I'd Rather Not Be Dead

by Andrea Brokaw

  My arm snakes around Finn's. “See, me, I would've just answered the question.”

  He tilts a smile toward me. “Sorry. Didn't mean to damage your reputation with my lack of customer feedback.”

  There's a loud silence in the half-filled English room as we stroll in. Finn gives me a quick peck on the temple before we settle into seats. I take the one next to him, forcing the row to shift over by one. No one says a word about it, though even the teacher looks astonished.

  I glare down a girl who's looking at me like I'm the anti-Christ and wonder how long we have until someone openly accuses me of using witchcraft. Not long, as it turns out. Leaving calculus, I pick up a thread about how Cris didn't really OD, but is in the hospital because I used too much of his blood working a Satanic rite to snare Finn's affections.

  “Watch out,” I tell the guy I caught spreading the tale. “I need a new donor now.”

  Finn gives my hair a light tug as the kid blanches and starts to back away. “For a completely different spell, of course.”

  “Obviously. I have you, but now I need to train you.”

  “Probably need more than one donor.”

  “Probably.”

  We drift through the day, trading glances during class and walking together through the halls. We eat lunch alone, in the place Cris and I usually eat.

  In movies, when the popular kid starts dating the unpopular kid, the unpopular kid always gets promoted. And then faces moral dilemmas involving his or her old friends, who may have been losers or geeks or freaks, but were at least genuine in their friendship.

  In real life, or at least at Pine Ridge, it looks like this isn't going to be the case. Since this morning, people have slowly stopped talking to Finn. They aren't ignoring him, exactly, but the attitude seems to be, “Just leave him alone and he'll come to his senses.”

  The cheerleading squad is a lot more militant than that, filling the day with jeers, sneers, and assorted other minor attacks that Finn pretends not to notice. I'm torn between hating them for being so bitchy to him and respecting them for sticking up for Bobbi.

  No, my issue isn't with Bobbi's friends. My problem is with all the people who aren't upset that my sister was hurt by Finn hooking up with me, but are acting like jerks anyway. Not that I should have expected better from any of them. I knew all along this school was filled with shallow and judgmental idiots and Cooper Finnegan turning out not to be one doesn't mean everyone else is secretly awesome.

  There's an announcement at the end of the day, a few minutes before dismissal, and the start of it makes me go completely numb. “It is my very sad duty to inform you of the passing of a fellow student.”

  My mind screams a name, but it's not the name the principal says. “Richard Woodman passed away this morning following complications from an accident off the Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday.”

  Guilt washes over me on the heels of relief. I glance at Finn, then follow his gaze to where it's moved while Ms. Pauler explains Ricky arriving at the hospital in a coma yesterday and never regaining consciousness. This afternoon, she tells us, his family made the decision not to keep him on life support. Tanya's fingers twine around her crucifix as she stares at the speakers, looking pale and fragile. But not surprised.

  Fray said Shadow wouldn't want to lose a death. It must have substituted Ricky for me. I'd feel a lot worse about that if he hadn't been trying to kill me when it happened.

  Tanya rushes from the room as soon as the announcement ends and the teacher doesn't try to stop her. I think about going after her, but what would I say?

  My attention goes back to Finn. He gives me a soft, understanding, smile. He's not happy to see Ricky dead. Ricky was, after all, as much a victim of Elza as I would have been. But given a choice between who would live and who would die, he'd keep things as they are.

  I call Cris's mom as soon as the bell rings. She tells me Cris woke up and wants to see me, lets me know which room they'd moved him into. Standing in the hallway outside of it, I feel dread gnawing at my insides. Finn pushes my hair back behind my ear and smiles.

  “If you break up with me now, you won't have to tell him.” He says it like a joke, but I hear the little tendril of fear worming its way through the words.

  “I don't suppose we could just keep us a secret?” I pose.

  “Sure. We'll just have to erase a few hundred memories.” He brushes a light kiss across my lips. “Still want me to wait outside?”

  No. “It's probably best.”

  He nods. “Okay. I'll be down the hall chatting up the nurses.”

  “Alright.” I give him another kiss. “The one with the beard really seems to like you.”

  He smiles for me. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Turning me toward Cris's door, he gives me a little push. My heart swells with tenderness for Finn as I knock and go into my friend's room, trying to think of something better to say than, “Hey. Glad you're not dead. And, FYI, I'm sleeping with your nemesis now.”

  But it turns out that I don't need to think of anything to say. One look at him and I know that the grapevine's beat me to the punch.

  “Cooper Finnegan?” he asks softly. “You really are pissed at me.”

