Croak (33 page)

IF REDEMPTION IS THAT WHICH YOU PRIZE,

DO NOT BELIEVE ALL OF THESE LIES.

THE KEY TO THE DEAD AWAITS OVERHEAD—

ALL YOU NEED DO IS OPEN YOUR EYES.

—BONE, THE SICK SCYTHE BANDIT

Lex mouthed the signature. For reasons unclear even to her, the white figure from the woods popped into her mind.

She looked up at the ceiling but saw nothing more than a few cobwebs. Unfortunately, she had no time to contemplate this any further, for the door to the library had begun to creak open. She hastily tore the page out of the book, stuffed it into her pocket, and turned to face Driggs.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She shrugged. Tears stung at her eyes, but she turned around and smeared them away.

He walked over to her. “Mort just told us what happened,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine—”

“Driggs,” she choked out over the softball-size lump in her throat, “I don’t want to talk about it. Really.”

“When you disappeared, I scythed back here as fast as I could, I handed off her Vessel, I called for help—”

“It’s over, okay?” Anger overtook sorrow. “My sister’s dead, I’m not, and Zara is—I don’t know—on the lam, or something.”

Driggs exhaled in disbelief. “How can you joke about this? Don’t you realize what this means for the town, for the whole Grimsphere? Zara’s—”

“—going to be lying low for a while. She didn’t exactly plan on me escaping and leaking her plan. Uncle Mort’ll report it to
The Obituary,
and tomorrow every Grim in the country will get a good look at her face. We’ll find her.”

Driggs frowned, disheartened at the obvious front she was putting up. He tried to catch her gaze. “Lex—”

“I should have stopped her,” she chanted in a manic tone. “This is all my fault. I had her. I had her, and I let her go.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Driggs, stop it.”

“What?”

“You’re trying to get me to talk about my feelings.”

“So?”

“So you’re not Oprah. Leave me alone.”

“Come on, talk to me. Cordy’s gone, but I’m still—”

“But I left her first!” she finally exploded at the sound of her sister’s name. She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “We’d never been apart for more than a few hours, and I just
left.
Like it was nothing!” She was yelling now. “You want to know why I’m doing this to myself? Because half of my existence was just torn away and it was
my fault!
Because it feels like someone lopped off my arm or heart or guts or some other vital piece of me with a rusty hacksaw!”

“I know,” he said, touching her shoulder.

“You
don’t
know!” She batted his hand away. “You got a twin?”

“No, but—”

“Then you have no idea!”

The room sank into a pained stillness. Lex and Driggs stared at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at every other object in the room, until finally there was nothing left to look at but each other.

“I’m sorry,” Driggs said. “I guess I’m no better at this consolation thing than you are.”

Lex felt drained. “Guess not.”

“I’m just glad you’re alive.” He wrapped his arms around her. “You really scared the shit out of me.”

She sniffled into his shoulder. “What else is new?”

A forced smile came to his face, then faded. They stood in an awkward silence yet again. But this soon led to where most awkward silences lead, and their lips remained locked for several minutes until Lex finally pushed him away.

“I’m not so sure about this,” she said reluctantly, wiping her mouth.

Driggs gave her a look. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That lame thing that superheroes do, where you push me away because you think you’re putting me in danger. I can make my own decisions, thanks.”

“But she’ll come after you first. Then Uncle Mort, then Elysia—I’m like a plague now.”

“I’ll try to suppress the bile,” he said with a smirk.

“Yeah, but . . . what about your girlfriend?”

“My what?”

“That picture you’re always carrying around. Who is she?”

He thought for a moment. Then his face broke out into a shy grin.

“What?” Lex asked.
“What?”

Some secrets, owing to their potential for tremendous embarrassment, should receive a great deal of consideration before they are divulged. Driggs at least had the good sense to stall. His strategy of choice was to rummage around in the pocket of his hoodie, as if Lex could possibly be duped into thinking that it hadn’t slipped into his hand the moment he reached for it.

