Dead Rules

by Randy Russell

  Mars turned her away in his comforting arm.

  “It’s like I’m a ghost,” Jana said.

  She leaned against Mars as they made their way toward the wide hallway full of flowers and people Jana barely knew.

  “More like a spirit,” Mars said, using his Dead School voice that no one on the Planet could hear.

  In the hall, someone’s little sister noticed Mars. She reached out to touch him. Mars smiled at the girl. She was one of the sensitive ones. Some people could see him no matter what he did. But not many.

  Her little hand passed through his arm.

  Soon Jana and Mars were outside. The same people who were standing around before were standing around now. Off to the left, the cheerleader gabbed to her friend, gesturing with her hands, tossing her hair. It looked to Jana like the girl was making a salad.

  The bus was parked in the street in front of the funeral home. People on the Planet could walk right through it and never know it was there. But it was real somehow, Jana knew. It carried her weight. She could feel the seats when she sat in them. It had to be real. And so did she.

  She turned a button on her school blouse between her fingers. It was real. Everything was real. Her love and her pain, which seemed like the same thing now, were real.

  “Tell me I’m real,” she said to Mars. “Tell me all this is really happening.”

  Jana held her hand to her mouth and bit down on her own flesh just above the forefinger. It hurt. How could she not be real?

  “Tell me I’m real,” she said again. When Jana breathed in, she swallowed tears. They burned like peppers.

  Mars had tried not to look when she bit her hand, but he understood. It was like jumping. Jumping was a more extreme way of being real, but it was just like biting your hand to prove you were there. That you were real somehow.

  “I’m not going back,” Jana told him. “I don’t have to.”

  Jana ran down the steps to the sidewalk.

  She wasn’t much of a runner. She had never been athletic that way. Jana couldn’t catch a ball. She couldn’t run in a straight line unless it was by accident. But she ran. As fast as her legs would let her, she ran. She ran past the idling bus, past the kids on the sidewalk, the kids standing under trees.

  Her chest heaved. Her heart pounded. She ran like she could not stop. Like a little kid down a steep hill.

  Jana turned at the end of the block on to a treelined side street of large houses set far back from the road. Her legs kept going, her arms pumping at her sides. She was surprised she was still running, still able to run. A bird flew in front of her, from one side of the street to the other. Like the bird, Jana was a thing of motion, her skirt flying.

  She was also a thing of muscle and blood and urgent breath. Her body worked. Jana was real. Her chest ached. Sweat appeared on her forehead. Veins throbbed in her neck. A sharp pain stabbed her side.

  Jana slowed. Her clothes felt heavy. She trotted two steps, then walked with her hand pressed against the probing pain in her side. Her heartbeat sounded like drums inside her head. Her face was red with heat, but at the same time she felt cold again. The cold was always there.

  She stumbled into someone’s yard and collapsed in the grass. Jana sprawled on her stomach and stretched out her arms. With her chest and belly and legs pressed against the earth, her breathing finally caught up. Jana hugged the earth, trying to hold on to it.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Mars asked, catching his breath. He stood at her feet.

  “Dunno,” she said without opening her eyes. Jana’s head was spinning.

  “I guess we have a few minutes to make sure. The bus won’t leave till the service is over. Most people stay at their own funeral. They give you enough time to stay.”

  “Did you stay at yours?”

  Jana rolled over on her back. She drew up her knees. Her face was stained from being pressed against the grass.

  Mars didn’t answer. Jana studied him through half-closed eyes. Unlike the other students she’d met, he wouldn’t talk about his own death.

  “You can do things here that I can’t,” she said. “I don’t understand. We’re both dead, but you’re not as dead as I am.”

  “Sliders have one foot still touching Earth,” he said in a serious tone. “We don’t get to leave Earth entirely.”

  “Not ever?”

  “Pull your skirt down, Webster,” he said without looking at her. “I can see your underwear.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not really here.”

