by Eros, Marata
“What is it?” John said eyeballing it.
“I don't know.”
“I want to see,” Jonesy said, leaning forward, giving it an experimental whiff; then he made a barfing noise, running over to the bin labeled Compost and heaved his breakfast into it.
Ms. Rodriguez left the room, squealing in disgust.
“That solves it, definitely a food item,” John deduced.
From the well of the compost bin Jonesy echoed, “Banana!”
“Thanks for clearin' that up!”
John walked it over to the compost bin, giving it a proper burial.
“I'm going to the bathroom and rinse my mouth out,” Jonesy said.
“Please,” John said.
“Thanks for figuring that out. I'll sleep better tonight, now that the mystery is solved.”
Jonesy waggled his brows. “Look at how I got rid of Rodriguez, huh?”
That was true.
Jonesy walked out, John and I scooping out the remaining stuff.
John said, “How can anyone get three English texts in here? You should be using your pulse-text.”
“I just like holding the real book.”
“Three of them?”
John stacked them in his arms, placing them on the bookshelf. We hardly used textbooks, everything was pulse this and pulse that. On top were the dedicated pulse readers, all English.
Jonesy returned from the bathroom as we were leaving. “They're already playing baseball out in the field,”
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
All of us tore out of there like our asses were on fire.
***
My belly was full of hot dogs, chips, and chocolate milk. During the baseball game, Jonesy had got a homerun, but John had only made it to first base once, tripping on the way there. I had been busy staring at Jade and gotten nailed on the shin by a bad pitch. My leg was throbbing in a distracting way.
“Look what I got,” Jonesy said, holding up a loose fan of Blow Pops.
He looked like one of those magicians who pulled coins from behind people’s ears. I grabbed a grape-flavored one. Mom would have a turtle if she caught me with sugar. Sugar was evil.
I thought it tasted pretty good.
Jade grabbed sour apple. Disgusting, but that wasn’t a surprise since she did like licorice ice cream.
I glanced at Jade just as the sun slid behind a cloud, reducing the luster of her hair to shimmering black oil. She caught me looking at her and smiled.
Jonesy snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Snap out of it, Hart!”
I swatted his hand away. “What's the haunted plan tonight?
Jonesy smirked, “I think you can just show up and scare all the ghosts with that haircut your dad gave you.”
Jade gave me a sympathetic look.
I scrubbed a hand over the bristle and sighed. I narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know my dad gave me a haircut?” I asked.
Jonesy laughed. “Are you really asking that question? Your dad always gives you the haircut .”
“Is it that obvious?”
Everyone nodded.
I folded my arms across my chest, talking around the sucker. “I doubt my hair is going to be enough to scare anyone or anything.”
“Caleb's right, what's the plan? I noticed it's Friday the thirteenth and nothing's happened,” John said.
“The day's young,” Jonesy said, brandishing his half-eaten lollipop. “There's plenty of crap that can still happen.” He eyed us. “So I'm thinkin' we should meet around eight at the cemetery then weasel over to the shack about ten.”
John nodded. “Maybe bringing my LEDs would be good.”
Jonesy huffed. “No. How is it gonna be creepy if you're wrecking it with LEDs? Think, my man!”
“He's got a point,” I said.
“It seems safer, though,” Jade hesitantly added.
“What could go wrong?” Jonesy asked.
Jade gave him an astonished look. “Ah... everything.” She bit into her sucker to reach the gum.
John stopped chewing long enough to say, “The gum loses flavor fast.”
“Yeah,” Jade and Jonesy said at the same time.
Jonesy grinned. The gum fell out of his mouth and plopped on the ground. “Ah, damn .”
After they walked off, I asked Jade, “Why don't you pulse Andrea and see if you can come to my house for dinner?”
“Okay.” She pulled out her pulse and was done in seconds. “It's okay. But did ya ask your parents?”
“Nah, my mom won't care. She'll think it's a vacation from the Js.”
