The Sweet Dead Life

by Joy Preble

  Copyright © 2013 by Soho Press, Inc. and Joy Preble

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States in 2013 by Soho Teen an imprint of

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Preble, Joy.

  The sweet dead life / Joy Preble.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-61695-151-1

  1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Angel—Fiction. 3. Dead—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. Missing persons—Fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.P90518Sw 2013

  [Fic]—dc23 2012033352

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  v3.1

  For Jake—who finds the universe as strange and wonderful

  and darkly amusing as I do.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Jenna’s Journal: December 3rd

  Jenna’s Journal: December 4th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 5th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 5th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 6th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 7th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 7th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 7th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 8th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 8th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 8th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 8th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 8th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 9th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 9th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 9th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 9th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 9th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 10th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 18th

  Jenna’s Journal: December 19th

  Jenna’s Journal: January 12th

  Acknowledgments

  “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”

  —Davy Crockett

  I found out two things today: One, I think I’m dying. And two, my brother is a perv.

  My friend Maggie says that things happen for a reason. This is how Mags thinks: that there’s an explanation for everything. Like the time in second grade when I got the flu and couldn’t go on the class trip to Huntsville to see the giant statue of Sam Houston. Maggie says the universe spit this out on purpose. If I’d been there, maybe something bad would have happened, like a pigeon crapping in my hair while I stared up at Sam’s enormous head. Or someone might have broken into our house, but didn’t because he peeked through the window and saw me lying on the couch all feverish, watching the Price is Right. Maggie believes the world works like that.

  Me? I don’t. This drives Mags nuts, but like my dad used to say, “You believe what you believe. Who am I to say you’re batshit crazy?”

  My father bailed on us when I was nine and we haven’t seen him since, but at least he left me words to live by and a colorful vocabulary. Unfortunately, the administration of Ima Hogg Junior High is not a fan of colorful vocabulary. Even though I’m probably dying of some strange disease—I’ll get to that in a second—they had no problem assigning me three days of after-school detention, otherwise known as ASD, for calling my algebra teacher Mr. Collins an asshat. Which he is.

  You would think a school named after a woman whose parents had an obvious screw loose in the naming department would be more reasonable. You would think.

  So this is what I was going to tell Casey—a.k.a. my perv brother—when I walked into his room: that he had to give me a ride for the next three afternoons because the state of Texas had cut the budget, meaning there was no more late bus for juvenile offenders like me, and it was too far to walk in my currently dying condition.

  True, at that moment, I didn’t know for sure I was dying. The doctors have been shifty about actually telling me there’s no cure for what I have. I’m just a fourteen-year-old girl who had to quit track because I can’t run even as far as the mailbox anymore without gasping for breath. I’ve got weird rashes on my feet and funny dark patches on my tongue. My white blood cell count is out of whack. I’m always cold and I’m thirsty even though I drink like a camel preparing for a desert trip. And just for grins, my pee has started looking a mite green.

  Here’s what I don’t have: Cancer. Diabetes. Scabies. Ebola. Meningitis. Beri beri. Flu. Congestive Heart Failure. Pica. Exploding Head Syndrome. (Yes, it’s real. Look it up!)

  Anyway, Casey’s silver Prius was in the driveway this afternoon when I got home. It’s really my mom’s car, but Mom isn’t exactly driving much these days. She’s not paying the bills much either, but that’s another story. And here’s the thing I’ve learned about a Prius. If your stoner brother (yes, Casey the perv) leaves it running all night because, in his words, “It’s like a stealth-mobile. Really, Jenna, I had no idea it was on,” it likely will not be able to take either of you to school the next morning. And if your brother lets his stoner pal Dave borrow it to go get tacos at Jack in the Box at 2 A.M., it’s likely to come back with the hood scratched and a huge dent in the front bumper. Not to mention likely stinking of a combination of grease and weed.

  “Likely” is a word I toss around a lot when it comes to Casey, because even when he tells the truth—which, in fact, he usually does—he still sounds like the worst liar ever.

  Dave blamed the accident on the Prius dash display. According to Dave, it’s extremely distracting because you can set it to show when the car is running on battery. The blinking lights freaked him out, causing him to close his eyes after placing his taco order. This is why he bashed into the drive-through menu. In no way did Dave believe that this incident related to what he had inhaled prior to the taco run.

  Dave to Jack in the Box worker: Dude. I’m stuck in the menu.

  Jack: Dos tacos. That’s Spanish for dos tacos.

  I walked in, tossed my backpack on the couch and headed upstairs. Mom’s door was closed. No surprise there. I thought about knocking. The thought didn’t last long. I could hear whatever was on her TV, a cooking show by the sound of it. Mom hasn’t cooked a meal in at least a year, but she’s got this thing for the Food Network. “That Paula Deen,” she commented the other day, “do you know she used to be afraid to leave the house? Now look at her.”

  I didn’t want to look at Paula Deen. I wanted my mother to snap out of whatever kept her inside most of the day. I mean, look at me. My pee had begun looking like a vat of dye for green Life Savers. But when your mother spends the day in the same sweats and T-shirt in which she’s spent the last three days and nights, telling her that maybe you’ve got some freaky jungle fever probably isn’t going to make a difference.

