My Friends Are Dead People (3 page)

“
But I am not the one who
is going to snap his bones in half! Can’t you see? I’m trying to
prevent that from happening.”

“
That’s not his father. I
can tell. I don’t want another word from you. Listen to me. What
good is this second life of yours if all you do is go around
disobeying your mother and scaring kids? You’re staying home today.
That’s final.”

Two young kids pitter-pattered in from the
hall, rubbing their sleepy eyes. Once their eyes adjusted, they ran
up merrily to the werewolf and wrapped themselves around his hairy
legs.

“
Leave, child,” the mother
motioned to me.

I was desperate to flee, but my legs would
not move. Seeing this, she pushed me rather gruffly. Thankfully,
that got me going. I ran out of the kitchen, staggered through the
dark living room, and slipped my way out of the house, but tumbled
over the pumpkins on the front porch, crashing head first into a
large moldy jack-o’-lantern.

“
Please, Charles,” I heard
his mother say inside.

“
I have visited Antarctica
and know what needs to be done. I need you to relay everything to
Forlin while I take the boy to Himalaya.”

“
Don’t you want to spend
your last days with me?”

“
I’m sorry, but this is
more important.”

“
And if the boy is
killed?”

“
If the boy is killed,
there will be no more afterlife.”

That was it. I darted off
the porch and raced off into the fog. “Duma!” I called, unable to
see a thing. “Charles is – a monster is coming! A
real
monster!”

The screen door from the red house screeched
open the exact moment I felt warm breathing down the back of my
neck. It was the most frightening thing I had ever felt in my
entire life.

“
Help me!” I shrieked in
the direction of a white house, just barely visible through the
fog. I ran further down the street and screamed toward some other
houses. “Help me! Someone help – Duma!”

Duma scurried across the street, totally
spooked.

“
Duma, wait!”

I ran after him and past the chubby woman
standing on the sidewalk. “Tell your friends!” she yelled after me.
“Lock your doors! Because they are–”

The woman’s ranting suddenly changed to a
hoarse scream. Duma and I froze for an instant, frightened by the
way she was screaming. A moment later, everything fell silent.

CHAPTER THREE

The moon and the
witch

After running all over the neighborhood for
a while, without ever slowing down, we finally found our street.
There was no point in going back to the woman if she was already
dead. Oh, my God, what if she really was killed? My breathing
started to pick up again.

“
Come on, Duma, hurry up,”
I said on our front yard. “We’re home.”

But Duma wouldn’t come through the gate. He
just stood outside, staring at the house in terror. However, it
wasn’t the house he was scared of. The werewolf was standing
outside my bedroom window, quite still, just breathing out short
gusty breaths and staring at the ground. He snorted painfully and
then trudged along the side of the house, still unaware of our
presence. How did he know where we lived? And how did he beat us
here?

I ran to my window and dove over the
windowsill. Once Duma jumped in, I slammed the window shut, rolled
my dresser in front of it, and blocked my door with everything I
could find in the room. I moaned. I was going to die.

After two hours of doing nothing but sitting
on my bed with Duma, bug-eyed with fear, I grabbed a pencil and my
journal, feeling a little bit better. Maybe Charles decided to go
after another kid. I was a scaredy-cat after all.

“
Today, I found out a
werewolf wants to kidnap me,” I recited to Duma as I wrote it. “His
name is Charles. He needs a human child to save everyone from
Himalaya. And he showed me a picture of the man who stole my I.D.
card. He said the child of this man would lead him to something
important, whatever that was. His mother seemed nice. She had a lot
of pumpkins around her house. I guess that protects them from the
monster, Jack. Also, Charles said a menala was found dead and taken
to the shores of the Promulgated Samhain Fellowship, whatever that
was. What did the mom say was the menala’s name?” I looked into
Duma’s keen, orange eyes. He loved it when I read him my thoughts–
“Oh, I remember.
Dili
was killed by Jack. And, uh, that’s it.”

