The Grave Winner

by Lindsey Loucks

  Her blue eyes clouded with something unknown before she blinked it away. “I need to know you’re strong enough to handle anything, my love.”

  She’d never asked me What would you do if I died? or What would you do if Dad and Darby wanted to bring me back? or What if spiders took over the house? If she had, I would know what to do. I would be strong enough to handle it on my own.

  Later, frozen pizzas baked in the oven while I set the table for dinner. Melted cheese with a hint of cardboard hung heavy in the air.

  When Dad walked in through the back door, his eyes widened. “What’s this?”

  “Leigh says we need to talk,” Darby said and lifted her glass of iced carbonation to her mouth. She liked hers in a glass because the bubbles tickled her nose.

  Worry wrinkled Dad’s expression. “This sounds serious.”

  “It is.” I avoided his eyes while I sat at the table.

  “I’ll wait to change my clothes then.” Dad’s gaze seemed to burn a hole through me while he sank into the chair across from Darby.

  My stomach clenched. For a second, I thought I was going to puke, but I took a breath and willed everything back down. “I…uh…saw Sarah right after she came back. At Mom’s funeral. And a few times since then.”

  Darby blinked and set her glass on the table.

  Dad didn’t move a muscle.

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but she’s definitely not the same. She’s…” A drop of sweat slid down Darby’s glass. “She looks…nightmarish,” I said and swallowed. “I’m no expert, but I think what she went through was pretty horrible. Committing suicide and then coming back. She’ll never be the same.”

  Darby caught another trickle down the glass and rubbed her fingers together. “Nothing will.”

  I gripped the edge of the table. “Darby, look at me.”

  She pressed her lips together as her gaze flicked up to me. Dad held still, his eyes locked on mine.

  “The other day when you said you wished Mom would come back like Sarah, I hope you didn’t mean it,” I continued. My eyes stung and my chin trembled, but I kept going. “We’re miserable without Mom. But I think she’s happy where she is, even though she doesn’t have us. If your wish came true, and Mom came back, she wouldn’t be happy. And she wouldn’t be the same.” A fallen tear streaked my cheek, and I brushed it away. “I know she wouldn’t.”

  Darby put her elbows on the table and held the sides of her head. Even though she stared at the tabletop, I could see tears pooling behind her glasses.

  Dad just looked at me, his face blank.

  “That’s all,” I said.

  Dad nodded slowly. Then he scooted his chair back and disappeared down the hallway.

  I stabbed at my band aid with a fingernail while I watched him go.

  Darby sniffed. “But I miss her so much.”

  I slid my hand across the table, palm up. When she took it, I held it tight. “Me, too.”

  Dad marched back into the kitchen carrying an old, frayed book. He dropped it in the garbage can and knelt between Darby and me. His voice thick with emotion, he said, “I thought you were going to tell us you were pregnant or something horrible like that.”

  Relieved, I threw one arm around Dad and didn’t protest when he nearly crushed my bones with the force of his hug.

  After our frozen pizza dinner and a short phone call from Jo asking if I was contagious, I spied on Darby from her bedroom doorway. She sat at her desk, scooting dead spiders into a nearby trash can. She opened the ugly middle drawer and lifted out the stack of drawings. Her head bent over the pages as she shuffled through them one by one. The drawn images shifted through my brain at the same speed, and I knew I would never forget them even if I tried.

  Darby paused for a second then tossed the stack into the trash can. I wanted to leap for joy or tackle her with my tickle fingers. Instead, I chose to act cool and pretend I wasn’t spying.

  “Oh, here you are,” I said like an innocent sister would. “Can Merlin read to me?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Sure, but he’s covered in spider guts.”

  I settled myself on her bed. “He’s got bigger issues than spider guts.”

  Darby stuck out a repulsed tongue while she brushed a tissue over her book. When she snuggled against me, she began reading. At the mention of the Enchanted Forest, my thoughts turned to Tram. Where was he? Had he forgotten about me? Why didn’t Trammelers carry cell phones?

