Reapers Never Smile

by Stephanie Prochaska

  “So what do you do for fun?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t think it was a subtle hint that I wanted to hang out with her more.

  “What do you mean?” Mindy asked, shifting her weight.

  “I mean, don’t you have any hobbies or anything? What do you do when you’re not at school? Do you go to the movies? Or hang out with people?” Other reapers, maybe? I added silently to myself.

  Mindy sat for a minute, thinking. She seemed lost in thought, and I almost asked if she was still paying attention. When she did speak, she sounded a little strange.

  “I guess I don’t really do anything fun.” she said.

  “What? You have to do something fun. What do you do when you go home?”

  “I work.” She shrugged. “It actually takes up most of the rest of my day.”

  I was about to ask her what kind of job she had, but I stopped myself in time. I already knew she was a reaper, so I was pretty sure I knew exactly what job she was talking about. I kind of wanted to know what exactly she did when someone died, but I wasn’t sure how to casually bring that up. I couldn’t really just ask her; if she found out that I knew about her, who knew what would happen to me? I was pretty sure she could just kill me right there if she wanted to.

  “So, do you ever get days off?” I asked. “Do you have a set schedule, or what?”

  “I’m sort of on call, I guess.” That made sense. She probably didn’t know ahead of time who was going to die.

  “But you go in almost every day?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty rare that they don’t have something for me to do.”

  “And when you get home – what? You just go to bed?”

  “I read, mostly.” she told me.

  “So you just hang out by yourself?”

  “I guess so.” Well, this wasn’t going well. How was I supposed to find out her weaknesses if she didn’t really do anything? So far all I found out was that she didn’t have an aversion to books. How helpful was that?

  The bell rang, and class started. As I started taking notes, I realized that finding out about reapers was going to be a lot harder than just the simple two minute conversation I’d hoped for.

  Chapter 16

  I sat down at my desk, staring blankly at a book on ancient Chinese history that I’d checked out of the library. I was trying to get started on that paper that Mr. Guerra had assigned, but so far it wasn’t going all that well. I had all my sources turned in, and my outline had been graded and handed back to me. I thought it was going to be easy from here on out, but it turned out that wasn’t the case; I had about three sentences written and absolutely no interest in doing any more. I’d pushed Samantha’s lamp over to the far side of my desk to give myself more room, but the light from my floor lamp kept reflecting off its base, drawing my attention to it. I resisted for about ten minutes before I decided to see if Samantha knew anything about history.

  I felt a little guilty about putting my paper off, but it was pretty easy to justify. It’s not like I was getting anywhere on my own, and even if she didn’t know a thing, at least I’d have something interesting to do. What’s the worst that could happen?

  The crisp blue light swam through the room, and Samantha stepped forward out of the shadows. It was funny how lighting that oil lamp actually seemed to make the room darker. Even though a few inches from the lamp itself the light was almost blinding, the corners of the room were completely dark.

  “You haven’t talked to me in days.” She started to pull her bottom lip out but saw the look on my face and stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s this stupid paper I have to write. The first draft’s due in two weeks and I haven’t even started yet.”

  “Oh. I’m glad I don’t have to do schoolwork anymore! It’s so boring!”

  “You’re telling me.” I grumbled. “It’s on Chinese history. I thought it would be easy – there’s a ton of books in the library. But I’m just not caring about the topic enough to actually do it.”

  “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I remember last year when Mr. Guerra made us write a seven page paper ‘for practice’. I mean, I learned a lot, but it took forever!”

  My sympathetic nod turned thoughtful.

  “What was your paper on?” I asked. Hey, seven pages of whatever she’d done was better than the zero pages I currently had.

  “I did mine on the Roman Empire.”

  Well that worked. The only guidelines were that it had to be ten to fifteen pages long and be about an ancient civilization. I’d wanted to pick something a little more original, but with only two weeks left, I was starting to not care what it was on.

  “So how much of your paper do you remember?”

  “I don’t know… it was almost a year ago…” she trailed off. She sounded unsure, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was enjoying herself. I was pretty sure she remembered most, if not all, of what she wrote.

  It didn’t take much convincing for her to admit that maybe she did remember a few things from last year. We talked most of the night, Samantha telling me all about the Roman Empire. I wrote down everything she said. I was just happy to finally have something I could put down on paper, and she clearly enjoyed telling me all about the topic. She told me about how the emperor ruled the senate and about all the plays they used to put on. By the time we were done, it was almost four in the morning. I thumbed through my notebook and realized I already had five pages of a first draft written and three pages of extra notes. This was going to be easy! All I had to do now was hand in the five page paper in two weeks and spend the rest of my time adding my extra notes in. After a quick trip to the library to get sources and flesh out the paper, I’d be done!

  Chapter 17

  “So what do you know about Mindy?” I asked Derek through a mouthful of sandwich. I’d already talked to her a couple of times by now, but I hadn’t learned much. I was hoping that Derek could either shed some light on her, or at least give me a couple of pointers on how to get through to her.

