The Dead and Buried (2 page)

I
sat in the office of Woodbridge High School, clutching the paper with my schedule and locker combo on it. Colby’s admission had freaked me out a little.
He
wasn’t scared, but that didn’t stop
me
from looking over my shoulder a couple of times before I’d left the house for school.

When I was little, I’d loved ghost stories. And I’d been completely convinced that ghosts were real. But then I grew up and figured they were just part of legend — like vampires and werewolves. Haunted houses were just old, run-down places whose “ghosts” could be explained by drafty windows, loud pipes, or lying tenants looking for attention.

But our new house was only twenty years old and in perfect shape.

And Colby didn’t lie.

I shook it off and focused on the schedule in my hand. There were no surprises, since we’d been in contact with the school over the summer and sent them my transcript. When I’d arrived at the office, the school secretary had told me to wait there for my “Newcomers Club Buddy” to assist me through my first day.

We didn’t have anything like that at my old school. But then again, we never had new kids, either. My whole grade
fit into one dingy old classroom. Woodbridge High School, though, was a two-story brick building with a clock tower at the entrance and was surrounded by fields so perfectly manicured they could have been on ESPN.

I looked through the office’s glass window into the hallway and felt a surge of anxiety. Throngs of kids meandered through the hall, stopping at lockers and calling out to each other over heads and backpacks. Kids who’d known each other for years. And I was stepping in, having no history, knowing no one. My stomach clenched like a fist.

A boy entered the office. He was tall, but you wouldn’t immediately know it from the way he stood slightly hunched forward. He wore a black T-shirt and dark jeans, with his hands stuffed in the pockets. An aura of sadness clung to him like bad cologne. He kicked at the ground as he mumbled to the secretary, “Um … the Newcomers Club.”

She pointed at me and he turned my way, not looking anywhere but at the ground as he trudged over. Still, I felt a bit of relief. I wasn’t alone anymore.

“I’m your guide for the day,” he said, apparently to my shoes.

“Hi. I’m Jade Kelley?” I knew that was my name, but somehow it came out sounding like a question. I stood, hoping he’d finally look up. When he did, my heart sped up a bit.

I didn’t have a ton of experience with boys. There were only fourteen of them in my grade back home and we’d all gone to school together since kindergarten. It was kind of hard to be attracted to a boy if you could remember him picking his nose in first grade. Though I did go on a date once, my
freshman year. And by “date” I mean we went to a dance together, kissed once, he tried to do more and I stopped him, and then he told everyone at school my breath smelled like a toilet. So … my track record … not so good.

But this guy standing in front of me seemed a little different. His dark hair was messy and too long. It hung down over the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen. Eyes that no one should hide. But they were also ringed with dark circles. He’d be pretty hot if he got a little more sleep and put a modicum of effort into his looks. But he seemed more than tired. He looked … haunted.

“Thanks for taking the time,” I said with a gratefulness that I meant. “I’d be lost without help today. This school’s much bigger than my old one. And coming in as a senior, when everyone else already knows each other, it’s so much pressure.”

Oh no.
I’d started babbling. And my voice had this hysterical-girl edge to it that I hated. I’d become Nervous Babbling Girl. My right hand went up to my ear. I was wearing my blue topaz stud earrings. Blue topaz was supposedly useful for verbalizing feelings. So either they weren’t working or were overworking. Regardless, a stream of verbal vomit continued to spew from my mouth.

He pulled a lock of hair behind his ear, his eyes at full force now, and gave me this entertained, lopsided grin. I modified my original judgment. This boy was
already
hot. He just hid it well.

I took a breath, and he was able to sneak in a question. “So where did you move from?” He didn’t mumble it, like before. He seemed interested. Like he’d finally woken up from the half coma he was in.

“A small town in the western part of the state. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.” I added a little giggle. Now I was Giggle Girl. Just … kill me.

“That’s cool,” he said. “Where did you move to in Woodbridge?”

“Um, Silver Road?” I said, again making it a question.

His whole face suddenly changed, and he took a huge step back, as if he’d just realized I had a debilitating contagious disease. He turned away from me and returned to the counter. “I, uh, can’t do this,” he said to the secretary, who didn’t look too surprised by his behavior.

With that, he was out the door. No explanation, nothing. I stood with my mouth open. I should have been appalled. I should have considered him the rudest boy on earth. But the moment when his face changed for some reason reminded me of this morning when Colby told me about the girl in his room. So instead of anger, the icy feeling returned. I rubbed the back of my neck.

Just as I was about to contemplate finding my locker on my own, another girl, who’d been standing in the office, walked over.

“Hey. I’m Alexa Palmer.” She didn’t say it in a friendly way. More matter-of-factly. Her hair was black, straight, and shiny,
with bluntly cut bangs. “I’m also in the Newcomers Club,” she continued. “I’ll be your Newcomers Club Buddy today. Even though you were Donovan’s assignment.”

Donovan.
So that was his name.

“So what was his problem?” I asked, aiming my thumb in the direction Cute Boy had fled.

“Donovan? Don’t mind him. Let’s see where your first class is.” She took the schedule out of my hand. “Only AP in Math, huh?” she said, not looking at me. Come to think of it, she hadn’t looked me in the eye once yet. “I’ll be in that class with you.” Then she handed the schedule back to me and clapped her hands together once. “Okay, let’s get you to your locker and to History. I will meet you at the end of each of your classes and shepherd you to your next. I’ll sit with you at lunch. And then tomorrow you can be on your own.”

I felt like I’d just been dismissed from a business meeting. “Um, okay. Do you want to jot down the room numbers so you’ll know where to go?”

Alexa raised one eyebrow, but still didn’t look at me. “Of course not. I memorized them.”

