Bad Girls Don't Die (5 page)

“Can I give you a ride home?” he asked.

I leaned down to look at him across the car, but didn’t answer.

He shifted into park. “Hi,” he said. “How’s the skull?”

“I have a bump,” I said. “But I got some sweet aspirin out of the deal.”

“Seems like they’d at least let you sleep through one class when you’ve been knocked in the head”—he paused—“by an evil Young Republican.”

“They like it when kids get minor head injuries. They think it builds character.”

He nodded. “Glad to see I didn’t knock any of the pink out of your hair.”

I reached up to brush a strand of hair off my forehead and winced when I touched the lump.

“Please let me drive you home,” he said again. “It’s really the least I can do.”

“You mean it’s Section Four of your ‘How to Be a Good Citizen’ handbook?”

He scrunched up his forehead.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ve completely fulfilled your
civic duty
.”

His eyes widened. “No—that was a joke. You didn’t think I really
meant
it, did you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Trust me,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “There are a lot easier ways to serve my community than dealing with you.”

Hmmph. Young Republicans have weird senses of humor.

“As a personal favor,” he said. “Please let me drive you home.”

All right, then. Fine.

I sighed and opened the door. “You’re the boss.”

“What if your friend sees you?” he asked. “Are you willing to deal with the consequences?”

“Oh, please. I am not afraid of the Doom Squad,” I said.

“That’s an excellent name for them,” Carter said, smiling. “Maybe we can arrange a rumble between the Young Republicans and the Doom Squad.” He shifted into drive. “So where do you live?”

I pointed down the street. “Three houses down, the one with the yellow shutters.”

He laughed. “I guess I have bad timing.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “You seemed pretty determined. I hated to disappoint you.”

He pulled into my driveway and put the car in park again.

“Wow,” he said, looking up at the house.

Our house is pretty cool, I must admit. It’s the oldest house on the block—probably the oldest one in town. It’s big and ornate, with elaborate details everywhere—not just shingles, but little scalloped pieces of wood, and not just columns holding things up, but arches connecting the columns—that kind of thing.

The oak tree in the front yard adds to the effect. It’s enormous and gnarled; it hangs over the house like an overprotective boyfriend. It’s lush and vivid in the summer, tangled and bare in the winter. In the fall it turns from green to red to yellow to brown so fast you hardly have time to notice, but right now it was one-third yellow, one-third brown, and one-third bare.

My sister actually flipped out the day we moved in, eight years ago. She thought our parents had somehow bought the haunted house from Disneyland and transplanted it to Surrey. She spent the whole day screaming. Mom even thought there might be something in the air that was causing her physical pain. But no, as is always the case with Kasey, it was purely mental.

Trying to appease Kasey’s fear, my parents repainted the house’s exterior with a sunny yellow-and-white color scheme, but it didn’t really cut down on the overall spooky look. We get huge crowds at Halloween.

Sadly for me, the coolness is diminished by the fact that my family lives here.

“Home sweet home,” I said.

“It’s where the heart is,” Carter said, craning his neck to see out the top of the windshield. “This is quite a house.”

I bent down to pick up my bag off the floor. “Yes, it is.”

“It’s kind of a mess,” he said.

I dropped my bag and bumped the back of my head on the glove compartment. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, it’s really a jumble of architectural techniques.” He pointed to the bay window. “That window is Gothic, and the shingle detailing is all Queen Anne, which
kind of
go together, but the columns on the front porch are neoclassical, which is just plain . . . wrong.”

Silence.

“Really?” I said coolly. But to be honest, inside I was kind of “lights and sirens.”

I narrowed my eyes and shot him a glare, just so he wouldn’t suspect anything.

“Yeah, I mean, whoever built this house just kind of picked random elements from all of those styles.” He squinted up at the top of the house. “And don’t get me started on the mansard roof. That’s pure Second Empire.”

I stared at him.

“My mom’s an architect,” he said, shrugging.