  “The girl with the pigtails?” Derek asked, snorting. “She’s kind of a dork, isn’t she?”

  I barely managed to hold back my own laugh. The idea that Derek of all people would make fun of someone for being uncool was almost too much.

  “Yeah, her.” I told him. “What do you know about her?”

  “Well, not much.” he admitted. “She came here last year around March or April. She was in one of my classes for those last couple of months. You should have seen her when she first came here. You think she’s weird now! She’s a lot better than she used to be. When she first came here, she was like an alien or something.”

  “What do you mean ‘an alien’?” This could be more promising than I’d thought. If she was even weirder before, maybe she used to do something that would give me a clue as to how to get rid of her.

  “She just seemed like someone who’d read about humans, but had never actually met one, you know? Like, she wouldn’t eat lunch with anyone – she wouldn’t even go to the cafeteria. She’d just go to the library.”

  “So? A lot of kids don’t eat lunch. What’s so weird about that?” I asked. I was starting to think Derek didn’t have as much information as I’d hoped.

  “I know that. But she wouldn’t even go near the place. Even when we had to go to P.E. she took the longest route possible – away from the cafeteria. And do you see the way she dresses? It used to be way worse.”

  I thought about it for a second. So far, what Derek had said was interesting, but I didn’t really see how it would useful at all.

  “Does she have any hobbies or anything?” I asked hopefully.

  “Probably.” he said, shrugging. “Why’re you so interested in her, anyway? You like her or something?”

  This time, I didn’t even bother to hide my snicker. Was he serious?

  “No.” I told him straight out. “I just met her the other day, and I wanted to know what you knew about her.”

  “Because of your cr
ush? It’s ok, you can tell me.” he said, laughing.

  “I told you already, I don’t like her. She’s just really… unusual. I just wanted to know what her deal was.”

  “Well, that’s really about it.” Derek said. “She doesn’t really talk to anyone that I know of. I never see her around before or after school. She just comes to class and goes home.”

  I nodded vaguely, thinking. I’d really been hoping that Derek would have some insights into Mindy, like that she was allergic to apples or something. But it seemed like he might actually know less than I did. At least I’d actually had a conversation with her. For the first time, I was beginning to have my doubts about this whole plan of Samantha’s. Mindy didn’t seem to have any friends at school to ask, and she wasn’t offering up any information herself. It looked like I was going to have to tell Samantha it was time to think of a new plan.

  When I got home from school, I did my usual quick check of the house to make sure I was alone. Even though I knew neither of my parents got home until late, I figured it was still a good idea to double check. It only took a few minutes, and I really didn’t want to have either of them walk in on me while I was summoning a ghost to my room.

  I lit the lamp and placed the glass chimney back on the base. Before I’d even had it completely fastened, the orange glow from the wick had started to change colors. The now-familiar blue light swirled out from around the lamp. I stepped back towards the bed and waited, rehearsing what I’d say when Samantha showed up.

  “Hi.” she said when she saw me.

  “Hey.”

  “So how’s it going with Mindy? Have you found out anything we can use against her?” she asked it as a question, but the look on her face said she already expected the answer to be yes.

  “Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” I said. Samantha froze for a second, a look of suspicion slowly spreading across her face.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I think we should try something else. She doesn’t seem to do anything, and I can’t keep asking her questions. Even she’s going to realize something’s up soon, and I really don’t think we’re going to learn anything helpful anyway.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked in disbelief.

  “I’ve tried talking to her for over a week. And I don’t know any more now than I did before.”

  “Then you’re not trying hard enough.” she said flatly.

  “I am trying.” I told her. Besides, I thought she was supposed to be coming up with the plan. All I had to do was find the reaper and she would take care of the rest. Hadn’t I already done my part? I tried to ask her about that, but apparently she was having a hard time remembering that little part of our agreement.

  “How am I supposed to do anything if you don’t find information out for me? That’s the whole point of you finding out about the reapers.”

  “So… what’s your part in this plan?” I asked.

  “My part? I’m trying to find out information too, but it’s a lot more difficult for me. Besides, this is all your fault – you started this. And now you won’t even help me?”

  “I am helping.” Unless somehow all those hours spent talking to Mindy didn’t count.

  “Good.” she said. “Well, I’m glad we talked. So, just keep trying, ok? And let me know when you find out anything.”

  “What? Wait.” That was not what I’d had in mind at all. I tried to stop her, but the thing about ghosts is that it’s pretty much impossible to stop them from leaving if they want to. She faded away, and I was left alone wondering how I was going to get Mindy to open up about her personal life when everything I’d tried so far had been completely useless.

  Chapter 18

  I walked into econ and sat down next to Mindy. I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to talk to her much anymore, but it looked like I couldn’t give up just yet. I tried telling myself she wasn’t bad, that she was just a little weird. And it was true that personality-wise – she wasn’t bad. It was just that she was really creepy. Every time I looked at her, all I could think about was seeing her laugh. I tried to put it out of my mind, to think about anything else, but somehow it never worked.