  Streaks of purple bruised the sky outside Darby’s window as she continued the story. Darkness followed.

  Darby placed her purple mermaid bookmark inside her fat Merlin book and snapped it shut. “I want to be like you when I get older.”

  I screwed my face up in mock disgust. “Why?”

  “You’re not afraid of anything.” She handed me her glasses and held the book to her chest.

  “Yes, I am.” Almost everything scared me these days. I unfolded myself from her and lay her glasses on the nightstand. After I kissed her on the forehead, I made a Darby burrito with her covers.

  In the living room, I took Dad’s warm spot on the couch when I sent him to tuck her in, too. Empty images flashed on the TV, lulling me to sleep.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  I stirred awake.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  It came from right over my head. I didn’t want to open my eyes, but they opened anyway. All I saw was a deodorant commercial. The tapping grew louder. My heart hammering into my throat, I forced myself to look up and behind me.

  Sarah stared through the blinds at me outside the window. The images of the TV reflected off her pale face.

  I jumped off the couch and faced her, my breath just as ragged as my heartbeat.

  Sarah curled a bony finger to follow her. Her blackened mouth sagged open farther. She gestured again.

  “Go away,” I said through clenched teeth.

  She held up three fingers and pointed at my house. Not at me, but inside my house.

  I lunged for the door and ripped it open. Her smell punched into my stomach and made me gag. Cold air brushed my arms as I fought the urge to puke. When the feeling started to pass, Sarah’s icy hand grasped my wrist and dragged me off the porch into the yard.

  “What are you doing?” I pulled away from her, but she only tightened her grip.

  Whispers hissed from her gaping mouth, growing more frantic with each step, but I couldn’t make out a single word. She crept to another window—Darby’s window. Through the blinds, her sleeping face gleamed with the moonlight, her Merlin book still clutched to her chest.

  What were we doing out here? What did Sarah want to show me? My blood drummed through me faster and faster with each passing second while Sarah’s touch rattled my teeth.

  The floor of Darby’s room shifted. Dark shapeless things crawled across the floor. Spiders. Thousands of them.

  My gasp cut through the silent night. Sarah squeezed my wrist, her cold touch hushing me.

  The thrashing mass of spiders grew taller as they climbed on top of each other, a black tower of movement. Then the tower divided itself right down the middle. Frenzied pulsing charged through the two piles of spiders that were both taller than me. I shook my head, trying to comprehend what I was seeing.

  Pieces of white gleamed through the spiders. Some faded into the white color, disappearing altogether. Pale streaks ran up and down the sides of the piles as more and more spiders vanished.

  I opened my mouth to breathe, to scream, but nothing came out. I knew what the white was. Skin. The pale streaks were arms and legs.

  Fingers emerged and flexed as the spiders melted into them. But it was the flashes of red that completely stilled my heart. Hair.

  The last few spiders dissolved into skin. There they were. One and Two. Dirty scraps of clothing hung from their bony bodies. Long patches of stringy red hair slid across both their backs as their heads turned toward Darby.

  “Darby,” I shouted, but it was too breathy to penetr
ate the window. Tremors shook my body. “Let me go.” I yanked my wrist, but Sarah’s cold fingers were steel.

  Something in the corner of the room exploded with blue light. A swirl of white erupted into the air and spun around Darby’s bed like a tornado. Notebook paper. Those were Darby’s drawings of Mom she’d thrown away. Faster and faster they went until Darby’s hair blew across her sleeping face. The taller Sorceressi looked at the shorter, and they both nodded. A blink later, they were gone.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  Darby’s drawings stopped circling, then drifted to the bed like a dead bird’s feathers. They covered her. Buried her. She still didn’t move.

  Sarah released my wrist and touched her thumb and pinky together. Three fingers pressed against the glass over Darby’s sleeping body.

  My heart splintered and cracked. The pain of it made me cry out. “No!” I snatched Sarah’s hand from the glass and gripped her bony fingers in mine to make her look at me. “They can’t have her.”

