As Dead as It Gets

  “Lydia!” I called, my voice blasting through the canyon. “Lydia! I need you!”

  “What are you doing?” Jared growled. He struggled with his free hand to get a fingerhold on the rocks, and he was kicking his legs and flailing his body, which made it even harder to hang on.

  My strength was about to give out. And I knew he would never let go of me…so it would be me letting go of the railing.

  And we would both die anyway.

  But not because I wanted to. Not because I was giving up. Not for nothing.

  “Alexis!”

  Lydia came into view next to me and immediately dropped to the ground and wrapped her arms around my waist from the other side of the guardrail.

  “Let him go!” she said.

  “I’m trying!” I said. “I can’t!”

  Jared was grunting, digging his fingers into my arm, cutting out half-moons of skin with his nails.

  “Then let go of the guardrail,” Lydia said, her voice vibrating through my body. “Alexis, I won’t let you fall.”

  I looked at Jared, and at the vertical drop below him.

  “What are you going to do?” Jared asked, shaking with effort. “Drop me? You think you can live with that? There are search parties down there, Alexis—and they can all see us.…You can’t even look in a mirror without bursting into tears—you think you can live with being a killer?”

  “I guess…” I swallowed hard. My jaw was chattering uncontrollably. “I guess I’m going to have to learn to.”

  And then, with nothing but a ghost to hold me, I let go of the guardrail and began to pry Jared’s hand off my arm.

  Jared’s eyes flashed with a sudden shock of fear and accusation as he realized what I was doing. “No! You can’t do this! I don’t want to be alone!”

  But I managed to get my thumb under his thumb, and then it was like his hand just peeled off of my arm.

  He slipped and seemed to stretch out over the space so that he was lying on his back, staring up into the sky…just like Laina.

  And down, down, down he went.

  AT 7:06 A.M. ON MARCH 3, I pushed my ex-boyfriend off a 103-foot cliff. He landed on the rocks below, dead on impact. Jared was right. There were search parties down in the canyon, and the people in the search parties could see the whole thing—my parents included. My name is Alexis Warren. I’m sixteen years old. And I’m a murderer.

  I FELT LIKE I WAS EXISTING OUTSIDE OF MY BODY.

  At the same time, there were plenty of reminders that I was in the real world: the cuffs on my wrists and ankles. The hard, slightly warped plastic of the chair beneath me. The edge of the table pressing a line in my stomach as I leaned forward, resting my head on my outstretched arms.

  My parents were out there somewhere. I’d only gotten to see them for a minute, and all I could focus on was their glazed eyes. They looked at me differently—now that I was a cold-blooded killer. Everyone did. I felt the gazes of the police officers like indelible ink on my skin. I heard their shocked silence like a buzzing in my ears.

  Kasey was safe. Carter and Megan were in custody. They were going to be questioned for helping me get away from Harmony Valley.

  And Jared was dead.

  But that was all I knew.

  I hadn’t seen Lydia since I fell backward onto the rock, hitting the back of my head on the guardrail and not realizing until I dragged myself down to the parking lot that I was bleeding all over myself.

  I was waiting for my lawyer. I wasn’t supposed to say anything to anyone without my lawyer. But what could I say?

  Finally, the door opened.

  Agent Hasan came in. I started to stand, but she held out a hand. “Don’t get up.”

  As if I’d been doing it out of courtesy and not the desire to run away.

  She sat down across from me, arms folded on the table. For a long time, we looked at each other.

  “You killed Jared Elkins?” she asked.

  “They told me not to talk without my lawyer,” I said.

  “Alexis, you killed Jared Elkins,” she said. “He was unarmed. There were two dozen eyewitnesses. So look me in the eye and tell me two things: did you have to kill him?”

  “Yes.” I met her gaze. It was an admission, but what was I going to do, deny what I’d done? Jared was dead. His cold, lifeless body was laid out on a table somewhere. At that moment, his dad was probably being driven to the morgue to identify him. If I thought about it for too long, something inside of me started to feel like a tightrope walker without a net. But I had done it.

  And I’d do it again if I had to.

  She made a mark on one of her papers. “Second question: can you assure me that it’s over?”

  “So, you believe me?” I said. “That I wasn’t behind any of it?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s over.”

  She looked down at the table. “For the record, I believe you. And for what it’s worth, putting you into Harmony Valley may have been…avoidable.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Apology accepted.”

  Agent Hasan stared at me for a long time. “You know there’s zero evidence tying Jared to those girls’ deaths.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I’ll bet there’s a lot that ties me, right?”

  She shifted in her seat. Then she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, which made her shoulders shrug up near her ears. She gave me a long look. “Yeah. There’s a lot.”

  “It was self-defense. I have to find a way to make people believe me.”

  “You’re not going to find a way, Alexis. You’re the one with probable cause. He’s literally an altar boy with a spotless record. So unless you can come up with a good reason for being at the scene of Ashleen’s and Elliot’s deaths—”

  “I can see ghosts in photographs,” I said.

  The room was silent. Agent Hasan’s expression betrayed more interest than she would have wanted it to. “Really.”