We walked to my house, our fingers entwined. I was really getting used to having her next to me. When we got to my place, we went straight to the kitchen. I did it out of habit, and Jade just followed.
Mom looked up from the stove. “Hi, Caleb. Oh... hi, Jade.”
“Hey, Alicia,” Jade said.
“Are you staying for supper?”
We both nodded, and I asked, “It's okay, right?”
“You bet. It'll be ready in,” she turned to the pulse-clock, synchronized to Greenwich Mean Time, “five-ish, okay?”
“Great, Mom. we're gonna go up to my room.”
“Door open, Caleb.”
Jade blushed, and I said, “Yeah, Mom.”
Holy crow.
“Oh!” Mom said. “How was your last day of school?”
“It was good. Jonesy got a home run.”
“Not surprising. He's pretty athletic, our Jonesy. Your dad will be home shortly.”
“Really?” That was different, Dad didn't usually get home until supper time.
“He knew it was your last day of school and thought it would be fun to play some ball or whatever.”
Jade said, “Ah, I've got some stuff to do, and then I can come back for dinner.”
“I didn't mean to chase you off, Jade,” Mom said.
She laughed. “I'm sure my aunt has something for me to do since I'm going out with friends tonight.”
“Oh?” Mom arched an eyebrow.
I jumped in. “Yeah, a group of us kids are going to explore and walk around.”
“Who?” Mom asked, hands on hips, eyes intense.
I shrugged, trying to be casual. “The Js and Tiff.”
“That tough girl from Scenic Cemetery?”
“Yeah, she's good to have around, Mom.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because she is AFTD too. It just makes things better if some weird stuff comes up.”
“Is there a plan for weird stuff?”
Uh-oh, this was getting close to lying. “No. But we didn't think anything bad was gonna happen at Scenic, and you know how that turned out.”
Mom looked thoughtful.
“Okay, who else?
“Sophie and Bry Weller,” Jade supplied.
“Who's he?” Mom asked.
“He's the older boy that was there,” I said.
Mom grimaced. “Oh. That was an unfortunate incident for him.” She shook her head.
Unfortunate incident didn't cover it.
“Is there some issue with everyone in that Weller family shortening their names?” Mom asked in her random way.
Jade said, “Tiff thinks her name sounds,” she paused, “too girlie .”
“What about the boy?”
“I don't know about him,” Jade admitted.
“Look at Jonesy. Why doesn't anyone call him Mark?”
We thought on that.
Finally, Mom said, “he doesn't seem like a Mark.”
Yeah, Mark was so wrong for him.
“Yet, he is clearly Mark,” I said.
“Okay, be back by around five, Jade. We're having pizza and salad.”
Salad? Disgusting. I'd drown it in ranch dressing.
Jade smiled. “I love salad.”
Jade and I hugged by the front door, and she sauntered off. I looked after her, torn between walking her home but not wanting to be freaky ov
erprotective.
Mom came up behind me. “You can't protect her all the time.”
I smiled. Mom has telepathy, but she's not a paranormal.
“I hate where she lives.”
“No, you hate who she lives near.”
That was mainly accurate. “That, too.”
I went to the bathroom to take a shower and wash off the layer of baseball grime with a chaser of sucker.
CHAPTER 30
Jade and I arrived at the cemetery a late. We were holding hands, with an occasional whack from Onyx's tail.
The whole group was there. Bikes were piled up beside the gate. It wasn't dark yet, but the sky had deepened to a polished azure—that color only summer could claim.
Tiff and Bry had on hoodies—the Weller uniform. My stomach clenched when I caught sight of him. Our last encounter had ended badly. He was John's height, but he had fifty pounds on my friend—definitely a jock. I swallowed nervously.
Onyx lowered his head, and I thought, It's okay, Onyx.
The Boy has put the good sounds in the Dog's head, but there was a nervousness that is not typical of the Boy. The Dog became watchful of the new people, a foreign pack.
