A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Halfway through class, he’s done with his cozy kitten and about to raise his hand to call Mrs. Witherspoon over, when I stop it in midair. “She said ‘interpret’ it, Stamp, not copy it exactly.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  I point to my own glob of clay in response. The magazine picture taped to my workstation is of a simple tennis shoe, but my piece of clay has been twisted and molded and bent to look like a single shoelace coiled into the pose of a striking anaconda.

  “What the heck is that supposed to be?”

  I frown, looking at it with a new pair of eyes. “Well, it’s supposed to represent the commercial oppression of the American shoemakers who hire cheap immigrant labor to manufacture their capitalist ideals of consumer confidence …” My voice trails off as his mouth opens wide and his eyes glaze over. I reel it back in and say, “Anyway, when Mrs. Witherspoon tells you to interpret something, you’re not supposed to just totally re-create what you see. You’re supposed to illustrate how the kitten makes you feel.”

  He nods, shrugs, nods again, says, “huh,” really loudly like maybe he’s in a room by himself, and then leans in, body heat shimmering off of him in warm, golden waves. Finally he murmurs to himself, “How do I turn a piece of clay into …happy?” He frowns at the prospect but then turns his clay cat into a (wait for it) smiley face. You know, the kind that Walmart used to use before it got too cheesy even for them?

  When Mrs. Witherspoon finally rolls around to check out our table, she is not amused. I see the righteous indignation roiling inside of her, back there behind her big red glasses and above her flouncy red scarf. As she raises a trembling finger and gets ready to chew Stamp a new one, I momentarily catch her eye and, with pleadingly blinking eyelashes successfully derail her—at least for today. (You’re on your own tomorrow, Stamp.)

  She sighs, bites her lip, and says, “Very nice, Stamp. Very …adequate.”

  When she’s gone, he looks at me, unconvinced, leans in, and whispers glumly, his breath Tic Tac fresh, “She hated it.”

  I snort a little and inch even closer. “There’s always tomorrow.”

  He’s laughing as we clean up our clay, but since he’s a guy, and new, and a guy, his so-called cleanup takes many minutes fewer than mine, and when the bell rings, I’m still elbow deep in muddy, clay-filled water at the sink.

  I try not to look too desperate as I glance toward our table, sending violently strong ESP waves across the room for him to Wait up, Stamp! Wait up! but already that Art class hussy tramp Sylvia Chalmers has his schedule in hand and is leading the way out of the room. I hang my head, dry my hands, and grab my books from our table—our table!

  As I exit the class, Mrs. Witherspoon doesn’t bother to look up from her latest copy of American Photographer when she whispers, “Careful, Madison. That one’s got heartache written all over him.”

  I snort, linger by the door, and remind her, “Weren’t you the one who told us every artist needs a broken heart to be any good?”

  3

  Rubbing the Grave

  DAD’S STILL NOT home from his swing shift at the Cobia County Coroner’s Office when I get home from school later that day, so I grab two apples from the fridge and eat one of them while standing over the kitchen garbage can. Although I dropped her off not five minutes ago, Hazel starts texting me before I can toss the apple core into the trash and reach for my phone.

  What r u up 2?

  I text back: Wuz gonna do some rubbings in da g-yard.

  Two seconds later: LAME! Call me l8r!

  I shrug, not really planning on it. (In case you haven’t already noticed, a little Hazel goes a long way.) I grab my sketch pad and an old leather satchel hanging by the front door, walk outside, and lock up behind me. By now the sun’s starting to think about setting, and already the mid-October air feels crisp and blue.

  I wedge my oversized pad of expensive onionskin paper beneath my arm, sling the satchel over my shoulder mailman-style, and start trudging down Pompano Lane toward the Sable Palms Cemetery, conveniently located at the foot of the hill.

  Yes, I admit, it is a little strange to live up the hill from a cemetery, but not when you have a coroner for a dad. In fact, you might say it’s fitting since most of Dad’s customers, as he likes to call them, are currently resting in Sable Palms. Or, as he likes to say, even when he doesn’t want to, he seems to bring his work home with him.