  Urgent whispers floated out of her black open mouth that never moved.

  My eyes blurred when I looked back at Darby. “She’s only nine.”

  Sarah pulled her fingers from my death grip.

  “And she doesn’t have a gift for the dead,” I pleaded. “Her drawings weren’t…they were in the trash. They were just drawings. It can’t be her.” I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window. “Sarah. Why didn’t you let me go? I could’ve stopped them. I could’ve… What can I do?”

  Sarah shook her head then walked away into the night.

  No. No, I couldn’t do that. There was no way I could walk away. I marched inside the house to my room and tore off a sheet of notebook paper. With no hesitation, I wrote:

  One and Two,

  Don’t you dare choose my sister. Choose me instead.

  - Leigh

  My mind whirled while I read the letter again and again. They couldn’t choose Darby. If she died and became one of them, their Three, I wouldn’t be able to function. Not after Mom’s death. Not ever. This was the only way to save her.

  Tears burned my eyes and splashed onto the paper. I could tape the note to the front door and hope they came back. A shudder knocked my bones together at the thought. But they couldn’t have Darby. I found some tape in a desk drawer and hung my note on the inside of the screen door so it wouldn’t blow away.

  I leaned against the hallway wall to keep myself upright. My heart thumped at the magnitude of my decision. Blood rushed to my head, mixing its heat with my jumbled thoughts.

  But I forced my feet forward, away from the door and the note. I collected Darby’s drawings from on top of her, watching the steady swell of her chest under the blankets, careful not to look at the pictures. Once they were in the trash again where they belonged, I curled myself around her sleeping body in a protective cocoon, waiting and listening to the night.

  I jerked awake with a gasp. Sunlight striped the mermaid bedspread through the window blinds. I sat up, the haze of sleep lingering in my brain, and looked around. Darby wasn’t there. After untangling myself from the covers, I stood and opened the door.

  “Darby?” I called.

  “What?” Her voice echoed from across the hall inside the bathroom.

  I pressed the side of my face against the wood of the door, relief flooding to my toes. “Just making sure.”

  “Huh?”

  My gaze slid down the hallway to the living room. “Just making sure.” I could hardly hear my own words as my feet followed my stare. Rounding the corner, I stood face to face with the front door. The white-painted wood seemed to dare me to open it, narrowing its engraved rectangle eyes at me. I twisted the doorknob.

  The note was gone.

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. That was the way it had to be. Even so, spikes of trembling fear stabbed through me. I grabbed hold of the screen door handle for support.

  To the left of the sidewalk that led to the front door, patches of Sarah’s black gloom burned a path as wide as a semi-truck through the grass to Darby’s window. Black tendrils licked up the tree trunk.

  I placed my palm against the cool glass as if to cover up the gloom. “Shit.”

  “What did you say?” Darby asked.

  I yelped and whirled around, clutching my chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  Darby eyed me, her bed-head hair falling over her shoulders in a tangled mess. “Are you sick again? You’re all pale.”

  “No,” I said, and willed myself to breathe. Turning around again, I shut the door and locked it. “Everything’s fine. Go take a bath, and I’ll comb your hair.”

  “Will you braid it like Mom used to?”

  I didn’t miss the note of hope in her voice, or the ‘used to’, which fell on my heart like a fat raindrop. “I’ll try.”

  Mom was master of all things girly. I hadn’t even reached apprentice level yet.

  Darby hurried down the hallway. With another quick glance at the front door, I followed behind.

  As soon as I stepped onto the bus, a group of junior high kids at the back moaned, “Braaaains.”

  “You dead, too, Baxton?” some other kid near the middle yelled. “Or did you spill black nail polish on your yard?”

  I stared them all down until they gulped or looked away while I strode down the aisle toward Jo. Dad’s yelling about the yard still buzzed in my ears. Worse though was that Darby had seen it, too. Her horrified face festered in my brain like an open wound.

  “That’s just the blood of last night’s sacrifice,” I told them.

  That ended the discussion. No one said anything or looked at me again after that.

