by Amele, Quinn
I snorted. "It wasn't a date."
"Oh? You could've totally fooled me at Cool Beans."
That catches my attention and I jerk up to catch her eyes. She smirks at me and gives an innocent shrug. I knew I recognized the barista. One of her flings—Berry or Bart or Ben, who knows. Did Rose rat me out? That only angers me more. My life is none of Miss Perfect's damn business. I grip my pen tighter. "He's my friend."
"You were supposed to be with your family tonight," Nate interrupts from the couch. "If you make extracurricular calls, then you will need to say so."
"Extracurricular..."
Rose coughs.
A hot blush eats at my cheeks. Oh you sneaky bitch. "Vic and I, we're not..."
"I'm sure, honey." Rose pulls her hair over her shoulder as she crosses one leg over the other. "Anyway, you're home just in time. I can not understand some of those certificates."
"You just listen," I deadpan.
"It gets all jumbled in my head. It's not my fault you're so attuned to dead people. Right, Nate?"
At the mention of his name, he seems to snap out of his own head. "Oh, yes. Estella is better. Excuse me." Instead of disappearing like he normally does, he slips out of the front door and down the porch steps. I frown.
Nate doesn't use doors unless he has to.
Rose rolls her eyes. "He's acting so weird. I couldn't stand another second alone with him. And it is true; you're like twenty times better at this death stuff than me. Doesn't surprise me. Weren't you a gothy kid?"
Even though Rose and I went to the same high school, we didn't run in the same circles. And I definitely wasn't with the gothic kids. I was a drama kid. I ran tech for everything, including all of her events. Namely, Miss Wolverine, Prom, Homecoming, and the Talent Show. It doesn't surprise me that she doesn't remember me. She only remembered people who were important to her, like the quarterback of the football team, and the senior class president.
Not lowly classmates like Vic and I.
It was somewhat ironic how she died, too. It was three days before Homecoming, and she was desperate to win Homecoming Queen. She apparently wanted to fit into her mother's homecoming dress. So, she starved herself for a few weeks, and had a heart attack. At least that's what she claims.
On her death certificate, I wrote down rat poison.
"Nope," I reply, pulling a chair out at the dining room table, and reach for the first certificate. The death whispers into my ear, and I jot down the cause, who they left behind, what type of person they were. Why Rose can't hear it is a mystery. Then again, she's about as dense as a brick wall.
"Oh my God," Rose gasps, slamming down her pen, "I had the most amazing day with this guy, Thane McGray. Ugh, he was amazing. We never even left his apartment."
I reach for the next certificate. "So you screwed around all day."
"In every position imaginable. You know, if you got some then maybe you'd like being dead."
"We're not dead."
"We're mostly dead." She takes a nail file from a cup in the middle of the table that is supposed to hold pencils, and begins to manicure her nails. "Better soak up life while we still can and all that jazz."
I snort.
"Besides," she goes on, "we can't get pregnant. Unprotected is so much better anyway. Cheers to being almost dead."
I wouldn't screw around with every man who gives me a second glance like Rose does, but I see her point. She's taking advantage of this whole situation, while I play by the rules.
I wouldn't screw around anyway, though. I want my first time to be special—not that it's a top priority anymore. It's not really a priority at all. Who'd want to date a dead girl, anyway?
Just thinking about dating makes me miss Jack all over again. I wonder where he is, what he's doing—I know that somewhere beneath the frost there is something there. Something that still loves me. Nate told me again and again there is nothing left to my Jack, but last night must say differently. There must be at least a little of my Jack left with the way he looked into my eyes...
"Frost went on Holiday, and now he is back. I would suggest you forget about him," he told me when I first asked about him.
"Frost?"
"Jack Frost."
"His last name's..." I couldn't tell him Jack's real last name. I knew he had told it to me once, but I couldn't remember it for the life of me.