Finally, he sighed, pulled out the photo, and handed it over.

Lex stared. And stared.

And staring back at her were the two Bartleby sisters covered in finger paint, the very same photo proudly displayed in her bedroom at home, next to the Sparks.

“Um, I’ve kind of been in love with you since the day I got here,” Driggs murmured, ruffling his hair. “Or your smile, at least. I was fourteen, and . . . uh, Mort always had pictures of you two all over the house, you know? And the minute I saw the one from your twelfth birthday, where you’re throwing cake at each other, I thought you were really . . . yeah.” He glanced, humiliated, at the picture in her hand. “I mean, I know that carrying around this
particular
photo makes me seem like a pedophile, but I guess it was just always my favorite. The grin on your face, your eyes, the paint—it looks like you’re having so much fun.” His eyes got dark. “My childhood wasn’t very fun. And we definitely didn’t have any photos of laughing people around the house.”

“I guess this explains all the empty frames in the living room.”

“Creepy, right? I know.” His eyes darted nervously. “I know it sounds weird and stalkery. But it was just a crush, honestly. I had no idea you’d ever actually come here. I practically melted into the floor when Mort told me.”

“But you’d never even met me, how could you—”

“I don’t know, all right?” he snapped. “All I know is that I had never seen anyone like you, and your stupid smile was infectious, and I fell in love with it, and ever since you got here I’ve been falling in love with the rest of you, and now I’m so far gone there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Okay?” He yanked the photo out of her hands. “Happy now?”

Lex let out a throaty, rusty laugh. “Marginally.”

Driggs shook his head in defeat, but his eyes were kind as he hooked his fingers into hers.

They were interrupted by a soft knock on the library door. “Lex?” Uncle Mort poked his head in. “You doing okay?”

“I guess.”

“Then let’s head home.”

Driggs squeezed her elbow before they stepped out onto the street. “Hey, put your hood up.”

“Why?”

He pulled it over her head. “Just do it.”

And as the three of them made their way past the crowd, Lex began to understand. Though her face was barely visible, she could hear the whispers. She could feel the stares. And she knew that tomorrow—or whenever it was that she could finally go back out in public—they would have a lot of questions for her, the girl who started it all.

Funerals are depressing even under the best of circumstances, if such things exist, and Cordy’s service was no different. Lex took solace in the fact that the casket remained closed, but otherwise she felt as if she had fallen into a giant blender full of salt and lemon juice.

The whole family had shown up, including aunts and uncles who Lex had forgotten existed, cousins she had never even met, and Captain Wiggles, Cordy’s beloved octopus, who grimly surveyed the scene from atop a large flower arrangement. A sizable portion of her classmates were in attendance (including Michael Thorley), none of whom could seem to stop shooting quizzical glances at Lex. Many teachers also dropped by, as well as a handful of people who were only tangentially involved in the lives of the Bartleby family—the local grocer, the mailman, their plumber, and even the reviled next-door neighbors. Lex couldn’t help but muse that if it had been her inside the coffin instead of her sister, the turnout wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive.

Her parents, naturally, were inconsolable. Their relatives believed they needed kind words, and so dispensed an endless string of condolences throughout the day. Their friends thought that they needed some space, to be alone with their grief. And the rest of the community decided they needed casseroles, which were delivered to the house by the truckload.

But the Bartlebys didn’t need any of those things. They couldn’t begin to comprehend why their daughter had been taken from them so unexpectedly, and there wasn’t a single explanation to be had. The coroner was stumped. The police chief had watched and rewatched the security tapes of the nursing home where Cordy worked until he passed out into his nightly bowl of oatmeal, but he hadn’t been able to figure it out. It was ultimately concluded that Cordy’s demise had been yet another one of those unexplained deaths that had been sweeping the nation—the last one, in fact, for several days.

