The Grave Winner

by Lindsey Loucks

  Dad was so distraught over the yard, he’d insisted we leave. I insisted we stuff my bike into the back of his car and get new inner tubes so I could come home whenever I wanted. Darby insisted she be told why our lawn looked like nightmares, but Dad and I kept our mouths shut. We didn’t want to upset her.

  I could tell Dad didn’t know how to explain that ours and the Henderson’s yards were replicas of each other, and none of us were back from the dead. Yet. I couldn’t find the words to fill in his blanks.

  Krapper still slept while I weaved my bike down its dark and silent streets. I kept to the middle of the road, never getting too close to grass or trees so my death touch wouldn’t kill anything. Despite the lack of spider poison inside me, I still killed everything just be being Three.

  What about Ica? Was she dripping inky shadows out of her feet, too?

  I hoped my yard had improved with my absence from Worst Yard Ever to Not As Bad As It Was. Rounding the corner onto my street, I slowed, not sure if I was ready to find out. Someone crouched on the front lawn, a darker shadow against the night sky.

  I braked my bike and climbed off, still several yards away. The figure stood and faced me. Skin and bones framed the person. No glowing blue eyes. It had to be Sarah.

  She sure came over a lot lately, much more now than when she was alive, which was never. I rolled my bike closer, watching her and taking in the state of my yard at the same time.

  Nothing had changed. Death still ruled over my yard, and blue tarps still hid Mom’s lilacs.

  Sarah’s feet crunched the black grass when she shifted. Her rotten dead smell tossed my stomach. I tried not to breathe her in.

  “What now, Sarah?”

  Unintelligible whispers were my only answer. She stared at me, her eyes sad, and the abyss inside her mouth hung open like always. The two of us were about to have a lot in common. More than we ever did.

  “Do you know how to stop One and Two?”

  She turned her gaze to my lawn and tapped her chest with her fingers in a steady rhythm. Almost like a heartbeat. Then, with one more glance at me, she swept past and took to the middle of the road like I had.

  If I became Three, we would probably be able to speak the same language. But would I want to listen then? Would I be so completely evil that I wouldn’t care about anything? Or anyone?

  But Sarah was dead, and I didn’t think she was evil. Scary as hell, yes, but not evil. I turned while she rounded the corner onto another street, her shoulders slumped. She’d never done anything evil to me. Even at school. Once she even apologized for Megan’s bitchiness in the lunch line.

  “Sorry about her,” she’d said with a smile. “Aunt Flow came to visit early.”

  I just rolled my eyes at her, lumping her in with Midol Megan’s group.

  Tram had said Sarah was a victim of One and Two’s grave winner game. Now I knew he couldn’t be more right.

  But why was she always showing up at my house? I stepped closer to where she’d crouched. Two somethings lay curled on the lawn, and as I bent to pick them up, a strip of orange tinted the morning sky. I held the things up to the meager light and ran my fingers over their bumps and curves. Brown seedpods like the ones on top of the piano. Had Sarah left these here? I stuffed the pods into the back of my waistband. Maybe Tram would know why she might’ve left them, but I didn’t want to bother him unless it was an emergency.

  A shuffling behind me made me spin around. Jo, pasty-faced with shadows under her eyes, plodded up the sidewalk. She’d been sick since yesterday, but between her coughing fits, I’d told her about the yard on the phone, about us staying at a motel, about everything. No detail was left unspoken. She deserved to know.

  When I hugged her to me, trembles took over her body.

  “Your hair,” she squeaked.

  “I know.” I broke away from her and tucked a strand behind my ear. It had turned red overnight. Sorceress red. At least it hadn’t fallen out like chunks of theirs had. But I wanted blonde back. Mom’s color. “It’s just hair,” I reminded her. My voice cracked. I was trying to convince myself more than anything, but it wasn’t working.

  She shook her head and scanned the lawn. “Krapper locals think it’s some vegetation virus you’ve got here. You and the Hendersons. The farmers are freaking. Everyone’s talking about it.” She barely got the words out before a deep cough doubled her over.

  “You okay?” I asked, patting her back.

  She straightened her body and breathed. “I can’t stop coughing, so I can’t sleep.” Tears pooled in her eyes and slipped down her face. “Not like I could anyway.”

  “Hey. Stop.” I put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. “I’m still here.”

  Her sobs turned into another round of coughing. When she recovered, she wiped at her face. “You can’t leave me, Leigh. Everyone here thinks I’m a hippie weirdo except you.” She looked at me, her wet brown eyes sick with worry.

  I hugged her tight and didn’t let go when more coughs shook her. “I won’t ever leave you, my hippie weirdo,” I said when she finished. “Are you going to school today?”

  “Are you?” Jo asked into my hair.

  “I can’t just sit around and wait for tomorrow,” I said as I pulled away from her. “Besides, I don’t want my dad to see my hair, so I might as well.”

  Jo coughed while a burst of wind tussled her own brassy locks. “What about your mom?”

  All sorts of feelings boomeranged inside me at the mention of Mom. Hope that I would see her again when I died. Guilt that I felt hope. Confusion that I felt guilt. But mostly hope, though I would never say that out loud.