  I pass Hazel’s house on the way down the hill, trying to ignore her as she waves frantically from astride the StairMaster in front of the big picture window in the family’s den-slash-home gym. Finally, I wave to keep her from bounding out of the house and following me down to the cemetery. (If there’s one thing Hazel hates, it’s being denied.) I can almost hear her delighted squeal through the hurricane glass.

  A large cul-de-sac sits at the foot of the hill, on the other side of a two-way stop sign where Pompano Lane meets Mullet Avenue. I don’t bother looking both ways, or even one way, before crossing the wide, empty street. This time of day, both streets are deserted, and even if they weren’t, the cemetery is so quiet you could hear a well-oiled bicycle coming from 60 paces and crawl out of the way twice before it got there.

  Only one of the big metal gates is still open. I spot Scurvy leaning on a dirty shovel, tapping his watch (though giving me a dirt-rimmed smile) as I slink through the open side.

  “Cutting it a little close today, aren’t we, Maddy?”

  I hand him the extra apple from my leather satchel. “I don’t know what it is, Scurvy, but that hill keeps getting longer and longer.”

  He ignores the lame excuse, takes the bribe, smiles, and downs the apple in four large bites. He tosses the core over the large wrought iron fence, and we both watch it land in the bed of his rusted-out, once-upon-a-long-long-time-ago lime green Chevy truck. It clatters around with the extra dozen shovels, hoes (not what you think), and hammers he keeps back there just in case.

  Scurvy is the local gravedigger, and since he and Dad spend so much time together—coroner, gravedigger, dead bodies, funerals, cemeteries; you do the math—he’s good enough to let me wander through the cemetery most evenings so I can do a few grave rubbings a week.

  Scurvy is all of 28. Despite his scruffy name, he’s anything but. He’s tall and broad, beefy in his tan-on-tan cemetery uniform, arms bulging and skin ruddy from digging graves or landscaping or whatever it is he does all day.

  His real name, according to Dad anyway, is Paul Delgado, but everybody in Barracuda Bay calls him Scurvy on account of his unfortunate teeth, which, as the name implies, are crooked, yellow, and big enough to resemble the headstones Scurvy tends to all day long.

  As he fiddles with the large, jangling keychain clipped to his faded leather belt, Scurvy eyes my sketch pad eagerly and asks, almost shyly, “Got any good ones lately?”

  I smile and flip the pad open to the middle, where I’ve carefully folded one of my latest grave rubbings. I hand it to him gingerly. Even coated with a special polymer from the art supply store, the paper is brittle and the thick black chalk easily smears.

  “This was a …a …recent one,” I explain without really explaining.

  I don’t need to. He reads the name above the brief dates—1994 to 2011—and says, “She was a friend of yours, right?”

  “Amy Jaspers? Not really, but …we did have Home Ec class together.”

  He stares at the rubbing, his forehead wrinkling, his leathery tongue licking his tombstone teeth. “I gotta tell ya,” he finally says, “I’ve been doing this since I graduated from Barracuda Bay, Maddy, and there’s a big difference between digging a grave for some old geezer who’s lived a long, full, happy life and some young teenage girl who gets cut down in her prime.”

  Then he looks me up and down, and then past me, into the dark, still graveyard. “You take care of yourself, Maddy. I know you kids don’t believe in things like curses nowadays—”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” I murmur.

>   “But between you, me, and the headstones, something’s not right about this town; hasn’t been since the school year started.”

  With that, he carefully rolls up the rubbing and hands it to me before trundling through the open cemetery gate. “Same deal as always,” he shouts over his shoulder, leaving the gate open just enough so I won’t get locked in but tight enough so I can squeeze through and push it closed myself when I’m done. “Lock up when you’re done.” I count to six before he snickers and adds his nightly joke, “And don’t forget to turn off the lights on your way out!”

  I wait until I hear his engine fire up and chug off before I turn toward the newer part of the cemetery. The satchel full of masking tape, scissors, charcoal strips, and other grave rubbing necessities isn’t heavy so much as it is awkward, so it’s good they buried Missy Cunningham close to the cemetery gates.

  I find her grave a few rows away from Amy’s and a few more away from Sally’s. Three high school classmates, three months, three grave rubbings, three identical dates: 1994 to 2011. (It doesn’t help that those would be my dates, too …you know, if I died tomorrow.) I shake off the shiver, try to put Hazel’s and now Scurvy’s words out of my mind, and look at Missy’s simple but honorable headstone.