  Last week, I proved this theory by showing her my tongue. It was covered with dots. She cried and told Casey to take me to the dentist. Then cried some more when we reported that: a) The Visa card was rejected and we now owed the dentist $250 and b) Dr. Kensington had informed me that the tongue was “mysterious.”

  I climbed the stairs, tired and pissed at Mr. Collins and the Ima Hogg detention policy. My boots felt too heavy for my legs, which was a definite bummer because I loved those boots. They were red square-toed Ariats that I’d gotten at Bubba’s Boot Town. I still had the receipt—not because I planned on returning them, but because it listed the name of the guy who’d
sold them to me. I was wearing boots that had been fitted by a salesman sporting a huge Texas-shaped silver belt buckle, whose name tag identified him as Jesus. You don’t return boots like that, even if some weird disease is making it hard for you to walk in them.

  Casey’s door was closed. I knocked. It was probably hard for him to hear me over the sound of Katy Perry singing about wanting to see someone’s peacock. So I turned the knob and walked in.

  My brother was slouched against the headboard of his bed, his laptop on the comforter and his right hand down his jeans. He was wearing a Mountain Dew T-shirt with a stain on the front. He was breathing sort of heavily. The state of Texas did not believe in sex education, but we still had cable and high-speed Internet. I was not unaware of what he was doing.

  “Gross,” I hollered. It took Casey a few seconds to register my presence. He scowled and yanked his hand out of his pants. If there is anything worse than being saddled with an unidentifiable disease and three days of detention, it is walking into your brother’s room to find him, unzipped, on a porn site. Correction: I had no idea if he was looking at porn since I couldn’t see the laptop screen. For all I knew, he was looking at pictures of the Grand Canyon. Which might explain his lack of a girlfriend.

  Actually, what explained his lack of a girlfriend is that he still hadn’t recovered from Lanie Phelps, his first and only love who broke his heart sophomore year by dumping him for (among other things) being the kind of guy who gets stoned alone, and, well, you get the picture. Lanie was blonde. Lanie was a cheerleader. Lanie was the walking cliché who, according to Casey, had informed him that the breakup wasn’t because he quit football. It was because he stopped “walking proud,” and she was having a hard time with that.

  Of course, he didn’t tell her the truth: that he quit football to help save our bank account.

  A pain sliced through my head. It hurt so hard that I gasped. Tiny white dots hazed my vision. Terrific. My brother is pleasuring himself to pictures of the Colorado River and I’m the one who’s going blind. I clutched at my temples. Katy Perry was now reminiscing about the taste of cherry Chap-Stick. The smell of stale marijuana and possibly the remains of a tuna sandwich wafted through my nostrils. I crumpled slowly to the floor. I’d have fallen faster, but the Ariats made my legs less flexible. Thank you, Jesus.

  I hit the carpet with a thud and my cheek pressed against something squishy that I was too distracted to identify. Above me on the bed, I heard Casey holler. It sounded like “Jenna, don’t break my bong.” Or maybe, “Jenna, I’m going to sing a song.”

  “I think I’m going to puke,” I managed. Could heads actually split in two like in a cartoon? Because that’s what mine felt like it was doing.

  “Hang on,” he said. I felt more than saw him fling himself off the bed. “Lemme get the garbage can.”

  I lay on Casey’s less-than-clean cream carpet, taking shallow breaths and trying not to vomit. The room was silent. Maybe Casey had turned down the volume. Or else I was going deaf along with everything else. I willed myself not to pass out and—since I had nothing better to do—scanned the crap under Casey’s bed, which seemed to include a lot of wadded up pieces of Kleenex. A plate with half of what was definitely that tuna sandwich I’d smelled was sitting in the middle of the used tissues.

  Note to self: Spray laptop with Lysol before using.

  “Here.” Casey shoved the garbage can at my head. “Can you sit up?”

  “Only if your pants are zipped.”

  “Ha ha. Did you ever hear of knocking?”

  “I have three days of after-school detention,” I said, because honestly this was why I came in here, wasn’t it?

  I managed to ease myself off the floor. Casey kneeled next to me holding the garbage can like he was offering me a prize. His hair was sticking up at funny angles. His breath smelled like corn nuts. His eyes looked red. He reached up and picked what turned out to be a half-chewed corn nut off my cheek. Then he smoothed my hair back and held it while I vomited into the can.

  We peered at the puke when I was done. If I had to color it in a picture, I’d use the forest green crayon.

  “What have you been eating?” Casey asked. He stared at the puke some more and then at me. I wiped a stray dot of vomit off my Ariats. I had recently cleaned them with the leather conditioner that Jesus had talked me into along with the boots.

  “Nothing. Nauseous all day. Oh wait—I had an apple slice during nutrition.” Nutrition was what Ima Hogg called our fifteen-minute break. I guess because we were too old for them to call it recess.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Take your hand off my head. I know where it’s been.”

  Then I passed out.

  When I came to, we both agreed that maybe I was dying.

