The Dead Girls Detective Agency

by Suzy Cox

  That made one of them. I smiled a thank-you at her. Just as Nancy wrote David on the Suspects side of her board. Right under madman/woman.

  “What?” She shrugged. “I don’t think he did either, but we can’t cross off suspects without investigating all the leads first.”

  “What about your friend? Ali, was it?” Lorna asked, desperately trying to change the subject. “Didn’t you say you weren’t getting along as well with her as you had been recently?”

  “Yes, she could feel like you dumped her for David and wanted revenge.” Nancy wrote Ali’s name below David’s. “So there, we have two suspects. I’m ignoring madman/woman for the moment, because those kind of random psychos are notoriously hard to find.”

  Excellent. “Two suspects who I am one hundred and one percent sure are innocent,” I said.

  “There is no such thing as one hundred and one percent,” Nancy said. “Let’s check Ali out first, then David next.” She looked at the clock. “Nine a.m. They’ll be in school now. Let’s make a move.”

  My (sort of ex) best friend and my (sort of ex) boyfriend? No way. But even if we just crossed them off the list at least it was better than sitting here. Watching Tess come up with stupid theories when she knew zero about my life.

  Nancy looked out of the hotel window, onto Washington Square. “Charlotte, we have to get a move on. Because somewhere out there is the person who killed you—a person who thinks he or she is getting away with murder. And I, for one, am going to make sure that is not the case.”

  Chapter 15

  “WHO CAN TELL ME WHAT THE ATOMIC NUMBER of oxygen is?” Mr. Millington asked, briefly taking off his horn-rimmed glasses, cleaning them on his dull-as-gray sweater, then repositioning them neatly on his thin face.

  Able to see the class again clearly, he smiled encouragingly. “Anyone?”

  His question was met with complete and utter silence. Only broken by the sound of Alanna Acland accidentally knocking her pink gel pen off her desk and it bouncing twice on the tiled floor.

  “Nobody?” More silence.

  “Okay, then let’s take things back a step—recap on the ground we covered last week to refresh your memories.” Mr. Millington looked around the class.

  “What is an atomic number?” Even though he’d suffered eighteen years teaching high school science, he had still not lost the optimism that maybe, someday, he would ask a question like this and one—just one—of the kids in his class would stop daydreaming about last night’s TV, the opposite sex, or what they were going to eat for lunch and actually answer.

  The class kept their eyes firmly on the floor. The eleventh grade chem students may not know what oxygen’s atomic number was, but they did know that if they made eye contact with Mr. Millington, he’d take that as a sign of intelligence and they’d be asked the question directly.

  “No one remembers? It’s on page seventeen of your textbooks. How about we all get them out?”

  Eighteen books were slowly and very begrudgingly pulled out of backpacks and messenger bags.

  “Everyone there? Great. Now as it says so succinctly on page seventeen, ‘Every single element has its own unique number that tells how many protons are in one atom of that element. The atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom of a particular element.’ Is everyone remembering this? Yes? No questions? Okay then, so if an oxygen atom has eight protons—can anyone tell me what the atomic number of oxygen is now?”

  Eugh. Was it possible to die of boredom when you’d already had your funeral, like, yesterday? It sure felt like it, if the numbness spreading through my brain was anything to go by.

  I wiggled around in my seat and shuddered. Chem class. I never thought I’d be back here again. Sitting in my old seat. Leaning on my old desk. Listening to poor Mr. Millington.

  But seeing as Dead Girls’ Chief Detective Nancy had decided that I needed to cross Ali and David off my most-likely-to-have-murdered-me list before we could investigate anyone else, I had to be here. Chem class was where they were both supposed to be.

  Supposed being the operative word.

  When I ported in, I’d found my chair empty. Which I totally got. I mean, it was pretty much still warm from when my body last sat on it. Nobody was going to be going there anytime soon in case it was cursed, or the kid caught a case of the Charlotte clumsys and accidentally fell under the nearest fast-moving mode of transportation too.

