The Cost of Living (ARC)

by Emilie Lucadamo

  That’s all he remembers. No James dragging him out to the bar, no wild parties, no burn of alcohol in his throat. It’s just…darkness.

  “Not much,” he confesses, and swallows hard. “I, um… I think I was drunk. Really drunk. And sick too, I guess, but my buddy’s a doctor so I can’t believe he didn’t notice, he’s usually on top of stuff like that—”

  He cuts off his rambling with a click of teeth and looks up at Adam. He feels a little sick and wishes he knew why.

  “Do you remember what was in the news last week?” Adam asks. His words are slow, careful. “About that bar that exploded. Some sort of gas leak?”

  Beck draws a blank. Surely James would have been ranting about that. Hell, he probably would have gone down there and tried to help out. He shakes his head.

  “What about that earthquake? It hit a cemetery hard, split a mausoleum right down the middle. You remember that, right?”

  Beck shakes his head again. His chest feels tight.

  Adam looks up and exchanges an unreadable glance with Sophie. Alyssa isn’t looking at either of them; she is scowling down at her hands, shoulders barely rising with each breath. Adam turns back to Beck again, and anger flares suddenly in his chest.

  “Adam, what the hell are you tellin’ me?” he demands. “I’m a busy guy. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Is that so weird, huh? Why’re you—”

  Wordlessly, Adam slides his phone across the table.

  Beck catches it before it can slide off, and frowns down at the webpage it is open to. At first he thinks it’s a news article—it is dated a few days after January 1, New Year’s Day. He knows instinctively this is recent (even though there are no holiday decorations around Adam’s apartment, maybe he just cleans up early). Then he focuses on the picture at the top of the article and feels his heart stop.

  It’s his face—his bright eyes, his warm smile beaming beneath a headline that reads In Loving Memory of Thomas Becker Murray (1995–2017).

  For a long moment Beck doesn’t move, staring with wide eyes at the article. It’s your standard obituary: when he died, who he leaves behind, a few spare facts about him, and where services will be held. His whole life and death, boiled down to barely a paragraph. His grin mocks him from the top of the page.

  “That…was two months ago,” he breathes, pointing at the picture. It was taken at Dylan’s last birthday party, in October. It had been a group shot—he, Dana, and Dylan, with James behind the camera. (“Dylan, you ass, quit makin’ that weird face! Okay, everybody look like you actually like Beck!”)

  Adam’s brows are furrowed, expression closed off and unreadable. “Beck, this article was written in January. It’s July now. You’ve been dead for seven months.”

  That’s the moment Beck’s world drops out from under him.

  He can’t speak. He can’t breathe. The phone drops from his hands as if it’s burned him, but he doesn’t try to stand up. His mind is an out-of-control merry-go-round, whirling thoughts and emotions and desperate attempts to rationalize what he’s just seen crowding his mind in a cacophony of chaos.

  What? That’s—no, that’s impossible. He can’t be dead. He’s right here, he’s alive, he can feel his heartbeat, he can’t be dead—it’s New Year’s, it was just New Year’s, he—

  He doesn’t remember New Year’s.

  He realizes with a sharp stab of alarm that he doesn’t remember New Year’s Eve. He doesn’t remember waking up on the first day of the year. He doesn’t remember partying with his friends, he doesn’t remember calling his family, he doesn’t remember—

  He doesn’t remember.

  What happened last night? How could he wake up in the middle of the street, naked and sick as a dog? He’d assumed he was drunk, but why can’t he remember drinking anything? Why can’t he remember how he got there?

  “No,” he says, not recognizing the sound of his own voice. “I’m not—I’m not dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Beck,” Adam says, and he really does sound apologetic. Like he’s offering condolences. Beck feels sick.

  He doesn’t remember dying. Of all the things a guy could forget, that seems like a pretty big one. Yet somehow his obituary is sitting right in front of him, and bright summer sun is shining through the windows of the apartment. Half a year has passed without him realizing, because he’s apparently been dead—

  Until he woke up in the middle of the street last night.

