Living Dead Girl

by Elizabeth Scott

  PRAISE FOR LIVING DEAD GIRL

  “Disturbing but fascinating, the book exerts an inescapable grip on readers.”

  —PW, starred review

  “Searing and heartbreaking.”

  —BCCB, starred review

  “Scott gives the phrase ‘emotionally wrenching’ a whole new meaning in this searing book.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “Scott’s spare language … is powerful, gripping, and heart-wrenching. The final page will leave you stunned.”

  —TeenReads.com

  “Scott’s novel is repellent in exact proportion to the brilliance of its execution.”

  —Horn Book

  “Some books are read and put away. Others demand to be talked about. Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl will be talked about.”

  —Ellen Hopkins, New York Times bestselling author of Crank

  “Most authors want to hear ‘I couldn’t put it down’ from their fans. Living Dead Girl is a book you have to put down; then you have to pick it right back up. The beauty of this story is that, though none of its readers will have had this experience, all will feel connected to it.”

  —Chris Crutcher, author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes and Deadline

  “A haunting story of an abducted girl you’ll be desperate and helpless to save; her captor so disturbing, so menacing, you’ll want to claw the pages from this book and shred them.”

  —Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of Wake and Fade

  A 2009 ALA BEST BOOK FOR YOUNG ADULTS A 2009 ALA QUICK PICK FOR RELUCTANT READERS A 2009 ALA TEENS’ TOP TEN NOMINEE A 2009 AMELIA BLOOMER PROJECT YOUNG ADULT FICTION PICK A 2009 NYPL STUFF FOR THE TEEN AGE SELECTION A 2008 BCCB BLUE RIBBON AWARD WINNER A 2008 VOYA EDITOR’S CHOICE FOR TEENS A 2008 ABC BEST BOOKS FOR CHILDREN TEEN SELECTION A TEENREADS.COM BEST BOOK OF 2008

  Also by ELIZABETH SCOTT

  Bloom

  Perfect You

  Something, Maybe

  living dead girl

  ELIZABETH SCOTT

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse paperback edition September 2009

  Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Spencer

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in a Simon Pulse hardcover edition.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Designed by Mike Rosamilia

  The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Control Number 2007943736

  ISBN: 978-1-4169-6059-1 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4169-6060-7 (pbk)

  eISBN 13: 978-1-416-99668-2

  THANKS TO Jennifer Klonsky for championing this book; to Bethany Buck, Paul Crichton, Russell Gordon, Victor Iannone, Lucille Rettino, Michael del Rosario, Kelly Stocks, and everyone else at Simon Pulse for all their support; and to Robin Rue, who is always in my corner.

  Thanks also go to Katharine Beutner, Jessica Brearton, Diana Fox, and Amy Pascale for their encouragement and kindness.

  And finally, Shana Naomi Krochmal—thank you for urging me to do more with this than leave it sitting on my hard drive. This book wouldn’t be here without you.

  1

  THIS IS HOW THINGS LOOK:

  Shady Pines Apartments, four shabby buildings tucked off the road near the highway. Across from a strip mall with nail places and a cash-loan store that advertises on TV all the time. There’s also a drugstore and tiny restaurants, every one opening and closing within months.

  Shady Pines is nice enough, if it’s all you can afford. The stairs are chipped but solid, the washing machines always work, and management picks up the trash once a week.

  A few mothers sit outside their buildings, resting in fraying lawn chairs and talking over each other while their children run around, playing. One dog lies sleeping in the sun, twitching its tail when a child comes over and pats the top of its head before running away, giggling.

  That man in the far building, the car guy, is outside, a pile of parts scattered on the black ooze of the parking lot around him. Car guy has been here since you moved in, but you never see him except for sunny weekends, when he works on his car.

  Not that he ever drives it.

  He’s a strange one, that’s for sure, living alone, always with that car, not really ever talking to anyone, but every place has one weirdo, and at least car guy cleans up after himself. He’s almost obsessive about it.

  Still, see how he sighs when that man, the one whose daughter is quiet and, sadly, a little slow, pulls into the space next to his? See how he watches the girl get out of the car? She’s a skinny little thing, always hunching over a bit, like she’s taller than she thinks she is. Homeschooled, of course, because of how she is, or so someone once told you when you were getting the mail, and there are no secrets around here, not with everyone living so close together.

  She walks slowly across the lot, trailing behind her father, who waits patiently for her to get to the building door, holding it open even though he’s carrying all the bags. She doesn’t even say thank you, but what can you expect? Kids never know how good they have it.

  2

  THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE:

  Cold, from the grocery store, from the dairy aisle you walked down to pick up the yogurt, from the frozen-food aisle, its cases filled deep with frozen pizzas and ice cream in large round containers.

  Cold, getting out of the truck, foot clinking over something metallic, piece of a car lying on the ground.