  But what I didn’t get was where David was. He should have been sitting next to me in his usual seat. As he had every Wednesday.

  Though, just in case I hadn’t noticed the absence of my dirty, cheating, no-longer boyfriend, I kept being reminded of it by Kristen—who was sitting three rows in front—turning around to stare at the empty chair every couple of minutes. Like, just by doing that, she was going to will David to appear.

  Well, everything else in life went her way, so I guessed she couldn’t understand why David wasn’t there holding her hand, stroking her hair, feeding her grapes or something—seeing as she’d deigned to kiss him and all.

  Even though Nancy and Lorna had done their best to make me feel better about things, I still couldn’t get the image of David and Kristen kissing out of my head. I could only hope David wasn’t showing his sorry ass around Saint Bart’s today because he was beyond ashamed about sucking face with that yesterday.

  Hopefully he was somewhere far away—like the Bronx—in an inner ring of tortured mental hell, wishing he had access to a time machine so he could honor my memory properly instead of stomping all over it in his size 11s, like good boyfriends are meant to do.

  Or maybe he’d just slept in.

  Whatever. He was so not worth another second of my time.

  “All hydrogen atoms contain one proton and have an atomic number of one, and all other atoms’ atomic number is also determined by …” Mr. Millington was still droning on.

  Enough. I clicked my fingers, activating the Lifesaver trick Edison had taught me. Mr. Millington’s blah instantly went on mute. His mouth still popped open and closed, open and closed, like a possessed puppet’s—which was kinda eerie to watch, but way better than what I’d previously had to listen to.

  I stood up from my seat. Even though I knew, as a ghost, I was invisible, I kinda expected the M-man to shout and tell me to sit down and concentrate. But he didn’t. I walked between the desks and to the front of the class.

  Next to the board, Mr. Millington had pinned up a picture of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. Underneath he’d written, “They have chemistry, so can you!”

  I stood in front of Mr. Millington’s face as he talked silently on and wrote about isotopes and potassium and positions in the periodic table on the whiteboard. Since I wasn’t getting any leads on who’d killed me here, would a little light haunting to stop the monotony be wrong? It was hardly Jimmy territory. What Nancy didn’t see, she’d never know about. And couldn’t take off my Nine Times.

  I tried my first solo Jab, sans Edison. Really lightly on Mr. M’s left shoulder. He flinched and rolled his shoulder back. Like a horse batting off a fly with its tail, then carried on teaching. Yet another guy I didn’t need to waste any more of my kinetic energy on.

  I walked over to Ali’s desk instead. May as well concentrate on her for a bit so I could take her off the list. I sat on top of the desk of the kid next to her, and leaned in for a better look at my friend.

  I hadn’t been this close to Ali since I’d been killed. That second day when I was in the school hall, she sort of wandered past without me noticing her until she was a bit blurry. And at my funeral, I guess I’d been too focused on slut boy to pay her attention. But now, centimeters away from her, I realized that Ali looked … bad.

  Her normally shiny straight brown hair was kinda greasy, she wore zero makeup, and there were bags under her eyes.

  Ali stared at a spot on the floor, somewhere in front of her. Unlike the rest of my class, it didn’t look like she’d zoned out b
ecause of Mr. Millington’s scintillating teacher style. It looked more like she was miles and miles away and … upset?

  A tear welled up in the corner of her eye. Ali silently wiped it away. Then looked around to check that no one had noticed.

  What was wrong with her?

  Suddenly Ali seemed to snap out of her trance. She wiped a second tear off her cheek and swiveled in her chair, staring hard at Kristen and Jamie. What on earth had they said? I clicked my fingers to turn the volume back up on the world. Pop!

  “I have chemistry with David too—so you can’t just say he belongs to you, Kristen!” Jamie was ranting in an angry voice. “Just because you’ve been trying to cozy up to him ever since that girl died, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed a chance with him too.”

  I looked down at Ali. She was bolt upright now. Her eyes looked as wild as mine felt.