  Why the hell can he not remember?

  Chapter Two

  JUST THE FACT that Beck isn’t hyperventilating is a miracle, but he’s coming pretty damn close.

  He’s dead. He’s dead, but he can feel his heart beating in his chest, can taste each breath of air, and hears his own panic ringing in his skull. How the hell can he be dead when he’s alive?

  It’s impossible. Humans don’t just come back from being dead. He couldn’t have just died.

  Everyone in the room is staring at him, watching him melt down before their eyes, but Beck doesn’t care. How can they expect him not to freak out when he’s just been told he’s been dead, and he can’t remember a thing? “I can’t believe this,” he blabbers, hands tangling in his short hair. “I can’t, I freaking can’t believe this. It’s a joke. This has gotta be a goddamn joke, you can’t be serious—”

  “Beck, please calm down,” Sophie says, but Beck rounds on her with wide eyes of disbelief.

  “Calm down? I’m dead! I just read my own damn obituary! Why don’t you try to calm down when you find out you’re dead, you’ve been dead for seven months and have no clue what’s going on—”

  “Hey!” Adam exclaims, and it’s this that finally snaps Beck out of it. His sharp tone severs through Beck’s panic with the efficiency of a knife. It’s such a contrast to Adam’s usual controlled, calm tone that Beck’s body freezes up before his mind can register it. Only when he turns to look at Adam does he realize the other man isn’t angry but is fixing Beck with a very determined gaze.

  Only once Adam sees he has Beck’s attention does he speak again. “We’re not freaking out, okay? That ain’t gonna help anybody. We’re gonna figure out what’s going on here but freaking out will only make things worse. You’ve gotta keep it together, Beck.”

  “Keep it together?” Beck’s voice is a disbelieving squeak. “I’m dead, Adam. And I don’t even remember how I died! The hell am I supposed to ‘keep it together’?”

  “Well, you better figure it out, because there will be no flying into a blind rage in my house,” Adam says, voice stern. Beck is reminded sharply of his mother, and how protective she is over her neat-as-a-pin dining room (with four kids, she had to defend that room like a warrior). He knows better than to test Adam on this—and maybe that’s what finally gets him to sit back down.

  Sitting does little for his nerves. He can still feel his heart pounding, fit to burst out of his chest, and his blood pulses in his ears. Even so, Adam trains a piercing dark-eyed gaze on him, and Beck finds it impossible to tear his eyes away. The longer he sits, staring back at him, the easier it becomes to breathe.

  Only after a few long minutes does Adam break the tension of the room.

  “I know this is a shock, Beck, but you’ve gotta understand what’s been going on. A week ago, something went down in a cemetery a few blocks from here. It was just after someone broke into our shop and ransacked the place. We don’t know who, and we don’t know what, but we think a spell was performed with the intention of resurrecting the dead.”

  Beck inhales a ragged breath. “Resurr—you mean, someone tried to bring back dead people?”

  “A dead person, yeah. Only, the spell used was made up on the spot—a combination of a bunch of different forms of necromancy all mixed into one ritual. Whatever effect it had was explosive. We don’t know what happened to the person who tried to do the spell, but ever since then a lot of bad magic has been swirling around.”

  “Demonic,” Sophie clarifies in a low voice. “There is a lot of demonic
energy in the air.”

  “And ever since then people have started…” Adam trails off, throat bobbing as he swallows. “More than one person has woken up, when they shouldn’t be. They’re coming back. That’s what’s happened to you, Beck.”

  Oh God, this is three shades more crazy than Beck ever wants to deal with when he’s got a headache. He shakes his head slowly, trying to dislodge the clutch of panic around his ribs on top of all the information refusing to sink into his head. “What—” he starts, then stops, laughs hysterically, then starts again. “So, no one tried to bring me back? I just woke up ’cause of a damn accident? Well, who the hell was supposed to come back?”

  “We don’t know,” says Adam. “We don’t know who the witch was, either. We don’t know how many people are coming back. Far as we know there’s been you, one or two other people in the newspapers, and—”

  “I’m not alone, then.” Beck seizes on this and pulls himself to his feet once more. “You mean, this is happening to other people too?”

