As Dead as It Gets

by Katie Alender

  Mom stood by the garage door, head down.

  “Mom?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at me, a magazine open in her hand. “Hi, honey. How was your day?” Her voice sounded normal—light, but with an undertone of tension. Still, nothing that hinted at an awareness of Ashleen’s death.

  “Fine,” I said, going back into my room.

  Later, I went out into the living room and turned on the TV, slumping in the corner of the couch with the remote in my hand.

  Behind me I heard the front door open. Kasey’s voice called, “See you tomorrow!” and the door closed.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning over the couch. “What’s up? What are you watching?”

  It was some lame Judge Somebody show where the judge works herself up into a lather trying to be funny while she messes with people’s lives.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Kasey dumped her stuff behind the couch and came around to sit next to me. I moved my legs to make room for her, but I turned up the volume a little, too—just enough to hint that I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. My sister caught the hint, so we watched the rest of the show in silence.

  “If we ever end up suing each other over a rowboat,” Kasey finally said, “just shoot me, okay?”

  “You got it,” I said.

  The trumpety music that announced the start of the six o’clock news sounded, and suddenly I didn’t want to know if there was any news about Ashleen. So I flipped to a show about misbehaving dogs and leaned back with my eyes closed.

  A minute later, Mom came out into the kitchen. “What do you girls want for dinner?”

  Before we could reply, her cell phone rang.

  My whole body tensed. It was like the energy in the room spiked before she even answered it.

  “Hey, Jim.…What? No. What? Okay. Thanks. Bye.” Her phone hit the counter with a clunk. Her voice was like a clear tube made of glass so thin it would shatter if you touched it. “Alexis…turn to the news.”

  My fingers were like stumps. I fumbled with the remote until Kasey took it from me and switched the channel.

  A reporter stood on location at Ashleen’s house, wearing her sad face. “Although police aren’t releasing details about the location of the body, they did confirm that it was missing teen Ashleen Evans. Autopsy results will be available later this week, but an anonymous source inside the police department told us there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of assault. The family has declined to speak to reporters, but they have released a statement asking for prayers and information that could lead to the arrest of whoever is responsible.”

  Mom’s face was gray. She came up behind the couch and put a hand on Kasey’s and my shoulders.

  They went to a split screen with the reporter in the studio. “Have the police compared this to the Kendra Charnow case at all?”

  The field reporter adjusted her earpiece. “No, Dana, not officially. But obviously that’s something that we’re hearing a lot of from neighbors.”

  Their chatter blurred together like squawking birds in my brain.

  I searched the trees for a flash of Ashleen’s ghost or the purple dress. But what I saw, right behind the reporter, was a blast of white light.

  I sat up and leaned forward. It hovered by the trees, and then it slowly grew larger in the frame—coming closer to the woman with the microphone, who was interviewing a crying teenage boy.

  “Alexis,” Kasey said, and I turned to look at her, feeling my pulse pound against my ears. I thought she was going to accuse me of being involved or knowing something. But she was just looking for a shoulder to cry on. She wiped her eyes and leaned toward me, burying her face in my hoodie.

  I put my arms around her, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the newscast.

  “They found the body?” Lydia had come back and was staring at the TV. Her voice was serious and utterly snarkless. “I saw it last night. It was pretty close to where you were standing.”

  “What was she wearing?” I asked.

  Kasey sat up and looked at me, sniffling. “What? Why would you ask that?”

  Lydia shrugged. “Regular clothes. Sweatpants…a shirt. Blue? I don’t know. It was dark.”

  But not a purple dress?

  I kept my eyes on Lydia, wanting to ask her more questions but unable to as long as Kasey was in earshot.

  Suddenly, the room was filled with a brilliant white light—just for a moment. Then it was gone.

  I glanced back at the TV. The white spot that had been drawing close to the reporter was gone.

  “That—” I searched the edges of the room. “What—”

  Kasey sniffled. “Huh?”

  “What?” Lydia said.

  “Nothing,” I said, to both of them. “Never mind.”

  The field reporter was running out of things to say, but she kept talking, clearly desperate to remain the center of attention. “One of the search party members mentioned to me that they found a—a lens cap, like from a camera. Not like a small snapshot camera, but the bigger kind—”

  An SLR.

  “—about fifty feet from the location of the body. So that might be something the police are interested in, but it also might be unrelated.”

  I went stiff.

  “Lexi?” Kasey asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just fine.”

  I sat in my car with the engine off, watching the rain slide down the windshield. I wished I’d brought an extra sweatshirt, but I didn’t want to go back inside and risk having Kasey ask me what I was doing.

  Plus, being cold made it easy for me to lie to myself and believe that’s why my hands were shaking—not because of what I was about to do.

  I balanced the business card on my knee and picked up my phone.

  AGENT F. HASAN, was all it said. And her phone number.

