“You can put me down now.”
He did. I stood upright, the effects of the salt chamber having now abated.
“Man, that was horrible in there. I thought I was going to croak.”
“And here I thought you already had,” said Darby.
“Ha-ha. I mean it. It felt like I was dying all over again. Is that how you ‘kill’ a ghost?”
“No,” said Cole. “We’re already dead, so we can’t die. From what we’ve learned, you can go into a prolonged sort of stasis, kind of like a coma, I guess, but you won’t die. That’s why we decided to pull this little stunt to get Miss Torvous in there.”
“And keep her in there,” said Zipperhead.
“At least until we can find out what to do about her freaking out,” said Cole.
“Well, thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. It was nothing,” he answered.
His face was flushing and he was getting all aw, shucks on me. I looked at Darby.
“Thanks. You risked your butt for me. I appreciate it.”
She wasn’t used to being thanked, or to anyone being nice to her at all, for that matter. So she mumbled, “Um, no sweat … You’re, uh … welcome.”
I smiled at her and she was about to smile but looked away, uncomfortable showing any emotion except for ballistic anger.
We went upstairs and though we swore our core group—me, Cole, Darby, Dougie, Cameron, Zipperhead, and Lucy—to secrecy, a girl who called herself Zen (death by hanging, but she swore it wasn’t suicide) had ventured down into the subbasement and gotten an earful from prisoner Torvous before she passed out. Zen spread the news and now Middle House was party central. Without Miss Torvous to keep everyone reined in, none of the usual protocols or schedules were adhered to.
Anarchy and chaos sound fun conceptually, but when put into practice, a house without rules can quickly degenerate into pandemonium and become a loony bin that makes you want to pull your hair out. Kids ate whenever they wanted, hardly anyone made their beds or picked up after themselves, and the place quickly became a jumble. Within hours, the kitchen and dining hall were disaster areas and kids squabbled about who was to blame and who should be doing what.
Every ghost in Middle House had their own unique power, their own way to inflict bodily harm or at least terrorize, so when fights broke out, it was time to dive for cover. A petite girl named Joanne (death by being pushed in front of a subway train) had telekinetic powers and she got into it with Lawrence (beaten to death with a baseball bat). Lawrence could conjure at will any earsplitting sound he chose, and between the dishes and furniture flying across the room and smashing into the walls and Lawrence’s cacophony of shrieks and roars and bomb blasts, the whole thing was becoming unbearable. Middle House was coming apart at the seams.
Cole managed to intercede, halting that fracas, but other altercations and squabbles broke out. It looked like it was only a matter of time before our happy home would implode under the weight of its own bedlam.
Cole and Darby patrolled the hallways, trying to restore order with only minimal success. Who wants to follow rules when the one cardinal rule—thou shalt not kill—was the one broken that got you here in the first place? I understood why a mob of murdered kids would want to blow off steam. Hell, I wanted to join them, maybe burn the damn place down. But then where would I be?
The chaos came to a screeching halt when a relentless pounding sound echoed through Middle House. It gradually dawned on everyone that it was someone—a real, live human being, no doubt—knocking steadily on the front door. The place fell into a quiet so deep we could hear each other breathe. Cole and I and the others rushed to the front door and peeked out. Two people were standing on the front porch, doing their best to peer in through the windows past the drawn blinds.
Cole identified them immediately. They were Mr. and Mrs. Reiner, the frumpy middle-aged neighbors. Mr. Reiner was short and stocky with a paunch and wore a sunshade hat and horn-rimmed glasses. Mrs. Reiner, though pudgy pretty in the face, had a very large butt.
“Hello?” said Mr. Reiner.
“It sure got quiet all of a sudden,” said Mrs. Reiner.
Her hands fidgeted around like two small birds trying to find a place to land.
“Maybe we should call the police,” she said.
“Susan, don’t be an idiot. She pays me well to tend the grounds. I don’t want to mess that up.”
“When’s the last time she paid you?”
