by Tonya Hurley
“That is Blogging Bianca,” Gary said, pointing to a girl who had her fingers curved as if she was ready to type at any second. “Her blog was her life.”
“Whose isn’t?” Scarlet smirked, one of her pet peeves being the amount of valuable time people waste blogging and pushing mundane personal observations in their own little cyber sweatshops for mass consumption.
“Unfortunately, that’s what it cost her,” Gary explained. “She got a DVT, you know, a blood clot from not moving around enough. Too many snarky entries, too little stretching out.”
“Too much information.” Scarlet squirmed, pun totally intended. “Talk about logging out.”
“What about you, Gary. How did you … get here?” Scarlet asked.
“Oh, I was driving my hybrid and I lost control. I swerved to save a tree, and instead, I plowed into the side of a Target.”
“Bull’s-eye,” Scarlet said, stifling her giggle with her hand.
“Yeah, but the tree was unharmed, thank God,” Gary said, still reveling in his success.
“You look older than the others,” Scarlet said.
“Oh, actually, I’m the youngest here, I think,” Gary said. “I probably look older because I only ate organic, no preservatives.”
“Oh,” Scarlet replied, trying not to look too shocked at the fact that Gary looked as old as her dad. “Bet you never got carded.”
“No, and never will,” Gary said with a momentary twinge of sadness in his voice.
“And you?” a mocking voice called to Scarlet from the other side of the room. “How did you get here?”
“Don’t mind Paramour Polly,” Gary said. “She’s jealous of everyone. She died stealing her best friend’s boyfriend. They were making out on the train tracks and …”
“I can figure out the rest, thanks,” Scarlet said, cutting the conversation short. She had heard all she wanted or needed to.
After learning about her classmates, Scarlet directed her attention to the screen. The film continued with lessons from Billy and Butch on the proper use of “special abilities.” Scarlet actually found it fascinating, but kept reminding herself she was only auditing this class. This stuff was all superfluous since she wasn’t really dead.
The lights came up and Ms. Pierce dismissed everyone, but remained at her desk. Scarlet trailed the rest of the kids out of class and then stopped to talk with the teacher.
“Can I help you, Scarlet?” Ms. Pierce offered kindly.
“I hope so,” Scarlet said with total seriousness. “You see, I don’t belong here.”
“We all feel that way at first, dear,” Ms. Pierce. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used …” Scarlet stopped herself. “What I meant to say is, I’m not like the rest of you.”
“What do you mean, Scarlet?” the teacher asked a bit curiously.
“I’m not dead, ma’am,” Scarlet said. “Yet.”
Ms. Pierce was a bit skeptical of what Scarlet was telling her, but glancing down at her roll sheet, she could not find Scarlet’s name. She continued to listen, this time a bit more closely.
“Then why are you here?” Ms. Pierce said. “It is not exactly top of the list for teenagers.”
“I’m looking for someone who is dead,” Scarlet answered. “A girl named Charlotte Usher.”
“I’m sorry, she’s not in this class,” Ms. Pierce advised, looking over her attendance roster once again. “Honestly, I have no idea how you would find her.”
“I don’t understand much about how all this stuff works, but I know that she graduated.”
“Well, that’s the problem, Miss Kensington,” Ms. Pierce explained. “None of us here know where that is, but we are all waiting for an opportunity to be taken there.”
The tone of Ms. Pierce’s voice indicated to Scarlet that she had held out hope that the new student would be the one to lead them over.
“I’m sorry if I’ve created any confusion.”
“You’ve created much more than confusion,” Ms. Pierce said enigmatically. “Since there is nothing I can do for you now, why don’t you take a spare room for the night at Hawthorne Manor and perhaps we can sort this out tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Scarlet said, her voice cracking slightly from the strain.
Scarlet was getting really anxious about time, and what might be going on at the hospital, but without any other options, she decided that it would be interesting to be at Hawthorne Manor again, as a guest rather than a waitress in the café.
Scarlet arrived at Hawthorne Manor much like she would for work, but now she had special access to the actual dorm. It looked grand and beautiful, just as she remembered it had the first time. She walked in the huge wooden doors and through the marbled foyer, proud that she had helped to save such a place. No one was around, as far as she could tell.
She stepped toward the massive staircase and then up to the bedrooms, looking over her shoulder the whole way, alert to any uptight, resentful ghosts that might reside there these days. She noticed name plates on all the doors as she walked down the hall and then came to Charlotte’s old room, which, as luck would have it, appeared to be unoccupied. It was strange for her to walk through the door, since last time, she’d pretty much floated in the huge stained-glass window.
She ran her finger along the fireplace mantel and thought about Charlotte and everything that had happened. She thought about Damen as well and wondered if he’d still be hovering over Petula in the hospital room, or if maybe he’d found a minute to tear up over her, stroke her hand, and call her back from the brink too. Unexpectedly, however, Scarlet found herself thinking mostly about Petula and how she could save her. Just then, she heard a rapping at the bedroom door.
“Scarlet?” a soft voice called out.