  “Let’s not get into this here, shall we?” Kristen was trying to be all upper-handy. “It’s really not the time or the place. Aren’t we supposed to be here to learn, J?”

  “Learn? As if! And you brought it up!?”

  “Girls! Is there a problem here?” Mr. Millington asked from the board.

  Ali slowly stood up and turned around to face the Bicker Squad.

  “Oh, be serious. I’ve seen you, following David into the library, talking to him after class and I—” Kristen started.

  “STOP!” Ali shouted.

  This time there was a silence so harsh, no one even noticed when Alanna dropped her gel pen for a second time in shock. Everyone turned from Kristen to Ali, like the crowd at a tennis match watching the ball bounce from player to player.

  “You two are disgusting.” Ali walked toward them, straightening up as she did. She’d grown a couple of inches over the holidays—now she was taller than I had been. How come I hadn’t noticed? That made me feel so, so bad. “Charlotte—that is ‘that girl’s’ name—has not even been dead for three full days and you are fighting over her boyfriend? What is wrong with you? You’re like … vultures.”

  Kristen looked totally thrown. She was not used to people standing up to her. Especially girls she wouldn’t even put on the B-squad. How dare Ali question her? In public. She blinked uncomprehendingly, then her expression hardened. Uh-oh. She was back.

  Kristen’s chair scraped on the floor as she pushed it back. “What’s wrong with us?” she asked, her eyebrows high. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you getting involved? Why are you all boo hoo over some girl who dumped you as soon as she got a boyfriend anyway?”

  Ali flushed. Kristen carried on. “I may not pay much attention to who you people sit with in the lunch hall, but I do know that you and Miss Feldman were like some badly dressed Siamese twins. Until hot David came along and noticed she wasn’t entirely unfortunate looking. Then she was always with him. And you were always on your own. In the library. After every single class. So why are you so desperate to stick up for Charlotte when she wasn’t that great to you anyway? Don’t you think that makes you a little”—Kristen looked Ali up and down and back again slowly—“pathetic.”

  Ali opened her mouth to speak. I willed her with every bit of my dead body to come out with a brilliant line. If I’d have been able to think of one myself, I’d have tried a Throw and put the words into her mouth, just like Edison taught me.

  But I couldn’t. And neither could she.

  Ali gave a little sob and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Kristen turned and confidently strode back to her seat, Jamie slumped next to her.

  “Er, class?” Mr. Millington said, looking nearly as distraught as Ali. “Can we stop this now and get back to the matter at hand? We’ve not covered RAMs yet, so we’re in danger of getting behind on lesson plans and …”

  I bounced through the door—so desperate to find Ali, that I hardly even noticed the tickle of the wood. Where would she go? Where did she always go when she was upset?

  I looked at the clock. Nine forty-five a.m.: fifteen minutes before class ended and everyone piled out into the halls. Which meant there was one place that was nearby and safe right now: the girls’ restroom.

  I pushed myself through the wall (yep, definitely getting used to the tickle) and heard a snuffling noise coming from under the door of the cubicle farthest from me.

  “Ali?” I asked, out of habit.

  But of course, she couldn’t hear me. She had no idea I was here.

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte.” Ali sniffed. “I know it’s crazy to talk to you when you aren’t around anymore, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  It wasn’t crazy. For a while after my grandfather had died last year, I’d talked to him. Maybe not out loud, but …

  “I should have been there for you. Even if our lives were changing and there were new people in them,” she said.

  I pushed my head through the metal toilet door—Ali sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest and crying quietly. “Maybe if I’d been a better friend, you’d still be here,” she cried. “I mean, if I’d gotten the subway after school with you that day like I always, always used to, then maybe you wouldn’t have tripped and fallen under that train. You were always the clumsiest person I knew. Remember that time when we were eleven and we were practicing kissing on pillows and you fell off my top bunk and broke your arm? If I’d been there on the subway, maybe I could have grabbed you, held you back, and everything would be different.”