  “Beck, we’re working to figure this out!” Sophie speaks up. She has one hand protectively clasping Alyssa’s own where they sit together on the couch; she massages her thumb over the nervous-looking girl’s knuckles. “We’re going to discover exactly what’s going on, but in the meantime you’ve got to work with us.”

  He reels back, shaking his head. He can’t become the lab project of a few people who seem to know more about magic spells than any ordinary person should. If he’s really been dead for months, then his friends… God, his parents…

  “I can’t stay here,” he says. “I gotta go home.”

  Sophie opens her mouth, looking like she wants to argue. Adam sees the storm on the horizon and grabs the wheel before she can drive them straight into it. “We can’t keep you here,” he says. “You can go when you want, but Beck, don’t you want to figure out what’s going on here? You don’t know how healthy you are, and if something happens—”

  “I feel fine.” He’s not sorry for cutting Adam off. Suddenly, all of his thoughts are outside this apartment, on the doorstep of the house his friends have rented on the other side of the city, and back in the streets of Jersey, standing in the front yard of his childhood home. If he’s cooped up inside here for another minute, he’s sure he’ll die all over again. He needs to find his people. He can’t stay here with these strangers, trying to convince him that he’s some freak of nature.

  He just needs to get home, and it will all make sense.

  “Sorry, Adam,” he says, shaking his head at the man. “Sophie,” he adds, turning to nod at her. He’s slowly backing up towards the door. “I can’t stay here. You’ve been nice, you get it, but I gotta—go—you understand.” He feels breathless, a little hysterical. “I’ve gotta get home.”

  Sophie stands up, but Beck is already at the door. No one is about to stop him, and maybe Adam realizes that, because he doesn’t even try. He just nods his head, a respectful if reluctant incline.

  “Good luck, Beck,” he says, and that’s the last thing Beck hears before the apartment door slams shut behind him.

  HIS STREET LOOKS exactly the same way he remembers it—rows of houses lining both sides of the road, in various states of disrepair. The same shutters are hanging from the same windows. The couple in the blue house still haven’t repaired their broken porchlight; the mailbox that Dylan ran over last Halloween hasn’t been fixed yet.

  Even so, he cannot help but notice the differences. When he’d last stepped out of his front door, the world was painted in dingy, dull-colored hues of winter. Now every lawn is lush, green, and in many cases overgrown. The massive elm tree in their neighbors’ yard no longer stands tall, a stump the only monument to its years of existence. There is a brand-new car in the driveway of the house at the end of the street.

  With every step towards his own house, Beck can feel his heart pounding faster. This is the place he has come to call home over the past three years, yet somehow he feels like a stranger, an unwelcome intruder. This is his street, but it is not really his anymore.

  He climbs the steps to the porch, rebelling in the familiar creak of wood. He knows every weak spot in those stairs, and that leaning on the railing will cause it to topple over. He knows the smashed porch light will still light up; he knows ringing the doorbell hasn’t done anything for years. He remembers every inch of this place, his home. His home.

  He belongs here, he tells himself as he pounds bare-fisted against the door. He belongs here.

  (What if his friends don’t welcome him back? What if they treat him like a freak, an impossibility? What if their reactions confirm what he desperately does not want to believe? What if—)

  The door swings open.

  “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

  For all the things that have changed, Daniela Ramirez Scarrone is exactly how Beck remembers her last—confident, steely, and sharp as a knife. Chestnut curls frame a round face, dark eyes fixed on Beck that are half-disbelieving, half-amazed. She still barely stands as tall as Beck’s shoulders, still with the same curvy figure and daring red lipstick. She has not lost the proud set to her shoulders, or the boldness that seeps from every pore. She’s the same old Dana, and she’s staring at Beck now like she’s seen a ghost.

  Dana has always been fearless. When Beck takes a step towards her and she steps back—that’s the moment he knows something is very wrong.

  “Dani,” he says, and prays to God she isn’t about to slam the door in his face. “It’s me.”