Mrs. Reiner pounded on the door zealously. WHAM! WHAM!
“Been a couple of months, anyway,” said Mrs. Reiner.
“That woman is so odd and the sounds that come from this place … Honestly, I don’t know what she could be doing here, all alone like this. I’m not moving from this spot until she comes to the door and you get paid, AND we get a satisfactory explanation for all the noise,” said Susan. WHAM!
“She’s just … eccentric,” said Mr. Reiner.
Cole and I exchanged a look. I stared down at the door. It had a slot mailbox, the kind the mailman could drop things through, or someone could deliver something out. Mr. Reiner knocked on the door. Mrs. Reiner pounded on it. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
“Mrs. Eddingham?”
Aha. That was Miss Torvous’s “front” name? The one she used to dupe the living? Cole grabbed me by my arm and, after motioning to Darby and the gang, whisked me down the hall to Miss Torvous’s room. We began searching. Did she keep cash somewhere?
We looked in her old rolltop desk and found utility bills and letters and a diary written in what appeared to be hieroglyphics. Zipperhead bounced on her bed. Darby yelled at him.
“Knock it off!”
“What’s the point? We’re gonna get found out and booted outta this joint and I’m never gonna find my killer. I know that for sure. I can feel it in my scars.”
Zipperhead looked scared, so I went and helped him off the bed.
“Um, you’re not really helping. Just … chill. It’s going to be okay.”
His jumping had dislodged a framed picture—the corner of which now stuck out from underneath the pillow on the side of the bed next to where Miss Torvous slept. I lifted up the pillow and saw a faded image of a girl with long brown hair. I was about to take a closer look when Cole’s voice snapped my head around.
“I got it!”
He’d found a large, thick book, the center of which had been cut out and held cash. Lots of it.
“How much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s thousands there.”
“I mean, how much do we pay him?”
“Oh, well, he said he tends the grounds. A few hundred should do it, I think.”
Cole grabbed the bills and we raced back to the front door.
“Mrs. Eddingham? It’s imperative that we speak with you,” said Susan Reiner, pounding yet again on the door.
I lifted up the slot and Cole slid out five one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Oh. My. Well, here we go,” said Mr. Reiner, clearly delighted. “That’s very kind of you. I appreciate the advance. I’ll see you next month, then.”
Eager to keep the dough and skedaddle, Mr. Reiner pulled his cranky wife along behind him and they departed. We watched as they walked up the long driveway, Mrs. Reiner glancing back skeptically. We’d held the fort, kept the land of the living at bay—for now. I wondered how long we could hold out without Miss Torvous.
CHAOS
That night, dinner was a glum affair. Everyone knew we were on shaky ground. Darby and Cameron assembled a passable meal of cheeseburgers, fries, and coleslaw with ketchup. Zipperhead had taken my words to heart and was doing his best to chat up a girl or two, without much luck. But he kept on going, from one to another. Eventually, I thought, he’d find someone who would see his inner cool.
After dinner, Cole and Dougie and I cleaned up the kitchen. There were only a few miscreants up for battle now, as our future seemed tenuous and uncertain. With Miss Torvous in a sa
lt coma in the basement, we lacked structure and discipline. Kids meandered around, eating and sleeping when they felt like it. Any semblance of a schedule had been tossed out the window. I sat in my room with Lucy for a bit but couldn’t relax. I had to get up and move around. I looked for Cole. He wasn’t in his room, so I went up to the roof.
It was a clear, cool night. He was by himself.
“Can I hang with you?”
“I was hoping you’d come up.”
I sat next to him. Time passed as we listened to night sounds: the crickets, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. After a while I opened up. I told him about going to see Andy and about how trying to connect with him had resulted in a near tragedy.
“I’m lost. Completely and utterly lost,” I said.
“It won’t last,” he said.
He was trying to comfort me. It wasn’t working.
“But I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll find your killer. That’s what we’ll do.”