  “I’ll visit her after school and…explain what’s happened.” And tell her I might be seeing her sooner than expected, if only for a little bit, unless I figured out a way to survive.

  “You’ll get some strange looks because of your yard.”

  I shrugged. “So what’s new?”

  Jo smothered her next cough with a fist. “Cal will be happy you’re there. And I didn’t tell him anything about anything.”

  A pebble on the sidewalk begged to be kicked. I did, and it landed in my yard with a scrunch. “Good.”

  Megan and Lily, dressed in their barely-there cheer outfits on a non-game day, sucked on popsicles in the lunch line. The boys at the nearby table grinned at them between mouthfuls of cardboard pizza, clearly happy with the free pseudo-porn in front of them.

  “I love that you organized for the Red Cross to give us these for donating blood, but eww.” Lily licked a blue drip off her hand. “I’m all sticky.”

  I’d stayed far away from the blood donation drive in the gym. No need to have the Sorceressi show up and kill everyone at school if I wasted any more precious blood.

  Shooting a glare at me, Megan bit off the end of her popsicle. “So you’re copying Sarah’s yard because you think it’s cool to come back from the dead? It makes sense since you’re like this goth punk…thing.”

  I rolled my eyes. Everyone had been asking me stupid questions about my lawn all day. If they knew the reason it was like that, they would probably run screaming from Kansas. Which wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Did you catch Lazy Russ Syndrome?” Lily’s eyes widened. “Is it contagious?”

  Megan plugged her nose. “She already stinks.”

  Lily leaned in to sniff me, but I threw the devil horn sign up in her face to stop her. She jumped back from my hand like I’d bitten her, the petals of her lily flower springing up and down next to her ear. I stared, suddenly captivated by it. Why wasn’t it turning black? It must be just as fake as she was.

  “Next thing you know, you’ll be walking around with your mouth hanging open.” Megan’s jaw dropped and she zombie-walked toward Lily, who squealed.

  Something in my gut started to simmer. “I thought you guys and Sarah were friends.”

  “Were.” Megan licked her popsicle and smacked her lips. “We can’t hang out with someone that creepy.”

&
nbsp; “Or dead,” Lily said. “We prefer friends with heartbeats.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded as though I’d just figured the two of them out. “Well, no wonder.”

  “No wonder what?” Lily asked between licks of blue snaking down her arm.

  “No wonder she’s dead.” I left them to ponder that thought while I cut them in line.

  How could they be like that? I had no idea if they were the reason Sarah took her own life, but I wouldn’t blame her. With friends like them, I would consider cannibalism. I wanted to stab their eyes out with their popsicle sticks to jab some sense into them, but my looming death demanded my attention more than their ridiculous, boob-head lives.

  With my lunch tray stocked with cardboard pizza and wilted celery sticks, I rounded the corner toward the library. Every time I’d passed the library that day, it’d been dark inside. I guessed Ms. Hansen was a no-show again. Just like Mrs. Rios. I hoped they would answer their phones soon so I would know if they were okay.

  Even though Ms. Hansen was gone, I couldn’t eat in the lunchroom with Megan and Lily and their adoring fans. On my way down the hallway, Callum and Mr. Mallory appeared at the other end. Did he not know how to walk himself to lunch?

  I never used to see him at school, and now he was everywhere. The last thing I needed was his daily injections of confusion, so I kept my eyes locked straight ahead as he neared, though my stupid peripheral vision kicked in. His face was etched with worry. I wondered if my expression matched his. He pointed to his hair and scrunched up his face. I knew he was questioning my color choice so I just shook my head.

  Deep coughs echoed behind me. I turned to see Jo sagging against the bathroom door. She was just as white as the painted cinderblocks behind her, which only accented the dark circles under her eyes.

  “Go home, Weed. I—I mean Jo,” Callum said with a glance at Mr. Mallory. “Here. Take my car. I’ll catch a ride after practice.” He dug in his jeans and tossed his keys to Jo.

  They landed at her feet. “I can’t.”

  “If you’re sick, you should go home. We have finals coming up, and we can’t have everyone getting ill,” Mr. Mallory said.

  “I’m fine,” Jo croaked, then picked up the keys and tossed them back.

  Mr. Mallory nodded. “If you’re sure then.”

  Callum shrugged. With one more backward glance at me, he continued on to the cafeteria with Mr. Mallory.

  “Are you eating?” I asked and tried the door to the library. It was unlocked.

  Jo shook her head while more coughs rattled her body. She followed me inside. We left the lights off in case we weren’t supposed to be in here without Ms. Hansen, and enough sun poured in from the windows anyway. It was too quiet without the hum of computers and Ms. Hansen’s shuffling, and the usual book smell seemed kind of meaningless since no one would get to sniff them but us.

  “Go home,” I said, setting my tray down on our usual table with a loud clatter. “You won’t miss much.”

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away from you.”

  Horses. I prodded the cardboard pizza, my mind whirling around a memory, and stared at the grease stuck to my finger. Unicorns.

  “Maybe you can help me,” I said.

  Jo coughed but nodded.

  “Go in Ms. Hansen’s back office and see if you can find anything that says I Dream In Unicorn.”

