Reapers Never Smile

by Stephanie Prochaska

  “Look, I know for a fact it’s true.” I had no actual proof, and my only hope was that Mindy wouldn’t realize this. “It’s ok. We’re not going to tell anyone.”

  Mindy managed to give a look somewhere between a sneer and absolute pity.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” she told us.

  Derek raised his eyebrows, looking from her to me and back. He took a small step away from me, and moved just a little bit closer to Mindy. Great. Now I was going to lose both of my friends at the same time and get no help dealing with Samantha. I sighed; I knew when I was beat.

  “Fine.” I turned to Derek. “I guess she won’t help us. We’ll just have to take care of this on our own.” I turned on my heel and started to walk determinedly back towards the cafeteria. I couldn’t even describe how glad I was that Derek actually started to follow me. As soon as Derek caught up to me, I turned around to face Mindy.

  “So, I guess we’ll handle it on our own.” She didn’t seem particularly phased, but I continued on anyway. “So we’ll take care of the ghost by ourselves. And if you meet any other reapers out there, and they learn that Samantha Corben was caught and they ever ask you about it, you can just live with the knowledge that you didn’t do anything. You let two regular kids do it while you sat back and watched.”

  I turned to leave, not even waiting for her reaction. I knew it was a low blow, but I was hoping it would shame her into helping. I felt a little guilty, but I tried to tell myself she had it coming. I’d asked nicely – I’d even practically begged her to help us. So if I had to make her feel bad for her to help, I was fine with that.

  We were about two feet from turning the corner when Mindy finally spoke up.

  “Wait.” she said. I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. Relief flooded through me. I turned around to face her as casually as I could.

  “I’ll help you.” Mindy said, lowering her eyes towards the ground for a moment before walking slowly towards us.

  “You will?” Derek asked as we headed back to meet her halfway. “Why?”

  “Because she’s dangerous. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”

  “But… how do you know she’s dangerous?” Derek asked. There was silence for a few minutes while Derek worked it out. “No! You really are a reaper, aren’t you?” he practically shouted.

  “Well…” Mindy started. She smiled so wickedly I could hardly believe it was the same awkward girl I knew from class.

  Derek started at her eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

  Chapter 27

  “Wait, so you really are a reaper?” Derek asked, a mixture of awe and terror on his face.

  Derek stared at Mindy as if she’d grown another head. I had to admit, I really enjoyed watching his reaction; I’d tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t believe me. And now, I didn’t even have to say I told you so to him. As I sat there thinking about what a genius I was, a cold chill ran down my spine and I hoped my thoughts weren’t showing on my face. All I could do was hope that neither Derek nor Mindy would ask why it was that Samantha would have bothered to inform me of the ways I could tell if someone was a reaper. There was just no way I was going to explain that she’d tried to convince me to trick Mindy. Fortunately, Derek’s thoughts had turned in a different direction.

  “So if you’re a reaper, what’re you doing in high school?” Derek asked.

  I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it was actually a pretty good question. She basically had a job, and she clearly didn’t need the education for what was probably a lifelong career – if life was the right term for person I was pretty sure would never die. Especially since I didn’t think she could just quit being a reaper. So, it seemed like all the reasons a person would have for going to high school just didn’t apply to her. So why was she here?

  “I was assigned here.” she said shrugging. Apparently that had been the only information she’d needed to make the move to this town.

  “Assigned?” Derek asked, clearly thinking she had more knowledge than she was sharing.

  “Yeah. When we couldn’t catch Samantha Corben within a few months after she died, the people higher up than me started to panic. Especially considering what she’d done. They wanted to get results no matter what, so they sent me here.”

  “To do what, exactly?” maybe I was being dense, but I couldn’t figure out what help her going to school could be.

  “A couple of things.” she told us. “See if she was haunting the school, check if any of her friends had managed to contact her. They didn’t even care if all I managed to do was to learn about her personality in order to get more leads as to where she might be.”

  “And did you get any new leads?” I asked. I already knew Samantha hadn’t been haunting the school, and judging from both Milner’s and Derek’s reactions to her, I figured it was a pretty safe bet that she hadn’t contacted anyone who’d actually known her.

  “Not really, no.” she confirmed. “No one ever mentioned her, and I never saw anything strange. So it’s really good you came along.” she said, looking at me. She actually had a small smile as she said that.

  “Yeah, I feel so lucky.” I mumbled.

  I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d managed to get into this situation. It was funny; I’d thought Samantha had been overreacting when she told me how the reapers were out to get her. And even when she told me she wanted to get rid of the reapers before they got to her, I still hadn’t really realized the severity of the situation. Maybe it was naïve of me, but I really thought there could be a peaceful resolution to this whole thing. But the more I talked to both Samantha and Mindy, the more I was convinced that neither of them would be satisfied until the other was gone.