  “It's not like that,” I tell him, walking into the room while I make a visual estimate of his condition. His color's almost back to normal, once you take the yucky hospital lighting into account. He's still on an IV, but only one, and it looks like just a fluid drip. He hasn't shaved yet and that gives him a wild appearance. I used to really like it when he went unkempt like that. There was something primal about it that drove me crazy.

  “Tell me what it is like then.”

  Taking a deep breath, I consider telling him the whole story. But I've already decided that's a bad idea. “Classic story, really,” I say, making myself look at Cris and not the floor, or the ceiling, or the flowers by the bed. “Girl meets boy. Girl thinks she hates boy. Girl turns out to be wrong...”

  I try to smile, but Cris doesn't smile back at me. “He's one of them, Drew.”

  There are several possible responses to that, such as, “No, not really,” or, “One of whom?” or even, “There is no them,” but I discard all of those, choosing instead, “My only love sprung from my only hate.”

  “What?” Cris asks, not catching the reference. I'm not sure he bothered to read Romeo and Juliet. I know I wrote his essay on it.

  I sigh and go for blunt. “I'm in love with him, Cris.”

  “No, you're not.” He seems very confident of this.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  He shakes his head with a smile. “No. You're just trying to make me jealous.”

  “I'm really not.” How to be more convincing about this?

  “You don't need to, Drew. I nearly died.” His eyes look feverish, possessed. “You learn things about yourself when you almost die.”

  I laugh. Don't I know it?

  “Drew, I love you.”

  I stop laughing. “Don't, Cris.”

  “No, I mean it.” He moves in the bed, sitting up all the way, folding his legs under the sheets and looking down at his lap. “I know was a jerk before. I never appreciated you. I've used you. I've cheated on you...” He looks up like he expects me to react to that, seems almost disappointed when I don't. “I treated you like crap, Drew. But I'm going to make it up to you. Because I really do love you.”

  My heart's getting torn to shreds and I just want to run away. But I can't. “You really want to make it up to me?”

  “God, yes!” The answer is immediate, his expression eager.

  “Then be my friend,” I tell him. I pause, swallow... Force my eyes back to his. “And just my friend, Cris. The rest of it... That's in the past. We're just friends.”

  “No,” he states flatly.

  The pain inside me hits the point where it stops being painful, starts being frozen and numb, like it hurts too much to actually feel. “Then we're not anything.”

  I turn to go, but he s
tops me with my name.

  “What?” I ask, having to ask twice because the first time it was whispered too quietly.

  “Friends, Drew. For now.”

  There's no for now about it, but I know him better than to think I'm going to get more out of him than that without giving him far more time. Silent, I nod. And I take a deep breath. “Tell your mom I said hi.”

  On autopilot, my feet take me to Finn. I manage to make it there without crying. And once he puts his arms around me, I find I don't need to cry anymore. In fact, with him holding me, I can almost believe that I'll never cry again.

  “What's wrong with you people?” someone shouts.

  It's a shout of desperation, followed by a wordless bellow of unhinged rage.

  Together, Finn and I turn to look down the hall. Where Ricky Woodman stands, hair mussed and eyes raving with madness. He's waving his hands, trying to get someone to so much as glance at him. He goes still when he sees us looking.

  His eyes widen, making him look even more insane. “You!” he snarls, his finger jabbing at us like a claw of accusation. “How did you do this, demon?”

  He stalks up the corridor, passing through a cart without blinking.

  I put my head against Finn's chest and, hoping no one notices, pull us into Shadow.

  “You are no match for the power of the Lord!” Ricky bellows.

  Laughter comes to me unbidden. “And you're in touch with the Lord, are you? Why was He so quick to let you die then?”

  His face turns a ridiculous shade of red.

  “Drew,” Finn whispers softly.

  I glance up at him, meeting his gaze and then sighing. “You're no fun.”

  “I'm not dead,” Ricky states firmly, if a hair hysterically. “You're lying!”

  “No,” Finn answers with more sympathy than I'd use. “She's not lying. Sorry, but you were in an accident yesterday, Ricky. Ran off the Parkway.”

  “What? And now I'm walking the Earth as a spirit?”

  I give Pine Ridge's newest ghost a cold smile. “Exactly.”

  He shakes his head. “No. Ghosts aren't real. They're lies told by Satan.”

  I shrug as Finn makes a little choking sound, probably remembering me saying something very similar, minus the bit about Satan. “Then what's happening? Why can't anyone else see you?”

  Ricky's body shakes as he takes a long breath, his eyes sparkling with tears as he licks his lips in thought, putting together everything that's happened to him. “Because I'm dead. Because I'm dead and I'm in Hell.”

  He slumps against the wall, shaking his head in disbelief.

  A nurse rushes by, her legs passing through Ricky's while he stares in terror.

  “You'll be alright, Ricky,” I tell him, my voice softer than before. “It's really not so bad.”

