old drinking buddies, who happened to be heading to the bathroom in the middle of Steph’s tirade. Sue ran up to Steph, fought to restrain her, before a counselor and some teachers on lunch duty came out to see what was up. By the time Sue confronted Steph, nearly half the hallway was torn in little pieces and decorated in saliva. A crowd of kids came to watch as Sue tried to reason with Steph. Steph just pushed Sue to the floor and cursed.

“She was my mother,” Steph screamed to the kids massing outside the cafeteria. “Your whore friends killed my mother!”

Steph broke down; a few kids rushed to comfort her.

“Where were her flowers and cards?” Steph hollered, sounding almost animalistic in her high-pitched screams. “Walls and walls for the drunken slut! Not a single signature for the life that bitch took!”

The counselor and teacher stood there, letting Steph scream out what was inside her.

“Damn you all,” Steph screamed. “You’re all assholes!”

She stormed off. The counselor stood at a safe distance, waving the teachers off.

“Give her time,” the counselor said. “I’ll go see that she’s okay.”

In the corner of the crowd stood Zipper, watching the pieces of my life on the ground, covered in spit. I saw him squint at Steph, take in her image. As I stood there, bawling over what I’d caused, he just looked at the girl. Cold. Detached. I knew that he’d just added her to his list.

* * *

I hadn’t checked in on my mother since the night of my death. I don’t know if some moments have the power to age you years, but that’s how my mother looked. Aged beyond her years.

I knew from her aura that just hours before she’d been crying, huddling over albums of me as a pink-ribboned baby, looking in my room at night, reminding herself that it all really happened, that I was really dead. She sat next to a collage of my life, with pictures of me as a tiny, freckled girl playing jump rope, to pictures of me at the Cape with my friends, surrounding her. She looked like she could barely stand.

And now here she was, surrounded by kids, one fine afternoon when her only daughter was to be laid to rest.

I always wondered what kind of funeral I might have one day when I was old. I imagined I’d be surrounded by my kids and grandkids, that I’d be elderly and wrinkled from all the life I left behind me.

I never thought drinking would kill me. I never once thought I’d die before twenty-one. I used to sing “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry on nights when I’d binged, but it was just a song, not a prophecy. Yet here I was, with a hundred sobbing kids, cameras, and a town mayor paying honor to the life of a little drunk who never should’ve died.

I scanned the audience as the mayor was photographed paying respects to my mother. Alex and Sue were there together. Alex was expressionless, still hiding behind glasses, but his aura was dark, the color of leaves just before they fall in winter. And he felt just as cold. I knew he was still in shock and that staring up at a closed casket didn’t exactly help him to come to terms with the fact that I was gone, that he’d never be with me again.

Hordes of girls crowded around after kneeling before my casket, pretending to pray, and then paying their respects to my mother. Some bawled, and others simply went through the motions for the dead girl in the class. They talked about me, not all in flattering terms. One girl gossiped to her friend, calling me a slut at my own funeral and said I’d brought it all on the town and on myself. I couldn’t disagree with her on the second point. Others criticized me for cheating on a guy as cute as Alex. I couldn’t answer that, either, only that I was searching, looking beyond me, beyond drink even, for something that wasn’t there. I was confused, and I took it out on Alex.

But today I spent most of my time trying to hold my mother, to let her know that I was still there. She was the one whose aura was half depleted by the enormous pain I’d caused her. She barely responded to my estranged father, a drinker himself, as they spent a moment crying together. I held her hand, but I knew she couldn’t feel it. I told her again and again how sorry I was, but I knew she couldn’t hear my words.

“Is there some way to get through to her, some way to let her know I’m okay?” I asked.

For once, I hoped Belinda was around me with some kind of sage advice.

There was no answer, but I felt myself concentrating on a picture. There were so many on a few posters, from me as a baby at the hospital, to me as a toddler, to me getting ready for the junior prom, my black bangs specially curled and barretted up for the occasion. I saw myself in shorts running along the beach at the Cape and as a middle schooler on a whale watch, laughing with my friends as we spotted a hunchback whale far off of port. Finally, there was the picture of the dress I wore for prom, white linen with cream-colored lace, a beautiful dress for a beautiful occasion. But perhaps the moment that touched me the most was the moment my mother pushed me after I got my training wheels off my first pink bike. I felt so proud with the wind whizzing behind me, like I could go anywhere. On the back of the picture I remember writing, years later: “You’ll always be my wind and because of you I’ll always fly.” I concentrated as hard as I could until the picture blew towards my mother. The mayor was still paying respects when the picture fell upside down at my mom’s feet.