I slid under the bedcovers and rolled on my
side just as a dark figure slipped out from under the bed. Duma
darted out of the room through the closet crack, and I shot out of
bed and stumbled to the door.

“
Oz!” I screamed, trying
to push aside all the stuff I had packed against the door. “I’m
going to die!
It’s
going to kidnap–”

“
Is this what I have to
do? Scare the heck out of you?” scolded Oz, looking groggy and
tired. “Get to bed please. If I hear you talking to Duma one more
time–”

“
I got attacked by a
werewolf!” I blurted. “This is the very, very truth.”

“
Then you shouldn’t have
gone out. Right?” Oz noticed the mountain of clutter against the
door. “I was going to give you the envelope, Jess, but you
disobeyed me again.”

I think she mentioned that on purpose. What
kind of mom would do that? And how could she last more than two
hours under my bed? I would have fallen asleep.

“
Oh, by the way, I found
out they don’t have enough on Duma to put him under. He’s safe.
Goodnight.”

Oz pushed a pile of clothes and boxes to the
side and cracked the door open just enough for her to squeeze out.
Duma came back in, looking at me like he had warned me all along
not to go outside.

“
Thanks a lot, you
coward,” I scoffed. “I can't believe they're going to let you
live.”

Duma jumped up on my bed and slithered under
the covers.

“
Keep a look out,” I
yawned grumpily, climbing into bed. “You got the first
shift–”

But Duma was already sleeping.

It was very rare that I would wake up
peacefully, from a light tap on the shoulder or a ray of warm
sunlight. I think that happened once or twice a month. Most of the
time, Duma woke me up by either biting my nose, hissing directly
into my mouth, or placing food crumbs or dead bugs in my ears.
Today, he was sleeping on my face, just as he did yesterday, the
day before that, and every other morning for the past two
weeks.

I turned my face, and he slid off, waking
himself up when he hit the floor. Not all cats landed perfectly on
all fours.

“
Stop sleeping on my
face!” I said irritably. “I’m not your pillow!”

He gave me his crazy stare
and then waddled tiredly out of the room. I stayed in all morning,
postponing my inevitable morning meeting with Oz. I made my bed,
swept the floor, and sprayed my desk and dresser, inside and out,
even the back. Oz always said dust found its way into places that
were hard to reach. After four long hours, I climbed outside and
fed the snails that were camped outside my window. I had made a
cardboard home for them and a tombstone for a snail I had stepped
on two years ago. It read:
The Snail That
Flew To New Heights, John The Snail, November 20,
1999
.

“
What’s going on here?”
said a warm voice behind me. Oz was leaning out of the window,
wearing her green cooking apron and her reading glasses. “The room
looks good, Jess.”

I kept quiet.

“
Come get some breakfast –
some brunch.”

Oz left the window and walked out of my
bedroom. I climbed over the window frame and followed her into the
kitchen and sat at the table. She fed me peanut-butter pancakes,
cinnamon bacon, and yogurt with scrambled eggs inside. The bacon
was actually not that bad. Everything else I fed to Duma.

“
Thanks,” I said to Oz as
I took my plate to the sink.

“
Thanks for
what?”

“
For brunch
and–”

“
Thank you for cleaning
your room. Glad you figured out tidy doesn’t mean
clean.”

I was feeling much better now that we were
back to normal. That was just the way it went with Oz and me, we
would fight at night and make up the next day.

I went into my room and checked the time. It
was nearly one in the afternoon. Katie would be getting out of
school in two hours, unless she decided not to go or had a minimum
day, which recently was every other day. One time she had it for
five months straight.

A rock shot unexpectedly into my room, and I
screamed my lungs out. Luckily, it was only Katie.

“
Hey, what you screaming
for?” she said, stepping through the window. “Didn’t Oz tell you
Duma’s going to be alright?”