  I pulled the rest of my body through the door and crouched on the floor beside my friend.

  “It’s okay,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear my words. “You couldn’t have done anything. I didn’t trip. I was pushed. I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry for letting a stupid guy come between us.”

  “Or if you really did have to die—if it really was your time—I wish you hadn’t gone when things weren’t good with us,” Ali said, her sob turning into a hiccup. “I should have been less jealous of you and David. Hung out with you guys more when you asked me to, instead of being weird about it. Now I’ll never get to tell you how much I’ll miss you.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said.

  I forgot myself—forgot the train and the push and the Rules and Kristen the hell bitch—and leaned over to give Ali a hug. I put my arms around her, being careful not to touch her body in case I passed into it. Instead I surrounded her and listened as she quietly cried.

  “Charlotte?” she said. “Are you …? Oh, stop being stupid, Ali,” she told herself.

  I wasn’t sure quite what just happened—maybe I needed her to feel my presence as badly as she needed a sign that I’d heard her. Whatever, I didn’t move.

  As we sat there in silence, neither of us certain the other knew we were there, I was a hundred percent sure about one thing: Ali hadn’t killed me. There was no way.

  She was the only one who had stood up for me. The only one. I wished I could tell her that I knew that—and how I’d do the same for her if things had gone another way. I wished I could go back to the time when we were best friends. The time before everything got so messed up. I thought David had my back, but after everything I’d seen since I’d died? Well, I didn’t for a second think he’d killed me either, but he wasn’t who I thought he was. No matter how much I tried to justify that kiss, I just couldn’t.

  Down the hallway the bell rang. Ali pulled herself up off the floor and started rummaging in her blue Gap satchel for her makeup bag to fix her blotchy face. She always looked terrible when she cried.

  I went out of the cubicle and found a chair to the side of the restroom door. I concentrated hard and Jabbed it three times, until it was nestled under the bathroom door’s handle. There, now no one would be able to get in until Ali had had time to get herself back together. I owed her that much at least.

  And so, so much more.

  Chapter 16

  “SO YOU JUST LEFT HER, LIKE, SITTING ON THE grimy bathroom floor, crying her eyes out?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. Ali was pretty
much okay by the time I ported back here—there wasn’t much I could do, was there? If I’d apparited while she’d been reapplying her eyeliner, she may have been scarred for life. And I feel like I’ve been a shitty enough friend without doing that to her too.”

  Back in HHQ, I waited until Tess was out of the way before I filled Nancy and Lorna in on what had happened at school.

  “Wow,” Lorna said. “Ali sounds really cool. A real girl’s girl. Not like Kristen.”

  Nancy walked over to the blackboard and neatly drew a red line through Ali’s name. Of course she had a whole different color chalk to do the cross-throughs. I wondered what color she had to draw a big old check when we figured out who my killer was.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t be here to see that part.

  “Knock, knock!” Edison poked his head around the door, making me almost fall off my swivel chair. I did my best to act like it hadn’t happened. “Afternoon, ladies, just thought I’d stop by and see how the investigation is going.”

  “Good,” Nancy said. “Thank you for asking, Edison. It’s nice to see you getting involved in a case. It’s not often we see you down here.” She peered at him suspiciously over the top of her black frames.

  “Well, sometimes, Miss Radley, even busy guys like me have a moment to spare.” He jumped up and sat on the table next to me. “And I thought, what better way to spend it than by dropping in on you and Lorna.” He looked down, his bright green eyes serious and focused intently on me. “And how are you, Charlotte?”

  Edison’s face was a picture of concern. He bent down and gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze. Even though I was sitting down and I really, really, really hated him, my legs still felt weak. Bad legs. “Hang in there,” he said. “If anyone can find your Key, it’s Nancy. She’s the best detective the Attesa’s ever seen.” He gave her his most winning grin.

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “So, we know one person definitely didn’t kill me. Now what?” I asked, moving out of squeeze distance of Edison’s arm and trying my best to ignore him.