Nate gave me an impatient look. "Exactly. He is back from Holiday, and I am sure you will not find another soul who remembers your Jack even existed." Later, when I asked around The Moonstruck, Nate had been right. No one remembered my boyfriend, not even Vic.
"But can't I see him? Just once?" I begged.
"If he wanted to see you, he would come. He knows where I reside."
And he did. Sure, he disguised himself as Vic and tricked me, but he probably needed to see if I was still me, too. We were both different, but we still loved each other. I know deep down we do. The first time I met him, I knew he was different. I was chasing The Moonstruck's resident tabby cat down the alleyway to take him to his annual vet visit when he stepped out from behind the dumpster and I slammed into him. He'd helped me up with a boyish laugh, and asked me my name. He'd been charming and witty, and found me at The Moonstruck every night until I agreed to go out with him.
There was nothing remotely strange about him. Sure, he was colder than the average person, but when I was alive I was always cold too, but for different reasons. He loved being cold, while I loved being warm in his arms.
"Are you going to help me?" I ask, drawing myself out of my memories, and wave the next form at Rose.
She doesn't even look up from her perfect French manicure. "You can do it."
"That's not what I asked."
She gives an impatient sigh. "Did you see what Nate's wearing today?"
Nevermind. It was useless to ask.
"Ugh, green and white? So not his color!"
Who gives a flying fuck what Death wears? He can wear whatever the hell he wants to, he's the Grim Reaper for God's sake. Who's going to tell him that green and white striped hoodie is so a fashion backward?
Not me, that's for sure.
Anything against his marble-white skin will look terrible, so it's useless to even suggest he try a different color. "So am I going to be doing your work too?"
"Now pink on the other hand..."
I give up. "Pink doesn't look good on anyone, Rose."
"Liar!" she gasps. "Pink goes excellent with everyone." She gives me a scathing once-over. "Except redheads."
I roll my eyes. Liver failure? "Ouch," I mutter, distracting myself from Her Bitchness. I file three more while she files her nails, before she suddenly slams down her nail file.
"Ooh! You know what I think you should do?"
I almost jump out of the chair in surprise. Settling back down, I narrow my eyes at her. "What."
"You should dye your hair. Like, green or something. Turquoise?"
"How about not."
"C'mon, it's perfect. Have you ever dyed your hair before?"
"Heart attack..." I scribble down on the next form, and fill in her name and age. Only twenty-four. At least she got to twenty-four.
Rose waves her nail file into the air. "Have you ever dyed your hair before?"
"Left a three-year-old and..."
"Well, I think you should," she replies, more to herself than to me, before she leaves up the stairs to her room, and slams the door.
Yeah, and I think she should stop bleaching hers. I think the peroxide's killing her brain cells.
Chapter Seven
Go On
Two hours and three hundred and seventy-two certificates later, I wander upstairs to take a shower and get last night off me. I peel my clothes off, and step into the shower. The water is scalding hot, and thrums against my knotted shoulders, slowly unwinding them. I lean against the slippery tile in the shower, my eyes closed, but I can still hear the whispering.
Death is happening, every mome
nt of every second, and I can't get it out of my head. It's like white noise. Something I can usually tune out but I'm too tired right now. And it's driving me crazy.
I grit my teeth, trying to concentrate on something—anything! A terrible pop song, a catchy beat, anything other than people dying, but it only makes the voices louder and more insistent.
"No, stay with me!"
"I don't want to die."
"Please, save me."
"Take me instead! Take me!"
"Stop it," I whimper, sinking down onto my knees, as I squeeze my eyes together. "Stop it! STOP IT!"
"But I haven't even started yet."
I gasp and jump, whirling around to pull back a sliver of the shower curtain. My heart skips a beat.
Frost curls around him like shadows curl around Nate, but he takes to them so much better. He's pale, but in a frigid way, as if he'd simply been lost in the snow long enough for it to crust his eyebrows and pepper his hair.