  Chapter 28

  I walked into econ and found the empty seat next to Mindy. When I’d first started talking to her in class, I’d been kind of embarrassed. But now I figured, who cares? I’d stopped worrying about how cool I looked; I wasn’t making friends with anyone who wasn’t either Derek or Mindy, so why not start sitting with my friends and actually enjoy it? It’s not like I had anything to lose in other people’s eyes, and I figured I might as well work on the relationships I already had instead of worrying about ones that seemed pretty nonexistent, especially since they’d agreed to help me with Samantha and all.

  Mindy smiled when she saw me, and I smiled back in spite of myself. When I looked over at her, I saw she’d dropped the pigtails. That combined with the fact that she wasn’t dressing like she’d stolen her dad’s clothes anymore made me feel a certain amount of pride. After all, it was my suggestions that had helped her start to look like a normal human girl.

  “Hey.” I said as I sat down.

  “Hi.” she said, smiling at me. “How’s your day going so far?”

  “Uh, good. You?”

  “Good.” she said.

  “Hey, how often do you, you know, work?” I asked. “Do you ever get any days off?”

  “Yeah. There’s usually a day or two every week that I don’t have to do anything. Why?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go bowling or something. Me and Derek were thinking about going either this Thursday or next Thursday. They have a special, so it’s cheaper. You wanna come?”

  Mindy’s eyes lit up. She got a huge grin on her face, and she put her hand to her mouth to hide it. She made a kind of strange noise, and for a split second I thought she was going to laugh with joy. I closed my eyes, silently hoping she wouldn’t make that bone-chilling sound. This time, I was lucky.

  “That would be really fun. I’ve never been bowling before.” she said.

  “I’ve been lots of times. It’s really fun. You’ll like it, I promise.” I told her.

  “I don’t really know the rules.” she mused. “Is it hard?”

  “No, it’s easy. I’ll show you.”

  “Ok.”

  “Are you busy this Thursday?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t actuall
y know what my schedule is until a day or two before. Every now and then I only get notified a few hours in advance, but that doesn’t happen that much.”

  “Ok. Why don’t you let me know on Wednesday? If you can go, we’ll do it this week. If not, we’ll try for next week.”

  “Sounds like fun.” she said happily.

  Our teacher came into the room, and the class quieted down. I got out my notebook and got ready to learn about economic disturbances. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mindy make a kind of wave that caught my attention. When I turned to see what it was, Mindy was staring at me. Once she was sure I was looking at her, she smiled. “Thank you,” she mouthed before turning back to her own desk.

  I headed from econ to history, feeling pretty good about myself. Today we were finally getting our papers back, and I knew I was going to get a good grade. As soon as I sat down, I saw a thick pile of papers, stacked carefully on the teacher’s desk. When the bell rang, Mr. Guerra stood up and came around to the front of the room. He split the stack in half and handed each to two students sitting in the front. He started to talk about how great most of the papers were, but I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy waiting anxiously for my paper to be handed back to me. I knew that with Samantha’s help, I had to have an A, but I still felt a little nervous now that they were actually being passed out. Finally, my paper landed on my desk.

  The first page had no red marks, which was a great sign. I flipped through the first couple pages, noticing that there didn’t seem many more marks inside, so I skipped ahead to the last page. Stapled to the end of my paper was a blank page where Mr. Guerra had written comments, and this was the page I was most interested in.

  The page didn’t have very much written on it. I smiled to myself, knowing that the less he wrote, the better. But as I started reading, my heart dropped.

  James, your paper is very well organized. You have an interesting introduction and good sentence structure. I was very impressed with the mechanics of the paper. However, you didn’t cite very many sources and a lot of your information seems to be incorrect.

  Please see me after class. D–

  I sat there reading those five sentences over and over, my ears burning. A lot of my information was incorrect? What did that mean? Was he saying that I made stuff up? That I was lying? It’s true that I didn’t exactly check out what Samantha had said, but I’d trusted her. She wouldn’t just make things up. And even if she did get something wrong, how could she have gotten so much wrong that I’d gotten a D–?

  Class passed incredibly slowly. I tried to put my paper out of my mind, but every time I glanced at it, tucked under my notebook, the words Mr. Guerra had written came right back to me. Finally, the bell rang, and I slowly packed up my things. I knew I hadn’t tried my hardest on that paper, but a D– seemed a little harsh. Now, I got to hear in person all the things that were wrong with my paper. Slowly, I walked towards the front of the room, where Mr. Guerra was busy packing up papers of his own. When he saw me, he stopped what he was doing and turned towards me.

  “James.” he said.

  “Mr. Guerra. You wanted to see me?” I showed him the last page of my paper as a reminder.

  “Oh yes. I read your paper. I did like the layout and how you presented your information. But the actual information itself was a little… strange.”

  “Strange?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe strange isn’t the right word.” he conceded. “But I do have a problem with some of the things you wrote.” He took my paper from me and casually flipped through it. “You wrote that the ancient Romans used to worship Zeus, the sun god. And here you put that the entire empire came to an end in 257. And those are just two of the problems I saw.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I mean, obviously what I’d written was wrong. And it hadn’t taken him any time at all to come up with those two mistakes. If he could come up with those after a casual glance, there must be a ton more that he’d found when he actually read the whole thing. I tried to think of something to tell him, some sort of excuse that would explain everything. But I couldn’t come up with a thing. And the worst part was since that was part of the information I got from Samantha, I didn’t even have a source to back it up.