“But what about Andy?”
Cole looked away from me into the night sky. He found a star he liked and fixated on it. After a moment, he spoke slowly and evenly.
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“You might not like it.”
“Try me.”
“You have to get Andy to fall in love with someone else.”
His assessment had been correct. I didn’t like it. In fact, I frickin’ hated it. Anger boiled up inside and I was concocting a string of expletives, a real scathing diatribe, but I couldn’t very well explode, because when I asked my heart of hearts what I should do, I knew Cole was right. Setting Andy free was the right thing to do.
“Still speaking to me?” asked Cole.
“Yeah. It’s just…”
“It sucks.”
“Yeah. A little hard to process. But you’re right.”
My life, or rather my death, had become much more complicated. I had to find my killer and bring him or her to justice before I could move on. But now the clock was ticking. I had to somehow fix Andy before he did something stupid. Nothing else mattered except making sure Andy let go of me. Because if anything happened to Andy, even if I did find my killer and made him or her pay, it wouldn’t matter, because all I’d want to do is find the deepest hole in hell and crawl into it forever. Time was not on my side.
I had to go back to school.
Cole, Darby, and the gang came with me. It was a Friday night, and under the lights at Mustang Stadium, our football team was clashing with crosstown rivals, the point of which seemed to be to inflict as much pain on each other as humanly possible. I began to wonder. What did it mean to be human? I thought I’d known when I was alive. Now that I was dead, I wasn’t so sure. It had to be more than shit happens and then you die. What was our purpose? Was it really to get as much stuff and have as much fun as you could before you croaked? I had no answers but plenty of questions. Being dead was allowing me a lot of time for introspection. Ironic, pondering how one should live their life after they’re dead.
The plan was to get Andy to fall for some other girl. I was sure the task would be herculean, if not downright impossible. But maybe that was just my ego talking. Why wouldn’t he eventually move on? What was so special about me? Other than the fact he loved me with every beat of his heart and almost killed himself in order to join me in death. I flashed back to our first date together.
We were cruising the mall at Northgate after seeing a movie. I pointed out a killer indigo shirt in an upscale store and begged Andy to try it on. He did, and it looked great on him. But once he saw the price, he wouldn’t buy it. I made sure he left it in the changing room, then herded him to the food court. I said I had to go to the bathroom while he got us some tacos. I went back to the store, acted like I was trying something on, then slipped the indigo shirt in my purse. I was so smart I even asked for a store bag on the way out. When I gave him the shirt, his eyes lit up but then he looked conflicted and I always wondered if he thought I’d stolen it. I justified the theft in my mind by telling myself I was doing whatever it took to keep him, to make him happy. Remembering this forced me to peel away another layer. I was pretty far from being the good girl I’d once imagined myself to be.
“Do you see him?” Cole asked.
I’d zoned out thinking about Andy, going further down memory lane than I’d intended.
“Um, not yet,” I said.
I started scanning the stands, taking in all those bright young faces, kids doing their best to act too cool to be there, too cool for school, too cool to be alive. If only they knew. I wanted to rush up to the ones I knew and scream in their faces. Wake up! This life you have is precious! Don’t waste any of it! I remembered Granddad saying that youth was wasted on the young. Now I understood what he meant. Boy, did I ever. I had a ton of regrets and I was only sixteen years old. I wished I could go back and live my life over again. But that wasn’t going to happen. The best I could hope for, it seemed, was to do better next time around. If there even was another time around.
I found him in the stands. He was sitting all alone up in the back row—where we used to sit—and he looked miserable. A couple of guys approached him with beers under their jackets and offered him one, but he shrugged them off. They let him be and swaggered away.
“He’s up there,” I said, and started to climb the stairs. I could have flown up, but for a few moments I wanted to feel like I used to, being alive, just kickin’ it at a football game.