  It’s granite. Most of them are these days. And there’s a tuba etched on a brass plate in the corner (she was in the band). But it’s the dates that get you the most: 17 short years. I don’t care who you are—rock star, millionaire, supermodel, or second chair tuba player for the Barracuda Bay High School Band—that’s not enough time.

  I sit down, dig into my satchel until I find a soft wire brush, and then clean off the face of Missy’s headstone. It doesn’t take too long, and it’s important that it be free of debris, especially here in Florida, where fresh (and even not so fresh) seagull droppings can turn a simple grave rubbing into a Jackson Pollock print in no time.

  Next I tear a fresh sheet of onionskin from the sketch pad and tape it at the top and around the sides of the headstone so it stays stationary. Finally, I sit in front of the tombstone, crossing my legs over one another and slowly, systematically rub across the stark white paper with a fresh piece of charcoal.

  By the time Missy Cunningham’s name has been etched into the clean, white paper, the sun has gone down and the streetlamps ringing the paved sidewalk around the cemetery have all flickered on, one by one. It’s still not enough light to see by, but as long as I set up the rubbing before dark, all I have to do is keep rubbing, so I’m still in pretty good shape.

  Crickets are chirping and my stomach is rumbling by the time I’m through with the etching. I carefully peel off the tape, roll it up, and slide a rubber band around the crisp onionskin tube to keep it smooth, tight, and, above all, clean. But even when I’m done and hungry and should be back home greeting Dad at the door with something fresh and hot out of the oven (yeah, right), I can’t stop staring at those short dates right under Missy Cunningham’s name: 1994 to 2011.

  “Tragic, isn’t it?”

  I turn, even in my panic careful to keep the tops of my sneakers from smudging the fresh rubbing, only to see stupid Bones sitting on a nearby gravestone, watching me with his beady yellow eyes.

  Leaning on the next gravestone familiarly, Dahlia smolders at his side.

  “W-w-what?” I ask, rapidly standing up and dusting off my jeans, the memory of that morning’s tumble in Home Ec still fresh on my mind.

  Bones doesn’t move, only sits there in his ridiculous white track suit. “I said it’s tragic, dying so young like that.”

  “I dunno,” Dahlia says, menace in her radiant yellow eyes. She’s changed into a formfitting black sweat suit that accentuates all of her petite curves, and silver sneakers that add an extra inch to her height. “Some girls just …deserve …to die young.”

  “N-n-no one deserves to die that young, Dahlia,” I say over the blood pounding in my ears.

  “I dunno,” Bones says. “I mean, it’s not like anybody really misses her. Maybe it was good Missy died so young. Who wants to live a sad, lonely old life?”

  “Of course people miss her.” I stand my ground. “Her parents; I think she had a younger brother; I know she was one of Ms. Haskins’ favorite students.”

  “Look at her grave, Maddy.” Dahlia points almost accusingly at the stone.

  I hold up the rubbing and say, “I’ve spent the past two hours looking at her grave, thanks.”

  “No,” Bones says, “she means, really look at it.”

  Their gleaming yellow eyes, darker, brighter, angrier now that the sky has grown black, leave no room for argument.

  “W-why?” I ask, gathering my things without making a big show of it.

  “Just …do …it,” Dahlia says.

  So I do, and even before I turn all the way around, I see what they mean. Upon closer inspection, the headstone’s not real granite; it’s fake. Like the fake flowers in the fake brass vase screwed to the fake granite tombstone.

  “Okay, so her parents weren’t millionaires. Doesn’t mean they don’t care.”

  “Look at the grass,” Bones says. “No one but you’s even been to this grave this week. You’d think, someone dies that young, kids from school would flock here, weeping and leaving teddy bears and somber poems full of teen angst, lighting candles in her honor. And yet, nobody comes; nobody …cares.”

  “I care,” I say defiantly.

  Bones shrugs, looks at Dahlia.

  Dahlia shrugs, looks at Bones.

  “If you care so much,” Dahlia says with steel in her voice, “then maybe we should do you a favor and let you join her.”