  Don’t stop to look.

  Walk up the stairs, Ray’s footsteps behind you. Listen to him pause, smiling at the one open apartment door, the Indian family on the second floor, always children running in and out, sometimes their TV turned up so loud at night Ray has to go down there and knock on the door, say please turn it down? Thank you so much.

  “Was that guy in the parking lot looking at you?” Ray says when you walk into the apartment, as soon as the door thunks closed and he’s turned the locks, one, two, three. Better safe than sorry, he always says.

  Shake your head no, no. Even if he did look, it would never be at you.

  No one ever really looks at you.

  Ray puts the groceries away, yogurt in the fridge, his oatmeal in its individual packets in the cabinet above the sink. Five apples, one for each day when he comes home from work. Five TV dinners you’ll heat up at night for him to eat unless he brings something home.

  He comes over to the sofa. Holds out a glass of water so cold the sides are frosty, ice cubes clinking inside. You’ve pulled your skirt up to your waist, arms resting by your sides, palms up and open. Waiting.

  “Good,” he says, and lies on top of you. Heavy and pushing, always pushing. “Good girl, Alice.�
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  Afterward, he will give you the water and a container of yogurt. He will sit with one hand curled around your knee. You will watch TV together. He will tell you how lucky you are.

  “Yes,” you will say. “I know I am.”

  3

  ONCE UPON A TIME, I DID NOT LIVE in Shady Pines.

  Once upon a time, my name was not Alice. Once upon a time, I didn’t know how lucky I was.

  4

  I EAT FOURTEEN CHOCOLATE-HAZELNUT candies, round and wrapped in silver foil that crackles when I snap it open.

  I also eat six cookies, long brittle tubes filled with chocolate; one puffy cheesy thing that tastes old, all grease and bitterness; and two mints before a woman in a sky blue shirt comes out and calls my name.

  The women I’m sitting with, all older, all reading magazines that promise quick dinners and happier children, look relieved.

  They’ve noticed the pile of wrappers around me, noticed how I sat and ate while they sipped diet sodas or water and gave each other cautious looks if they reached near the candy when grabbing another magazine.

  They know I do not belong here, that there is something not quite right about me.

  But they will do nothing about it. They will say nothing, ask no questions. No one does. No one has.

  No one ever will.

  “Alice?” the woman in the sky blue shirt asks again, and I stand up, swallowing a last bit of cookie. Flour and sugar, brittle sweet.

  There is a plastic decoration on the wall across from me; clear rippled plastic resting against a blue wall. A reverse ocean, with no water for anyone to drown in.

  I can see myself in the plastic and it waves me into a strange, distorted creature, the shadow of something or someone.

  I look wrong.

  I look dead.

  I’m not, though. I’m only partway there, a living dead girl.

  I have been for five years.

  5

  ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A little girl. She lived in a town four hours away from here, in a house on a street named Daisy Lane. She had a mother and a father and her own room and a TV and sometimes could stay up late to watch movies on the weekend if she ate all her dinner.

  She had a cat and three best friends and wanted to work with dolphins. She had posters of them on her walls, and her computer screen saver was one, a dolphin with warm eyes and a sweet grin gleaming out at you. All her stuffed animals, except for the stupid ones her grandparents gave her, were dolphins.

  One day she went to the aquarium. She wore blue jeans, a white shirt (no logos, no designs), and sneakers (white, with white socks). She went with her fifth-grade class, and since it was three days before her tenth birthday, she thought her friends would let her sit by the window on the bus.

  They didn’t, and when they got to the aquarium there weren’t any dolphins and her friends got mad because she wouldn’t loan them her lip gloss—it was new, it tasted like cream soda, and she didn’t want to share.

  She was a selfish little girl.

  She paid for it.

  6

  “DAY OFF FROM SCHOOL?” SOMEONE asks, and I realize the woman with the sky blue shirt is gone and I’ve been guided into a room where another woman stands, smiling and ready.

  “Skipping,” I say, stripping off my clothes, down to one of Ray’s old T-shirts. Smell of him all around me, always.

  “I used to do that,” the woman says, smiling more, like we share a secret. She has a mole on her face with two hairs growing out of it. You’d think she’d notice a thing like that.

  “Ready,” I say, lying down, and the woman motions for me to spread my legs.

  “You want it all gone?”

  I nod.

  She is supposed to ask how old I am, and maybe other things. Something. There is a sign out front that says minors must have a parent or guardian present to sign off on all services, and this isn’t a desperate, dying store that needs customers. This is a busy, bright place, where women wait and there is a girl whose only job is to ask you if you want anything to drink. (Coffee? Water? Diet soda?)

  It doesn’t matter, though. The woman standing over me won’t ask any questions. She never does. Never has.

  Never will.

  She starts to wax. My eyes burn and then water as she rips hair away, stripping my flesh.