  Jo beamed when I sat next to her. “Who should we sacrifice tonight?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I mumbled.

  “What happened?” Jo asked in a low voice.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Later meaning never. Jo would fall apart if she knew what had happened. And what would happen. Jo knew me well enough not to press the issue, even though her forehead stayed puckered while she launched into a detailed account of her and Miguel’s first kiss.

  My mind wandered. What would happen next? How would One and Two make me their Three? And when? I needed time to say goodbye to everyone, to tell them how much I loved them.

  Another thought pierced my heart and flipped it upside-down. I would never see Darby and Dad or Jo again. Not really. Even if I came back from the dead, I knew I wouldn’t be the same. Sarah proved that. I would never kiss Tram again. A knot twisted in my throat.

  “Leigh, are you listening to me?”

  I blinked. “Yeah.”

  Jo narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “Then what did I just say?”

  “Um.” I swallowed, but the knot in my throat didn’t move. “You said that kissing Miguel was totally hot. With glitter and sparkles.”

  “Yeah,” Jo said, crossing her arms. “About ten minutes ago. Then I started to tell you about Callum.”

  With my lips pursed, I stared at the back of the seat in front of me. “What about him?”

  “He got a baseball scholarship letter from some university. Mom and dad are ecstatic. But you know what?”

  The bus rolled to a stop in front of the school.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I realized Jo still bounced in her seat even though the bus had stopped. “What?”

  “He hasn’t accepted it yet. Because of you.”

  My eyes widened as I turned to look at her. “What?”

  Students around us stood and jostled each other toward the exit.

  “He didn’t even have to say anything. I just knew that was the reason,” she said and tapped the side of her head. “I’m becoming more in tune with his thoughts and feelings ever since he declared his love for you.”

  My face burned, and I shook my head. “He never—”

  “Please.” A small smile dashed across her mouth. “The only reaso
n he breathes is because you do.”

  She stood to join the exodus of students. The pain in my heart was probably written all over my face, and I was glad she didn’t look back at me. I couldn’t help but think what might happen to Callum if I did stop breathing.

  Megan’s seek-and-destroy eye missiles had shrunk into AK-47 bullets. Lily still stood between us in the lunch line, our own waif WWIII preventer, and fiddled with her pink lily. I was too lost in thought to pay much attention to either of them.

  Death at fifteen would suck. There was tons of stuff I wanted to do, like go to college and slam dance at a punk concert, but I’d chosen my path. One and Two probably wouldn’t let me change my mind. If I could talk to Tram, maybe he could help me find a way out without risking Darby’s life, too. But where the hell was he?

  The lunch lady handed me a tray with a styrofoam bowl of hamburger soup and some wilted lettuce on the side. Just as I turned the corner toward the library, Callum and Mr. Mallory rounded another corner and headed straight for me through the empty hallway. Mr. Mallory had kicked the swarm of reporters outside since end-of-the-year finals were coming.

  My heart twirled, even with my grim decision hanging over my head like a gleaming meat cleaver. How could he still have this effect on me? He’d weakened me by pretending he cared. A swell of anger warred with my dancing insides, leaving me confused and breathless as he came closer.

  He must’ve seen me because he straightened his shoulders. A slow smile spread across his mouth, and his eyes sparkled with warmth.

  A blush heated my skin while he and Mr. Mallory swept past. I didn’t know why, but I looked back at him. He waved, his grin bigger than ever.

  I hurried into the library, unable to face his warmth any longer. A sudden realization knocked the breath from my lungs. My death might kill him.

  Thoughts wrapped around my brain so tightly, I barely heard the buzz of conversation mixed with the loud hum of ancient computers. Ms. Hansen whispered and gestured wildly, the ends of her hair nowhere near her mouth. Mrs. Rios stood in front of her, palms out as if to push Ms. Hansen’s excitement away.

  “I’ve never trusted her. If we can just find proof that she’s…or find where they all gather, maybe this can be stopped,” Ms. Hansen said.