She turned around and walked right out the door without looking back. I hurried to follow her. There was no small talk on the way to my locker or my first class. And no platitudes when she dropped me off. I wished I were confident enough to tell Alexa I could face the rest of the day on my own. The girl was clearly strange. But the idea of having someone walk me around all day and sit with me at lunch did help keep me from hyperventilating.

My morning classes went by quickly, with Alexa dutifully meeting me after each one and walking me to the next. All the classes seemed a little harder, a little more intense than the schoolwork back in my old town. I’d have to work hard to keep up. That Donovan boy was in three of my classes. I caught him looking at me once, and he immediately dropped his eyes back down.

My old school offered no advanced placement classes. This school seemed to have an AP for everything, but I was only scheduled for Math. My grades must have been good enough for me to get in, but I had a feeling AP Calculus here was an entirely different beast from Math at home.

I sighed. I had to stop doing that. Marie was right with that particular nag. My old town wasn’t home. This was.

I survived all my pre-lunch classes. When it was lunchtime, Alexa went to use the girls’ room so I waited for her, leaning against a row of lockers. Just then, a girl approached me. Her bold makeup and overhighlighted hair added up to pretty, but in a “trying too hard” kind of way. And she smelled like a Bath & Body Works had exploded all over her.

“Are you the new girl?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m Jade Kelley.” I thought about holding my hand out, but something told me this wasn’t a “let’s be pals” introduction. It had some sort of purpose.

“Where do you live?”

She didn’t reply back with her own name, which was strange. “Here,” I answered tentatively. “I just moved to town.”

The girl heaved her shoulders with impatience. I noticed a
gaggle of three other girls watching us from a distance. “No, like,
where
in town?”

“Silver Road.”

Her eyes widened. “Which house?”

“Number six,” I said, not liking this conversation and its one-sided feel. “The yellow one.”

My interrogator’s mouth opened, then shut wordlessly. She scurried back to her group and they all huddled in as she whispered. I only heard a few words …
“new girl”… “house”… “Kayla Sloane.”
Who was Kayla Sloane? And what was the big deal about my house? It certainly wasn’t the biggest in town. Did they give this third degree to every new student?

I felt a swoosh of wind and Alexa called over her shoulder, “Let’s go,” as she breezed by me. I jogged a few steps to catch up to her.

“Would you stop doing that?” I said with more annoyance in my voice than I’d normally use. But between Fruity-Smelling Girl’s questions and Alexa’s oddness, I’d just about had it.

Alexa looked at something above my head. “Stop what?”

“Walking so fast that I have to run to keep up with you.”

“Well, I’m taller than you,” she said flatly. “Longer legs.”

“Yeah, but it’s rude.”

She stopped then, her forehead creased. “Why?”

I had to explain this? Really? “Because when you’re going somewhere with someone you should walk together side by side at a comfortable pace. Not breeze by them, yelling over your shoulder, and forcing them to go faster. Especially when
it’s someone’s first day and that someone is kind of nervous.” I let out a big breath.

Alexa’s face sagged. She looked like she actually felt bad. Like it just dawned on her now that what she was doing wasn’t cool. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

We walked the rest of the way a little slower and I saw her take a few peeks at my feet, like she was mentally calculating speed or something.

The cafeteria had long tables in the center, and several round tables lined the perimeter. After we got our food, we grabbed two end seats at one of the long tables. I expected other people to join us, but after a few minutes it was clear that wasn’t happening. I momentarily wondered … if I wasn’t sitting with Alexa today, would she be alone at lunch? I didn’t want to ask, though, and make her feel self-conscious.

I took a tentative first bite of my lunch, Chinese chicken stir-fry with lo mein noodles, and nearly moaned. It was so good. So
not
the school lunch I was used to. I didn’t even mind that Alexa obviously wasn’t one for small talk. All the more time for me to shovel this awesomeness into my mouth.

But then I was full and a glance at the clock told me ten minutes remained. I felt the need to fill in the silence. “So,” I struggled to think of something to ask. “Can you tell me about the other students here?”

“Sure,” Alexa said, wiping her mouth with her napkin. She nodded toward a girl standing nearby who had long dark hair. “That’s Meghana Patel.” She looked away. “And that’s Kane
Woodward, and that’s Johnny Xu, and that’s Laura Preston.” She rambled on, pointing out people here and there. But they seemed to be at random. They weren’t even people who sat together.

“Are they your friends?”

“No. They’re the top ten.”

“In what?”

Alexa simply said, “Class rank.”

Ahh. She was one of those overachievers. “Okay. Can you tell me anything about someone who
isn’t
your competition?”

Her eyes flicked around for a moment, then she just shrugged. Ooookay. I glanced around the cafeteria and spotted Donovan, who was sitting at one of the round tables with a group of boys. They all wore black T-shirts with band names or gamer-related logos. Donovan kept his head down and didn’t seem to be involving himself in conversation.

“What about him?” I asked, nonchalantly pointing him out.

Alexa peered over her shoulder, then returned her eyes to her plate. “Donovan O’Mara. Above average. Rank thirty-three.”

“No, what does he do? Besides school.”

Confused at first, Alexa thought for a moment, then said, “I’ve seen him in the art room after hours. He talks with other boys about video games. If he spent less time gaming, he could have come in at twenty-six through twenty-eight. No higher than that, though.”

I sighed. “But what’s he
like
? You know, his personality.” I watched as he picked apart a sandwich.

“He used to smile a lot. It looked nice.” Alexa added softly, “But he doesn’t smile anymore.”

It took all my effort to tear my eyes from him. He just made me feel so curious. I wanted to know why he was so sad.

I wanted to fix him.