As Dead as It Gets (2 page)

The gray afternoon sky was sliding headlong into a purple twilight. The low sun shone through a tangle of bare branches in a spot of brilliant white. For the first time all day, Jared looked cold. And tired.

And lonesome.

“Come on,” I said, reaching out to untwist his camera strap. “You’re going to freeze to death out here.”

His mouth quirked up in an almost-smile. His dark brown hair—as long as the Sacred Heart Academy dress code would let him wear it—hung down over his forehead. His cheekbones were chiseled, as if he’d been sculpted from marble. He looked like an aristocrat. And his lips had a slight natural downturn, which made his smiles feel like something you had to earn.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s getting late.”

We walked in silence, eventually reaching the thick wood stumps that marked the edge of the parking lot, which held only three cars—his Jeep, my mom’s gray sedan (which I’d borrowed), and a little blue hatchback.

Near the blue car, in the dim light, I saw a small scuffle, and then a girl cried out, “No, Spike, come back! Sit! Stay!”

A little black dog came tearing across the parking lot toward us, dragging its leash behind it.

“Please stop him!” the girl called.

In one motion, Jared whipped the camera off his neck and handed it to me. Then he took off after the dog.

The girl came up to me, huffing and puffing. I recognized her right away—it was Kendra Charnow, a girl I knew from school. As soon as she saw me, she came to an awkward stop. “Alexis!?” she said. “Um—which way did they go?”

I pointed back down the path, and we both started running. But just around the bend, we found Jared, leading the dog by its leash.

“Thank you!” Kendra scooped the dog off the ground and kissed its tiny snout. “He’s a rescue, and they told us he was a runner, but I didn’t know…”

Then she got a good look at Jared.

Not being his girlfriend, I could watch her behavior objectively, like a scientist taking notes in the field. And it was always the same when girls noticed him.

Kendra’s shoulders went back, her stomach magically sucked itself in, and she fluffed the red ponytail sticking out from underneath her beige baseball cap. Then she tilted her head in that
See how cute I am?
way.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said to Jared. “I’m—”

“Glad to help with your dog,” Jared said. “I’m really sorry, we’d better get going. It must be close to freezing by now.”

Maybe it was the pull of my old Sunshine Club etiquette instincts, but I felt obligated to introduce them. “Jared, this is Kendra. She goes to Surrey.”

Kendra gave him a smooth smile. “I’m a friend of Alexis’s sister.”

Right. Not a friend of mine.

“Nice to meet you, Kendra,” Jared said, putting his hand on my elbow almost protectively. “Have a good night.”

“Good night,” she said.

And that was that. Jared walked me to the door of my mother’s car and waited while I seat-belted my camera into the passenger seat.

I looked up at him, struck slightly dumb by the way the pale gold light of the sunset lit up one side of his face like a Renaissance painting, touching off the edges of his hair with a thin halo of fire. And then, on the shadow side, his skin was as cool blue and smooth as ice.

He looked like a half-man, half-god.

And he wouldn’t even blink at another girl.

What was
wrong
with me?

“Take a picture,” he said, a smile spreading slowly across his lips. “It’ll last longer.”

I smiled back. That had been one of the first things I’d ever said to him.

If I were a girl who knew what she wanted—a girl who knew the difference between what she could have and what she couldn’t have—a girl who was able to let go of the past and move on—I would get out of the car, grab Jared, and smother him with kisses.

But I’m not that girl.

“’Night,” I said.
You will make someone so insanely happy,
I thought.

He smiled. “’Night. Call me when you have some time.”

“I will,” I said.

And I would. Next time I was lonely, or feeling sorry for myself, or just needed to look at a face besides my mother’s, father’s, or sister’s, I would call him—and he would come.

As I texted Mom to tell her I was on my way home, I kept an eye on Jared climbing into his Jeep.

SEE YOU SOON <3 U, Mom replied.

I dropped my phone into the cup holder and switched on the radio, watching Jared turn left on to the quiet highway and disappear down the narrow strip of road.

Something is seriously the matter with you, Alexis.

I’m not a complete idiot. I know I’m not special enough to play hard-to-get and hold the attention of someone like him for any amount of time under normal circumstances. Jared had his own baggage. It wasn’t just me who needed him—he needed me, too.

He’d never said what it was that haunted him, but I suspected it might have had something to do with the fact that he and his father lived alone. He’d never so much as mentioned his mother—and of course I didn’t ask for an explanation. The whole basis of our friendship was that we didn’t press the subject—
any
subject.

