Cornered

by Rhoda Belleza

  Then I opened my locker and found a note from Kyra. Though her penmanship is not the best, I was able to make out the message: YOU ARE SO DEAD. I faked being sick and was sent home early.

  THURSDAY

  Sam came home late last night, and this morning after breakfast, I overheard a conversation between him and Mom that went like this:

  “You were with that girl last night,” Mom said bitterly. When Sam didn’t answer, she pressed him, “You were. Weren’t you?”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Don’t Mom me,” she said point blank. “I can smell her perfume from over here.”

  “Just for the record,” he answered deadpan. “That’s my deodorant you’re smelling. And seriously, Mom, the thing is, she’s not just some girl. I’m in love with Courtney. I mean, for real.”

  “Love?” Mom said, and I could almost hear her raising her eyebrows at him.

  “Something like that,” Sam replied. “I’m going to ask her to the prom anyway.”

  “Oh honey,” I heard her sigh, “however you feel about her, wherever you take her, there will be no more sneaking out or staying out all night. Especially after prom. Got it?”

  Mom is pretty cool for a Christian, but I think if I ever stayed out almost all night kissing some girl she hardly liked—and then announced the next morning that I was in love—she’d probably lose it. It’s just a hunch on my part, but it’s one I’m not looking forward to proving true or false. However much my mother loves me, she will never be able to come close to the world in which I intend to live my life. I exist in a parallel universe, one that is second-class and takes place mostly off stage, sotto voce.

  Mom wheeled around the corner and found me standing there. I tried to look as though I hadn’t been ear-hustling on her conversation, but pretending to tie my shoes gave me away, because in fact, I was standing there in my socks. Mom just shook her head and continued to breeze past me.

  “Come on, everyone!” she called out. “Shoes on. Let’s go. This train is pulling out the station in exactly two minutes. Anyone not on board has the privilege of walking to school.”

  I found my sneakers and quickly laced up. As always, I thought about my father at that moment. He’s the one who taught me to tie my shoes in the first place. After he died, I made a promise to myself that every time I stopped to tie my laces I’d remember him. I gave up wearing slip-ons or flipflops. It’s my way of keeping my dad in my life on a daily basis, honoring him. Sometimes I use the time to speak to him, give him an update or ask him questions about whatever’s troubling me. I’ve decided not to discuss the idea of suicide with him because the possibility that he and I might be reunited very soon would really piss him off.

  FRIDAY

  School is no picnic, but at least we’re reading Hamlet in Mrs. Sweeney’s class, and this guy seems as confused about life as I am. Thing is, English class takes up only a fraction of the time spent in that hive of adolescent angst known as Jefferson High. Whose idea was school anyway? A sadist, no doubt. My particular torture is being trapped in an environment in which everyone goes around saying that I am a muff-diver. That’s fun.

  In the hallway on my way to my locker I usually have time to scan the sea of faces looking for Kyra Connors to appear. I hadn’t seen her for a whole day, and I knew this couldn’t be good. Somehow her absence in the hallways loomed larger than her actual presence.

  I imagine that years from now, the bully known as Kyra Connors will be living in a one-bedroom, high-rise apartment overlooking a parking lot. She’ll be in an unremarkable third-tier American city that is in a state of steep decline. Lonely, fat, and with a skin condition which will discourage her from dating, she’ll stay at home most nights waiting for the timer to announce her microwave dinner is fully nuked. Looking back, she’ll try to figure out where she went wrong in life. How did she end up with nothing? She will conduct a not-so-instant playback of her life’s story, which will go on for months. Then one evening while petting her cat, she will understand. “I see now! I should not have been so rough on that Emma Taylor girl back in high school.” Before she has finished eating dinner, she will decide to make it up to me and look me up on the Internet or whatever. But she won’t be able to find me, because by then I will be dead.