“Yeah … ?” Scarlet asked cautiously, hoping she wasn’t so tired she was now hearing things … or worse.
It was Green Gary, with an unexpected invitation.
“Some of us are hanging out in the meeting room. You can join us if you want.”
Scarlet was drained but thought this might be a good opportunity to get some info out of the kids.
“Sure,” she said, opening the door and scooting through the hallway and down the stairs after him.
“What up, paleface?” Tilly asked, mocking Scarlet’s porcelain skin, which appeared even more translucent in her ghostly state.
Ordinarily, Scarlet would have been offended, but looking at Tilly, who resembled one of those puckered, peeling radiation zombies from a cheapo old sci-fi flick, her rigorously sunblocked complexion did pale in comparison. Tilly totally redefined “hot mess” and Scarlet didn’t feel the need to “burn” her any further.
“Can’t we all just get along?” Green Gary asked, coming to Scarlet’s defense.
“It’s okay,” Scarlet responded brusquely. “I’m not here to make friends.”
Polly looked Scarlet over and felt threatened by her casual style and natural beauty, not to mention Green Gary’s overattentiveness toward her.
“Well then, Tartlet,” she chimed in cattily, “what are you doing here?”
“Yes,” Blogging Bianca inquired, her hands poised over an imaginary keyboard like a bloggerazzi. “What is your purpose here?”
It was strangely surreal how Bianca froze after each statement, as if she were on a real-life vlog. The only thing missing was the “play again” arrow over her face.
“I’m looking for someone, actually two people,” Scarlet said softly. “And I don’t know how to find them.”
“Friends or family?” Bianca asked.
“Both,” Scarlet answered.
“Can’t be both. Friends are people you choose to be around and family are people you have to be around,” Bianca said, spinning the idea into a potential blog entry, but then realizing that she needed to at least try to be helpful. “I can post an alert,” she said semi-sincerely, overlooking the fact that everyone she could possibly alert was already i
n the room.
“What, no milk carton, dumbass?” Andy shouted at Bianca as he worked out some new freestyle tricks on his skateboard. “She needs to actually do something, like look for these girls.”
“I’m hoping the friend can lead me to the family,” Scarlet said. “And I’m running out of time.”
“I see,” Gary said. “Everybody is just a little disappointed. We were kind of hoping you were here for us.”
Scarlet looked around and saw sadness, frustration, loneliness, but not anger.
“I guess we all are waiting for someone to come and save us,” Scarlet concluded.
Scarlet settled under the heavy sheets of the comfy four-poster and had barely drifted off to sleep when her eyes opened again, forced by the moonlight that crept, like a false dawn, up the colored window pane. Her troubled conscience wasn’t helping much either, now totally immune to her Chinese sleeping chants.
The possibility of catching any shut-eye was looking more and more remote now, so she picked up right where she left off, obsessing about her rash decision. Wouldn’t she have been much more help at the hospital than she was trolling around between worlds? And what about all the anxiety she must be causing her mom? Damen? As she turned her face away from the moon’s icy glare, she noticed Charlotte’s old Deadiquette book sitting on the nightstand next to the bed.
Charlotte’s text, she remembered, was different than the rest. Older, if she recalled correctly. She pulled the book she’d been given from under the blanket and began thumbing through each, comparing pages and chapters. She came across the chapter on possession in Charlotte’s book, which was missing from hers.
“Been there, done, that,” Scarlet said, flipping right by the ritual.
She turned all the way to the end of each book, matching page for page, but it seemed the possession stuff was the only difference. Until she got to the very last page. In Charlotte’s book, there was one extra. It looked more like an order form or an application than actual text. Easy to overlook, unless you were specifically looking for it.
The heading on the page read: EARLY DECISION.
Chapter
10
This Is How I Disappear
Always remember that you are absolutely unique.
Just like everyone else.
—Margaret Mead
Timing is everything.
We let some people in and keep others out for all kinds of reasons, most of them having to do with timing. The difference between good timing and bad timing, between making friends or making problems, is usually just a matter of readiness. Dead, alive, or in-between, nothing is more futile than being in the right place at the wrong time.
Petula and Virginia both had taken seats on the bench but were not saying much. Petula noticed the girl looking down at her feet and made a preemptive comment.
“They took my polish off,” Petula said, pointing out the obvious hatchet job so that the little girl wouldn’t have a chance to point it out first.
“So?” Virginia said in her best who-cares tone of voice.
“Well, you can’t go around with ratty-looking feet,” Petula admonished. “If you don’t care about yourself, who’s going to care about you?”
“Aren’t there more important things to worry about?” Virginia asked.
She looked at Petula, some dark roots poking out from under her blond, frazzled hair extensions, and realized that there probably wasn’t anything more important to Petula.
“Don’t kid yourself,” Petula seethed. “When you look good, like I do, you make everyone else around you look good. Beauty matters.”
“I know all about it,” Virginia said a little wearily.
“Oh, really?” Petula spit back condescendingly.
“Yes, really,” Virginia insisted, mocking Petula’s grating voice.
The girls glared at each other, facing off.
