by J M Lassen
Miles realized he was standing on the lid. Perhaps he should have made the hole a bit wider. It would be difficult to get the lid open while standing on it. He needed to pee: there was that as well. When he came back, he shone his flashlight into the grave. It seemed to him that the lid of the coffin was slightly ajar. Was that possible? Had he damaged the hinges with the telescoping shovel, or kicked the lid askew somehow when he was shimmying up the rope? He essayed a slow, judicious sniff, but all he smelled was dirt and cherry ChapStick. He applied more cherry ChapStick. Then he lowered himself down into the grave.
The lid wobbled when he tested it with his feet. He decided that if he kept hold of the rope, and slid his foot down and under the lid, like so, then perhaps he could cantilever the lid up—
It was very strange. It felt as if something had hold of his foot. He tried to tug it free, but no, his foot was stuck, caught in some kind of vise or grip. He lowered the toe of his other hiking boot down into the black gap between the coffin and its lid, and tentatively poked it forward, but this produced no result. He’d have to let go of the rope and lift the lid with his hands. Balance like so, carefully, carefully, on the thin rim of the casket. Figure out how he was caught.
It was hard work, balancing and lifting at the same time, although the one foot was still firmly wedged in its accidental toehold. Miles became aware of his own breathing, the furtive scuffling noise of his other boot against the coffin lid. Even the red beam of his lamp as it pitched and swung, back and forth, up and down in the narrow space, seemed unutterably noisy. “Shit, shit, shit,” Miles whispered. It was either that or else scream. He got his fingers under the lid of the coffin on either side of his feet and bent his wobbly knees so he wouldn’t hurt his back, lifting. Something touched the fingers of his right hand.
No, his fingers had touched something. Don’t be ridiculous, Miles. He yanked the lid up as fast and hard as he could, the way you would rip off a bandage if you suspected there were baby spiders hatching under it. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
He yanked and someone else pushed. The lid shot up and fell back against the opposite embankment of dirt. The dead girl who had hold of Miles’s boot let go.
This was the first of the many unexpected and unpleasant shocks that Miles was to endure for the sake of poetry. The second was the sickening—no, shocking—shock that he had dug up the wrong grave, the wrong dead girl.
The wrong dead girl was lying there, smiling up at him, and her eyes were open. She was several years older than Bethany. She was taller and had a significantly more developed rack. She even had a tattoo.
The smile of the wrong dead girl was white and orthodontically perfected. Bethany had had braces that turned kissing into a heroic feat. You had to kiss around braces, slide your tongue up or sideways or under, like navigating through barbed wire: a delicious, tricky trip through No Man’s Land. Bethany pursed her mouth forward when she kissed. If Miles forgot and mashed his lips down too hard on hers, she whacked him on the back of his head. This was one of the things about his relationship with Bethany that Miles remembered vividly, looking down at the wrong dead girl.
The wrong dead girl spoke first. “Knock knock,” she said.
“What?” Miles said.
“Knock knock,” the wrong dead girl said again.
“Who’s there?” Miles said.
“Gloria,” the wrong dead girl said. “Gloria Palnick. Who are you and what are you doing in my grave?”
“This isn’t your grave,” Miles said, aware that he was arguing with a dead girl, and the wrong dead girl at that. “This is Bethany’s grave. What are you doing in Bethany’s grave?”
“Oh no,” Gloria Palnick said. “This is my grave and I get to ask the questions.”
A notion crept, like little dead cat feet, over Miles. Possibly he had made a dangerous and deeply embarrassing mistake. “Poetry,” he managed to say. “There was some poetry that I, ah, that I accidentally left in my girlfriend’s casket. And there’s a deadline for a poetry contest coming up, and so I really, really needed to get it back.”
The dead girl stared at him. There was something about her hair that Miles didn’t like.
“Excuse me, but are you for real?” she said. “This sounds like one of those lame excuses. The dog ate my homework. I accidentally buried my poetry with my dead girlfriend.”