  “You couldn’t find this ghost because it wasn’t a ghost,” I said. “It was a poltergeist. I knew how to find it, so I tried to save Ashleen and Elliot. And Jared could have made it stop, but he was never going to. The thing about a poltergeist—”

  But she cut me off by holding up her hand. “Keep your secrets, Alexis. That’s extraneous information at this point.”

  Of course. Because as long as there were no mice left in the pantry, she didn’t care why they’d been there in the first place.

  It wasn’t like I could tell all that to a lawyer anyway.

  “Purely out of curiosity,” she said, looking almost amused, “why are you telling me all of this now, and not a week ago?”

  Our eyes met. “I don’t have anything to lose.”

  She shrugged, like that was as good a reason as any. “I’ve helped you a lot over the years, Alexis.”

  “Not because you wanted to.” My voice was robotic.

  I couldn’t help but speak the absolute truth. And why not? What could she do to me? “Because it was your job to cover things up. To take care of them.”

  She sat back, adjusting herself in the chair as if my statement had been a jacket that didn’t fit her right.

  “What would you have done to me if you’d known?” I asked. “A week ago?”

  “What would I have done?” Now she leaned forward so our faces were only a foot apart. “Probably the same thing I’m going to do now.”

  I held my breath.

  “Offer you a job,” she said.

  I was so surprised that I actually laughed, though it came out sounding like someone had punched an unsuspecting cow. “Yeah, well…I’m about to go on trial for murder, so…”

  “Now, come on. You know that I can take care of little problems like that.”

  Yeah, I knew it.

  And she really meant it. She was willing to help me. “But…why?” I asked.

  She shrugged, looking a little helpless. “You’re smart. You’re dedic
ated. You’re relatively fearless. And God knows you’re lucky as hell. So you might actually be useful.”

  I sat up. “Useful?”

  “Useful. Meaning of use. An extra pair of hands…and eyes.”

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re saying no, and I know you mean it,” she said. “But do me a favor before you completely write me off: go back to school.”

  I stared up at her.

  “Yeah, I said no third chances, but why not. Just make a deal with me. I’ll get this charge lifted. I’ll get everything explained away. I’ll get a gun planted on the scene and Jared’s fingerprints all over it. You’ll be cleared for self-defense.”

  It certainly sounded too good to be true. “And what’s my part of the deal?”

  “Go back to your life. Try to be normal, now that everyone you know has seen you kill another human being.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s plenty—and if you don’t believe me now, you’re going to very soon.” As she spoke, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, first unfastening my wrists and then giving me the key so I could bend over and free my ankles. “I’ve met people like you, Alexis. They spend years trying not to feel like a freak transported in from another dimension. It never works. No one will ever look at you the same way again. And on top of that, you’re tainted. Psychically speaking, you’re a magnet. You’re going to spend your whole life wondering what’s coming. What spirit is going to be drawn to you next. Who’s going to get hurt if you don’t watch yourself.”

  I thought about Aralt and Laina. How they’d just seemed to sort of find me.

  My resolve was beginning to weaken.

  “Or…come with me. Be around people who understand you. Learn the ropes. Try your best to keep people safe from themselves.”

  I stared at the table, which was carved up with initials.

  I was remembering my parents’ faces as they watched me get loaded into a police car, handcuffed.

  Then I imagined seeing that look in the eyes of every single person at school. All of them staring as I walked down the hall. Never having a moment when someone wasn’t looking at me and thinking, Killer.

  “If I went…” I said. “What about school?”

  Agent Hasan started to answer.

  “Oh, please.”

  The voice came from behind me.

  Lydia circled the room and stood next to Agent Hasan. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you? News flash, Alexis: she doesn’t help people—she locks them up. If you want to help people, you’re just going to have to keep monkeying your own way through it. But God, that’s better than being a nameless drone in a suit.”

  Agent Hasan finished her spiel. I hadn’t heard a word of it.

  Lydia came up beside me. “Do you know what she’s really saying? She’s saying come with her because you should be scared.”

  “But I am scared,” I said.

  Agent Hasan smiled, thinking my reply was for her.

  “Yeah,” Lydia said. “But that doesn’t mean you run away and hide. I mean, think about it—has she ever actually helped you? So she’s incredibly gifted at sweeping things under the rug. Is that what you want to be part of?”

  I stared down at my hands.

  “You know what?” Lydia said. “You have to make this decision for yourself.” And she disappeared.

  Agent Hasan was waiting for me to speak.

  “I…I don’t think I can go with you,” I said. “I have to stay here. I have to at least try.”

  “Oh, sure. Good luck with that,” Agent Hasan said, shaking her head and starting toward the door. “Tell you what—give it two weeks, then give me a call.”

  I looked around. “Do I just wait here, or…?”

  “Come with me,” she said, gesturing to the hallway.

  “You’re free to go. You’ll get a call from a man named Neilson. Just do exactly as he says and everything will be taken care of.”

  “Um…thank you.” I almost said for everything, but I realized how untrue that was. “For your help today.”