“
Uhmm . . .
yeah–”

“
Well, while you’re
thinking can you solve this for me?” She showed me a page in her
math notebook. “Teach is still forcing me to finish last week’s
assignment. How crappy is that?”

“
Why don’t you study? You
have an extraordinary memory like mine—”

“
Nah. I’m
good.”

“
It’s four and a quarter,”
I calculated easily.

“
He’s going to be so
amazed. This is the hardest one.”

“
You want me to do the
rest?”

“
Nope. I don’t do more
than one. He’d think something’s up.”

“
Don’t you think you
figuring out the most difficult one would raise
suspicion?”

“
True. I’ll put five
quarters and twenty dimes.”

That was the dumbest thing I had ever heard,
but whatever. “Katie, I’m going to tell you something.” I waited
until I had her full attention. She looked like she was about to
smile. “I didn’t say anything yet! Why are you–”

“
No, just go on. I’m fine.
I won’t laugh.”

“
I saw and heard something
last night and . . .”

Katie burst out laughing.

“
I did! I saw a werewolf,
and now he’s coming after me to take me to a monster in Antarctica.
That’s why I was screaming when you came in. I thought he was the
one who threw the rock.”

Katie shook her head, looking embarrassed by
me.

“
I’m not lying,” I
scowled. “
I saw a
werewolf.
”

“
Don’t make fun of mí
foster mamá,” she smiled. “That’s not nice.”

I gave up. She wasn’t ever going to take me
seriously. “So what’s our plan for trick-or-treating?”

Judging by her grin she had already come up
with a plan of escape.

“
Something. So, what do
you want to be?”

“
What’s the
plan?”

“
I think you should be a
dead boy. That’s cool, no?”

“
I don’t want to be
a–”

“
I can spread dirt all
over you. It’ll be good. We can make a tombstone that you can carry
around and–”

“
And it could say
something like ‘I was eaten by a crocodile’,” I said
excitedly.

Katie made a face.

“
That wouldn’t be funny?”
I asked as I watched her grab my pillow.

“
That’s gross. Wait here.
I’m gonna talk to Oz. Today, we’re going
trick-or-treating.”

I waited for Katie to leave before I
followed her out. Instead of going into the kitchen, I sneaked into
the living room and squatted behind the couch, where I was able to
see the entire kitchen. Duma was in the living room with me,
clawing at one of the corners he liked to pee in.

Just as Katie walked into the kitchen, Oz
shoved a pie in the oven. “Hey, Oz! Pumpkin pie?”

“
Apple.” Oz shut the oven
door with her hip. “Want to help? I’m making another batch . . .”
Oz trailed off as she saw Katie’s big belly. Katie turned a little
so my pillow underneath her shirt wasn’t visible.

“
You know what you look
like?” asked Katie.

Oz was slow to reply. “A chef?” she uttered
blankly, still staring at Katie’s stomach.

“
A witch. If you just undo
your hair–”

“
I’m not dressing up for
Halloween, Katie. You know me better than that. What’s your secret
plan to go trick-or-treating this year?”

“
You know this is my last
year?” said Katie quietly. “I don’t have time to make up
plans.”

“
Katie, is this Jess’s
idea?”

“
No. It’s just that . . .”
Katie handed Oz a doctor’s slip. “I won’t have time. I’m not
tricking you.”

“
What do you mean, you
won’t have the–”

“
I’m pregnant.”

Oz sat at the table, unable to speak for
five minutes. Did she really believe Katie was pregnant? Katie was
thirteen years old!

Finally, Oz spoke. “All this time, you’ve
been – when did this happen?”

“
Six months
ago.”

“
You know who the father
is?”

Katie glanced into the living room before
answering. “I don’t know. It was some college guy. I never saw his
face. Well, I refer to him as a piece of–”

Oz gave Katie a stern look.

“
It’s going to be a boy,”
mentioned Katie. “Some nurses said I shouldn’t go to school
anymore. They think I should take care of the baby. I’m going to
call it Alfredo. That’s good, no?”