by Jolene Perry
Hartman walks around the car and climbs into the driver’s seat, frowning the whole time. Well, crap.
The thing I wish I could say (but never would because the rest of the world doesn’t think the same as me) is that people die. People die all the time. Every day. Expectedly. Unexpectedly. Babies. Kids. Adults. Brothers. Sisters. Fathers. Mothers. Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents. Great-grandparents. Spouses. Some are loved greatly by a ton of people. Some funerals are attended by only a few. It doesn’t change how dead people are, so we shouldn’t be so surprised when someone we know dies.
This is all harsh and horrible of me to think, but I’ve seen death every day, my whole life. If I internalize death as more than just something that happens, the sadness of it spreads like black ink on white silk. I’m smarter than that.
“You stopped talking,” Hartman says as we pull out of the parking lot. He looks both ways. “I know it’s awkward when I bring up my dad.”
I let out one of my even breaths to keep my mind and feelings calm and even. “I see death all the time, so I say the generic thing or I say the wrong thing.”
“Hmm.”
Like right now, I’m curious if Hartman and his mom are the kind of people who had his dad dressed up in a suit he’d never normally wear, or if they put him in a jersey of his favorite sports team. Or maybe he was cremated, and if so, what kind of urn did they use? Something big and ostentatious, something small and unobtrusive, or something that would have suited Hartman’s dad?
I point, careful to keep my hand out of his line of sight. “Take a left here.”
“Thanks. This town is just big enough to get lost in, but not so big that Siri does well. And…most of your roads follow the lines of the ocean and are winding anyway.”
I blink a few times. “That was quite a commentary on Paradise Hill.”
He shrugs.
“We go quite a way on this street. And yes, it’s a winding one.”
He nods, and now that he’s watching the road instead of looking at me, I stare. We don’t get new students very often, and I can’t remember the last time I was in a car with someone who wasn’t Bree or my parents.
His profile is nice, and he doesn’t look so awkward and lanky from the side. I send Bree a quick text. On someone less interesting, his clothes would look pretty dorky, but on him…I think it works.
Once I hit Send, I realize I probably just encouraged Bree’s wiggling her brows over him, like she wanted to do at the library.
The keys in the ignition jangle when we hit a bump, and I glance down.
“Blake Smith?” I ask when I read the tag on the keys.
He clears his throat. “My dad.”
I totally should have known the keys were his dad’s. Not smart, Gabe. I clutch my bag tighter.
Bree still hasn’t written! Grrr.
“So, funeral home, huh?” he asks.
And here we go…
“Yep.” I let my lips pop on the p, ready to be irritated over what he might ask next. It’s not fair, really, and I should be used to all the questions by now.
“Crazy.”
Why does everyone think it’s crazy? “Well, there are funeral homes out there, and someone does run them.”
“It seems…” He lets out a sigh. “It seems like a very sad profession, that’s all.”
“I watch a lot of sadness, I guess.” And the benefit is that I’m very good at keeping myself from being depressed. I have about a tenth the amount of drama in my life as most of our junior class. Though I owe some of that to my complete lack of guy drama and the rest to Bree.
“You guess?”
“Everything is temporary. I just got to learn that sooner than most.” Most of the time I feel pretty lucky. I don’t think I’ll be as surprised when super crappy things happen to me because I live my life half expecting them.
He blinks so many times that I wonder if he’s trying not to cry. I nearly rest my hand on his shoulder. Again. But I don’t. Bree is here in spirit, trying to keep me from embarrassing myself.
He makes a quick swipe of each eye that makes me wonder how recent his dad’s death was.
“Take a right here.” I point to the light.
He glances around at the roofs of the larger homes that peek above the few homes-turned-businesses. “It’s nice up here.”
Guess this is our very welcome subject change.
“Yep.” I point to the palm trees that line the black, iron fence around the cemetery. “And convenient.”
He clears his throat a few times, pointedly staring at the road in front of us. “You’re not far from the beach.” His voice sounds kind of forced or strangled.
What’s up with him?
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m down there a lot, but we’ve had too many drowning victims for me to want to swim. That, and it’s freezing.”
Hartman gives me another strange glance.
This look shuts me down and is one of the main reasons my circle of friends extends only as far as Bree.
“You live a short walk from the beach, and you don’t swim?” he asks.
I’ve already lost him, and it’s not like I’m interested in him, so at this point, there’s no reason to mask any of who I am. “Seeing the victims was enough. I know how to swim because I’d prefer not to drown. So I swim sometimes. In a pool.” I point to the massive house. “This is me.”
He scans the exterior of the mansion-turned-mortuary. “You live here?”
“Well”—I point to the sign, the archway that stretches across the driveway, and the obviously new front glass doors—“the main floor and basement are both for the funeral home. We live upstairs.”
His eyes scan the massive Spanish-style house and the many upstairs windows. “Oh.”
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t live in at least a part of this gigantic space. For a while we were in the apartment to the right over the detached garage, but even that was pretty large. “I’m used to it, I guess. And we really do need the room. The old attached garage was turned into a chapel. The rest of the first floor is the coffin room and the viewing room, and the carriage house is the new garage…”
I’m gesturing like he’ll care how we’ve rearranged the interior, but he doesn’t say anything so I stop talking.