I slumped back in my seat. I really, really, really hate to admit it, but I was sort-of-kind-of-maybe the
tiniest
bit intrigued. It wasn’t often you met kids my age with an appreciation for architecture.

“I’m Carter Blume, by the way,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Oh.” He sat in confused silence for a few seconds. “Can I ask you a very serious question?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

He stared straight into my eyes. “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”

Wait, what?
“Wait, what?”

“It’s a classic icebreaker.”

“If I were an
animal
. . . ?”

He faked a sigh and checked an imaginary watch. “Your inability to answer the question doesn’t bode well for—”

“I refuse to answer that,” I said. “On the grounds that it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever been asked.”

He stared at me, frowning. “I hear your subconscious saying
monkey
.”

“Right,” I said. “Monkey.”

“Are you mad at me for knocking you over with the door today?”

“Yeah, I’m furious,” I said in a monotone, rolling my eyes.

He faked a grimace. “I need to be more careful. Do you—”

“My turn,” I said. “Are you really a Young Republican?”

“Would that matter?”

I thought about it for a second. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m not in any political party. I speak for myself.”

Interesting answer. And suddenly the car felt like it was a hundred degrees, and I would have liked maybe three more bucket seats between us.

“I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Your shutters are goldenrod, not yellow,” he replied. “See you tomorrow?”

“I doubt it!” I said, but I could feel my lips betray me with a hint of a smile. I ducked my head and turned away.

The front walk felt like marshmallows beneath my feet as I tried to get to the porch, knowing he was watching every self-conscious step I took. When I reached the stoop, I turned back to look at him. He took his eyes off the roof and looked at me.

“It’s a mess,” he called, “but I kind of like it.”

Then he honked and waved and drove off.

I walked through the front door feeling a little dizzy. I stopped in the foyer and looked around.

Architectural jumble.
Well, maybe he had a point. The entryway was even more ornate than the outside of the house—the wide stairway spilling out only a few feet from the front door, the high ceiling with crisscrossing arches, and wood-paneled walls with intricately carved details, like cherubic faces and squirrels and birds and sprays of flowers. It looked like a fairy tale had exploded all over the walls.

Straight ahead was the hall that led back to the living room. To the right was the kitchen, and just past that, the dining room. To my left was a sitting room that nobody ever sat in.

What did Carter know, anyway? I went up the long, straight staircase to the dark hall of bedrooms.

Mine was the first one on the left. I went inside and flopped onto the bed, my eyes sweeping the plaster molding for signs of architectural failure.

I had to stop thinking about Carter Blume.

Part of me wanted to develop the pictures from the previous night, but my eyelids started to feel like they were being pulled shut. I gave up and closed them, the delicious promise of a nap settling over me like a blanket.

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I heard my sister’s voice.

“Now, Arabella,” she said. “Don’t be a pig. You have to share.”

A pause.

“I know it fits you perfectly, but she’s new and she doesn’t have anything to wear. Think what she’s been through. Don’t you care about her feelings?”

Another pause. I pressed my hands against my head.

“But what if we have company again? You know Sar—”

I couldn’t take it. I reached up and thumped on the wall with my fist.

A minute later there was a tiny tap-tap-tap on my door, and Kasey popped her head into the room.

“I didn’t know you were home,” she said. Her eyes were wide.

I traced the outline of the bump on my forehead. “Why are you talking to your dolls, Kasey?”

“I’m not,” she protested.

“You know you’re
thirteen
, right?”

“That’s
not
what I was doing!”

“It’s just a little crazy, that’s all.”

“I am not crazy, Alexis! You’re so
rude
!” She slammed my door and stomped back to her room.

I tried to go back to sleep, but I felt a little bad. So I got up and knocked on Kasey’s door.

She opened it a crack. “I’m writing a story and I was just working on the dialogue!” she said, before I could apologize.

She backed away from the door, and I followed her inside.