  “Yes, you are. When you’re with me you are.”

  Jana tugged her skirt hem down over her legs. “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart . . .” Mars said, then paused. They looked at each other. Their eyes locked. A hint of what Mars was about to say danced at the edges of the perfect blue gaze of his eyes looking into hers.

  “And hope to die?” Jana finished for him.

  His cheek dimpled, then his mouth broke into a wide smile. Soon he was laughing. And so was she. Mars laughed so hard he had to sit down to catch his breath. Jana laughed until she felt like crying. Her tears were always close by.

  Jana sat up in the grass and smoothed the front of her blouse.

  “It’s like this,” Mars eventually told her. “Here on the Planet you’re like a spirit and I’m more like a ghost. A spirit, you know? People can’t see you, except in their dreams. A ghost, though, can interact and talk to people one on one while they’re wide awake and walking around. Sometimes they can see me. If I want them to, they can see me.”

  “Like you did with Nathan? He didn’t see you, though.”

  “No. But he felt me and he heard me when I talked to him.”

  “How can you do that?” Jana asked. She wished she could.

  “I work at it,” Mars confessed. He pushed his dark hair from his forehead. “It’s what I do. The kids in school don’t work at anything. They just do their classwork and think they are getting something done. They think that’s it. They accept things the way they are. I don’t know how to say it, really, but I have ambitions that have nothing to do with school.”

  She understood perfectly.

  “I want to do something out of the ordinary, Webster. Going to school on the Planet really is doing nothing. You just sit in the classes someone else tells you to sit in. You learn things you didn’t choose to learn from people you didn’t choose to teach you. Then one day they tell you it’s over and you have to go out there and learn the world for real.

  “And that’s if you’re lucky. That’s if you don’t die in school.”

  Jana snickered. She was with him every word. She was working to be an actor. Besides taking speech and drama and being in a play now and then, she worked at it mostly on her own. She studied old movies, for one thing. She practiced acting all the time. When other people were just having conversations, Jana was working. She was watching reactions closely to see what clicked and what didn’t.

  “I’ve had real jobs since I was thirteen,” Mars told her. “I had to if I wanted anything. I worked when I was on the Planet and I work now that I’m in Dead School.”

  “Why?” Jana asked. “We’re dead. Work’s over.”

  “No, that’s the thing. Dead School is different. You have to figure things out on your own. There are rules, but it’s not the way Arva says it is. She wants it to be like regular school and so do most of the others. But in Dead School, you have to do it on your own. And you have to figure it out for yourself. Nothing’s the way it was and there’s nobody to explain it to you.”

  “Figure what out?”

  Mars grinned. “That’s it exactly. You have to figure out what you have to figure out. It’s going to be different for everybody.”

  “What’s going to be different?” As far as Jana was concerned, being dead was different enough.

  “Our destinies. That’s what happens when you graduate, Jana, or get expelled. You go to your destiny. I go to mine.”

  “So why not just go now
? Why Dead School at all?”

  “That’s the right question,” Mars said. He stared into her eyes as if looking for something there. “It’s our chance to learn to change our destinies. We died while we were still in school, with almost none of our future determined. There are still things to learn in Dead School, Webster. There’s still time.”

  Jana let out a sigh. Despite his misstep with her mother at the funeral, Michael was Jana’s destiny. She didn’t need more time to learn that.

  “Look,” Mars continued. He spread out his hands and studied them. “Every Slider in school could do what I’ve done so far. But it’s work and most of them don’t want to work at anything. We’re bad kids to begin with, you know? And almost nobody wants to improve. They don’t even realize they have the chance.”

  “What about Risers?” Jana asked. “Can’t we learn to do what you do?”

  “You’re not as close to Earth as we are. You’re not Earthbound. For most Risers that’s good enough. Your eternity is going to be . . . better than ours.”

  Mars paused.