  He doesn't look up before we vanish. But just before we leave the hospital, I hear his voice whispering. “Hell...”

  In Dedication...

  This novel was dedicated to my mother. The following is a blog excerpt from a few years ago, from back when I'd Rather Not Be Dead was titled Shadow and before Hedgie Press was born. It should help you to understand why it's safe to say this book would never have come about at all without my mom.

  Mothers Day, 2010

  My Mother Loves My Novel

  You don't have to look far to find someone saying that you shouldn't place much value on the opinions of your friends and family on your writing. In fact, in some places you'll find people openly mocked for statements like, “My mom loved my novel!” Which kind of upsets me, because it's important to me that my mom enjoyed SHADOW. But the true value in mother's feedback wasn't when she said she loved it, it was when she told me what she didn't love.

  When my mother first asked to read the book I kept talking about, I'll admit I was worried. Scared even. I kind of expected her to give me a quick, “That's nice, dear...” and not much else. Sort of like when my eight-year-old babbles out a tale that makes no sense to me and I smile at him while trying to edge away. I had no idea if she'd like it or not and I was worried I'd never even really know. I mean, my mom's a really nice person. Plus, you know, she's my mom...

  Turns out, I should have had more faith in her.

  My mother's an amazing woman, someone I've always admired. She's strong. Smart. Brave. You have to be brave to call up your daughter and tell her, “Yeah, that's nice, dear. But....”

  I've given much more beta-reader feedback since I sent Mom the second draft of SHADOW to read than I had prior to that, so I have an even better understanding of how much guts it took to give me the help I needed. When I write notes for other writers, I spend hours staring at them before I hit send, trying to see if it all really needs to be said, hoping I'm not going to hurt someone who trusted me, praying I'm not going to say something that's going to make this other writer give up on their dream... How much worse would those fears be if I were talking to my child?

  She considered the easy route, just metaphorically patting me on the head and saying she was proud. She even called my sister and asked her if I'd really meant it when I said I wanted to know the flaws in my novel or if I just wanted her to give her support. I suspect she more than half-hoped my sister would let her off the hook. But my sister writes too. No pardon was granted.

  So my incredibly awesome mother got on the phone and told me all the problems she had with my story. At first, she sounded as uneasy as I've ever heard her, like she was certain I was going to yell or cry or call her names. When I instead ate up everything she was saying, she started getting into it. By the time she was critiquing the ending she was downright gleeful suggesting alternatives to what I'd written. (I'm going to assume that's because she relaxed. Not because she got to the bit where she insisted someone who originally lived needed not to... ;)

  SHADOW wouldn't be what it is now without my mom, it would be something much weaker. I've had a lot of other beta-readers, several of them writers and many of whom said really helpful things, but none of them came up with nearly as much to work on as Mom did. She pointed out plot holes, she brought my attention to problems with characterization, she let me know the sections where the mood was off. She came up with a whole slough of things that no one else had mentioned. She was hands-down SHADOW'S MVB, Most Valuable Beta.

  So, yeah, my mom loves my book. She loves it so much that she was willing to man-up and tell me which parts of it could be improved. She gave me what my novel needed, even though she wasn't certain it was what I wanted until after the fact. It's one of many things I love her for.

  Acknowledgments

  First off, thank you to the organizers of National Novel Writing Month because this story started out as a NaNo project. Thanks to everyone who played along with me way back in... 2007? (Yikes!) Thanks to my alpha-readers for encouraging me as I wrote that first draft. Thanks to the betas who helped me through numerous other drafts. Special thanks to the lovely Kat Lunn of England, who took the time to write to a random stranger from across the ocean to tell me to take this novel off the shelf and let the world read it. And thanks to all the friends who reacted to being told about Kat's letter with an exasperated, “I've been saying that for years!”

  I think we've already established that this book owes its biggest debt to my mother, Linda Collins. If you like this book, credit her. If you don't, blame me. It's not her fault her daughter's a nutjob.

  Speaking of my mother's daughters, it was my sister who came up with the final name. One of the options I was debating was I'd Rather Be Dead and she told me that she thought Drew would rather NOT be dead, actually. And she was right!

  While acknowledging the role of my family, we should tip our hats to my father for his constant support of every project I take up and my grandfather, Lewis Allen, who told me my very first ghost stories.

  Special kudos also go to my husband, Jimmy Brokaw, for not only sharing his wife with a keyboard but for always telling me I could achieve far more than I believed I could.
And, of course, a huge dose of gratitude to our son, Eric, who has grown up knowing that at any given moment there's a part of his mother's brain that isn't with him but is off playing with her imaginary friends, but who tells me on a regular basis that he's not only cool with that but it's something he loves about me.

  And thanks to you, for reading all this and presumably the book. Readers are why writers write!