  Dana’s eyes look large in her pale face. The hand holding the door open trembles slightly. “Beck?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, it’s—the weirdest shit has been happening, Dani, Jesus, I don’t know what’s going on—”

  “What’s going on?” Dana echoes and barks out a harsh laugh. “Are you kiddin’ me? You’re dead!”

  “That’s what they’re tellin’ me, but I can’t be dead since I’m right freakin’ here!” Beck doesn’t mean to yell, but it’s been a hard morning. His temper flares up, short and sharp, and he sees Dana’s eyes go wide. Beck’s has known her to be frightened maybe twice in all of the years he’s known her, and this surpasses all of them. This isn’t just fear—it’s terror, desperate hope mixed in with disbelief, fury, and a little bit of despair. He’s never seen that look on anyone’s face before, and it sure doesn’t belong on Dana’s.

  “I’m crazy,” she mutters to herself. “Jesus Christ, you can’t be here.”

  “Dani,” Beck says, voice pitching up in a whine. “Please just let me in.”

  She stares at him for a long moment, deathly silent. Beck shifts under her gaze but forces himself to meet her eyes. She picks him apart, peeling away each layer of skin and unraveling every part she can get to for answers. When she reaches out a hand without warning, it’s all he can do not to jump back. Instead he allows her to touch his cheek; their flesh connects, and she jumps back like he stung her.

  “You’re warm,” she breathes. “God, you’re real.”

  “I’m really here.” Beck isn’t sure if he wants to laugh or cry. “I’m not dead. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not dead. Okay?”

  “Okay. Okay.” Dana nods, her bob of curls bouncing, and takes a step back from the door. “Get in here; everybody’s gotta see you.”

  Beck doesn’t need to be told twice. He scrambles through the doorway, reveling in the sight of the familiar foyer. The rundown coat rack next to the door still stands proud, holding anything from umbrellas to swimming goggles, conspicuously bare of any actual coats. The “family pictures” that Dana and James took such care to hang along the walls leading upstairs are all in their places; so is the dubious looking carpet leading upstairs like the world’s ugliest (red and brown checkered) runway. Everything is just as Beck remembers, and for a moment it’s easy to forget he ever left in the first place.

  It’s good to be home, he thinks, and has to fight back a grin.

  Then Dana br
ushes past him down the hallway, and he is dragged back to reality. He isn’t home quite yet.

  It’s strange to be led through his own home like a visitor. Beck figures he should try talking as he follows Dana through the house, but he really doesn’t know what to say. Dana must be facing a similar problem; in all the years he’s known her, this is the first time Beck has seen her speechless. She keeps her posture stiff, eyes straight ahead as she leads Beck through the house all the way to the “studio.”

  The “studio” was dubbed as such through a collective vote, after Dylan insisted they needed an official name for at least one room in their house, just so they can pretend to be busy should anyone (i.e., their parents) call them. The “studio” is not a studio at all, and no work actually gets done there. It is a room with a leather couch, an ancient air hockey table, and the largest television in the house. This is where movie nights and video game showdowns happen, where snacks are eaten and the wildest food fights ensue. The very stern “no business in the studio” rule has been enforced since the day they moved in, and anyone who tries to bring house bills or homework into the room is summarily exiled to the backyard (no matter the weather; Beck’s written essays in the snow more times than he cares to remember).

  Beck loves the studio.

  When he steps into the doorway, his eyes widen in relief. Of all the ways he’d expected to find his friends, the normalcy of the sight in front of him is a balm to his ragged nerves. Dylan is a familiar sight, lanky limbs splayed across the back of a chair, lying upside down with a game controller clenched in a white knuckled grip. He’s running his mouth, the way he always does during a game, a stream of curses and unimaginative trash talk being drowned out by the screen’s sound effects. James, at least, is capable of sitting like a human being. He might be lounging on the couch, but he is locked in iron-clad focus. They’re playing a shooter game on the screen, one of the team ones that Beck has played before. Dylan is fighting against James and losing badly.