  SPRING CREEK HIGH SCHOOL

  Casey Samuels Progress Report

  Calculus: 52

  Honors US History: 12

  AP English: 67

  Teen Leadership: 33

  AP Chemistry: 70

  European History: 0

  We dealt with my (maybe—possibly? yes … it might be the truth) dying condition the way we dealt with everything these days: we hoped it would go away. This isn’t exactly an action-filled activity. I told Casey I would be all right—or at least no worse than I already was—and that he needed to get back in the semi-wrecked Prius and drive on an angle to work. I thought about telling him to keep his hands out of his pants while he was on the road, but I figured he had learned his lesson by having his sister faint dead away in his room after catching him in the act.

  Okay, we both knew that wasn’t why I passed out. But if it could put a stop to my brother’s self-love, I was all for it.

  “I’ll bring you back something,” he said as he helped me to my room. “I’ll take care of Mom, too,” he added. “You just rest. Or do your homework or something.”

  The fainting and the puking had suddenly made me hungry. Or at least now the slightly nauseous feeling I’d had all day was gone and I was aware that maybe I should eat.

  “Brisket sandwich,” I said. “And French fries. But only if Jorge is working the fryer.” Jorge Garcia was a genius at making French fries. He was about five foot four and from Guatemala and the best line cook at BJ’s BBQ, where my brother waited tables four nights a week. Casey’d gotten the job through Dave before Dave was fired for toking up in the back.

  True story: Casey’s name tag at BJ’s doesn’t say Casey. It says Dick. When I noticed this and asked him about it here’s what he said: “This way I can say to customers, ‘Welcome to BJ’s. I’m Dick.’ ”

  This, ladies and gentlemen, is the boy who shares my gene pool.

  As he left my room, a piece of paper fluttered out of the back pocket of his jeans and landed on the floor. I started to yell after him, then saw the words Spring Creek High School and shut my mouth.

  I waited until he pounded downstairs, then plucked his progress report off the floor, and climbed into bed. I loved my bed. It was a queen-size my parents had bought me right before our family situation went screwy. Luckily they’d popped for a goose-down duvet and brown and white cover that I also loved. Not too warm. Not too light. Perfect. Unlike the rest of my life.

  I stared at my brother’s pathetic grades. My heart started throbbing like it had before I passed out, but not because I was about to faint again. I blinked a few times. If Mr. Collins saw me right now, I know what he’d say. “Jenna Samuels. What’s up with the crying? Your brother was the best running back Ima Hogg ever had. But he’s a quitter. I put my rear on the line for that boy, talked him up to all the Spring Creek coaches. And what does the little pissant do? Up and quits the football team sophomore year. So think twice about wanting to follow in his footsteps, young lady.”

  I know this because it’s exactly what he said to me while waving my less-than-completed homework in my face. Somehow my lack of desire to slog through five pages of algebra problems made me a slacker. That I already h
ad an A in Algebra—and that Mr. Collins was a shitty teacher who preferred worksheets to actual teaching—didn’t seem to weigh into his thought process. Instead, he simultaneously called me out and dissed my brother. Calling him an asshat was a logical response.

  But somehow I was the one with three days of ASD. Go figure.

  Here’s the conversation we didn’t have:

  “Hey Asshat Collins, you know what? Casey quit football because he’s working two jobs. Casey’s working two jobs because we have no health insurance and the five doctors who haven’t been able to figure out what’s wrong with me still want to be paid. Mom hasn’t had a paycheck in over a year. Her savings account—which turns out had been sizeable from sources unknown—is currently down to $875.53, a sum that is less than our mortgage payment. Which hasn’t been paid in five months. Oh: And on the nights that Casey isn’t at BJ’s serving brisket and ribs and recommending the blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream, which by the way I used to love before everything began to taste more or less like sawdust, he delivers Chinese food for Beijing Bistro. Our Prius reeks of egg rolls and sweet and sour pork in addition to the weed odor and the grease from Dave’s taco habit. So if you and the wife and three little Collins rugrats feel like moo shu this weekend, you know who to call. Don’t forget to tip.”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  The throwing up and the almost crying had made me dehydrated. Slowly, I eased out of bed. When I was sure I wasn’t going to crash to the floor, I shuffled downstairs to the kitchen. Even in my condition I was not about to drink bathroom water.

  At the sink, I chugged two glasses—so thirsty!—then found a container of orange juice in the fridge with a semi-respectable expiration date. I gulped from the carton, and emptied the rest into my glass. We might be broke, but I was still a manners girl.

  I exited the kitchen with my juice at the same exact moment Mom stepped out of her room. As usual, she was wearing an ancient pair of red sweats from Victoria’s Secret that were way too big and a pink Cockrell Butterfly Exhibit T-shirt I’d gotten at the Science and History Museum when I was nine, about a month before Dad decided that he wanted to be elsewhere. I’d put it in a bag of clothes to give away but somehow it had ended up in her wardrobe. Possibly because it fit her. Her hair was greasy and pulled back into a ponytail, but she’d swiped on some blush and eye shadow and lip gloss like she was trying to make an effort, which was definitely not something she’d been doing lately.