  “What’s your hometown, Webster?” he asked out of the blue.

  “Asheville,” she said. Jana smiled to remember it so easily. Being on the Planet had its advantages and memory was one of them.

  And when she smiled she was real again. Everything was real again. Dead School was real. Jana was real. Mars was real. But everything worked in a new way. She’d have to learn how it all worked to be with Michael again. He was real too.

  “Michael thinks I’m dead and gone,” Jana said.

  “Yes, he does.”

  “But I’m not gone, am I?”

  This time Mars smiled. “Maybe we should let him know that, Jana. Hand me your cell phone and I’ll show you a few tricks.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT WAS TIME TO TALK TO MICHAEL.

  Jana fished her cell phone from her skirt pocket and handed it to Mars. She tried to steady her excitement, but her grin turned into a beaming smile. The Planet smelled sweet. The yard they sat in had been mown the night before and it smelled like watermelon rind and clover.

  Mars flipped her phone open and turned it on with one hand. “The kid sitting next to your boyfriend, you got his number?”

  “It’s in there somewhere,” she said. She took the cell from him. “His name’s Nathan Mills. He and Michael are best friends, don’t ask me why. The girl with the boobs is Nathan’s new girlfriend. Sherry Simmons. But I want to talk to Michael.”

  Jana pushed the menu. Her list of contacts didn’t come on-screen.

  “Hey, my phone won’t work.”

  “It’s not the phone. It’s your fingers when you’re on the Planet.”

  “I forgot. I can still feel my body.”

  “There’s a bit of you here,” Mars confessed. “Just not as much as there is when you’ve had more practice.”

  “You mean, I can get to be like you?”

  “No,” Mars said. “You’re a Riser. You can do better, but . . . Here, let’s try it this way.” He scooted closer, took the phone from her hand, and held it open in front of her. “Do the numbers. Start with Nathan.”

  Jana pushed the code for her contact list and found Nathan. Her fingers worked the phone as long as Mars was holding it. She pushed Send. Mars lifted the phone to his ear while the number went through. It rang six times without an answer.

  “Voice mail,” Mars said to Jana. He waited for the signal. “Hey, Nathan,” he said into the phone. “It’s me. We met at the funeral today, remember? I’m your new best friend.”

  Jana giggled.

  “I know what you guys did and I think you should tell someone,” Mars went on. “I mean, if you don’t get around to it pretty soon, I’ll have to drop back by and talk to you about it in person. What’s a good time for you?”

  Mars winked at her while he talked into the phone. She thought he was making stuff up to get Nathan’s attention.

  He clicked the cell closed to end the call.

  “Here, let me,” Jana said.

  Mars flipped the phone open and held it again for her to push the buttons. She brought up Michael’s number. His picture appeared on the screen. She had taken the picture of him at a rehearsal and he had a crazed expression on his face. It was supposed to be lust, she remembered. Michael was good- looking and all that, but Jana was a much better actor.

  Michael’s voice mail was short. “Not here,” he had recorded, followed by, “Message. Now.”

  Jana didn’t know what to say. And she waited too long. A service voice said, “We didn’t get your message, either because you were not speaking or because of a bad connection. To disconnect, press one. To record your message, press two.”

  Jana pressed two. It beeped.

  “Michael? It’s me,” Jana said. Her voice quivered with excitement. “I’m still here and you can find me. Call me back and . . .”

  Jana was interrupted by the recorded service voice. “Unfortunately the system cannot process your entry. Please try again later. Good-bye.” There was no beep. The phone was silent.

  “Your voice isn’t registering,” Mars said. He was close enough to hear the recording.

  “You mean, it can’t hear me? Michael can’t hear me?”

  “Take my hand,” Mars said.

  He leaned in. Jana huddled closer and placed her hand in his. Her left hand, the one with Michael’s ring on the third finger. She blushed as his heat moved through her like a tide.

  “Squeeze,” he said.