  “Hey, you,” I heard Kyra’s voice call out in the hallway. I turned around and there she was, her hair and bobblehead cruising above the crowd, her face flashing mean in my direction.

  My heart began to bang against my rib cage as though it was making a desperate attempt to escape. Suddenly my legs were making a run for it, my arms pushing open the side door as I moved quickly through the teacher’s parking lot. I didn’t know where I was headed—I wasn’t going home and I wasn’t going back to school—but I needed to get as far away from Kyra as possible. I wanted out. Of everything. I ran and ran up the hill behind the high school until my lungs burned and my sides ached. I started thinking I might die right there on the spotty grass beyond the football field.

  There was a chain link fence at the far end of the school property, and I knew I wasn’t allowed to go beyond this point. I’ve heard stories about seniors who smoke cigarettes and have sex there on a regular basis, and this seemed a much better option than anything I could think of on my own. I’d rather face whatever awaited me in the shady cool of the unknown than get beat up on school property. I hopped the fence and continued to make my way into the woods. Trees and bushes grew tall and wild there; they had never been pruned or clipped or shaped to be anything other than what they naturally were. This was where I’ll live, I thought to myself. This is where I’ll spend my school time until the whole Kyra thing blows over. Pretty soon she’ll find some other target, and then I’ll go back to being just another unremarkable face in the hallways of Jefferson High.

  Up ahead I noticed a flash of color through, and as I came into a clearing, I saw a pattern that involved electric blue and lime green paisley. Not something you see every day in the wild. It looked as though someone had tied a sheet between two trees and pulled it taut to make a kind of tented area. As I approached, I heard a low, rhythmic humming and I caught sight of a foot sticking out from under the tented area. The toes were long and ladylike, the nails polished pink, and the ankle kept the beat of the hummed tune. Whoever this person was she hardly seemed a threat to my personal safety, so I decided to get closer and see what was up.

  There was Justin Guns, sitting with legs outstretched and his earphones on, wearing an expression of pure delight. He wore enormous sunglasses and moved in time to a song playing on his iPod. I guess his eyes were closed because I stood in front of him for a full minute as he moved to the music, blissed-out and unaware of my presence.

  I don’t think I’ve ever said two words to Justin. He’s not the type that people tend to talk to unless they have something rough to say, something mean, something to remind him that he’s not normal. But seeing him working a deep personal groove, I realized that no one had ever really known Justin. He never had a friend. Even weird girls (like me) steer clear of his freakish fashion sense and outsider status. No one in their right mind would actually choose to go that far afield of the norm. No one other than Justin.

  When he finally looked up and saw me he jumped to his feet. His earbuds went flying from his head and he backed away, like he was some kind of wild animal and I was the hunter.

  “What?” he asked.

  The earbuds were lying in the dirt, pumping out the once glorious beat of his former bliss. When I took a step toward him, he quickly covered his face with his hands and leaned away from the punch, the insult, the assault that he figured was about to rain down on him.

  “WHAT?” he said again, only louder this time.

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I felt that anything I said would be heard through his ears, which had been tuned for too long to hear the worst. So I reached into my bag and pulled out my sandwich, the one mom made for me that morning. I held it out for him to take. He eyed it sus
piciously, and then looked at me as if trying to figure out my connection to it. We stood there like that forever. Tears welled up in his eyes and his chin quivered.

  “’S aright,” I told him. “I’ve been sent to bring you back.”

  We Should Get Jerseys ’Cause We Make a Good Team

  BY LISH MCBRIDE

  “I’M SO BOOOOORED,” Brooke’s voice drew out the last part making it about a billion syllables. When I didn’t look up from my book, she flopped around the dining room, knocking over stacks of books and singing the Muppets theme song at the top of her lungs. She was good at making a general nuisance of herself, so I just bent closer to the pages, holding the edges down so she couldn’t muss them.