It had been a while since I’d been in her room. She’s too worried that I’ll break something. Even our mother isn’t supposed to go in there, according to Kasey. If
I
banned my parents from
my
bedroom, they’d assume I was operating an international drug cartel, but Kasey’s always been the well-behaved daughter, so she gets away with it.

I stared at the dolls, which were lined up on the built-in shelves like a sinister chorus. There wasn’t room for all of them—there were more in an old cabinet squeezed between the bed and the window, and half the closet was filled with them too.

Kasey had rag dolls, porcelain dolls, talking dolls, peeing dolls, baby dolls, dolls in elaborate costumes, and dolls stripped down to their pantaloons (like the poor new girl, whichever one she was). Some were so old and used that their soft, smooth cheeks had been worn to a shine. Some were brand new. Some were half bald. Some were pristine.

But they were all creepy. It was the only quality they shared.

I was dying to photograph some of them, but that was just unheard of. Impossible.

Kasey seemed to realize for the first time that I’d entered the forbidden zone.

“Let’s go talk somewhere else,” she said, trying to sound chipper.

“You’re utterly transparent,” I said.

But I let her guide me out into the hallway and back to my room. We both flopped backward on my bed, and she grabbed my old blue teddy bear, Mr. Teeth, and started tossing him into the air.

“How was school?” she asked, in the tone of voice that means she wants something.

“Fantastic,” I answered. “How about for you?”

She hugged the bear tight to her chest. “Not so great.”

“No? What happened?”

She shrugged and yawned. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Let’s see, a half-hour whinefest about the middle school cafeteria running out of pudding versus peace and quiet? I didn’t press for details.

“Hey, Lexi,” she said, her voice small and hopeful. “Did you do an ancestor report in eighth grade?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Everybody does one.”

“Then yeah, I guess.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I must,” I said. I’m a pack rat, like my mom. Thankfully I’m also obsessively neat, like my dad. I even have file cabinets of my very own. (
Thanks, Santa!
) “I wouldn’t have thrown it away. Why do you ask?”

“I have to do one,” she said. “And it’s hard.”

“When’s it due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Kasey!” I said, sitting up. “You always do this!” Every couple of months, it seemed, the whole household was thrown into chaos because of some academic crisis caused by Kasey’s poor planning.

I thought she might cry. “I know, but I can’t help it.”

“That’s a cop-out. You could. If you tried.”

She pulled Mr. Teeth tightly across her face. “I know. I know.
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know—
”

“God, stop!” I said, grabbing the bear away. This was the way most of her weird moody spells started—she’d get all wound up about nothing.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “You don’t have to help me.”

“Seriously, tomorrow?”

She nodded. She looked completely miserable all of a sudden. Her face had gone all splotchy, and her blue eyes were bright like she might start crying.

Kasey’s in eighth grade. That means she has less than a year to pull herself together enough to survive being my sister at Surrey High.

She’s supersmart, but it’s the kind of smart that makes you think she’s going to end up a mad scientist. She can read something in a book and remember it exactly. She can’t see scary movies because she’ll remember all the scary parts perfectly and have nightmares for months. I’m smart too, but I’m more like “take the toaster apart and put it back together and, lo and behold, it still works” smart.

“I’ll help you, I guess,” I said. “You can’t just not turn one in.”

She made a gurgly sighing noise. “Oh, thank you.”

“You should try to plan ahead next time.”

She sniffed. “Who are you, Mom?”

I whomped her with Mr. Teeth.

“Is it in your files?” she asked, popping up off the bed. “Can I look?”

“I’ll find it for you,” I said. “Later. Right now I need a nap.”

“Yay, yay, yay,” she said, dancing out into the hallway.

One second, the weight of the world. The next, lighter than air.

Must be nice.

A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Kase, come back,” I called. “I heard the stupidest thing today.”

She reappeared in the doorway, looking at me curiously.

“It’s dumb,” I said. “It’s silly . . . it’s just something Pepper Laird said.”

Her eyes were still wide, but a deep crease spread over her forehead.