As Dead as It Gets

  I turned the key, my heart aching like an open wound.

  Two days later, and yet still somehow reeling from my conversation with Carter (it didn’t help that everyone at school was talking about his and Zoe’s breakup), I pulled into the Sacred Heart Academy lot and parked in a space marked welComed guesT. I assumed that meant me—even if I was uninvited.

  I’d skipped sixth period, so their school day was still in session. As I walked to the main office, I could see random kids wandering around between classrooms. I felt the oddness of being a stranger in a strange school.

  The front desk was staffed by a woman in a plain brown dress. She smiled at me. “Welcome. Can I help you?”

  “Hi,” I said. “I know this is super, um, not planned, but I was wondering if Father Lopez is here today.”

  She looked interested. “Yes, he’s here. Did you have an appointment to speak with him?”

  “No,” I said, expecting to be turned away.

  “All right.” She stood up. “Let me just go check and see if he’s available.”

  I told her my name, not that he would know who I was, and waited, my whole body on pins and needles. A minute later she came back and pulled open the swinging wooden door.

  “Come on through,” she said. “He’s got a few minutes to spare.”

  I followed her to a small office with a high window and a giant desk. The man behind the desk—Father Lopez, I guessed—was old and bald, leaning over a book. A Bible. Yeah, I suppose that would make sense.

  “Alexis? I’m Father Lopez. Nice to meet you.” He stood up and shook my hand. “Won’t you please have a seat?”

  “Thanks for letting me come in,” I said.

  “All guests are cherished, expected or otherwise,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Um, yeah. Okay. I summoned all my nerve. “I have a really weird question. Do you remember a boy named Phil Corcoran?”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “He was a football player,” I prompted. “He died in 1965?”

  Father Lopez’s eyes lit up. “Goodness. Philip Corcoran. Yes, of course. Nice young man.”

  “And do you know who Randall Corcoran is?”

  He sat back and looked at me. For a minute I was afraid he was going to ask me a question in response to my question. But then he nodded. “Yes. The younger brother.”

  Younger brother? Was Philip’s ghost haunting his brother—possessing him, causing him to commit the crimes that had landed him in jail? That was what had happened with Kasey…a ghost took over her body and made her do bad things—almost murder.

  “Randy was a nice boy, too. Always looked up to his brother. Just devastated by his death. If I recall correctly, when Phil died, Randy started a campaign to have the graduation ceremony canceled at their high school. He went to the school board meeting to make his case. It didn’t work, and he got very angry. Dropped out of school. Went on to a life of some unhappiness, I think. I wonder if he’s still alive. I should look him up,” Father Lopez said, jotting a note down on a piece of paper. “See how he’s doing.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It was the last thing Phil would have wanted—Randy’s sad turn. But Randy wasn’t thinking that way.”

  “What was the, ah, first thing Phil would have wanted?” I asked.

  I’d meant my question literally—I was hoping for an answer like, Phil would have wanted someone to take good care of his prized Babe Ruth–autographed baseball.

  But Father Lopez considered it with a philosophical look on his face. He turned to me and folded his hands. “What would you want? If you died, how would you want the people who care about you to feel?”

  I squinted. “Um…sad?”

  “Sad forever? To the point of not living their own lives? And always feeling guilt over what had happened?”

  “No, of course not. Just for a little while. Not guilty, I mean—sad.”

  “Exactly. You’d want them to remember you but keep going. I’ll never forget that school board meeting. Randy had brought his brother’s trophy with him, as a sort of visual aid. And when the superintendent refused his request, he threw the trophy to the floor.” Father Lopez leaned forward. “This was an object that was precious to him—Phil had given it to him before he died. And he was so filled with rage that he broke it.”

  So if Randy was the one who was filled with rage, why was Phil’s ghost trapped on the sidewalk, hating on the Redmond High kids?

  And why was Phil’s ghost holding his broken trophy? Was he mad at his brother for ruining it?

  My head was starting to hurt. I stood up.

  “I hope I’ve helped you,” Father Lopez said. “I’ll admit I’m curious, but…I hope you’ll come back if you have anything else you’d like to discuss.”

  I was about to give him my standard Yeah, sure line. But something stopped me. I didn’t want to lie. So I just said, “Good-bye. Thanks again.”

  I walked back through the hall toward the exit, studying the framed photographs that lined the walls, trying to see if I could sense any sameness between these kids and me—anything that bridged the gaping distance I felt from them and their privileged experiences. I saw a couple of ghosts, but not many. A Catholic school was too close to being a church, and ghosts don’t hang out in churches.

  I glanced at one picture that had been taken at a dance.

  And I froze, staring at the grinning brown-haired girl in the center of the photo—clearly alive, clearly not a ghost.

  And clearly wearing the purple dress.

  With my cell phone, I snapped a picture of the photo and booked it down the hall, practically hyperventilating. I ran to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, staring at the girl and the dress on my cracked screen, trying to make myself believe it was true.