  The air is suddenly chill.

  “Why would you even say such a thing, Dahlia?” I say.

  Bones, who’s been sitting on the headstone, slides off like ice cream melting from a cone. “Maybe she’s right, Maddy. I mean, who would miss you, besides Hazel, that is.”

  Dahlia walks to his side and says, “Yeah, you’ve got no boyfriend, don’t belong to any clubs, and if one more person in Ms. Haskins’ Home Ec class were to die, well, what’s the big deal? They’d say, ‘It was only Maddy; it’s not like she’ll be missed.’“

  Bones is laughing, the sound crisp and creepy. “Yeah, once Hazel got over it, no one would ever think twice.”

  My skin is alive with blood, my throat flushed through and through. And I know the fresh rubbing of Missy’s grave is already ruined as I clench down, down around its middle. And I hate them, and I fear them; not because they’re creepy or ugly or mean or stupid or bullies, but because …they’re …right.

  Who would miss me? Okay, Hazel, sure. Dad, of course. But …then who? Scurvy? Seriously? For a week or two, maybe, until some other morose teenager came along trading him apples to do grave rubbings (maybe even my grave rubbing), and then I’d be old news. Ms. Haskins? Mrs. Witherspoon? And …who else? Nobody. Five people, a single handful, and three of them would only miss me out of pity. Only Dad and Hazel would really care.

  But the worst part is, these creeps know it.

  And now Bones and Dahlia are slinking forward, one to the left, one to the right, and the threat is closer. Not just the words they’re saying, which …they can’t really be serious, right? They’re kidding, pulling my leg.

  They must have heard Hazel and me whispering about the Curse of Third Period Home Ec this morning. When they stumbled across me lurking in the graveyard after dark, well, they’d pretty much get drummed out of the Ugly Bullies for Life Club if they passed up that opportunity, right?

  Behind me, a twig snaps.

  As I turn to see who snapped it, a voice says, “Leave her alone.” Not loudly; it’s barely above a whisper, and it’s over before I see Dane Fields standing to my right.

  His eyes are either black or gray; it’s hard to tell with the shadow from his hood covering them. His pale, prominent cheekbones make his face more angular than soft. On his size-11 feet are beat-up black sneakers with knots in the laces. His grimy gray cords a
re either so out of style they’re cool again or so newly stylish they’re hip; either way, they’ve been part of his uniform since he transferred here this year.

  To Dane’s left stands his girlfriend, Chloe Kildare, who’s an inch shorter than Dane and twice as thick.

  Bones is still walking forward, though slowly now.

  “You heard him,” Chloe says. “Scram!”

  I give Chloe a good once-over, since even though she seems to be protecting me, she’s not even looking at me. She’s dressed all in black, which is her way; big black slacks, big black boots, big black jacket, death metal T-shirt with a touch of blood red, black lipstick, black hair like a helmet around her death white face.

  “Says whom?” Dahlia says, though I notice she’s stopped now, too.

  “Says who,” Dane says through the thin slit between his pale, gray lips, and I smirk hearing a tough guy correct someone’s grammar. Then I speedily wipe off the smirk before Bones or Dahlia can see and hate me even more. “And we said, that’s who”

  Bones and Dahlia look at each other and laugh. No, that’s not quite right. Cackle is more like it. That’s what they do: cackle. A cackle fit for a graveyard; fit for a witch, or a ghost, or a girl who takes a class that’s been cursed.

  Bones and Dahlia swiftly go from cackling to growling, literally, their lips peeling away from their teeth, their teeth gnashing like animals’, and I can feel Dane and Chloe creep forward menacingly before one of them says, “Beat it, losers.”

  More cackling, more growling, as Bones finally crooks a long, candle-waxy finger and looks at Dahlia and they disappear into the shadowy bushes just off the sidewalk. In the darkness I can see their horrible yellow eyes aglow as they make a hasty, if unwilling, retreat through the dense shrubs lining the outer cemetery.

  I wait until I’m sure they’re gone before I turn to Dane. “Thank you, guys. I don’t know what happened. I was just—”

  “Better run home to Daddy”—Chloe picks up my pad and hands it to me—”before you piss somebody else off.”