  It is good for women to look like little girls now, to have no hair between their legs. The women out in the waiting room, the ones who will not look at me, are here for that too, to be made into smooth, hairless creatures.

  They will have their skin polished, smoothed, so everyone can pretend they are young again.

  Everyone wants the young.

  7

  ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A girl in an aquarium.

  She wouldn’t share her lip gloss and so her friends said she couldn’t walk with them.

  She got mad and went off to look at the penguins, which weren’t dolphins but looked pretty, like in the movies she’d seen with her mother and father. Her lips tasted like cream soda, but she actually didn’t like it all that much (it was the only flavor left and her mother had agreed to buy her lip gloss once, just this once, and she knew she had to take what she could get) and she missed her friends.

  Plus the penguins got boring fast. They just stood around looking like they knew they weren’t in a real home. Looking like they knew their lives were just a lie.

  A man tapped her shoulder and told her she needed to go find her class, that they were watching a movie.

  “It’s already started,” he said. “You better hurry up.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. “Where?”

  “The movie theater.”

  The girl looked at him blankly. She didn’t know where that was. They’d been given maps when they came in, but she and her friends hadn’t looked at them. They were bright red with stupid baby-looking arrows drawn on them to show where you were when you got the map. Dumb. Like they didn’t know where they were?

  They balled them up and threw them away. Then she wouldn’t loan them her lip gloss.

  Then she was alone.

  The man sighed. “Fine, I’ll show you. Come with me.”

  The girl knew she wasn’t supposed to go anywhere with strangers, but the man had on a blue shirt like everyone who worked at the aquarium, and he was crabby like the lady who’d told them welcome and to be quiet in the same sentence. He was just an annoying, boring grown-up, not like the strangers she was warned about, who spoke sweetly creepy, things like oh little girl, come sit on my lap, or offered rides or candy or secrets.

  The man took her outside, because her class was in the other building, the new one. She’d seen it as she came in, and had wondered why they’d put in a movie theater but not dolphins.

  Before they went outside, before they even left the penguins (who were still just standing there, doing nothing, like they were watching them), he gave her a baseball cap.

  “Everyone got one,” he said. “Yours is the only one left, though, so it’s too big. Better tuck your hair up under it. Maybe that way it’ll stay on.”

  So the girl mashed her hair up under the hat so the hat wouldn’t fall off and went outside. When she did, the man stayed behind to say something to the woman at the door. Grown-ups and all their boring talk.

  8

  “ALL RIGHT, ALICE,” THE WOMAN RIPPING off my flesh says. “You can get up now. We’re done.”

  9

  THE GIRL WENT OUTSIDE AND THE man caught up to her in three easy steps. She heard him coming—one step, two step, three—and sighed, eager to get back to her friends.

  “This way,” he said, and she followed.

  “Sorry I had to stop for a second there,” he said as they walked. “I had to ask the lady by the door where the gift shop was. She thought you were my little boy. Isn’t that funny? You don’t look like a boy at all.”

  10

  ONCE UPON A TIME, THAT MOMENT was when a little girl’s world ended.

  11
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  “HAVE A GREAT DAY, ALICE,” THE woman tells me as I am leaving, waving without looking at me. It is only three steps to leave her behind, the door to her little room with its light and wax and hot pain.

  Ray says it’s sad how women try so hard to be young, to pretend they are something they have forgotten.

  “You can never remember the best part of yourself when you grow up, Alice,” he tells me. “My mother told me that, and it’s true. So what do you do?”

  12

  NEVER GROW UP.

  Like something out of a story, maybe.

  Try saying it while a hot, heavy hand pinches, testing to make sure you’re still child enough.

  Try saying it when you can’t grow, when you’re forever trapped where someone else wants you to be.

  13

  GET UP.

  Those were the first words I ever heard.

  Open my eyes, see a girl, black and blue all over, dried blood along her thighs. Red brown stains smeared across the hairless juncture between.

  “Get up and take a bath, Alice,” the man in the blue shirt said, and Alice did.

  I did.

  That’s how I was born. Naked, hairless, covered in blood like all babies.

  Named, bathed, and then taken out into the world.

  14

  I PAY FOR MY WAXING AND WAIT FOR my receipt. The woman who prints it out asks if I want to leave a tip.

  “I gave her five dollars already,” I say. “Can you put that on the bill?”

  The woman frowns but types something into her computer and then prints out another receipt.

  I leave and walk to the bus stop.

  Along the way, I stop at a convenience store and buy five dollars’ worth of hot dogs and candy. Two hot dogs, with cheese, and three candy bars, on sale. Bright orange stickers below the candy saying SPECIAL! VALUE! I eat everything before the bus comes, even the candy bars, their chocolate gone old, spiderwebbed with gray, and throw all the wrappers away.