  She popped her head up in the middle of the table, her blond ponytail swaying and her wholesome smile aimed right at me. She would look more at home in a dairy commercial or a Swiss Miss hot cocoa ad then an entity jutting out of a piece of furniture. But Brooke’s a ghost, and she can do that sort of thing. It’s kind of her schtick.

  “C’mon, Fraaaaaaannnk.” She drew my name out like she had with the word bored.

  “I need to finish reading this. We have a lot to catch up on.” We’d all only just found out that things like ghosts were real. Brooke becoming one had been a key component of that. My friend Sam learning he could raise the dead being another. I was the only part of the team who didn’t have some cool power to add, so I’d thrown myself into research. Like most nerds, books were my only friends for a long time.

  “That book isn’t going anywhere, but I might die again if you don’t help me. I’ll croak from extreme ennui and it would so be your fault. I’d be so mad I’d haunt you twice as much as everyone else.”

  I sighed and carefully closed my book. Brooke had her mind set on something; therefore, complete surrender was really the only workable response. Besides, I couldn’t say no to Brooke. When she was alive, I’d had something of a crush on her. And not just because she’d been crawl-through-broken-glass-I’ll-do-anything-for-you hot. Well, that was part of it, but the real reason was because Brooke had actually talked to me.

  Me.

  No one talked to me. Not nicely at any rate. So though she’d become more friend than manic-crush, I still had a gooey-soft spot for her. When Brooke asked, I always said yes. There really was no other answer.

  • • •

  The bad side of being dead—besides what immediately pops to mind—is that it’s kinda hard to get places. The floaty-misty thing gets old, and Brooke tells us it’s exhausting to go great distances on her own. That’s why so many ghosts stay put in one place. Especially if they spend all their energy appearing in front of people and saying, “Boo,” which Brooke of course loves to do. Brooke says it’s about endurance, which takes time to build—unless of course, you have someone like Sam around. If he were here, he could make Brooke corporeal and give her a body, because Sam’s a necromancer and he can do suave things like that. But he was out on a date so Brooke was stuck with me, and I am not suave.

  Sam figured out how to do enough mumbo-jumbo so that we could see Brooke, giving her a physical presence—which was fine in the house, but we were going into town, and that made things tricky. Brooke’s death had been pretty publicized, and there’s nothing like a dead girl walking the streets to get some attention. So no presence. Just me and my invisible friend. Which is probably for the best. I look like the kind of guy who’d have invisible friends.

  Brooke picked a car from the garage, which was like a mini-museum for classic cars. The kinds that most guys don’t get to touch until their mid-life crisis when they hock their retirement fund for one shiny, metal dream from their youth. And even then it’s only one, but Sam had so many everyone in the house could play bumper cars and we’d still have some left over. Brooke climbed into her favorite, a 1957 baby blue Karmann Ghia. Never mind the fact that every time I drove it I spent the whole trip in a panic-sweat. You try driving around a classic car that you don’t own and see if you have a different reaction.

  Not that Sam would do anything to me. Even if I crashed it he’d probably just shrug. No, I was afraid of the butler, James, and if you’d ever met him, you’d understand why. As if summoned by my thoughts, a black and white cat leaped onto the hood of the car. He sat down, tail flicking in irritation, his silver eyes at half-mast. I don’t speak cat, but I do speak James. Sort of. I’m learning. His manner said and what do you think you’re doing?

  “We’re going to get Ramon a present,” I said.

  “Do you want to come with us?” Brooke asked, ever the peacemaker. James jumped off the hood, and before I heard his paws hit the cement, he started to shift. There was a billow of smoke. Not “poof” like with magicians and escaping villains, but like the slow twist of cigarette smoke. A few seconds later and the cat was gone. In his place stood . . . oh good, a dragon. In this form he was closer in size to a medium weight dog.

  “You have three forms and you think that’s the one to wear to the video store?” Brooke asked, her tone so dry it crackled. She could get mouthy with James. What would he do to her? But I kept my mouth shut. James was a little scary.