  I zoomed all the way in on her face, looking for a connection between the girl and the superghost. It wasn’t the ghost—this girl wasn’t blond.

  So who was she?

  There was a knock on my window, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

  Megan was standing outside of my car.

  In my shock, I stared at her for a few seconds before she made a “roll down the window” gesture. I hit the button, and the glass sank.

  “Um…hi,” I said.

  “Did you come here to complain?” she asked. “About Brother Ben?”

  I set the phone in my lap. “No,” I said. “I swear—”

  “It’s all right if you did,” she said.

  I stared up at her.

  She swallowed hard and looked directly into my eyes.

  “I quit Brighter Path,” she said.

  Something inside me leapt, like a unicorn jumping over a million rainbows. But I tried to stay calm. “Why?” I asked. “You liked it so much.”

  “I did, kind of,” she said. “But only because it was safe. Or so I thought. But…it wasn’t real. Do you know what I mean? It was fake. It wasn’t really a brighter path. It was just a…box.”

  I wanted to get out of the car and hug her until she turned blue. I wanted to turn on the radio and have a dance party.

  “Besides.” She shook her head, looking disgusted. “The stuff he said to you—calling you a liar—and a thief? That really crossed a line. I mean, you can be rude, but you’re no thief.”

  I froze, remembering the book of charms. “Um, actually…” I said, cringing, “there was one little thing.”

  Megan looked stricken. Then, to my shock, she burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Lex! Are you serious? You stole something from him?”

  “It was well-justified,” I said. “I swear.”

  She was still laughing, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, that doesn’t matter. He was still really wrong about a lot of things. You know, I just got tired of him talking about…my mom and…stuff.”

  I didn’t want to say anything that might sound like “I told you so.”

  Megan looked down at me. “So why’d you come here?”

  “To
talk to Father Lopez about something.” I didn’t elaborate. If she wanted a normal ghost-free life, I had to respect that.

  She nodded and dragged a finger across the car door. “You keep your car as clean as your house, don’t you?”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  Her gaze bored into me. “Are you really having ghost problems?”

  It took me a second to overcome my staunch deny all mind-set.

  But I nodded and held up my phone to show her the zoomed-in picture of the girl wearing the dress. “Do you know who this is?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Marissa Hearst. She’s a senior. What about her?”

  I pulled the phone back into the car. “Do you really want to know?”

  Megan began to fidget with her little necktie. “Maybe not the whole story. But is there something simple I could ask her for you?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “That’s not getting involved. It’s just…talking to someone.”

  “If you could ask her where the dress came from,” I said, “that would be amazing.”

  Megan reached for my phone and angled it to see through the cracks. “What dress? Okay, I see it. Jeez, what happened to your phone?”

  I tucked it into the cup holder and gave her a small smile. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Maybe I don’t,” she said, limping back a step from the car. “But I’ll find Marissa and let you know what she says, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thank you. Seriously.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, giving me a wave and heading for the school entrance.

  But it wasn’t “nothing” to me. It was practically everything.

  I drove past Surrey High on my way home. The student parking lot was mostly empty, but I did see Elliot’s giant wood-paneled station wagon. Which meant she would be in the Wingspan office. Which meant I could stop by and offload the pictures of the sweatshirt for Chad, and not have to worry about getting up early the next morning to do it before school.

  Elliot had her laptop open and was busily typing.

  “Prop the door open, would you?” she said. “It’s the first warmish day in forever.”

  So I propped the door and went to the computer with the card reader.

  “So sorry about that rando Carter thing the other day,” Elliot said. “He could have just dropped the shirt off here. I think dating Zoe turned him insane.”

  I spun around and looked at her. “Did you just say rando?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It just doesn’t sound like an Elliot word.”

  “I claim all words,” she said. “I empower them by speaking them.”

  I believed it. Someday, Elliot would be president of the United States and saying, “These rando stock market downturns are not going to shake our national spirit.”

  “No worries about the shirt thing,” I said. “It’s pretty cool-looking. I got good pictures.”

  “Hope it didn’t take you away from anything important.”

  “Ha. No. Not really.…”

  “Hm?”

  “Just…a boy.”

  She sniffed. “Sounds like you’re crazy about him.”

  My laugh came out like a grunt. “Crazy is one word.”

  “Remember what I said, Warren. Follow your gut.”

  “Sometimes my gut’s pretty rando,” I said.

  “Follow it anyway.”

  What was it about Elliot that made me believe everything she said?

  “But what if following my gut will hurt someone?”

  She moved her laptop out of the way. “You mean the boy?”

  I nodded.

  “At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for you. You can’t live for someone else. You can’t let your guilt define your life.”

  “So…”

  Her eyes sparkled. “So kick him to the curb.”

  I laughed.

  “Um…hey.” Elliot’s eyes suddenly went wide. She was looking over my shoulder.

  I turned around.

  Jared stood in the open doorway.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice sounding oddly tight.

