Deadgirl

by B. C. Johnson

  Deadgirl

  B.C. Johnson

  This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser only. It cannot be sold, shared, transferred, or given away.

  Published by Cool Well Press, Inc.

  270 Bellevue Avenue, 334

  Newport, RI 02840

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for reviews. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet, without the publisher's permission and is a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.

  Deadgirl

  Copyright © 2012 by B.C. Johnson

  ISBN: 978-1-61877-114-8

  Editor — Craig Dunn

  Cover Artist — DarkAshe Graphics

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America

  First electronic publication: April 2012 by Cool Well Press, Inc.

  www.coolwellpress.com

  Dedication

  For my parents, Mike and Robin, for telling me it can be done,

  For my brothers, Bill and Tom, for reminding me why,

  And for my love, Gina, for, well, everything.

  Prologue

  Dead

  My pulse pounded in my head, and I ran like my legs would fall off. The throbbing sound of the blood in my ears drowned out everything else, including the high, trapped animal screams I only vaguely recognized as my own. It blotted out the heavy footsteps of the man behind me, chasing me, catching me.

  I wasn’t going to outrun him—I knew that before I even took my first step. But I could fight him less than I could flee, and my body said to bail. I listened.

  The wind whipped at my hair. Long strings of sweat-soaked black hit me in my eyes, my gasping mouth. I wished I’d put the whole damn mess up in a ponytail, but then again, I’d been trying to look cute, and ponytails weren’t cute. If you were at the gym, or bouncing on top of a cheerleader pyramid, maybe. Going out with your dream guy on your very first date? Hair down. Its pedestrian straightness curled into spiraling locks that fell to my shoulders, my lashes so long you could land planes on them, my wide eyes—my best asset—emphasized by exotic…expensive…eyeliner. Cute top, cute jacket, cute skirt. Boots, because he loves them. I know, I asked his friend. Well, my friend. Our friend.

  The boots helped, I realized, as my legs pumped fire. Sneakers would have been better, but in what universe was I out on a date wearing sneakers? No universe I wanted to live in.

  I sucked in a breath. Not funny.

  But the boots beat sandals or strappy heels or something equally less-supportive. Not that my dad would have let me out of the house with strappy heels. Still, that hadn’t stopped me from tucking them in my backpack and trading out my Nikes on numerous occasions.

  Why couldn’t my head shut up? I shushed the voices telling me about shoe-choice and focused in.

  I ran through a dark parking lot next to a closed-down office building, crunching asphalt under my Maddens. The chill wind tore at my jacket. I would have abandoned it if I’d had the chance—I felt like I was wearing a parachute. Not good for wind resistance. It only reminded me how stupid Batman had to be streaking into battle with a blanket tacked to his shoulders.

  Shut up!

  I shook my head, trying to clear the crap that kept threatening to break my attention. Why now, in my final moments, couldn’t I stop thinking about junk? Why couldn’t I just focus, once, on what mattered?

  I’d run the wrong way, I knew that already. When the guy and his buddies had accosted me, I just ran away from them. It was my natural instinct. Forget that the Set and the rest of civilization were on the other side of those jerks, forget that running away meant running into dead parking lots. My brain had screamed for me to book it, and I’d booked it like a champ. In the wrong effing direction.

  Why couldn’t I say the f-word, even in my brain? Another problem to sort out.

  When my hands slapped into chain link fence, I knew I was toast. I wasn’t paying attention and the alley behind the office building only lead to the freeway.

  A few cars passed as I stared out into the blackness. The urban-ocean sound of the freeway lulled me into a weird stupor. I touched my head to the chain link fence and felt the cool diamond-shaped wire pressing into my overheated skin.

  My pulse slowed, and I heard footsteps.

  I was trapped.

  To hell with it.

  I spun around, my fists balled white. The fastest one, the tall skinny one with the spiked hair, had caught up to me. It was cold, but he had the white tank-top and loose jeans you’d expect someone in his profession to wear. He took a few more steps toward me and stopped. His muscles stood out, tense against his skin—he was ready to spring if I tried to run past him. Not that I would.

  His buddies were catching up—three of them were visible, chugging along to get to us. I took a perverse glee in seeing that the big fat one, the one that had called me a hoochie wasn’t even in sight.

  “What’s a matter?” the spiky haired guy asked. I smiled grimly when I heard how out-of-breath he was.

  “Give you a chase?” I asked. I didn’t feel witty or vivacious. I felt helpless and terrified. Something in my tone must have fooled him, though, because he stood up straight in alarm and took a step back.

  I don’t think I was playing by the script anymore.

  To hell with the script. I wasn’t going to die like a chump, especially not while looking cute. I took a step forward, and he stepped back again. I gave him a triumphant smile. It didn’t last long. His friends arrived and made a line to block me in.

  One of the guys, short, bald, and sporting a shark’s smile, took a step into the yellow pool of a dimming parking lot light.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. I wondered if there was a creep phrasebook or something. “Why you trying to run?”