“Look,” Miles said, “I checked the tombstone and everything. This is supposed to be Bethany’s grave. Bethany Baldwin. I’m really sorry I bothered you and everything, but this isn’t really my fault.” The dead girl just stared at him thoughtfully. He wished that she would blink. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her hair, lank and black, where Bethany’s had been brownish and frizzy in summer, was writhing a little, like snakes. Miles thought of centipedes. Inky midnight tentacles.
“Maybe I should just go away,” Miles said. “Leave you to, ah, rest in peace or whatever.”
“I don’t think sorry cuts the mustard here,” Gloria Palnick said. She barely moved her mouth when she spoke, Miles noticed. And yet her enunciation was fine. “Besides, I’m sick of this place. It’s boring. Maybe I’ll just come along with.”
“What?” Miles said. He felt behind himself, surreptitiously, for the knotted rope.
“I said, maybe I’ll come with you,” Gloria Palnick said. She sat up. Her hair was really coiling around, really seething now. Miles thought he could hear hissing noises.
“You can’t do that!” he said. “I’m sorry, but no. Just no.”
“Well then, you stay here and keep me company,” Gloria Palnick said. Her hair was really something.
“I can’t do that either,” Miles said, trying to explain quickly, before the dead girl’s hair decided to strangle him. “I’m going to be a poet. It would be a great loss to the world if I never got a chance to publish my poetry.”
“I see,” Gloria Palnick said, as if she did, in fact, see a great deal. Her hair settled back down on her shoulders and began to act a lot more like hair. “You don’t want me to come home with you. You don’t want to stay here with me. Then how about this? If you’re such a great poet, then write me a poem. Write something about me so that everyone will be sad that I died.”
“I could do that,” Miles said. Relief bubbled up through his middle like tiny doughnuts in an industrial deep-fat fryer. “Let’s do that. You lie down and make yourself comfortable and I’ll rebury you. Today I’ve got a quiz in American History, and I was going to study for it during my free period after lunch, but I could write a poem for you instead.”
“Today is Saturday,” the dead girl said.
“Oh, hey,” Miles said. “Then no problem. I’ll go straight home and work on your poem. Should be done by Monday.”
“Not so fast,” Gloria Palnick said. “You need to know all about my life and about me, if you’re going to write a poem about me, right? And how do I know you’ll write a poem if I let you bury me again? How will I know if the poem’s any good? No dice. I’m coming home with you and I’m sticking around until I get my poem. ’Kay?”
She stood up. She was several inches taller than Miles. “Do you have any ChapStick?” she said. “My lips are really dry.”
“Here,” Miles said. Then, “You can keep it.”
“Oh, afraid of dead girl cooties,” Gloria Palnick said. She smacked her lips at him in an upsetting way.
“I’ll climb up first,” Miles said. He had the idea that if he could just get up the rope, if he could yank the rope up after himself fast enough, he might be able to run away, get to the fence where he’d chained up his bike, before Gloria managed to get out. It wasn’t like she knew where he lived. She didn’t even know his name.
“Fine,” Gloria said. She looked like she knew what Miles was thinking and didn’t really care. By the time Miles had bolted up the rope, yanking it up out of the grave, abandoning the telescoping shovel, the wire cutters, the wronged dead girl, and had unlocked his road bike and was racing down the empty 5 a.
m. road, the little red dot of light from his headlamp falling into potholes, he’d almost managed to persuade himself that it had all been a grisly hallucination. Except for the fact that the dead girl’s cold dead arms were around his waist, suddenly, and her cold dead face was pressed against his back, her damp hair coiling around his head and tapping at his mouth, burrowing down his filthy shirt.
“Don’t leave me like that again,” she said.
“No,” Miles said. “I won’t. Sorry.”
He couldn’t take the dead girl home. He couldn’t think of how to explain it to his parents. No, no, no. He didn’t want to take her over to John’s house either. It was far too complicated. Not just the girl, but he was covered in dirt. John wouldn’t be able to keep his big mouth shut.
