As Dead as It Gets

  “Not really,” I called, careful to hover in the shadows. “I’m getting a little bored with photography, to be honest. I might cut back.”

  Kasey’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t say anything. I walked past her toward my bedroom, trying to stay steady on my trembling legs.

  * * *

  The ridiculous thing was, I knew exactly how to stop Lydia.

  All I had to do was get up the courage to go to her house and find her power center—whatever object was holding her to this world—and destroy it, and I’d be free. Free of her, and (though I only let myself hope for this in my most desperate and pitiful of moments) maybe even free of the ghosts that haunted my photos. Who was to say the two problems weren’t related?

  The trouble was, when I contemplated facing Mr. and Mrs. Small, my hands began to sweat and my mind went all wobbly. Their daughter’s death had basically ruined their not-so-great-to-begin-with lives. Under the weight of their desolate gazes, there was no way I’d be able to play it cool enough to concentrate on finding something that had been precious to Lydia—much less obliterating it.

  The whole situation was like an itch I couldn’t bear to scratch.

  Lydia believed I was a murderer. The kids at school never came out and said anything, but I could see in their eyes that they suspected me, too. After all, when Lydia went running after me, she was totally alive. Five minutes later, we were alone in a fiery beauty salon together, and Lydia was dead. So her parents had to wonder.

  And maybe what scared me most was that underneath all of my denial and nightmares and anger…some part of me might figure out it actually was my fault.

  Here’s a hint of how my life used to be: all I had wanted from the day I turned sixteen was a car. I begged, I cajoled, I bargained. Amazing how when you have a cute boyfriend and a popular best friend and everything in your life is just one peppy, perky little party, something like a car can seem really, really crucial. After everything went down with Aralt, I finally forgot about cars. I forgot to care about them, forgot to nag Mom and Dad about them.

  So of course I got one for Christmas.

  It was an act of profound sympathy on the part of my parents, I guess, because God knows my behavior and grades thus far in my junior year hadn’t exactly been car-for-Christmas-worthy. I’d even gone back to my old habit of skipping classes on a fairly regular basis. But Mom and Dad were insanely excited, giggly and pink-cheeked. I tried to give them a little pink-faced giggling right back, but I think they saw through it.

  I could tell Kasey did.

  The car was six years old and ugly: brown, rounded off at the corners like a bubble or an egg or something—with a big splotch on the backseat that I’d just as soon never find out the cause of, thank you very much. But it was a car. It had windows and locks and seats and a gas pedal—and it was mine.

  I fell in love immediately.

  Grandma was off windsurfing in Australia with her women’s club for the holidays, so it was just the four of us—Mom, Dad, Kasey, and me. We finished opening presents in about ten minutes and ate our traditional holiday breakfast of scrambled eggs and a giant pile of artery-clogging bacon. I took my trying-too-hard parents on a drive around the neighborhood.

  Then the house fell back into deathly silence.

  Kasey retreated to her bedroom to talk to her boyfriend, Keaton Perry (could someone please tell me how on earth my little sister was old enough to have a boyfriend? And a senior, no less?), and I went to the living room and turned on the TV. The local news was playing, and the anchors were decked out in cheesy holiday sweaters. They were joking and jolly, talking about Santa Claus as if he really existed, that thing adults do to humor the kids who are mostly just humoring adults.

  Then they turned serious.

  “A Christmas tragedy,” the female anchor said, frowning. “Surrey police are investigating the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Kendra Charnow, whose parents reported yesterday that their daughter apparently left the house in the middle of the night. The Surrey High School junior’s wallet and winter coat were both left behind, and footprints found in the mud outside her window seem to suggest that she left the house barefoot.”

  “What?” Kasey appeared from her bedroom and plunked down onto the sofa. “Kendra?”

  The cameras turned from the front of the Charnows’ house to show the side yard, which was cordoned off with bright yellow crime-scene tape. A bunch of neighbors milled around as busy-looking police officers walked from the house to the street and back again.

  Mom sat next to me. “You’re kidding me…and on Christmas.”

  I was watching a woman in the background who had to be Kendra’s mother. She had short reddish hair and dark circles under her eyes, and leaned heavily on the arm of the man next to her.

  Then they cut to footage of Kendra’s bedroom. There was crime-scene tape blocking the doorway, but they showed her unmade bed, her open window, and her dresser.

  “Wait.” I grabbed the remote and skipped back to the shot of the bedroom. The end of the news camera’s pan settled on the surface of Kendra’s dresser. What you were supposed to notice was that her purse was still there, with her wallet sitting next to it.

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

  Because what I noticed was the single yellow rose.

  COULD LYDIA REALLY BE BEHIND THIS? Did she hate me so much that she was going after not just me but random people I knew, too?

  And then it hit me: Kendra had been in the Sunshine Club.

  Yet another girl who’d survived when Lydia died.

  Maybe it wasn’t just me Lydia was coming after—maybe she was planning to hunt all of us down, one at a time.

  Unless someone stopped her.

  Well, it won’t be me. The thought was like a command from my subconscious. I was done playing with ghosts. Done thinking I knew how to fight them.