  Jana closed her fingers tightly around his hand and felt so much warmth move through her she wanted to shut her eyes.

  “Now try it.” Mars made a face like he was working on a math problem. A long black car drove by, followed by another one.

  “Michael,” Jana said after she got the signal. “It’s me.” She paused, then quickly added, “I’m still here. I’m always here. Call me.” Her hand that held on to Mars tingled. Michael’s ring felt large and heavy and out of place on her finger. Jana pressed harder. Even her toes were warm.

  Mars watched the other Jana, being driven in her casket, roll by.

  “I love you,” she said into the phone. Jana’s neck and chest were flushed with heat. She’d felt this way before when she and Michael were kissing, when they lay on the couch together and kissed.

  She let go of Mars’s hand.

  Mars snapped the phone shut. Jana dropped her hands into her lap and watched an ant crawling on her wrist.

  When she did talk to Michael, she knew what he would say. He would say he loved her and that he needed to be with her as much as she needed to be with him. Jana tried to flick the ant away from her wrist and realized she was crying again.

  There were more cars on the street. They moved slowly, their lights turned on. A dog barked in someone’s backyard.

  She flipped her finger across her skin again. The ant was still there.

  “All I do is cry,” Jana said to Mars. “I’m not like this in real life.”

  Mars flicked away the ant for her. She looked at him through her tears. Jana’s mouth trembled. Her tongue drew back in her throat. She tightened her lips as much as possible and tried to breathe without gasping. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Fart, fudge, and popcorn, Mars. I just want to be normal!”

  Mars nodded as she spoke. He was listening without judging her. Mars understood.

  Jana made herself stop crying. As an actor, it was never difficult to stop crying once you started. You just said your next line. When crying happened to you for real, it was difficult to turn it off.

  “You are normal,” Mars said. “You’re more than normal, Webster. Not less.”

  A Virgin appeared.

  She stood in front of Jana, seeming to float. A piece of pretty paper with eyes and lips. The dog stopped barking. The Virgin sang one word. “Time.”

  “The original singing telegram,” Mars said, standing up. The Virgin was gone as quickly as she had appeared.

 
; A lock of dark hair had fallen onto his forehead.

  “We gotta go now,” Mars said. He held out his hand to her, offering Jana his strength, his warmth.

  The grass under her legs felt cold.

  “What if I don’t? What if I just stay?”

  “Can’t,” Mars said. “You’re a Riser. In a few minutes you’ll be sitting on the bus. We may as well walk. When you learn to leave campus on your own, you can stay on the Planet longer.”

  What if she wasn’t a Riser? Jana wondered. Her hands felt like ashes as she dusted her palms across each other. Her knees, she noticed, were grass stained. The inside of her elbow was streaked with dirt where a trickle of sweat had dried.

  Jana took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. She and Mars were standing too close. Embarrassed by proximity, but not wanting to step away, Jana straightened her blouse and brushed off her clothes.

  “If there are bugs in my hair,” she said, shaking her head, “I’ll just die.”

  Mars tried not to laugh. But he couldn’t help it.

  As they walked together on the sidewalk, Mars opened her cell. He turned it off and handed it back to her. Jana wanted to try to call Michael again, but slipped the phone into her skirt pocket. She didn’t need the frustration of not being able to push the numbers on her own. He’d get her message. That was enough for now.

  “Remember,” Mars said, “on the bus or on campus or in the dorm, don’t even turn it on. You’ll kill the battery.”

  “Might as well be dead like the rest of us,” Jana said.

  When Michael listened to her message, he would remember how much he loved her. When he heard her voice, Michael would need her again. The real her. The Jana who still existed. The Jana who was his whole world.

  The side of her body walking next to Mars was warm. Her other side felt chilled. It was like walking in two different weather patterns at the same time. Jana imagined a TV forecaster offering the day’s predicted high and low temperatures with the words “depends on who you’re with.”