He looks back toward the street. “So, you’re also close to the school.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I walk.”
He pulls into a parking space and rests his arms on the steering wheel, still looking at the house. “Are you sixteen?”
“Yes, but I don’t like to drive, so I don’t do it often. I do have my license, though.” Because Bree made me get it. “But my mom hogs the Subaru, which means I’m stuck using the old hearse, because everything else is insured by the business, and the insurance company says I’m not old enough to drive those…” I trail off when I realize that there’s no way he cares about any of this. “But really, I don’t like driving.”
The corners of his eyes twitch. “Too many people die in car accidents?”
I tap my fingers on my knee. “People are bad drivers. We get distracted.” But people die doing all sorts of everyday stupid things, and apparently can injure themselves just walking into a library.
We sit in silence for a few moments, and then he starts tapping the steering wheel. I’m staring at him again. My heart does an extra little ka-thump.
“My dad was a teacher. He died of a heart attack at his desk,” Hartman says as he taps the steering wheel a few more times.
Guess we’re both finger-tappers. I stop.
“Dad was totally healthy. A runner even.”
I know I’m warped and twisted because the first thing I think is that if his dad came through here, I’d have never guessed his death right, and Matthew would have won the bet.
Hartman’s fingers still, and he turns to face me. “So, will you stop going to school?”
I want to tell him that being careful is such a tiny part of the equation that keeps one pe
rson alive and leaves another dead, but then I’d have to try to explain why I’m so cautious. That would lead to me rambling again about just trying to stack the odds in my favor, and then who knows what ridiculous thing might come out of my mouth. There is no good way to answer.
“Thanks for the ride,” I tell him before leaping out of the car. “It was really nice of you.”
“Gabriella?” he asks.
“Gotta work.” I point to my black dress and then to the front door, all without making eye contact. “Thanks again.”
“Yeah…” His voice is quiet and almost lost sounding. “Anytime.”
My heart is pounding and my head is spinning, and I’m not totally sure I understand why. I don’t wait for him to say anything else, just close the passenger door and try to remember my “work walk” (slow and succinct) as my heart shakes.
When I push open the lobby doors, the smell of sympathy flowers hits my nose, so I take shallow breaths because after my incident at the library, I’m not into sneezing again. I pause next to the massive cherrywood desk that sits near the front and try to see this room the way an outsider would.
Big, open area. Chapel doors. Another set of double doors to the coffin room, which Dad calls the salesroom. Aside from the glass windows into the viewing area, it sort of looks like a hotel lobby. Kind of boring, really. I wonder if I’d have earned the nicknames if people knew the reality of what we do.
“You are in it today,” Angel says as he moves a few vases on one of the side tables. He’s pretty meticulous about their placement.
He’s in a gray suit, which camouflages his weirdness nicely.
“A little,” I admit.
“Mrs. Nichols is happy. Don’t worry about her.” Angel gives me his professional smile. “We were chatting this morning.”
I swallow before sarcasm leaps out of my throat. “Thanks. I gotta…” I point to the back office doors.
His smile widens, and I’m kicking myself for not just walking around him when I first came in.
The second I’m in the back offices, Dad glances up at me, and his eyes widen. “What happened to you?”
“What?”
“To your face?” He points.
I grab Mom’s mirror out of her desk and groan. The right side of my nose is swollen just enough that it looks like my nose is crooked, and the distinct purple of a bruise underlines my right eye. Well, that’s just great.
“Library. Ran into the thingies.”
“The thingies?” Dad asks.
“You know.” I set down Mom’s mirror and swirl my hand in the air. “The alarm thingies.”
“The big white ones?” he asks incredulously.
I frown. “I sneezed.”
Now he’s smiling instead of looking worried. “Only you, Gabby.”
“It’s Gabe, Dad. Has been for a few years.” I start for the back door of the family offices that leads to the house. “I’m gonna go get some food.”
He leans back and kicks his swivel chair to face me. He’s kind of slouched, and his hair is sort of messy around his face. I get this glimpse of what he might have looked like before he got old. Weird. “I need you to please run down the hill and get your sister from Aunt Liza.”
I try to hold my groan in my throat, but it escapes in a weird gagging sound, which makes me cough, which makes my face feel like it’s splitting apart. “Can’t Mickey just walk home on her own? Aunt Liza’s house isn’t that far.”
Dad’s gaze is back on his computer, and his fingers are typing away. “Sorry. Your mom’s picking up food from the caterer. Your cousin Matthew’s touching up makeup, and I need to make sure everything runs smoothly for services.”
I clap my hands together and plaster on a shallow fake smile. “And I’ll be trotting down the hill with my busted face to pick up Mickey.”
Dad kicks his chair around to face the computer again. “Oh,” he says. “I have Bree’s paycheck. Where is she?”
“Out with a guy,” I say. But not just a guy. With Bryce, and that’s one of the weirdest life twists I’ve seen in a while. Why did Bryce ask her out? What does he want? Does he really think she’ll be stupid enough to…do whatever it is he thinks he can talk her into?