We were like a pair of travelers who wandered together because it was an infinitesimal bit easier than wandering alone.

Pearl-size drops of rain began to splash against the windshield, so I flicked on the wipers and made sure the headlights were shining. The road was empty in both directions, but I used my right-turn signal anyway, just in case Mom had spies out in the middle of nowhere.

The public-radio announcer droned on in a comfortingly bland voice about last-minute gift buying.

I put my foot on the gas, and just as I started to apply pressure—

The radio cut out.

There was a split second of silence; then a roar of static filled the car. It was so loud it seemed to be coming from inside my head, vibrating through my body like a scream. I took my hand off the wheel to smack the power button. But the sound didn’t go away.

My ears hurt all the way down to the corners of my jaw.

While I was focused on the radio, the car lurched violently to the left and went into a spin.

I tried to remember what I’d been told about spinning out of control—don’t slam the brake, right? Steer in the direction you want to go?

But what if the direction I wanted to go was
behind
me?

A bright white light flooded the car, like the headlights of a semi bearing down from fifteen feet away.

I braced for impact. The seconds seemed to stretch endlessly.…

But the impact never came.

When one too many beats had passed, I glanced to my right and saw, as fast as a subliminal message flashing on a screen, a figure sitting in the front seat next to me: a girl—though it was too bright for me to see anything but her outline. As soon as I started to comprehend what I was seeing, she blinked away.

And the white light—what I had thought was headlights—blinked away with her.

After a millisecond of shock, I turned my attention to my spinning car.

The steering wheel was stuck, canted hard to the left. Hitting the brake didn’t help. The tires slid across the wet asphalt. A burning-rubber smell filled the air.

In a final effort, I grabbed the parking brake and yanked on it with all my strength. The engine roared in protest, and the car skidded off the road, jolting over the deep grass on the shoulder.

I tried slamming on the brake again.

This time it worked. The tires straightened out, and the car bumped to a stop about five feet from a drainage canal.

The static from the radio died with a jagged shriek.

I put the car in park, then collapsed forward and rested my head on the steering wheel, trying to catch my breath.

Anyone else would have thought there was something wrong with the car—but I knew better. Because when I looked down at the passenger seat, I saw, resting on the upholstery…

A single yellow rose.

Just like the ones at Lydia Small’s funeral.

I
DIDN’T KILL
L
YDIA
.

Yes, I was there when she died, but that’s totally not the same thing.

Just try telling
her
that.

She clearly blamed me, and she showed up every couple of weeks to make sure I knew it. Up to now, she’d just been annoying—taunting me, threatening to hurt me…which might have been scary if she hadn’t been such an obviously weak ghost. The most she’d been able to do was knock a textbook off my desk in class, after twenty minutes of trying.

But this—an actual attempt on my life—was new.

And it pissed me off.

I unfastened my seat belt and threw the door open, launching myself out into the rain. “Nice, Lydia!” I said, turning in a circle. “Trying to kill me? I guess you’re going to have to try harder next time!”

Cold rivulets of water streamed down my face. And I realized I was crying again, which just made me angrier. I wanted to kick something. So I kicked at the wet grass and almost lost my balance.

Perfect—to slide down the bank and land in the canal would have been the absolute icing on this ghastly cake of a day.

“Come on!” I yelled. “If you want me, I’m right here!
Come and freaking get me, Lydia!
”

I was on high alert, adrenaline pumping, ready for a fight. How a ghost and a human could fight, I don’t know. I guess I figured the force of my fury alone might bruise her a little.

I waited for her to show up, in all her ghostly glory, as she usually did—barely five feet tall, with long, straight black hair, wearing the clothes she died in: a torn, bloodstained, red cocktail dress and no shoes. Determined to wreck my day—if not my entire life. Slightly see-through and eternally whiny.

But she didn’t come. And as my adrenaline high faded to a post-adrenaline low, I began to feel not only sort of sheepish and humiliated, but also very cold and wet.

Adding to the splendor of the scene, Kendra had pulled her car up and rolled down her window. She looked more inconvenienced than concerned. “Alexis? Um…are you okay?”

Had she heard me yelling Lydia’s name?

“Yeah,” I said. “There was just…a squirrel crossing the road.”

Her eyes went wide. “Did you hit it?”

I could hear the whispers already:
Alexis Warren ran over a squirrel—on purpose!
“The squirrel is fine,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

I waved her off and got back in the car, shaking with anger and a fresh dose of mortification. As I was putting my seat belt back on, my phone rang, startling me.

It was Jared. “Hey. I forgot to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“All right, well…be careful. The roads are kind of slick.”