Cole and the others were bird-dogging me, floating above, waiting and watching to see what I did. Before I reached the top of the stairs, Andy got up and headed for the upper deck to the snack bar and bathrooms. I followed him. He went into the boys’ bathroom. I stayed outside. Sure, I could have gone in after him and no one would have seen me, but I’d never wanted to slip into the boys’ bathroom when I was living, and didn’t want to now. That was totally a guy’s fantasy, being invisible and traipsing around the bathrooms or girls’ locker rooms or whatever.
Three girls emerged from the bathroom. Andrea Johnson, Tabitha Welsch, and Carly Hockney. Out of the three of them, I thought Andrea was the most likely candidate to become Andy bait. I’d once seen her and Andy kicking a soccer ball back and forth, some serious foot flirting going on. But then again, that was back in third grade, so I wasn’t sure there was still much of a connection between the two of them. But who knew? Maybe she was deeply embedded in Andy’s brain as a future girlfriend.
As I was pondering this, Cole floated down and landed next to me.
“Cute,” he said. Referring to the girls. Truth be told, they were all pretty. I had no idea why it bothered me that Cole was thinking these girls were attractive. I told myself he could have all three of them for all I cared. I was really good at lying to myself.
It was hard for me to imagine Andy falling for any of these girls, but I guess we had to start somewhere. I had no idea what to do or how to begin.
“Um, okay, cute is cute, so … just exactly what am I supposed to do here?”
I knew I sounded like a whiner but I didn’t care. I hated the whole game plan. I was going to be a rat bitch and I knew it.
“How about you don’t stress out and just watch,” said Cole. “I have an idea.”
It was halftime and the snack bar deck was starting to fill up, getting jammed with kids giggling and poking and wolfing down junk food while they scoped out the competition. Cole rose up and zipped above some girl, singling her out. My eyes were on him, not her, and then Andy was coming out of the bathroom. Cole pulled the girl’s scarf from her neck without her noticing. He dropped it to the floor. Andy bent down and picked it up.
“Hey,” he said to the girl. “You dropped this.”
The girl turned around. It was Dani.
SEDUCTION
As she gazed up at my boyfriend, her eyes shined with gratitude. I wondered just exactly how you could kill a ghost, because that’s what I wanted to
do to Cole right now as he floated down next to me. He saw the malice in my eyes.
“Easy. Take it easy. I know it’s going to be hard.”
But he didn’t know. He had no freakin’ idea how hard it was watching Dani flutter her eyelids and move her body, sending unmistakable signals to Andy. I’m yours if you want me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. The nonverbal communication was what counted here, and Dani was making short work of him, consoling him now with another gentle hug. She hooked her arm through his and tried to get him to walk with her. But he shook his head. He wasn’t ready yet. Good! I thought.
Spurned and hurt, she turned away from him and headed for the grandstands. Darby was waiting for her there and deftly spilled a drink on the metal stairs. Dani slipped and fell. And screamed.
I watched Andy rush down to help her. He didn’t just lean over and console her—no, he had to go and scoop her up into his arms! She leaned her head on his chest. Her hero.
He carried her out to our spot and sat her down and examined her ankle. She winced in pain. I flew over and could see that she was fine but was milking the moment for all it was worth.
“Does it hurt?” said Andy.
Hell yes, it hurts, I thought.
“A little,” said Dani. “It feels better when you touch it.”
Andy blushed. The scene was making me nauseous. She was such a little pro. I felt myself being yanked backward. It was Darby.
“Come on—you’re not doing yourself any favors getting your panties in a bunch being so close like this,” she said.
Darby was strong—she had to be to pull me away, because Andy was like a giant magnet to me—and she dragged me up to join the pack on the stadium roof. We had a ringside seat for the little play unfolding before us. I would call it The Seduction, starring Dani and my very own beloved Andy.
“I gotta give her props. She is good,” said Zipperhead.
“What the hell would you know about it?” said Cameron. “You never even reached puberty.”
“You don’t need puberty to fall in love,” said Zipperhead.
Bad Girl Gone Page 13