“I don’t need a lesson from you about the importance of beauty,” Virginia responded. “You know that picture you get in the frame, the one of the little girl with the perfect face and smile, the one that makes you want to buy the frame?”
“Yeah,” Petula said. “Actually my sister used to keep those pictures in and pretend that she had another sister, not me.”
“Well, that was me,” Virginia said. “From there I went on to be one of the most winning pageant girls around.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Petula sniffed. “I never really had time for that kind of stuff. I was always too busy with my friends, you know, having a social life.”
Petula tried to play it off, but she knew she’d been trumped. She’d secretly wanted to be one of those pageant girls. It really suited her competitive personality, she thought, but her mom felt otherwise. Petula always thought it was some conspiracy Scarlet and her mom came up with to keep her from ever fully realizing her outer swan.
“You have friends?” Virginia asked with a mix of sarcasm and curiosity.
“I have two best friends, in fact,” Petula said, rubbing it in.
“How good for you,” Virginia responded, a little more wistfully this time.
Both girls had taken measure of each other, and after round one they returned to their “corners,” each with a bit more respect for the other. They had more in common than Petula would have expected and more than Virginia preferred to think.
“I take it you never won a Miss Congeniality title,” Petula said after a while, smiling at the tweenager.
“Actually, I don’t even know what I won,” Virginia answered indifferently. “I couldn’t care less anyway.”
“Oh, you care,” Petula said with a smirk. “I’m sure you could have quit any time you wanted.”
Virginia remained silent.
“But you didn’t,” Petula pressed, “did you?”
Petula accepted Virginia’s awkward silence as enough of an answer and turned her focus back where it belonged, on herself, especially her pedicure.
“Look, they didn’t even take it off the whole way,” Petula said, clearly distressed. “I’m never going to find nail polish remover … here.”
After a few seconds, Virginia came through with practical advice.
“You just need to soak your feet in some warm water, peel off the excess polish, and then soak your nails in some lemon juice for naturally white tips,” Virginia offered, easing Petula’s concerns.
“How did you know that?” Petula said in amazement.
“I know lots of stuff,” Virginia said mockingly. “Lots of mindless, unimportant stuff …”
“I think there’s a lot we can learn from each other,” Petula said with a gleam spearing off of her colored contact lens. “You’re going to be the little sister I always wanted!”
With that cold remark, the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted. Both girls tried to hide the unspoken fears that had been lurking under their conversation and slid closer together, each pulling her hospital gown down as far as it would stretch, which was not nearly far enough.
“Damn cotton!” Petula cursed, hunching over slightly. “It has no give.”
Dr. Kaufman, a hot young neurology resident who magically transformed Hawthorne Hospital into General Hospital, came into the room to examine both Kensington girls as Damen kept vigil between them. The doctor started with Petula, examining her as thoroughly as Dr. Patrick and the nurses before had.
Damen laughed a little to himself at the sight of the doctor running his hands along Petula’s arms and legs, checking her skin for rashes. This is the kind of guy she’d really go for, he thought, and was instantly hit by a wave of sadness, realizing she might never have the chance.
The doctor examined Scarlet as well, and Damen felt a twinge of jealousy as he watched Kaufman handle her, performing the required neurological and motor testing. Damen couldn’t help but think that he’d rather be “playing doctor” with Scarlet than watching the real thing. Kaufman held her lids open, shined his penlight in Scarlet’s eyes, and noted his findings on the ever-pre
sent clipboards hanging from each bed.
For Damen, these three-times-a-day examinations were almost like online updates tracking the arrival of a plane that had been delayed due to bad weather. If there was any improvement in either girls’ condition, it might mean that Scarlet had been successful, that she was closer to returning to him and closer to living than dying.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Damen said anxiously, pushing for a concrete answer to ease his mind.
“I’m going to be frank with you,” Dr. Kaufman said.
“Please,” Damen replied, picking up Scarlet’s hand and holding it tightly.
“I’m afraid their vitals aren’t as strong as they were yesterday,” Dr. Kaufman said. “And the neurological evaluation is unchanged.”
“What does that mean?” Damen asked naively, knowing damn well what it meant but not wanting to face it.
“It appears that both of their conditions are deteriorating,” Dr. Kaufman said cryptically as he initialed the exam sheet, turned, and left the room.
Damen hung his head over Scarlet and then thought of a million questions he wanted to ask, if only to feel like he was actually doing something. He bolted out of the room after Dr. Kaufman, and saw him dip into another patient’s room at the end of the hall.
He stopped short of the doorway when he heard soft whimpering coming from inside the room. He peeked in and spied Dr. Kaufman beginning a new exam. Then he saw an agonized couple, hovering hopefully over a beautiful young girl, not more than twelve years old, who appeared to be desperately ill. Damen may not have been a doctor, but he could tell she was in trouble. He felt himself on the verge of tears — for the little girl, for Scarlet, or for himself, he could not be sure.
Life’s not fair, Damen realized for the first time in his super-popular, super-connected, super-successful existence as he turned and walked back to Petula and Scarlet’s room.