  “Hi.” she said as I sat down.

  “Hi.” I replied, a little glumly. Hopefully I could find out something in the next day or two so I wouldn’t have to keep doing this.

  Mr. Taylor walked into the room and set his briefcase on the desk. He didn’t even open it. Instead, he turned to the class and made a short announcement.

  “Everybody partner up. We’re going to play a game.” he told us. He started writing categories on the board: businesses, theories, supply/demand. He kept going, until there were seven different groups. Under each category he wrote 100, 200, 300, until he reached 1,000. When he was finished, he turned back to us. “Each group will have a chance to answer the questions. Whichever team answers the question gets to choose the next one, and whoever raises their hand first will get to answer first. If they get it wrong, the team who raised their hand second will get a chance, and so on. Any questions?” No one raised their hand. “Ok. Groups of two. Go.”

  I looked around, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Mindy. Even though she was a reaper, which should have been more than enough to intimidate me into partnering with her, I was hoping for better. She was about the scariest dork I’d ever seen, and that wasn’t really a combination I was looking for in a friend. We’d been talking a lot lately, true. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t open to the possibility of hanging out with someone else. But after a couple more minutes of frantically searching, it was pretty clear she was going to be my only option.

  Finally, I looked over in her direction and nodded to let her know I’d seen her. As everyone started moving around the room and arranging their desks, she scooted her desk next to mine.

  “So how are you at econ?” I tried to sound more enthusiastic than I felt. I just hoped she’d put down my lack of excitement to our class subject instead of who my partner was.

  “I’m ok at it.” She shrugged.

  “I hope you’re better than me.” I laughed nervously.

  I’d thought I’d like econ; it seemed like it would be intuitive. But it was a lot more formulas and theories than I’d expected and it ended up being more difficult than I’d been prepared for. So now I was going to have to guess answers to econ questions in front of the whole class and do it with Mindy breathing down my neck. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves.

  We were allowed to use our notes and books, so that at least made it a little better. The first question was about the father of modern economics. I had no idea who that was, but Mindy’s hand shot right up. We got the answer right, so I let Mindy pick the next question.

  We actually managed to do pretty good. I got a few questions right, but Mindy did most of the work; we ended up getting third place. It was actually pretty impressive. I knew that if I’d been on my own, I would have been in the last five.

  Maybe it was selfish of me, but I started thinking of Mindy in a slightly different way. She was still really creepy, sure. But she was also really smart. And she didn’t even make me feel bad about not knowing the answers to most of the questions. She might be a reaper, but she still seemed like a decent enough person. Maybe I’d be able to overlook her scariness after all. I mean, she was pretty nice, and who knows? It might be a come in handy to have a reaper like me.

  Chapter 19

  I tried to ask Samantha only one more time about Karen. She’d been less than thrilled. She stared at me for a couple of minutes; her eyes got real big and her mouth turned down a little at the corners.

  “Why do you want to talk about her?” she sulked.

  “She’s in my class…” I trailed off. I really couldn’t think of a good reason that didn’t also have a pretty high chance of alienating Samantha. What could I say? That Karen was pretty? That she was nice? Popular? Saying any of that could easily lead to Samantha asking if I
thought she wasn’t as good as Karen. I already knew Samantha wasn’t that fond of Karen, and she got mad pretty easily when I brought her up. Why did talking to girls have to be so difficult? At least now she was just pouting instead of getting mad like she usually did. It wasn’t much, but I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I’d actually be able to get some information out of her today.

  “I don’t want to talk about her.” Samantha’s whine got a little more obvious. “Let’s talk about something fun.”

  “Talking about your old classmates isn’t fun?” I knew she didn’t exactly count Karen amongst her friends, but I was hoping if I said it that way she’d let it slide. “You don’t want to talk about the people you used to know at all? Don’t girls usually love to talk about people?” At least all the girls I’d ever known seemed to like to.

  “I don’t mind talking about my friends. It’s just that Karen isn’t one of them, so why should I bother with her?”

  “Oh. Ok.” It was obvious there was something she wasn’t telling me, but I decided not to even bother asking; it’s not like she would have told me, even if I did.

  “So who were your friends?” I asked.

  “Eric.” she said instantly. Of course he was. Did this girl ever think about anything else?

  “Anyone else?” I asked after a pause.

  “Well… there was Sarah. And Katie. And Lisa and Janet were ok. How are they doing?”

  “I think they’re all cheerleaders now.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. Katie and Janet and me were cheerleaders last year. Sarah and Lisa tried out, but they didn’t make the squad. It’s good they made it this year.”

  I didn’t know any of her friends personally, so I couldn’t tell her much more. The only person I could really tell her about was the one person I wanted to pretend I didn’t know.

  “Derek?” she asked, laughing. “How’d you get stuck hanging out with a loser like him?”