“Where are we going?” the dead girl said.
“I know a place,” Miles said. “Could you please not put your hands under my shirt? They’re really cold. And your fingernails are kind of sharp.”
“Sorry,” the dead girl said.
They rode along in silence until they were passing the 7-Eleven at the corner of Eighth and Walnut, and the dead girl said, “Could we stop for a minute? I’d like some beef jerky. And a Diet Coke.”
Miles braked. “Beef jerky?” he said. “Is that what dead people eat?”
“It’s the preservatives,” the dead girl said, somewhat obscurely.
Miles gave up. He steered the bike into the parking lot. “Let go, please,” he said. The dead girl let go. He got off the bike and turned around. He’d been wondering just exactly how she’d managed to sit behind him on the bike, and he saw that she was sitting above the rear tire on a cushion of her horrible, shiny hair. Her legs were stretched out on either side, toes in black combat boots floating just above the asphalt, and yet the bike didn’t fall over. It just hung there under her. For the first time in almost a month, Miles found himself thinking about Bethany as if she were still alive: Bethany is never going to believe this. But then, Bethany had never believed in anything like ghosts. She’d hardly believed in the school dress code. She definitely wouldn’t have believed in a dead girl who could float around on her hair like it was an anti-gravity device.
“I can also speak fluent Spanish,” Gloria Palnick said.
Miles reached into his back pocket for his wallet, and discovered that the pocket was full of dirt. “I can’t go in there,” he said.
“For one thing, I’m a kid and it’s five in the morning. Also I look like I just escaped from a gang of naked mole rats. I’m filthy.”
The dead girl just looked at him. He said, coaxingly, “You should go in. You’re older. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got. You go in and I’ll stay out here and work on the poem.”
“You’ll ride off and leave me here,” the dead girl said. She didn’t sound angry, just matter of fact. But her hair was beginning to float up. It lifted her up off Miles’s bike in a kind of hairy cloud and then plaited itself down her back in a long, business-like rope.
“I won’t,” Miles promised. “Here. Take this. Buy whatever you want.”
Gloria Palnick took the money. “How very generous of you,” she said.
“No problem,” Miles told her. “I’ll wait here.” And he did wait. He waited until Gloria Palnick went into the 7-Eleven. Then he counted to thirty, waited one second more, got back on his bike and rode away. By the time he’d made it to the meditation cabin in the woods back behind Bethany’s mother’s house, where he and Bethany had liked to sit and play Monopoly, Miles felt as if things were under control again, more or less. There is nothing so calming as a meditation cabin where long, boring games of Monopoly have taken place. He’d clean up in the cabin sink, and maybe take a nap. Bethany’s mother never went out there. Her ex-husband’s meditation clothes, his scratchy prayer mat, all his Buddhas and scrolls and incense holders and posters of Che Guevara were still out here. Miles had snuck into the cabin a few times since Bethany’s death, to sit in the dark and listen to the plink-plink of the meditation fountain and think about things. He was sure Bethany’s mother wouldn’t have minded if she knew, although he hadn’t ever asked, just in case. Which had been wise of him.
The key to the cabin was on the beam just above the door, but he didn’t need it after all. The door stood open. There was a smell of incense, and of other things: cherry ChapStick and dirt and beef jerky. There was a pair of black combat boots beside the door.
Miles squared his shoulders. I have to admit that he was behaving sensibly here, finally. Finally. Because—and Miles and I are in agreement for once—if the dead girl could follow him somewhere before he even knew exactly where he was going, then there was no point in running away. Anywhere he went she’d already be there. Miles took off his shoes, because you were supposed to take off your shoes when you went into the cabin. It was a gesture of respect. He put them down beside the combat boots and went inside. The waxed pine floor felt silky under his bare feet. He looked down and saw that he was walking on Gloria Palnick’s hair.