  There was more smoke, and then he held his hand out for the keys. If he packs a lot of menace into his kitty form, he has even more as a human.

  “No way,” Brooke said, leaning against the dash. “If you wanna go, you better climb into the back.” I expected him to argue, but he just stared at Brooke for a minute, then walked around to her side and got in. Cats are naturally fussy, and James carried that into human form. He brushed some lint off his shoulder, pushed back the lock of black hair that had tumbled forward while he was adjusting everything, and then sat up straight and elegant. He caught me watching him in the rearview mirror and his eyebrows raised in a What? type expression. I knew better than to say anything, so I adjusted the mirror and kept my mouth shut.

  I buckled myself in, and Brooke did too, even though she didn’t need it. Her blue eyes were bright and shiny and her blond ponytail bobbed as she bounced excitedly in her seat.

  I couldn’t help but grin at her. “So, where are we going?”

  “Scarecrow Video. We need to get a proper present for Ramon when he gets home from the hospital. A welcome home gift.” She was very firm about the when part—there was no possibility of “if” for her. Her friend was coming home safe and that was that.

  I wish I had her faith.

  • • •

  Scarecrow Video is a local icon—two stories of movie geek wonderland. They had films so rare it took a five-hundred-dollar deposit just to take them out of the store. Everything was separated into sections. I’m not talking comedy, horror, and so on. What I mean is if you go in and ask for a Japanese zombie film, they will take you to that specific section. Sometimes they are organized by director, or country, or themes like awards or subjects. You practically need a degree in film just to find anything. Or the guts to approach one of the employees and expose your ignorance to the world.

  Especially if you were me. And especially if the employee was Maren.

  She was on shift when I walked in, and my pulse did that little fluttering skip I’ve come to associate with pretty girls. She was wearing boots today with a short tartan skirt held together with safety pins, her black tights the only nod to the outside temperatures. Her T-shirt was worn and faded, the words FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS almost unreadable. When I look at Maren, I sometimes think of the angry Japanese school-girls you see in Anime. She’s petite, she’s cute, and I’m pretty sure she could end me if she wanted too.

  She pushed her jagged-cut bangs to the side, her face set in a grimace of concentration as she tried to explain something to her coworker, Andy. Maren had added pink to the two inches of blue tipping the black strands of her hair. It made her contrast even more with Andy, who still dressed as he had in high school. Dapper, like someone out of a really expensive cologne commercial.

  Brooke leaned in and whispered in my ear. “If you were a cartoon
, there’d be little hearts above your head right now. Maybe even some sparrows.” I don’t know why she whispered it. No one could hear her but me. James, thankfully, had wandered off to look at a display. The last thing I wanted to do was give James even more ammunition for mockery. “You going to talk to her today?”

  I sighed but didn’t respond to her. Nothing quite like talking to yourself to make an impression.

  We ambled around the store, trying to decide what Ramon would want. I was staring at the cover of Incubus, a movie I thought he might appreciate because of its use of Esperanto and the inclusion of a very young William Shatner. At the very least it would be good for him to experience some classic film history. Or I could get him Mega Piranha. Black-and-white horror indie film or giant, poorly animated killer fish? I pondered the difficult choice until I felt someone bump me, hard, as they walked past. Out of reflex I looked up and saw the lean back of someone I knew well.

  Tyler.

  • • •

  Back in school we only had those little half lockers. They said it was to accommodate all the students, but I think it was to make it impossible to stuff people into them. I had mine open, looking for my AP English binder, when I heard someone pound their fist into the locker next to mine.

  I’d come to know that sound. Other kids like me, the rodents lurking at the bottom of the social food chain, all knew it for what it was: the death knell. Nature’s way of announcing a predator in your midst, like the roar of a tiger or the scream of the hawk in the cloudless sky. It was the predator’s way of getting you to run, to start the game.

  You flinch when you hear it.