  But who else would—who else could?—if I didn’t? I was the only person who could even see Lydia.

  It’s still not my problem.

  Only…the longer I thought about it, the more it kind of looked like my problem.

  “Police are searching the densely wooded areas nearby—both the Pelham Nature Preserve and Sage Canyon are within a mile of the Charnow home,” the reporter said. “Unfortunately, though, rescuers have told us that it could take days to canvas the area—and last night’s rain washed away a lot of important information.”

  Pelham? That was the nature preserve where Jared and I had been. Where we’d run into Kendra the day before her parents reported her missing.

  They cut to an overhead shot of the area, taken from a news helicopter.

  In the upper right corner of the screen, among the trees, was a bright splotch of white. At first I thought there was something wrong with the TV, but when the camera moved, the position of the white light moved, too. So, its source was actually there in the forest.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “What’s what, honey?” Mom asked.

  It was a small, glowing spot of light—like someone was aiming a really powerful flashlight directly at the screen.

  I’d never seen anything like it before…except for the brilliant white light in my car. Which came immediately before Lydia’s yellow rose showed up.

  Because of my “special” relationship with Lydia, I could see, hear, and interact with her in ways that I couldn’t with other ghosts. So it was possible that she could appear as a bright glow in photos—and on TV—when regular ghosts didn’t. I didn’t actually have any idea—I’d never gone out of my way to photograph her.

  The helicopter spun to reveal the thin line of the highway. The light glowed on, about halfway between the main hiking trail and the road.

  “What?” Kasey asked. “What are you looking for? Did you see something?”

  The camera panned a little farther to reveal a billboard bearing the logo of a car dealership.

  “I thought I did, but I didn’t,?
?? I said, getting up off the couch and going to my room.

  A few minutes later, I came back to the kitchen and found both of my parents huddled protectively near Kasey, who was on the phone with one of her dozens of friends.

  “What’s up?” Dad asked.

  I held up my car keys. “I think I’ll go for a little drive.”

  Kasey gave me a worried look. “Don’t you want to talk to anybody? Did you call Megan?”

  “Why would I call Megan?” I asked, leaning against the doorway.

  “She knows Kendra. She was in the—”

  “Kase,” I said. “Trust me. Megan’s not waiting for my call.”

  My parents looked stricken.

  “It’s fine. Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I’ll be home in a while.”

  “Where will you go?” Dad asked.

  “Just…out,” I said, leaving before they had a chance to ask me not to.

  As I drove past the entrance to the nature preserve, I saw that the lot was choked with police cars and news vans. So I kept going, about a half-mile farther, until I came to an abandoned diner. I parked my car behind the building and backtracked on foot toward the billboard I’d seen on the news, staying close to the trees until I was directly below the sign. Then I plunged straight into the woods, my phone in my hand to keep track of my location.

  I stepped over exposed roots and low, rough brush, dividing my concentration between not falling and looking for Kendra. The cold cut right through my sweater and bit into my skin. Added to that were the chills I got when I took the time to wonder what Lydia could do to someone who couldn’t see her, someone she caught off guard.

  Kendra might already be dead.

  I kept my eye out for Lydia, but I also had my camera strapped around my neck. Every once in a while I’d take a volley of photos and search them for any sign of the bright light.

  Nothing.

  Finally I came to a small, rocky cliff and paused, unable to go farther without climbing down. I lifted the camera and fired off a few shots.

  Bingo.

  The photo showed the white light directly in front of me, glaringly bright.

  “Lydia?” I called.

  My only answer was the distant chopping of helicopter blades.

  Silent night, I thought.

  “Boo.” Lydia had materialized a few feet away from me, eyebrow cocked.

  At the sound of her voice, I hurried away from the edge of the cliff.

  “Merry Christmas, Alexis,” she sneered. “Get lots of presents? I’ll bet you did. I’ll bet it was super awesome. So tell me: did you stop for a single minute and think about me or my family? I’ll bet anything you didn’t. You’re completely wrapped up in yourself, as usual. And I’m just a rotting corpse in the ground.”

  But I did. Before I fell asleep last night, I thought about your mother sitting alone in the darkness, and it made me cry. Sometimes it feels like all I do is cry.

  “I wish you were just a rotting corpse.” I put my hands on my hips. “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Kendra,” I said.

  She gave me a flat stare. “What am I, a bloodhound?”

  Then she vanished.

  I sighed and walked back toward the cliff, turning around and carefully edging my way down, scraping the bejeezus out of my hands and balancing precariously on wobbly rocks and slick piles of gravel.

  When I reached the bottom, I started to go to the right.

  Lydia appeared in my path. “She’s actually behind you,” she said, tossing her hair. “Better hurry. She looks dead.”

  Then she gave me a nasty glare and disappeared again.

  Just as Lydia had said, Kendra was about thirty feet away. She lay on the rocks, her eyes closed and her leg canted at a sickening angle; she must have fallen and broken it.

  For a second, I really did think she was dead.

  I lifted her wrist and felt a faint pulse, but when I gently patted her cheek, her eyes remained tightly shut.

  I pulled out my phone and prepared to dial 911.