  Agent Hasan was maybe the second scariest thing in my life besides ghosts. She worked for the government—though it was impossible to tell exactly which department she worked for—and she had a talent for showing up right when you needed her. When she’d come to clean up the Sunshine Club mess, she’d told my sister and me that she didn’t give third chances.

  So I might be burning a third chance I didn’t have. But even I had to admit that it was time to get someone else involved.

  Lydia walked through the passenger door and sat down, reclining so her feet went through the window. “Where are you off to?”

  It was too late to hang up—the call was already going through.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “Go away.”

  Lydia peered at the business card. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

  “Hello, Alexis.”

  There was no mistaking Agent Hasan’s voice. She always sounded slightly bored, like she couldn’t believe she was wasting her time with you. It was, to put it mildly, insanely intimidating.

  “Hi,” I said. “How…how are you?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the news at all lately.”

  “With regard to what,” she said, “specifically?”

  “The girls,” I said. “The ones who go out into the woods.”

  “Kendra Charnow and Ashleen Evans?”

  Okay, so she had been watching the news. “Yeah…I was thinking that maybe you might want to find out more about that.”

  She waited a beat before speaking. “And why would you think so?”

  “It just seems like maybe there’s something weird going on.” I glanced over at Lydia, who was leaning close to hear both sides of the conversation.

  “Define weird.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe…possibly…supernatural?”

  “Hmm,” she said, though she clearly knew all along that that’s what I was getting at. “Why don’t you tell me why you think so?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I don’t have a specific reason. But doesn’t it seem worth…I don’
t know, looking into?”

  “Alexis, let me clarify something for you.”

  “Okay.” My voice had dropped to a rasp.

  “If I think there are mice in my kitchen, eating my protein bars, I can install a camera and a motion sensor and look into the situation. You follow?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Or I can set out some poison and mousetraps and take care of the situation. Understand?”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Poor mice,” Lydia whispered.

  “I don’t look into things,” Agent Hasan said. “I take care of things. Now, if you know something about Kendra and Ashleen, and you think we should talk, I would really appreciate it if you could say so right now.”

  “No!” I said. “No, I just wanted to bring it to your attention.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “Because if you have any special reason to suspect paranormal activity, I need to know so that I can come over to Surrey and deal with it.”

  It hit me that it wasn’t just the laughing white light that would be caught in Agent Hasan’s mousetrap. It would be Lydia. And me.

  Because having supernatural eyes made me a supernatural freak, too.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I don’t have a reason.”

  “Then we don’t have anything else to talk about, do we?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Nothing. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Alexis.”

  I hung up and sat back, staring into the rain.

  “Who is that woman?” Lydia asked. “She talks like a mafia hit man.”

  “Close enough,” I said.

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s the one who locked Kasey up for ten months,” I said.

  “Wow,” Lydia said. “You’d end up in a padded room.”

  “And you’d end up in the gray void,” I said. “And to her, it would be a job well done.”

  Lydia gave me a wary look and vanished.

  IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the last thing in the universe I felt like doing, but when the bell rang after school on the following Monday, I took my camera and reported to the Wingspan office for the Student Council shoot.

  As I put my hand on the doorknob, everything hit me at once: dizziness, confusion, hope, misery—a veritable smoothie of conflicting emotions.

  Just be professional, I told myself. I’d seen Carter. I’d talked to him. How bad could it be?

  But when I walked into the studio I saw exactly how bad it could be.

  Carter and the other three officers were standing together, talking about some student government issue, which would have been fine—if Zoe hadn’t been hanging off of Carter’s arm like an overprotective purple-haired poodle.

  She glared at me, but I was distracted by Marley Chen, who came and stood next to me. Marley was the features editor—basically my partner on all things yearbook-related. She had long, straight black hair, and most of her clothes were vintage. She acted like an air-headed Valley girl, but having worked with her a few times, I knew she was the second smartest person (behind Elliot, of course—no one was as smart as Elliot) on the yearbook staff. Maybe I was deluding myself, but I felt like we were becoming almost friends.

  “Hi, guys,” she said to the Student Council officers. “Give us a minute to get set up, and then we’ll start.”

  I went through to the adjoining classroom that the Wingspan staff used as a studio. Marley and Elliot came in while I was slipping my camera onto the tripod.

  “Why is she here?” Marley whispered. “This is only for officers. She’s just a class rep!”

  “I don’t get what he sees in her,” Elliot said simply, pushing up the sleeves of her NYU hoodie.

  I locked the camera in place.

  “Not to mention,” Marley said, “that it’s completely juvenile to drag your girlfriend to a yearbook photo shoot.”

  “Agreed,” Elliot said, casting a disdainful look toward the doorway.

  “Um…thanks, guys.” I was taken aback by this unexpected show of loyalty.

  Marley sensed it. She shrugged. “You’re part of the Wingspan now, Alexis. We look out for our own.”

  Part of the Wingspan? Yeah, I’d done a couple of shoots, but…did they not know anything about me? More to the point, if they did know, would they still want me to be part of their group?