He's wearing a hoodie zipped up to mid-chest, and a white t-shirt underneath, and faded tight blue jeans. But his feet, strange enough, are bare, and frost creeps across the tiles from his footprints.
He smirks, and closes the bathroom door behind him, trapping us both inside. I shiver despite the scalding water, and pull the shower curtain tighter to my chest. His face is so achingly familiar, more than last night when it was dark and he was shadowed, from his strong jaw to his crooked nose, and when my eyes draw to his lips I remember all of the days he kissed me in places that still make me ache. He sees that yearning in my eyes, and advances to the edge of the tub. The steam around him hisses and pops away like static.
I blush at the nearness. So close, his skin sparkles like tiny bits of ice inlayed into his pores. "So," he says, raking his eyes down my shower-curtain-clad body, "would you like to continue from last night?"
"I...um..." Careful, a small part of me whispers. "Do you...remember me?"
"You'll find that I remember a lot of things." Achingly slowly, he curls his fingers between the shower curtain and the flesh of my breasts, and pulls the plastic away. His eyes light at my naked body, before snapping back up to me. "I remember very well."
My heart jumps into my throat. "Everything?" I choke. "Even Charleston?" The one night we almost went all the way. The one night I asked him to stop, and he laughed and kissed my inner thigh, and told me he would wait as long as I needed, that he would always be there for me.
"Even Charleston," he replies, but the words don't stir anything behind his icy eyes. Before I can call him on it, his lips press against the side of my neck. Frigid, sharp lips that make me gasp in surprise. My hands instantly grab onto his jacket. His tongue tickles the skin on my neck, and slides down, slowly, like a melting ice cube, to my collarbone. "Let me cool you down a little..."
The contact makes steam rise from my skin, and the ice that began to grow across my collarbone quickly melts into droplets and slide down. He pulls one hand behind my back, the other cupping my breast, and kisses the side of my cheek.
"How did you get in?" I ask breathlessly. It takes every mote of energy I have left to concentrate. "How did you find me?"
"Living with dead meat, here?" he sneers, and at least that part of him hasn't changed. "It wasn't that hard, trust me."
"Does he know you're here?"
"Do you want me to tell him I'm touching the most beautiful girl in the world?" he replies, and he says it so simply all resolve I had simply melts. I press my lips against his, and unzip his jacket.
He shrugs it off as my fingers go for the button on his jeans. He laughs and kisses me again, his lips still so cold they hiss like steam when they find mine. A fire is growing in me again, like it had last night, but it's different this time. Stronger. More passionate, more wanting. Where last night it was a flame, now it's an inferno.
I just want to enrapture him, I want to pull him so far into myself I consume him.
Somehow, he must sense that too, because he pulls off his jeans and underwear and steps into the shower with me. Clouds of steam hiss off his pale, frigid skin the moment he climbs in with me. His chest, hard and muscular, presses against mine, his manhood sizeable against my stomach. My heart hammers, but I can't think straight. His shoulders are so broad and smooth as I wrap my arms around them, and pull him deep into the kiss.
God, I want to eat him up, and it seems like he wants to let me.
"You're so sexy," he mumbles into my mouth, massaging my breast with his large, cold hand. I moan in pleasure against his lips, and feather my fingers into his hair. "So fucking—"
There is a loud bang and I jump. Suddenly, I'm standing in an empty shower. I glance around for Jack, but he isn't here.
Just like that—vanished.
I swallow a mouthful of water, and slowly pull the curtains closed. The bang was Nate coming in the front door. He's yelling about something, probably a still birth. My hands are shaking. He was right here. Jack was right here.
Where did he go?
Out of curiosity, I look down at the bottom of the tub, and step out of my own blackened footprints, as if they are seared into the tub. I gulp. What's happening to me?
I'm going nuts, that's what's happening.
I turn off the shower and quickly dry myself off and slip into jeans and a sweater, listening to Nate rummage through his office. But then I realize I don't hear anything else—not the whispers, not any voices. My head is entirely my own.