  “Not trying,” I said, but it didn’t stop me from taking a step back. I was shaking now, “Doing.”

  “Got nowhere to run now, hmm?”

  I didn’t. I said nothing, my lips tight.

  “We just wanted to talk.”

  I spat at him. It didn’t go the distance.

  “Just looking for a date,” one of the guys said quietly in the background. Real tough-guy type I guessed.

  I tried not to shake, tried not to show anything but what I hoped was grim determination. I didn’t even have a purse to swing at them—I had only a rarely-attended one-month women’s empowerment self-defense course to fall back on. My dad’s idea. I’d rolled my eyes and called him paranoid. I’m an idiot.

  Still, I’d need a couple more black belts in a few more martial arts—and a baseball bat—to fight four guys. Five. No good. I could see fatty chugging up behind them now. It looked like he was about to die from exhaustion, so I guess that’s an upside.

  They said some more things, none of them pleasant. They closed in on me, and I backed up against the fence. I swore to God, right then and there, that those guys were going home a few valuable pounds lighter. I balled my fists even tighter—I dropped into the only fighting stance I could remember. It was half self-defense course, half-Pink Ranger, but it was all I ha
d.

  Then the bald guy pulled something shiny and silver from his jacket, and my heart stopped.

  I’d seen them enough on TV, and I’d taken my dad’s to the gun range before. It was a revolver, a snub-nosed little thing that despite its pathetic look…oh no.

  My eyes flooded with tears and my gut sank. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t feel strong anymore, I didn’t feel anything. My hands trembled.

  “Just stay cool, and don’t scream, okay?”

  The little bald guy sounded really reasonable now. Like a doctor saying that the stitches won’t hurt. I wanted to tear his little face off. He took another step forward, then another. Some of the guys behind him looked eager—some looked queasy.

  “Nobody’s gonna die, okay?”

  He took another step forward and grabbed at my jacket. I pulled away, slapping at his hand.

  “Hey!” He held the gun up and wiggled it in the yellow light. “Hey, now.”

  When he stepped close enough for me to taste his breath, I snapped. My body moved without my brain—I grabbed the wrist with the gun and swung it away from me.

  My other hand hit him in the throat while my knee came up between his legs with a dull thud. I moved like a machine—my eyes shot wide open as Baldy fell to the ground.

  The arm with the gun swung around—I grabbed it again with both hands as Baldy sank to his knees.

  We struggled.

  An explosion blossomed out from the gun, deafening me, making my eyes water. I tasted smoke.

  Baldy’s creep friends ran forward, horror in their eyes as they dragged him away. Their bravado evaporated, and they were screaming. Baldy shrieked in confusion and what I hoped was pain as they carried him away.

  Good…little punks.

  But I felt so weird all of a sudden. My thoughts couldn’t focus. My eyes began to blur. I sat down on the asphalt. Baldy had dropped the gun, I realized. Dropped it after it had gone off. It glittered, a cold yellow crescent of metal against the black ground.

  I touched my stomach. My hands felt warm then, too warm, even as a chill ran through me.

  What was…?

  I stared up at the sky then, without warning, looking at the lack of stars, staring into the hazy gray expanse of a light-polluted night in the city. The yellow sun of the parking lot light was the only point in the smoke-colored sky.

  My eyes didn’t close, not like I thought they would. Everything just turned grey, as if a slow fog had swept over the parking lot of Brookes National Bank and Trust. As if the nothing-grey of the corrupted sky had swollen and blotted out the whole of existence.

  And as it did, I knew what was happening. Right then, I finally understood.

  But I was so happy…

  It wasn’t fair…

  …what did I do wrong?

  ...nothing. I did nothing wrong…

  No…

  NO!

  …this isn’t happening.

  Chapter One

  Two Days ’til

  The sound of the bell ringing was audible candy. It was an ear massage. No—noise-joy. It made every muscle in my body go slack. My brain went first—it actually seemed to sigh as it let go of the math problem it had been grappling with. Goodbye, my friend. Adieu, fair Geometry. Peace out, punk.

  I hopped out of my chair, one-shouldered my backpack, and jetted for the door. There wasn’t anyone I particularly liked in sixth period anyway. It was math—somewhere I slacked too far behind for my smart friends and excelled just too much for my…less smart friends.

  In regards to math, I am the missing link of geometry. Euclid’s Sasquatch, they should call me. They don’t, though, because that’s a terrible nickname, and I wouldn’t answer to it.

  As soon as I shot out of the door, the sun slapped me in the face. It was like emerging from a cave, in more ways than one. My skin yearned for the sunlight, sucked it up as it banished the clinging boredom. I felt everything one should feel when escaping math.

  Then I felt someone crashing into me and hurling me to the ground.

  I hit the concrete hard on my side, and pain shot through my hip and elbow. It took me a second to get my bearings. I was rarely tackled, and even less so outside of Geometry.