“Sorry!” Miles said. He meant several things by that. He meant sorry for walking on your hair. Sorry for riding off and leaving you in the 7-Eleven after promising that I wouldn’t. Sorry for the grave wrong I’ve done you. But most of all he meant sorry, dead girl, that I ever dug you up in the first place.
“Don’t mention it,” the dead girl said. “Want some jerky?”
“Sure,” he said. He felt he had no other choice.
He was beginning to feel he would have liked this dead girl under other circumstances, despite her annoying, bullying hair. She had poise. A sense of humor. She seemed to have what his mother called stick-to-itiveness; what the AP English Exam prefers to call tenacity. Miles recognized the quality. He had it in no small degree himself. The dead girl was also extremely pretty, if you ignored the hair. You might think less of Miles that he thought so well of the dead girl, that this was a betrayal of Bethany. Miles felt it was a betrayal. But he thought that Bethany might have liked the dead girl too. She would certainly have liked her tattoo.
“How is the poem coming?” the dead girl said.
“There’s not a lot that rhymes with Gloria,” Miles said. “Or Palnick.”
“Toothpick,” said the dead girl. There was a fragment of jerky caught in her teeth. “Euphoria.”
“Maybe you should write the stupid poem,” Miles said. There was an awkward pause, broken only by the almost-noiseless glide of hair retreating across a pine floor. Miles sat down, sweeping the floor with his hand, just in case.
“You were going to tell me something about your life,” he said.
“Boring,” Gloria Palnick said. “Short. Over.”
“That’s not much to work with. Unless you want a haiku.”
“Tell me about this girl you were trying to dig up,” Gloria said. “The one you wrote the poetry for.”
“Her name was Bethany,” Miles said. “She died in a car crash.”
“Was she pretty?” Gloria said.
“Yeah,” Miles said.
“You liked her a lot,” Gloria said.
“Yeah,” Miles said.
“Are you sure you’re a poet?” Gloria asked.
Miles was silent. He gnawed his jerky ferociously. It tasted like dirt. Maybe he’d write a poem about it. That would show Gloria Palnick.
He swallowed and said, “Why were you in Bethany’s grave?”
“How should I know?” she said. She was sitting across from him, leaning against a concrete Buddha the size of a three-year-old, but much fatter and holier. Her hair hung down over her face, just like a Japanese horror movie. “What do you think, that Bethany and I swapped coffins, just for fun?”
“Is Bethany like you?” Miles said. “Does she have weird hair and follow people around and scare them just for fun?”
“No,” the dead girl said through her hair. “Not for fun. But what’s wrong with having a little fun? It gets dull. And why should we stop having fun, just because we’re dead? It’s not a
ll demon cocktails and Scrabble down in the old bardo, you know?”
“You know what’s weird?” Miles said. “You sound like her. Bethany. You say the same kind of stuff.”
“It was dumb to try to get your poems back,” said the dead girl. “You can’t just give something to somebody and then take it back again.”
“I just miss her,” Miles said. He began to cry.
After a while, the dead girl got up and came over to him. She took a big handful of her hair and wiped his face with it. It was soft and absorbent and it made Miles’s skin crawl. He stopped crying, which might have been what the dead girl was hoping.
“Go home,” she said.
Miles shook his head. “No,” he finally managed to say. He was shivering like crazy.
“Why not?” the dead girl said.
“Because I’ll go home and you’ll be there, waiting for me.”
“I won’t,” the dead girl said. “I promise.”
“Really?” Miles said.
“I really promise,” said the dead girl. “I’m sorry I teased you, Miles.”
“That’s okay,” Miles said. He got up and then he just stood there, looking down at her. He seemed to be about to ask her something, and then he changed his mind. She could see this happen, and she could see why, too. He knew he ought to leave now, while she was willing to let him go. He didn’t want to fuck up by asking something impossible and obvious and stupid. That was okay by her. She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t say something that would rile up her hair. Not to mention the tattoo. She didn’t think he’d noticed when her tattoo had started getting annoyed.