Wait a minute…She still hasn’t texted me back…
“All okay?” Dad asks, making me jump. “I recognize that worried face.”
“Yeah. Good. All okay.”
Yeesh. My brain must be shorting out. Bree is out with Bryce. This is totally going to be a one-time thing. I have to stop worrying.
Chapter 4
I head around the side of our huge house and step over the low rock wall into the cemetery. Bree and I used to try to walk along the uneven top of this wall—just one of the loads of things we’ve outgrown together since we met.
Bree came to my house for the first time a few months into the school year of seventh grade and didn’t freak out that I lived above a funeral home. She didn’t ask to see a body or ask about ghosts, just shrugged. I swear, it was like someone had lifted the weight of a bus off my shoulders. There was so much excitement in the idea that I could have a friend come over who wouldn’t be weird about where I lived—even though I had a hard time leaving the funeral-home part of me at home.
In Bree’s eyes, I’ve never been defined by what we do. And once I jumped into her love of vintage…that sealed us.
Staring at my phone, I will her to text me back.
Nothing.
Having a day off of school and not spending it with Bree is like…I don’t even know what it’s like, because it’s not something that ever happens.
I weave around the familiar headstones, trying to make sure I don’t always take the same trail over the grass between my house and Liza’s. With kid number two, Mom and Dad are trying to prevent the kind of scarring that might come from wandering around dead people all day and replace that with the kind of scarring that’s going to happen by my little sister’s proximity to our great-aunt Liza.
Sucks that even my parents look at my life and want to save my sister from the same fate. There’s no convincing them that Bree and I like being different because we do it together.
A light breeze kicks up from the ocean, and I sneeze, sending pain across my face. This day is crap.
When I step inside Aunt Liza’s massive house, instead of turning left into Matthew’s sleek, modern part of the house, I turn right into crazy-town.
The moment I push open the massive, wooden door, music hits my ears. Big band? Mickey listens to…Bieber-like music. Not this. Music vibrates against the wall, but I see no one. Just the insane living room.
Every piece of furniture stuffed into Aunt Liza’s crowded living room is dark or velvet or has wooden scrolling details. Some have all three. Stacks of magazines rest around the mismatched furniture, and the bizarre assortment of trinkets from generations past makes the room feel like a dumping ground for lost items instead of the vintage masterpiece it could be. The wallpaper is cigarette-scented red brocade, and the whole thing just feels…oppressive. Or it would without the music and bizarre bits of pop art Liza has collected over the years.
“Hello?” I call.
“Oh dear!” Aunt Liza parades through her hinged kitchen doors in a red strapless ball gown. A tiara sits on her head, and a long cigarette holder dangles between her thin, glove-clad fingers. “I’m so glad you could join us!” Her voice is the low crackling voice of someone who has spent her life smoking. “Cookies are coming out now!”
She twirls twice and disappears through the clacking door into the kitchen. I tug my shoulders back and walk around the curvy living room furniture, pushing through the door behind her. Flour, measuring cups, and bowls line the black granite countertops. Matthew redid this room about a year ago and modernized the whole thing. It still has enough Liza touches in the lighting and bizarre charcoal art on the walls to match the crazy-cakes feeling of the rest of her house.
My great-aunt Liza reminds me a bit of a cartoon charac
ter. Her high cheekbones and the wrinkles that have formed a pattern over her whole face, rather than just near her mouth and eyes, only add to the effect. And maybe the fact that she had her thick eyeliner tattooed on makes her appear like more of a caricature instead a person. Every once in a while, I see bits of my dad in her—the shape of their noses and their foreheads are almost identical—but the older she gets, the nuttier she gets, and the more straight-laced my dad gets. Although, he is just her nephew.
My gaze lands on my little sister, wearing a sparkling flapper dress with a feather in her hair. Who knows which family member that one came from, or how much that dress must be worth. Aunt Liza’s closet is a vintage treasure mine.
“Mickey?”
“Cookies are almost done. We have to stay. Please?” She clasps her hands together, her wide blue eyes blinking in the way that nearly always works on Mom and Dad. I’m not so easily persuaded.
“You’re dressed in an impeccable vintage dress to bake? Were you careful?” I ask as I try to take in the scene of the formal dresses and trashed kitchen. “Where is the music coming from?”
“Look!” Aunt Liza picks up a very modern set of blue speakers. “My little grandson set this up for me!”
Brilliant. I’ll have to pinch Matthew for that one later. I was so happy when the turntable broke because I didn’t get hit with scratchy, tinny-sounding swing music or fifties pop or whatever Liza’s mood dictated for the day. I should have known that would never last. At least the iPod won’t sound garbled like the record player sometimes did.
I turn toward my sister. “Dad asked me to get you because he and Mom are getting ready for services tonight, and he wants to have dinner.” I’m not sure how cookies are going to play into dinner, but all I was asked to do was fetch Mickey.
Mickey adjusts the feather in her blond hair and pushes out her lower lip in a pout. “Please? Just a minute more?”
I start to protest that I’d really like some time to myself, but the timer goes off and Aunt Liza claps her hands together before shoving vegetable-printed oven mitts over her long, black gloves.