  “I’m sorry.” I mumbled, not sure what else I could say.

  “I’ve seen your work before, and you’re obviously bright. You’ve turned in great papers in the past, so I have to wonder why this one was so different.”

  “I don’t know.” I said after a pause. I knew he was hoping for an explanation, but the only one I could give him was that a friend of mine had made stuff up and I was dumb enough to write it all down. And there was no way I was ever going to tell him that.

  “I know ten pages is a lot to ask. That’s why you have so long to do it, and why we have small pieces due every couple of weeks. Did you just get overwhelmed?”

  “Maybe.” I said. It would certainly explain why I’d had such a hard time when it came to writing the final paper.

  “I remember reading that all your sources were for a paper on ancient China. What happened to that?”

  “I guess this one just seemed more interesting.” I mumbled.

  “Well, it is interesting.” he said, glancing down at it. “You do have some good information here. And I know you also have a lot of sources for that paper on China. So I’d like you to go back to your sources on either that paper or your notes on Rome, pick one, and write out another paper. Ok?”

  “Ok.” I mumbled. I wanted to ask if I’d get a better grade if I did it, but I didn’t quite have the nerve. I was still a little shaken that I’d basically been caught cheating.

  “And when you turn it in, I’ll grade that one in place of this one. You won’t be able to get an A, but it’ll really improve your grade if you do this. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” he smiled at me before starting to shuffle papers into his bag.

  “See you tomorrow.” I said, relieved the torture was finally over. “Thank you, sir.” I added as I headed out the door as fast as I could.

  Chapter 29

  “Hey, Mindy.” I said as I sat down in econ the next day. Our teacher wasn’t here yet, and I was hoping to talk about maybe hanging out this weekend.

  “Hi.” she replied. She had a strange look on her face, and I knew something was wrong. I braced myself.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I need to talk to you about… that lamp you found.”

  Great. Samantha was just about the last person I wanted to be talking about right now. I’d already decided she was a lousy friend, so what else was left? And now on top of everything else, I had to rewrite my whole history paper because I was dumb enough to believe her. I really wanted to talk about anything else. I decided to tell Mindy I had it all figured out and get to another topic as soon as possible.

  I looked around. Everyone was so involved in their own conversations that they wouldn’t pay any attention to us.

  “I know, I know.” I told her. “She’s out of control. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  Mindy narrowed her eyes at me.

  “You’ll take care of it?” her skepticism was pretty obvious. “How do you plan on doing that?”

  “Well… I… I’ll just…” I had no idea. Normally I probably would have come up with something clever that at least sounded plausible, but with her, I just couldn’t do it. There was absolutely nothing I could make up that Mindy wouldn’t be able to see through instantly. So instead, I just sat there like an idiot caught in my lie.

  “I do this all the time, remember?”

  “Yeah, I know.” I admitted. It was true I’d asked for her help, and I should be grateful that she’d finally agreed. But I just didn’t want to worry about all that right now. It wasn’t just the fact that I was still mad about the history paper. I’d already admitted to Mindy that I didn’t know what to do, and now I was having to come up wi
th my own plan to get out of this whole mess. I just didn’t want to have to admit that I really was as completely clueless as we both knew I was. Not right now.

  “Do you actually know what you’re doing?” I could tell by her tone she already knew the answer was no. “What do you really know about this girl, anyway?”

  “Well…” I thought about it for a minute before replying. “I know she was a student who went to school here before she drowned. She has a bit of a temper, but she’s not all that bad.”

  “She’s been on the loose for over a year.” Mindy pointed out. “Most ghosts can’t do that. She’s obviously very clever – you’d better watch out.”

  “What all do you know about her?” I asked. For the first time, I was starting to get worried about my ability to maintain even the tiny amount of control I had over this whole mess I was in.

  “Not too much. I got here a couple months after she’d already died. What I do know is that strange things started happening after she died.”

  “Really?” I glanced around one more time. Everyone was still talking loudly to each other. “What kinds of strange things?”

  “To be honest, I’m not really sure, they didn’t go into a lot of detail. What I do know is that the people who give me my… assignments… were worried. And they don’t worry unless something big is happening.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything for awhile. When I did speak, I had only one question.

  “So what should I do?” I asked.

  “My advice is to stop lighting that lamp. Whatever you do, don’t summon her again.”

  Chapter 30

  As it turned out, Mindy was not able to come with us the first week we tried to go bowling. I had to admit, I was a little disturbed; if she wasn’t coming, it could only mean that someone in this town was either dead or would be very soon. I tried to push those thoughts from my mind, and I wondered how Mindy could do it all day. But I guess when that’s your job you learn to deal. Maybe it doesn’t bother you so much after you spend enough time with the dead. I thought about asking Mindy about it the next time I saw her, but I really couldn’t do it. Even though I had a lot of questions, there was a definite part of me that just didn’t want to know.