  “Don’t thank me now.” As I walked past her, she patted me on the shoulder. “Thank me in two weeks. Have fun out there.”

  WE’D WAITED IN THE CAR until the last possible minute.

  “Are you ready?”

  I stared at the front of the school. “No.”

  Carter reached over and took my hand. “It’s going to be okay, Lex.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  I stared into his eyes, as blue as a tropical sea. A tropical sea a million miles away. One I passionately wished I could be beamed to. Actually, at that moment I’d take pretty much anywhere but Surrey High.

  “You’re brave,” he said. “And you’re strong. You can do this.”

  “Sure, if you say so,” I said, gazing at the doors.

  The two-minute warning bell rang.

  “I guess I have to go to my locker,” I said. “See you at lunch?”

  And suddenly I was alone, walking down the school hallway, feeling like a famous actress making an entrance with a spotlight shining on me. Only the glances being shot at me weren’t the kind of looks movie stars get.

  I reached my locker.

  About forty different people had scrawled MURDERER across the door.

  You’re brave. You’re strong. You can do this.

  I tore my gaze from the graffiti, pulled out my books, and went to first period. The teacher looked up at me, then went back to taking attendance. I was late, but he didn’t say anything about it.

  I sat in my normal desk. The four desks immediately surrounding it were empty.

  When I got to second period, my library study hall, a security guard was sitting on the couch.

  “I’m sorry, Alexis,” Miss Nagesh, the librarian, said, fidgeting nervously. “You’re not allowed to be in here unsupervised. And I’m afraid I don’t have time to sit with you. So you’re going to have to spend second period in the main office from now on.”

  I nodded and let myself be escorted across campus. In the main office, I sat at the in-school suspension desk in the corner and tried not to feel the eyes on me. Which was kind of like a dartboard ignoring the darts.

  And so on.

  Between third and fourth period I stopped by the yearbook office. Fourth period was the yearbook elective class, so the Wingspan staff—most of whom were people I’d been eating lunch with for a month—were sitting at their desks.

  Mr. Janicke stood up when I came in. “Oh! Alexis—it’s, uh, nice to see you. I guess this is as good a time as any to, uh, talk. I hope you won’t be too upset, but some members of the yearbook staff would be more comfortable if…”

  “If I quit, right?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Well, that’s why I was coming by,” I lied. “I was just going to drop off this memory card and tell you I decided to resign. So…good luck.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “And we’re still going to do the Lydia Small memorial for you. I think it’s what Elliot would have wanted.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  By lunchtime, there was hardly a visible patch of paint on my locker. I even saw a couple of kids writing on it as I approached.

  But you can imagine how fast they ran when they saw me coming.

  Somebody had written BODY COUNT: 4.

  And somebody else had written AND COUNTING.

  Lydia, Ashleen, Elliot, and Jared. No matter what the official stories were, nobody seemed to believe anything except that I’d murdered them one by one, in cold blood.

  At least Kendra had finally woken up. And she didn’t remember anything about our conversation in the woods. So my body count wasn’t five.

  See? You can be a murderer AND an optimist.

  I changed my morning books for my afternoon books and reached into my bag to grab the paperback I’d finished reading in English. But as my hand groped for the book, my fingers hi
t something small and hard.

  I froze, then dug around until I found the hole in the seam, which I’d been too busy to repair. Something was stuck between the outer layer of fabric and the inner lining. I fished it out and stared in disbelief at the object in my hand: a small glass woodpecker attached to a thin gold necklace. I shut my locker door and reached up to fasten the chain around my neck.

  Then I went to lunch.

  I stepped into the cafeteria just as the bell rang.

  And I swear on Lydia Small’s grave, every eye in the room turned to me.

  I figured sitting at the yearbook table was out. But I guess I’d thought that maybe my sister’s friends might make room for me. Or the Doom Squad, maybe? They claimed to like scary people.

  But everywhere I looked, tables were weirdly full.

  Or not full…

  They just didn’t have any extra seats. Empty chairs were piled high with bags and coats.

  Making it clear that I wasn’t invited.

  Back to my old seat at the Janitor’s Table, then—except the whole table was gone.

  I took one last look around the room of three hundred silent high school students, and something inside me threatened to break.

  Why had I thought I could come back here?

  I heard Agent Hasan’s words in my head: Good luck with that.

  And suddenly I didn’t think I’d need two weeks to give her my answer, but I knew she’d make me suffer through two weeks of it anyway. Make me sink as low as I could go so I’d never be tempted to doubt her again.

  But my miserable reverie and the quiet of the room were broken by the squeal of chair legs on linoleum.

  And on the far side of the cafeteria, my sister stood up. A second later, Keaton stood up. And Mimi.

  They started walking toward me.

  From the other side of the room came the muffled sounds of an argument, and then the words, “Then I quit!”

  And Marley stood up from the yearbook table. Then Chad.

  They walked toward me, too.

  Kasey reached me first. “So I guess we need a new table.”

  “Um…” I braced myself to make sure my voice would be steady before I spoke. “I don’t see one in here.”