  I had no idea how to respond. So I didn’t. I said, “I think we’re ready.”

  Elliot went back to the office and announced, “It’s pretty tight in there. Why don’t we just keep it to a minimum of people? Just Marley and whoever’s turn it is?”

  I leaned forward to check my aperture setting as Marley brought the first person in. “Here’s Carter.”

  “Great,” I said, not looking up. “Have a seat.”

  He sat, head turned toward the door.

  “Look at Alexis, please,” Marley said.

  His piercing blue eyes found me through the viewfinder. “How’s the camera?”

  I tried to make my voice completely aloof. “Good.”

  Marley, bless her heart, tried to lighten the tension in the room. “It’s a really nice one. It looks expensive.”

  “Um.” I felt like my stomach had left my body. “Yeah, I’m not really sure how much it was.”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars,” Carter said.

  My breath caught in my throat. What was he trying to imply? That it was so expensive, he didn’t think I should have kept it after we’d broken up? He could have it, for all I cared. I would have returned it to him in a heartbeat. But he’d never so much as hinted that he wanted it back.

  Then I had a flash of angry shame. He’d basically forced me to take it one night when he was supernaturally crazy-obsessed with me. He’d had three months since then—plenty of time to ask for it privately. He knew my phone numbers. Was he doing this to humiliate me in front of Marley? To show her that I was a bad person?

  But when I looked up at him, ready to come back with a reply, there was no expectation on his face. In fact, his expression was completely calm and composed as he said, “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Thanks,” I said shortly. “I do.”

  I took a few test shots, then had him angle his shoulders away from me.

  “Raise your chin?” I asked, clicking off a run of exposures.

  I went on directing him, growing more relaxed with each frame. Why had I dreaded this? Carter was a mature almost-eighteen-year-old. He wouldn’t make a scene. And I certainly wasn’t going to.

  After about five minutes, I stood up. “We got it,” I said to Marley. “Next?”

  Carter had started to stand when a voice spoke up from the doorway. “Wait just a minute, please!”

  Zoe edged her way in toward Carter.

  She turned to me, venom in her eyes and a smile on her lips. “Can you take some pictures of us…you know, as a couple? We have some from when we went to the winter dance together, but I’m sure you can take better ones.”

  “We’re pretty busy,” Marley said, in a strangled, high-pitched tone.

  “It’s fine, Mar,” I said. “Sure. Why not?”

  Carter didn’t look thrilled about it, but Zoe sat and pulled him down next to her. I repositioned the shot and fired off a couple of frames.

  “Thanks,” Zoe said, dripping with artificial sweetness.

  “Stop it,” Carter said, under his breath.

  I looked at him over the top of the camera. “You might as well smile,” I said. “This is for posterity.”

  Next to him, Zoe’s face bloomed into a blissful fake smile. With her short dark hair and pale skin in contrast to Carter’s conservative style, she looked like an elf on a date with an accountant.

  A cute accountant, piped up the voice in the back of my head.

  Shut up, voice.

  I glanced at them as I clicked the shutter, challenging myself to let the full meaning of their smiles sink into my heart.

  They looked like the perfect cou
ple.

  And it hurt. A lot.

  “That’s probably enough,” Marley said nervously.

  I straightened up. “Marley’s the boss. See you later. It’s been real.”

  “I’m so sure,” Zoe said. She gave me a sickening smirk, then took Carter by the hand and led him out of the studio.

  He didn’t look back.

  I called Jared from the parking lot.

  “Hey, stranger,” he said.

  “Are you busy?”

  “Not if you need me.”

  I hesitated. Need seemed like a really powerful word—a powerful word containing a lot of powerlessness.

  Then the sound of Carter’s voice came rushing through my head, making me dizzy with loneliness. Tears stung at my eyes.

  “I think…I do,” I said.

  Jared was on the porch before I had even put the car in park, and he was there opening my car door by the time I hit the emergency brake.

  “Hey,” he said, looking down at me. “You all right?”

  I tried to smile. “Better now.”

  I leaned over to get my purse, and when I sat up, he was staring at me like I’d said something in a foreign language. But he just extended his hand and helped me out of the car.

  “So what happened?” he asked, steering me up to the porch.

  I sighed. “Rough day.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  “No, I know. Come on in.” He held the door for me. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate. Dad’s working from home, but he’s in his office.”

  Sitting on a comfy lounge chair a few minutes later, chasing marshmallows around my cup with the tips of my fingers, I tried to suppress the uneasy feeling inside me—the feeling that I was here for the wrong reasons.

  It wasn’t like we didn’t enjoy each other’s company. We never ran out of things to talk about. So what if it wasn’t like when Carter and I were together? Jared wasn’t like Carter, he’d never be like Carter, and honestly, I didn’t even know if I wanted him to be. Because something had obviously gone horribly wrong with Carter…or I wouldn’t be in Jared’s living room, drinking Jared’s hot chocolate.