The Dog approached the big male and sniffed his hand. Then, he moved his nose to the female. They were pack, but the others... not. He backed away cautiously, knowing he must maintain his rude eye contact when his Boy was nervous with the pack of two. The Dog understood when the big male looked away that the Dog was dominant.
That was good. The Dog wagged his tail.
“Doesn't seem like your dog likes me much, Hart,” Bry said.
“Nah. He’s just sizin’ ya up.”
Tiff gave me a little salute with her fingers. “Hey, Caleb.”
I nodded back at her. “Hey.”
Bry came over, and I tensed. Onyx omitted a soft growl.
“We're cool,” Bry said, giving me the guy clap on the back.
Everyone seemed to relax, including Onyx. Cool. I instinctively liked Bry for putting stuff to bed.
***
We hiked up a steep knoll, Jonesy in the lead and John, with his LED strapped to his side, following closely.
I caught Sophie glancing at Jonesy, but he didn’t seem to notice. She was taller than Jonesy—what a weird pair they'd make.
“Ya know, you didn't need to bring a murse with all your safe crap,” Jonesy announced, eying up John's satchel-thing.
“What's a murse?” Bry asked.
I chuckled. “A purse for dudes.”
“It doesn't look like a purse,” Bry said, staring at John’s bag.
Jonesy turned. “Listen, if it has a strap and hangs off your body, it's a purse.”
Bry laughed. “Jockstraps hang off your body.”
Everybody let loose on that one for a minute.
“Anyway,” Jonesy said, “John has the contingency crap in case something happens.”
“What's gonna happen?” Bry asked. “We're here to see some ghosts, right?”
“Well, ya see, it's Friday the thirteenth, and—” Jonesy began.
I waved him quiet. “You remember Scenic, right, Bry?”
“Unforgettable, my brother,” he said.
“Right, stuff like that.”
Sophie said, “It's okay. There aren't any of Caleb’s relatives here.”
“Like that's going to matter?” John smirked.
We all looked up at the cemetery. I put out my undead feelers. There were some old dead there. They called to me like a satellite come to orbit. My teeth hummed in response.
John had continued about twenty more feet. “Hey, Caleb,” he called, “how's your signal?”
“Fine, why?” The buzzing of the dead was a dull roar in my skull.
Suddenly, a wall rose in my brain, instantly silencing the dead. I looked up sharply at John. “You doin' the whammy on me?”
“I am,” John said, rocking back on his heels with a grin splitting his face.
I smiled, turning to Tiff. “Do ya feel that?”
“Not anymore,” she said.
I looked at Jade. “And you?”
“Wonderful silence. Nothing.”
“Let go of my hand and touch Tiff,” I told her.
Jade moved away and put her hand on Tiff’s. She shook her head.
Bry had gone around the base of the knoll, about twenty-five feet away.
“Hey Bry!” I shouted.
John scowled. “Sh! Don't be an idiot. Remember, radar.”
Bry said, “Yeah?”
“Jade's gonna come over there and see if she can get a read on you. We need to know how far John's whammy extends.”
“Ah... okay.”
I turned back to John, who was leaning against a crooked tombstone that glowed like a soft beacon in the dusk. “You still narrowed in on me?”
“Yeah.”
Jade walked over to Bry while I crushed a spark of jealousy.
She put a hand on his forearm. “I get something but...” She looked at John. “It's an echo of normal.”
Okay, so we were working with maybe fifty feet.
“Are you fully juicing us, John?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, almost though.”
“Give us all ya got,” I commanded.
John made a strained face. I could see him struggling, even in the low light. He settled on a point between where Jade and Bry stood, about halfway around the base of the knoll, a loose arc.
Jade touched Bry again. “Nothing this time.”
“Kill it John.”
“Yeah, don't keep all amped up, or we won't have any cool shit happen,” Jonesy said.
John visibly relaxed, and the white noise of the dead rushed back in like waves to the shore.
“I hear them a lot,” Tiff said.