Even downstairs, when I touch the death certificates... nothing. Absolutely nothing. I retract my hand like it was burned.
This is too good to be true.
"Rose!" I call up to her. "Do you hear anything?"
She opens her bedroom door. "Like what?"
"Voices," I reply, and instantly realize how incredibly insane that sounds. "I mean the dead voices. The dying ones."
"Ew, no." She rolls her eyes again and closes the door again. "Freak."
I grab my gray jacket off the coat rack and leave the house. I don't even bother to ask if Jack was there. She would've said something if he was. She would've tried to bang him in the doorway.
Outside, the murmurings are sometimes louder, especially closer to town. But all I hear is the silence in my head, and birds, and traffic, and people. Like how the world used to sound.
My heart jumps into my throat. I missed how the world used to sound.
Enjoy it, Estella, I tell myself, and set off toward the bus stop into town. The clarity feels like it does when you've breathed smoke for years, and suddenly taste a gulp of fresh air. It's glorious, and invigorates me down into the marrow of my bones.
I make it to the stoplight across from the bus stop before Nate finds me. I can feel him before I see him, and he keeps even paces with me crossing the street. Maybe if I ignore him long enough, he'll go away again.
Or maybe he can sense that the voices are gone, too.
Was Jack a part of the silence? Did he somehow make that happen? No, that couldn't be, because what does Jack and Nate have in common? Absolutely nothing. There would be no reason for Jack to mess with Death.
I join a homeless man on the bench waiting for the bus, and Nate comes to stand a few feet away, his hands in his jacket pockets, looking strangely smaller than usual. Does he know Jack visited me? Had he visited me? It felt so real, even though it disappeared as quickly as a dream.
The afternoon is cold, growing colder by the moment, and my breath leaves my lips in short, puffy clouds. Nate doesn't breathe, and his stitch lips are set into a thin, straight line.
No, he can't know. It was all in my head.
That just makes me even more depressed.
A lone car coasts to a stop at the light and waits. A family crowds inside, laughing and singing along to some Dora the Explorer song. The little girl has a doll with her, probably one she got for Christmas last month, and her brother keeps poking her in the side to annoy her. I remember when Gage used to pull my hair whenever I got the front seat, and kicked my
seat. He always said, "It wasn't me! She's lying!" and do it again.
I didn't think I'd miss that—and really, that I don't. But those long car trips with Mom and Dad and Gage...I miss those. I miss family vacations. I miss going to see the grandparents. I miss driving through the Blue Ridge on Saturdays when Mom didn't have to work. They don't go anymore, partly because Gage has soccer games on the weekends, and partly because they don't want to go without me, and I never have time.
Soon, the light turns green and they're gone. Home, probably, where they'll kiss each other goodnight and sleep soundly without a care in the world. Tomorrow they'll wake up, and run down to breakfast, and take for granted all of the times they could say, "I love you."
Life goes on, though.
Even with out me, in the house I used to live in, life goes on.
"How could you do this for so long?" I finally ask to break the silence. My feet are getting cold anyway. I want to go back inside.
"I do not know."
Maybe it's the softness of his voice, but I glance over at him with a curious look. "You don't keep time?"
"That is not my job. I keep death." He turns his onyx eyes to me, and there is a glimmer of something soft, and something secret, inside of them. "While you keep memories in days and years, I keep them in people and names. I keep them in stories."
"Stories," I echo, more as a statement than a question. I went into his study once. He doesn't have a room at the house, only a small, cluttered study with a mahogany desk and a swivel chair. I found it a little odd, when I first saw it, every wall lined with books upon books. Old ones, new ones. Books about history, about art, about magical and far away places.
They made sense now, his peculiar love for books.
I like stories, too. I can't remember a childhood outside of the library, or a time I didn't keep a book nearby. They were easy escapes, cheap adventures, where I could be the heroine to a story riddled with perils and great feats of strength, where I could always find a happy ending.