  “Jared,” I said, getting up. “This is Elliot. Elliot, Jared.”

  I watched them study each other and felt the full impact of Elliot’s lack of self-consciousness. She didn’t simper or fawn over Jared. She just nodded at him.

  “Nice to meet you.” Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than necessary, and then she turned back to her work.

  He didn’t reply. I walked to the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk,” he said.

  “I can’t really talk right now,” I said. “I’m working.”

  “Yes.” His expression was blank, unreadable. “Right. I see.”

  “Um, Alexis? If you guys are done, we should really get started on planning that layout.”

  Elliot was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

  I could feel Jared’s gaze burning into me.

  Follow your gut.

  “We are,” I said, standing as tall as I could. “We’re done. Jared, I’ll call you later.”

  He cocked his head to one side and looked at me.

  “Good-bye,” I said again.

  He walked away without another word.

  Elliot stared at the empty space in the doorway. “Sorry about that,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. “You just seemed like you needed an out.”

  “I guess I did,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She glanced at me, slightly preoccupied, then back at the door for a few drawn-out seconds. “I know him from somewhere.”

  Then she went back to her work.

  That night, I sat in my room, able to concentrate on my schoolwork for the first time in forever. At the back of my mind, no matter how bad things got, there was a safety net now—Megan.

  Not that I expected her to get very involved. But at least she hadn’t shut me out. She’d listened. And she was willing to help. Even if it was just a little help, I felt a relief I hadn’t known I needed, like someone had been winding a rope around me so slowly that I hadn’t noticed its constriction until it was suddenly taken away.

  I could breathe again.

  My cell phone buzzed with a text message, and I glanced down. It was Megan.

  Working on Marissa, she wrote. Hopefully know something 2morrow.

  With a happy little tingle in my spine, I texted back: Thanks.

  After a while, I put my books away, took a shower, and changed into my pajamas.

  I’ll be able to sleep tonight, I thought.

  As I climbed into bed, I noticed that another text had come through on my phone. I picked it up, thinking the message would be from Megan—but it wasn’t.

  It was from Elliot.

  Remembered where I met him. Used to be in Tree Society with his girlfriend. Hiked Maxwell with her once.

  Tree Society was a volunteer group that planted trees and maintained the hiking trails around Surrey. Maxwell meant Maxwell Canyon. Elliot talked about it all the time, but she could never convince any of the other Wingspan staffers to hike it with her. That type of trail is best left to people who owned special hiking sandals and backpacks that are really just giant water bottles. In other words, people like Elliot.

  But what was this about a girlfriend?

  I texted her back: He never talks about her.

  I laid down, switched off the light, and stared at my phone, hoping it wasn’t too late for a reply. But apparently it was. Because I was asleep before a response came through.

  And anyway, she never sent one.

  I was deep in a dream about photography—walking through a strange city with buildings that stretched so high they disappeared into the clouds. And every time I took a picture of one, it shivered and changed into something else.

  A sound came from a building behind me—a soft song. I started to walk toward its open doors, bu
t they closed. I would have to climb in a window—

  And then I woke up.

  My phone was ringing, blaring out the sounds of this beyond-cheesy old song called “That’s What Friends Are For”—Megan’s ringtone. I hadn’t heard it in for-ever.

  I grabbed the phone and hit answer, glancing at the clock. It was past midnight.

  “Megan?” I said. “Hello?”

  “Lex. Marissa just texted me back.” Her voice shook with excitement. “That dress was Laina’s.”

  Laina. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Laina Buchanan?” Megan said. When I didn’t react, she inhaled loudly. “Jared’s ex-girlfriend.”

  I was still bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained. Jared never talked about any ex-girlfriends. I just assumed he didn’t have any who meant anything to him.

  “Lex, this is huge.” Megan finally got that I didn’t understand the subtext behind what she was saying. “Laina’s the girl who died.”

  That did the trick. “What? Died? Did you say died?”

  “Yeah. In a hiking accident, two years ago.”

  I suddenly felt like I’d chugged an entire pot of coffee. “Are you at your computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you look up Laina Buchanan plus Henry-Gordon Funeral Home?”

  Typing, then a decisive click. “Yep,” Megan said. “That’s where her services were held. Well, there and at the school. She went to Sacred Heart since kindergarten.”

  “Okay,” I said, although nothing was okay.

  “What are you going to do?” Megan asked.

  “I don’t know. I have to talk to Jared, I guess.”

  “When? Tomorrow? You have to do it as soon as possible.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  But I couldn’t wait until tomorrow, which is why, exactly twenty-eight minutes later, I was standing outside Jared’s bedroom window, tapping lightly on the glass. He hadn’t answered my texts or calls, so I’d decided to pay him a visit.

  I saw movement inside, a shadow emerging from the bed, and Jared appeared at the window in a plain white T-shirt and boxers. His eyes went wide. Before he could open the window, I pointed toward the front of the house and started running for the front door.