So I noticed.
“I will, thanks. You, too.”

Then we hung up.

Feeling even emptier than before, I did a three-point turn and headed home.

Lydia appeared as I was making the left into Silver Sage Acres, the master-planned community of town houses where my family moved after our old house burned down. (Two murderous ghosts ago—old news.)

She faded into view in the passenger seat, her filthy, bloody ghost feet resting on the dashboard. “Come and get me?” she asked. “Is that some kind of joke?”

Seeing ghosts in pictures? Totally my fault, and I’m the first person to admit it. (Never to another human being, of course. Just to myself.) I’m the one who re-took the oath to the evil spirit Aralt when Lydia splashed noxious chemicals in my eyes. I thought I could beat the system—take the oath, then read another spell—one that would release him from my body again. But that was before I knew that Lydia was planning to destroy Aralt’s book—his dwelling—so she could have him to herself forever.

My eyes absorbed a healthy dose of supernatural hoodoo, and I got stuck with the consequences. Totally, totally my bad.

At least it only resulted in my being able to
see
most ghosts. Not hear their despairing, wormy-mouthed, pleading whispers.

But Lydia? I straight-up refuse to take the blame for Lydia. She got selfish at the end and died in pain and in fear, which usually produces a ghost. In this case, it produced a ghost that walks and talks and annoys me just like Lydia did when she was a real live girl. Same attitude, just deader.

When she came into view, I tensed, tightening my grip on the wheel.

But she didn’t try anything. I pulled Mom’s car into the garage and hesitated before grabbing my camera—it would mean reaching right through Lydia’s semi-opaque body. I decided to come back for it later and headed for the door to the hallway, which was always unlocked.

Lydia passed through the car door and stood in my path, both feet planted on the floor. She—and most of the other undead spirits I’d seen—preferred to move like a living person, walking and standing on the ground. Some of them float, but only when they’re too angry or distracted to think about it.

She tossed her hair and sniffed. “What makes you think I’m at your beck and call?”

I almost walked right through her, but my nerve faltered at the last second. I hated the way it felt, like jumping into a freezing swimming pool—or being pushed in. Lydia hated it, too—which almost made it worthwhile.

But not quite.

“Move,”
I said.

She came a half step closer. “Since when do I take orders from murderers?”

See what I mean? Passing the blame much? As if I’d
forced
her to start the Sunshine Club and fall madly in love with an evil spirit. As if it had been
my
idea for him to devour her life force. I’d tried to talk her out of it. I’d even tried to save her—and, rather pathetically,
kept
trying, way after the point where she was savable. But there’s no way to convey that to an angry ghost.

They just don’t listen.

“I get it, okay?” I said. “You hate me. You tried to kill me, and it didn’t work. But take comfort in the fact that you
definitely
ended my day on a low note, and move along, please. See you in a few weeks.”

Her eyebrows went up.

When she didn’t move, I held my breath and charged forward. The frigid rush of blood in my veins left me light-headed, with Lydia’s outraged yelp resonating in my ears.

What happened next took me by complete surprise.

A second blast of cold hit me from behind, and then Lydia was in front of me again.

The double dose was like a hundred full-body ice-cream headaches. I doubled over in pain, wondering if it was possible to die of ghost-induced hypothermia. My fingers were so frozen I couldn’t feel them. I stumbled, put my hands out, and sank to the floor before I could lose my balance and fall.

After a minute, the feeling of imminent freezing-to-death passed, and I looked up at Lydia. She stood on the step by the door that led into the house. The effort of passing through me had left her a little hunched over and slightly more see-through than usual. And when she spoke, her voice was weaker.

“I’ll leave you alone,” she rasped, “when I
feel
like it.”

She disappeared through the door, and I heard the light
ka-chunk
of the lock turning.

I got up a moment later, my legs like tree stumps being stuck with a million pins. The circulation gradually came back as I made my way to the door. I knocked a few times before giving up. My parents were probably in the kitchen with the TV on, so I went around to the front of the town house.

My little sister, Kasey, pulled the door open just as I was about to turn the key in the dead bolt. Her hand tightened on the doorframe when she saw me, soaked and shivering like a half-drowned rat. She, on the other hand, practically glowed, her long hair draped over her shoulder like a gold silk scarf.

Once upon a time, I’d been worried about Kasey fitting in and making friends, but that had proved to be yet another shining example of my general cluelessness about how the world works.