“Yeah, kinda hard to miss that whole group at the top of the hill,” I said.
Tiff rolled her eyes. Jade joined us with Bry.
“Let's do it,” I said.
I half pulled Jade up behind me as we laughed and talked about the baseball game.
“Jonesy got that last home run, right?” Sophie remarked.
I nodded. “Yeah, he did.”
“Brett got one, too,” Jade said.
“He'd be a really good athlete if he wasn't such an ass,” John said.
“Yeah, that’s too bad,” Jade said.
“Come on,” I said. “Don't feel sorry for him. Look at what just happened at the hideout. I'll tell ya something. If either one of those jerks comes near you, they'll get a reckoning.” I wasn't doing forty pushes before bed for nothing.
Jonesy said, “Yeah, I'm itching to get old pyro and Brett. That would be great!”
We took a rest at the top. Cars whizzed by on Highway 167, creating constant noise. At least there wasn't that horrible auto smell anymore that my parents had described from when they were young. We were surrounded by a bunch of buildings with just a small oasis of trees adjacent to the graveyard, which looked untended.
Bry said, “My grandparents used to come here to make out.”
Sophie gasped. “Are you kidding? They told you that?”
“Yeah, they've been married forever and thought they could just, ya know, talk about everything.”
“Wow, awkwardness,” Jade said.
“Not a lot of privacy,” I remarked, looking around.
“It was different back then. There was just the highway down there”—Bry jerked his head in the direction of the cars moving on the ribbon of concrete—“And nothing was here but those houses up by Panther Lake. Small neighborhoods, nothing more, from the 1960s and a few farmhouses.”
I tried to envision the Kent of sixty or seventy years ago. It didn't seem real. We moved into the center of the cemetery. I looked at the tombstones, seeing that many of the etchings had worn away with only a few letters left.
Jade bent over to study one. Her hair swept forward, leaving her pert nose the only thing visible from the side. “Why is this one
speckled?” she asked, running her hand over the polished surface. She pressed a finger into a corner divot, worn smooth from many seasons of weather.
Some of the speckles seemed to sparkle in the pale light. Nearby were similar tombstones with that speckled look. Small flecks caught the light, seeming to wink back at us.
Night had descended, a velvet glove encasing our group while the moonlight speared through the trees, caressing a stone marker here and there and illuminating the areas between.
“I think it's granite,” I said.
“No. I’m pretty sure those are marble,” John said.
I shook my head. “No, the all-white ones are marble. My dad told me these were granite.”
“He gives you the graveyard know-how?” Jonesy asked.
I laughed. “No, he knows some stuff about geology.”
“I didn't think your dad did rocks and stuff,” John said. “I thought your dad was bio-chemistry.”
“He is. But he had to study all kinds of sciences. I remember he told me once that they don't use granite like this as much anymore. They're using that recycled glass stuff now, ya know, the stuff that looks like quartz.”
“It's pretty,” Jade said.
I thought so too, but I wouldn’t say out loud.
“Moving on. Let's blow this Popsicle stand.” Jonesy walked toward the shack.
We made our way carefully through the long, hay-like grass where the markers appeared to be stranded, drowning. Onyx's black tail appeared like a shark's fin in the ocean of yellow.
“Good thing it's a full moon, not a lot of need for the LED's,” John said, slapping the one bouncing at his hip.
Jonesy, quite a ways ahead, said, “It adds to the vibe-of-creep I've been trying to establish, boys and girls!”
Tiff gave Jonesy a good natured middle-finger salute.
Without even breaking stride, he said, “I saw that!”
Sophie giggled. Bry rammed his knee right into the corner of a tombstone and swore.
“Pull up your boxer briefs, bro,” Tiff said.
“Put a cork in it,” Bry replied, limping away.
A broken fence marked one side of the cemetery, the slats crooked and standing up like swords. My sense of foreboding increased.
Jade whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Great.
“We picked the place for the scare factor.” I looked around; I wasn't getting caught with my shorts down.