  I was trying to look up my GPS coordinates when a filthy hand lifted off the ground and rested on my arm.

  “Alexis…?”

  “Kendra!” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I need water.” Her eyes fluttered from the effort of opening, and her mouth made a futile swallowing motion. “Please.”

  I had a bottle in my backpack. I pulled the cap off and tipped it toward her cracked lips. “Just sip,” I said. “There’s plenty. Don’t try to drink too much at once.”

  She took a couple of small swallows, then stared up at me. “I’m tired.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m going to call the police,” I said. “They’ll come save you.”

  She nodded stiffly, but I could tell by the glimmer in her eyes that she was still afraid.

  “What happened? Why did you come out here? Was it—” I cut myself off before I could say Lydia.

  “I was…trying to get away from something.” Her eyes grew hazier, more distant. “I was…trying to get away from…”

  “From what?” I wanted to coax the name out of her. I didn’t want to say it myself, because if I was wrong—

  Kendra’s eyes suddenly went wide with fright. “From you, Alexis.”

  I blinked.

  Trying to get away from me?

  Then, before I knew what was happening, Kendra’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she was unconscious again.

  I grabbed my phone, about to call for help. But suddenly I wondered how this would look. The police might believe I’d just gone out to hike, and take pictures…but would my parents?

  Would Kasey?

  Not a chance.

  I backed a few steps away, trying not to slip on the mossy rocks. And a thread of fear wove up through my heart, like a snake being charmed.

  I couldn’t face the police. I couldn’t spend another day trying to avoid my parents’ searching gazes, lying my way through the explanation everyone would demand.

  Someone would save Kendra, I would make sure of that—but I didn’t plan to be there when it happened.

  If I weren’t me (oh, to be some average girl living in an average place with average problems! The magic of it!), if I were some other person looking in on me and my messed-up life, I think the obvious questions would be—why did I bother trying to keep so many secrets?

  And why didn’t I ask for help?

  Like Carter said after the whole Sunshine Club disaster—why didn’t I turn to him, or my parents, or anyone? After all, there’s strength in numbers, right?

  It’s more complicated than that.

  This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve dealt with ghosts before. And when you’re dealing with murderous spirits, more isn’t merrier. It’s not like Scooby-Doo. The amount of people you have on your side doesn’t matter. You can’t physically fight a ghost, so there’s no point in having an army of friends standing at the ready.

  That just means there are more people who potentially could get hurt.

  So I could go to my parents, yeah. But would they try to help me figure out what was going on? Would they help me get to the core of the situation?

  No. They’d call Agent Hasan, the government agent who’d come in twice now to clean up our supernatural messes, and then they’d have Kasey and me packed into the car and on the road to some no-name town in North Dakota before lunch.

  But that wouldn’t work.

  I’ve learned something in my months spent inadvertently spying on ghosts: if you notice them, they notice you. If you’re aware of a ghost, it becomes aware of you.

  And when a ghost is aware of you, you’re that much more likely to have ghost trouble. The kind you can’t drive away from. The kind that ends in pain and misery…or death.

  Especially when the ghost hates you as much as Lydia hated me.

  That night, while my family was sitting down to a festive Christmas dinner of delivered pizza, the local news repor
t ran an update on the rescue effort. Kendra had been located and taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital. She hadn’t been able to say anything because she was in a coma.

  Her whereabouts had been called in by an anonymous tipster from an old pay phone at an abandoned diner near the woods.

  “It’s awfully strange,” my mother said. “But I’m so relieved they found her.”

  I was relieved, too—

  Relieved that they found her, relieved that she was alive…

  And relieved that she couldn’t talk.

  I’M PRETTY SURE TAGGING ALONG with your little sister to her popular-people New Year’s Eve party dumps you off the deep end of the loser scale, but there I was, anyway.

  I tried to hold my head high as I followed Kasey through the immense front door of the equally immense Laird house. She was immediately swarmed by a pack of chattering girls who pulled her in the direction of the fittingly enormous couch. Dear devoted Keaton, spotting her from across the room, cut short his conversation and made a beeline for her.

  I commandeered a chair in the corner next to the snack table, set down my unfashionable, un-party- appropriate bag, and went into Alexis Doesn’t Want to Be Here mode, talking to people only when they talked to me, nursing a cup of punch, and watching my fingers slowly grow oranger and oranger from all the cheese puffs I couldn’t seem to stop eating.

  A shadow fell over me, and I looked up. The first thing I saw was the hair—dark brown, just past shoulder length. Then the skin, perfectly gold, even in winter. Then the eyes, dark and knowing—and maybe a little bit tired.

  “Megan,” I said.

  My best friend, whom I’d seen maybe four times since October, did a double take when she saw me. She took a halting step back, which made me notice how she still limped on her left knee.

  The knee I’d destroyed.

  “Wow—your hair,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  I tried to smile. It didn’t really work.

  “When did you do that?” she asked. “What does it mean?”

  I reached up and touched it self-consciously. Megan, who’d never given my pink hair a second glance, seemed utterly horrified by my white hair. She was looking at me like I’d announced I had a bomb strapped to my chest or something.