My sister was A-list. She’d growth-spurted over the fall, and now she was almost as tall as me. Her hair was long and caramel blond, just wavy enough to make every hairstyle look effortlessly natural. She had an innate sense of what to wear, what to say, when to laugh, how to stand, and how to tell jokes so everyone in the room would strain to hear the punch line. On top of that, she was smart. Way smarter than me.

It would have been completely insufferable, except she was so
nice
.

Even the niceness would probably have been insufferable if I hadn’t been so relieved that she wasn’t a total outcast.

One per family was plenty.

Most important to me, she’d been through hard times with ghosts just like I had—but she had moved past those times. She was free from worrying about evil spirits and power centers. Free to be normal and happy.

She was safe.

And I intended to make sure that she stayed that way.

“I got caught in the rain,” I said, before she could ask.

From the kitchen wafted the mixed scent of simmering spaghetti sauce and fresh-baked sugar cookies. “Get any good pictures?” Dad called.

Someone was chopping something. The
thunk
of the knife on the cutting board stopped as they waited for my answer.

“Not really,” I called, careful to hover in the shadows. “I’m getting a little bored with photography, to be honest. I might cut back.”

Kasey’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t say anything. I walked past her toward my bedroom, trying to stay steady on my trembling legs.

* * *

The ridiculous thing was, I knew
exactly
how to stop Lydia.

All I had to do was get up the courage to go to her house and find her power center—whatever object was holding her to this world—and destroy it, and I’d be free. Free of her, and (though I only let myself hope for this in my most desperate and pitiful of moments) maybe even free of the ghosts that haunted my photos. Who was to say the two problems weren’t related?

The trouble was, when I contemplated facing Mr. and Mrs. Small, my hands began to sweat and my mind went all wobbly. Their daughter’s death had basically ruined their not-so-great-to-begin-with lives. Under the weight of their desolate gazes, there was no way I’d be able to play it cool enough to concentrate on finding something that had been precious to Lydia—much less obliterating it.

The whole situation was like an itch I couldn’t bear to scratch.

Lydia believed I was a murderer. The kids at school never came out and said anything, but I could see in their eyes that they suspected me, too. After all, when Lydia went running after me, she was totally alive. Five minutes later, we were alone in a fiery beauty salon together, and Lydia was dead. So her parents
had
to wonder.

And maybe what scared me most was that underneath all of my denial and nightmares and anger…some part of me might figure out it actually
was
my fault.

Here’s a hint of how my life used to be: all I had wanted from the day I turned sixteen was a car. I begged, I cajoled, I bargained. Amazing how when you have a cute boyfriend and a popular best friend and everything in your life is just one peppy, perky little party, something like a car can seem really, really crucial. After everything went down with Aralt, I finally forgot about cars. I forgot to care about them, forgot to nag Mom and Dad about them.

So of course I got one for Christmas.

It was an act of profound sympathy on the part of my parents, I guess, because God knows my behavior and grades thus far in my junior year hadn’t exactly been car-for-Christmas-worthy. I’d even gone back to my old habit of skipping classes on a fairly regular basis. But Mom and Dad were insanely excited, giggly and pink-cheeked. I tried to give them a little pink-faced giggling right back, but I think they saw through it.

I could tell Kasey did.

The car was six years old and ugly: brown, rounded off at the corners like a bubble or an egg or something—with a big splotch on the backseat that I’d just as soon never find out the cause of, thank you very much. But it was a car. It had windows and locks and seats and a gas pedal—and it was
mine
.

I fell in love immediately.

Grandma was off windsurfing in Australia with her women’s club for the holidays, so it was just the four of us—Mom, Dad, Kasey, and me. We finished opening presents in about ten minutes and ate our traditional holiday breakfast of scrambled eggs and a giant pile of artery-clogging bacon. I took my trying-too-hard parents on a drive around the neighborhood.

Then the house fell back into deathly silence.

Kasey retreated to her bedroom to talk to her boyfriend, Keaton Perry (could someone please tell me how on earth my little sister was old enough to have a boyfriend? And a
senior,
no less?), and I went to the living room and turned on the TV. The local news was playing, and the anchors were decked out in cheesy holiday sweaters. They were joking and jolly, talking about Santa Claus as if he really existed, that thing adults do to humor the kids who are mostly just humoring adults.

Then they turned serious.

“A Christmas tragedy,” the female anchor said, frowning. “Surrey police are investigating the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Kendra Charnow, whose parents reported yesterday that their daughter apparently left the house in the middle of the night. The Surrey High School junior’s wallet and winter coat were both left behind, and footprints found in the mud outside her window seem to suggest that she left the house barefoot.”