What Mr. and Mrs. Bartleby really needed was closure. Unfortunately, that was the one thing that neither their family nor friends nor neighbors could provide. And as Lex watched them stand next to their own daughter’s casket, weeping silently and holding on to each other for dear life, she realized what she had to do.

***

Dinner that night was silent. The house grew dark as the sun set; no one could summon the effort to turn on a light. And despite the rather impressive spread of more than a dozen casseroles, the food just sat there, cold and mostly uneaten.

Uncle Mort sat in his dead niece’s chair and poked at the grayish lump of goulash on his plate. Racked with guilt, he had not said much of anything since the day Cordy died. Lex, who hadn’t left his house until it was time to drive to the city, had tried to reassure him that there wasn’t a thing he could have done, that Zara’s powers had grown so strong it wouldn’t have mattered. For some reason, Lex gathered, this made him feel worse.

As the night wore on, the silence grew heavier and heavier, until it threatened to collapse into itself and form a black hole right there on the dining room table. When eight o’clock rolled around, Uncle Mort slowly rose from his seat.

“I should get going,” he muttered.

“Take some food,” Mrs. Bartleby said flatly.

“Sure, sure. Just let me grab the car.”

The screen door banged on his way out. Mr. Bartleby picked at his plate. And as the roar of the Gremlin’s engine ripped through the walls of the house, Lex stood up.

Her parents looked at her in abject terror. “What are you doing?” her mother asked.

“I’m going back,” she said softly.

“You absolutely are
not!
” Fresh tears sprang to her mother’s eyes. “We just lost one child, if you think for a second we’re going to let the only daughter we have left just . . . just leave . . .” She collapsed into a fit of sobbing.

Lex’s father just stared.

But her mother fought on, gasping for air. “You selfish little—we already told you no! School starts in two days!” she choked, her face a hopeless mess of fury and grief. “And leaving your family at a time like this—how
dare
you?”

Lex looked away, unable to look into the eyes of the mother whose heart she was breaking all over again. “I know who did this,” she said even more quietly. “And I have to go back.” She looked up. “I have to go back and finish it.”

Her mother, now too overcome to speak, wept. Yet her father was watching her with a strange expression on his face.

“You know who did this?” he repeated blankly, stealing a glance at her bandaged hands.

Lex nodded.

He stood up from his chair, walked over to his sobbing wife, knelt down beside her, and took her into his arms.

“Go,” he told Lex.

“What?” Her mother wailed frantically, struggling against her husband. “No! She can’t go! How could you let her—”

“Shhh . . .” Mr. Bartleby breathed, stroking her hair. Exhausted, Mrs. Bartleby finally crumpled into her husband’s arms, emitting strangled moans of agony.

“Go,” he rasped once again, gazing at Lex, his own eyes now filling with tears. “Go find the monster who murdered my baby girl, and you kill that son of a—”

He broke off as a sob choked his throat.

Lex left the table and noiselessly went upstairs. She grabbed Cordy’s empty backpack and began stuffing various items into it, hurriedly stripping the contents of the room where she and Cordy had once built a spaceship out of a cardboard box and flown all the way to the Planet of Infinite Jungle Gyms. She took a few clothes out of her closet, a pair of heavy boots, several books, Captain Wiggles, a handful of photos, and—

She stopped. A sliver of light glimmered from the bookshelf. She moved aside a photo to reveal the girls’ two Sparks, sitting there just as she had left them. Lex’s was still glittery and flickering, the small glints of light whizzing around the globe and crashing into the glass, making them shine even brighter.

But Cordy’s no longer contained any luminous embers. Instead, it shone white and clear, a brilliant beacon against the darkness of the room.

Like the flash of a soul, Lex thought.

She grabbed both Sparks, threw them into the bag, and zipped it up, shaking slightly. She had gotten what she wanted, she was returning to Croak—but for all the wrong reasons. This was not how it was supposed to happen. And even though Lex knew she was making the right choice, even though she wanted nothing more than to take up the fight that now rose before her, still she glanced back and took one last look at her room, wondering if she would ever see it again.