  I looked up from the ground to see what I wish I hadn’t expected. Wanda, lying beside me, in a pile of goldenrod fliers. They fluttered around her in the gentle breeze, like tiny yellow birds trying to take flight. I clambered to my knees and helped her gather them up.

  “I’m so—” Wanda said, but stopped when she turned to look at me, “Lu! Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t even looking.”

  She shook her head, sending her short spray of strawberry blonde hair dancing around her face. Wanda wasn’t pretty. She could be cute, with a makeover, maybe. Her face was too long, her hair too short, her body too skinny. Maybe it was her way of being that ruined everything—always cringing, always apologizing.

  Still, she’d been at least a third-tier friend since both of us could read, and we’d been through a lot together. She wasn’t my coolest friend, but glass houses, you know?

  “Wanda, calm down,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll make it.”

  We went to work scooping up the explosion of fliers. When we’d shuffled them into two neat stacks, I handed my stack to her and re-shouldered my backpack. Wanda looked even more nervous than usual, I noticed. Better try to trick her into telling me. She wasn’t famous for divulging.

  I pointed at the stack of fliers in her hands.

  “Winter Formal?”

  The flier advertised Winter Formal in a fruity, almost gothic font. Two tiny clip-art dancers wheeled underneath the text. After the dancers, standing out in quotes, were the words, “Under the Stars.”

  “Yeah,” Wanda said. She tucked a crescent of hair behind her ear, which immediately fell back out of place, “It’s coming up, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “There isn’t a date on the flier, honey.”

  Wanda deflated. I felt like a rat for pointing it out, but it was better than being embarrassed later. Wanda needed group humiliation like I needed five pages of grammar homework.

  “Oh crap,” Wanda said. “Oh crap!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Crap, Lu, I’m such a freak. I forgot the date.”

  “Can’t you just go back and redo it?”

  “Not today,” she said, “The ASB room is closed already. I was supposed to get these up yesterday, but I just spaced. I’m such a freak.”

  Wanda looked at the stack of fliers like they’d betrayed her.

  “What about Kinkos or something?”

  “I don’t have the file. And I’m outta cash.”

  “Let me see one?” I asked.

  Wanda muttered something and handed me one of them.

  “Hey, you know,” I said. “There’s kind of a space under the dancers but before the theme. If we space it out right on my printer at home, we can just open a new document, put the date in the right spot on an empty document, and use the fliers you already have as paper.”

  Wanda brightened up, and she smiled up at me through her hang-dog expression. I remembered why I liked Wanda. She could be a sourpuss sometimes, but her joy was clean and contagious. I grinned back at her.

  “You think it’ll work, Luce?”

  “I really do,” I said. “Just come over anytime tonight.”

  “You’re not on...a date or anything?”

  Wanda always assumed I was some kind of social goddess, just by contrast with her own life. Though flattering sometimes, mostly it annoyed the crap out of me because it wasn’t even close to true. I thought of Zack, then I made a point not to.

  “No,” I said. I don’t think I hid the annoyance in my voice very well. “Just come over whenever, okay?”

  “Sure, sure,” Wanda said. She wasn’t pushing it, which told me she’d noticed my tone.


  I wanted to apologize, but I was thinking of Zack now, which is my anti-purpose.

  “Okay, see you later.”

  I turned and walked away. What a bitch I am.

  It was turning cold, something I relished. Atlanta High, typical of Southern California high schools, was an open-air campus, with only the occasional awning acting as a hallway between classrooms. Some people hated it—they’d seen too many high school movies with rows of lockers filling a crowded hallway. We didn’t even have lockers. I guess having a locker meant every kid would keep grenades in there or something.

  That’s fine, I thought, tugging my backpack up higher. I’ll just charge my back problems to the State of California.

  I walked across the little blacktop courtyard in the middle of the math wing and headed towards the parking lot. A gate near the gym emptied out into the massive parking lot. I joined the flood of humanity eking through a break in the chain link fence. I didn’t see anyone I knew—just a few school faces. People I’d been familiar with for years, but never actually spoken to. I’m sure they felt the same way about me.

  My mom’s car, an electric green Honda hatchback I affectionately referred to as the Goblin mobile, wasn’t parked far away. I walked up to the passenger side and rapped my fist on the window. I couldn’t see her face from my angle, but she waved a hand at me. She knew the drill.

  I set my backpack on the roof and leaned against the door. My hands slid into the pockets of my jeans. The cold was wonderful, but the wind still froze my hands into icicles. I wondered what it must be like to live in a place that snowed—I loved the cold, but if a California winter made me chill, I imagine I’m too big of a wuss to live anywhere else.

  “Hey, Luce!”

  I snapped my head around. Morgan appeared from the human exhaust valve that was the gym gate—I still had trouble swallowing the clump of hatred that popped up whenever I first saw her. I think I’m cute—not to blow my own horn. I have exotic-looking eyes, a good face, and an average body. But I’m arguably pretty, and certainly not what anyone would call hot.