  “Okay.”

  Jo dragged herself to the office behind the checkout desk while I powered up a computer and waited forever for it to come to life. After I pulled up a search engine, I typed in every combination I could think of. Gretchen, One, Two, Three, Trammeler.

  Nothing. The magical world didn’t exist in cyberspace.

  Jo slipped into the chair next to me with a mountain of fat file folders. “Found them.”

  The orange copy paper on top of the pile was the one I’d seen Mrs. Rios with after she’d dropped them in the hallway.

  “Anonymous is Missing,” I read from the top.

  Jo cleared her throat. “Missing from where?”

  “No idea,” I said and started reading again. “No one has heard from Anonymous in two weeks, leaving everyone wondering if they finally spotted what he/she was looking for. ‘Information was not left at the secret drop-off point at the agreed-upon time,’ Our Trammeler says. According to Our Trammeler, Anonymous’s assignment was to locate Gretchen’s cult headquarters, then share its location with him so he could determine who all the members are. Since Our Trammeler is the only active Trammeler, and everyone knows who he is, he chose an anonymous Trammeler for the job, employed by him, not the Counselor, in case the Counselor’s warning bells gave away Anonymous’s identity.”

  Jo went into a coughing fit; I paused to rub her back and let her finish.

  “‘It’s possible Anonymous found what he, or she since I don’t even know their identity, was looking for, stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time, and vanished because of it,’ Our Trammeler says. When asked if he would choose another anonymous Trammeler, he said he would if he could find a willing Trammeler to look for Gretchen’s cult compound. As of this writing, there aren’t any volunteers.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Rios say that news lady was part of a cult?” Jo asked.

  “Ica Reynolds from Wichita’s channel thirteen.” I nodded and rolled the corner of the newsletter between my fingers.

  “She has to be evil,” Jo said between coughs. “Right?”

  “Very.” Ica seemed better suited than me for Sorceressi status. Why did One and Two choose me then? I flipped through more newsletters. “The Trinity Bleeds: A Theory,” I read from another. “The Trinity trees have always been sacred, yet it’s unclear as to exactly why. When oak, ash, and thorn grow together, the power is palpable when you stand in the center.

  “The oak represents the Sorceress, both strong and proud. The ash belongs to the Trammeler, because the seedpods are also known as keys and can be used on the locks of the prisoners’ cells.

  “‘I use them as keys to the prisoners’ cells below my roots where I keep the prisoners until the Counselor is ready to convict them, but I’m not sure the keys work in the Core,’ Our Trammeler says. “‘They might, but I can’t enter the Core to find out because I’m not dead.’”

  Ash tree keys. I dropped the newsletter and typed that into the computer. An image popped up of the same thing Sarah dropped off at my house. Curved and brown like a dead banana. If they really were Trammeler keys, what was Sarah trying to tell me?

  I continued reading. “The hawthorn is known as the dead’s tree. So, to make the Trinity bleed, or in other words, break the hinge to the Core, someone has to die in the Trinity grave. Someone has to die (hawthorn). A Sorceress (oak) will resurrect you. But where does the ash tree come in? It’s sure to have something to do with the ash tree keys and Trammelers.”

  Sighing, I flipped through more newsletters, but nothing else important jumped from the pages. None of this was helping. My death loomed closer, and I was nowhere near finding a way out. I shuffled and scanned through another file folder.

  Jo rested her head on my shoulder. “I love you, Leigh.”

  Despair welled in my throat because that sure sounded like a goodbye. “I love you, too.” Resting my cheek on her head, I put my arm around her. “Do you ever have a question that you already know the answer to, but you have to ask it anyway just to be sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  I took a breath. “If I die tomorrow and come back, will you still be my friend?”

  “Yes.” She sniffed. “Duh.”

  “Good.” I felt a smile drift across my face, but it would need an anchor to stay there.

  Jo sniffed again. Silent tears streamed down her face and dripped onto my shoulder. “There has to be something we can do. Can’t you just run away?”

  I brushed at my long, white sleeves to look at the red hole that used to be a spider bite and the creamy flesh around it that used to be tattooed. “One and
Two would find me.”

  “We have to find a way—” She interrupted herself with a fit of coughing. When she finished, she scooted away from me and leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, cheeks still wet. “I don’t want you to catch this.”

  I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. My death date was tomorrow, and she didn’t want me to be sick for it. That might’ve been funny if none of this was really happening.

  Jo seemed to drift off to sleep while I looked through more newsletters, but a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye stopped me dead. A small brown spider scurried out of Jo’s open mouth and crawled across her face.

  “No!” The contents of the folder slid to the floor in a cascade of whispers as I leaped on top of her and flicked the spider away. “Jo!” I shook her, but she just groaned.

  Bright hallway tiles streaked by me. I realized I was running from the library, but toward what I didn’t know. Away from Jo. Away from the spider. A scream clawed at my throat. Flashes of people’s faces registered for a second while I tore through the cafeteria.

  Shocked. Confused. Callum. Right in front of me. I headed right through him, but he grabbed my shoulders and spun me around.

  “Leigh. What happened?”

  “They have Jo,” I whispered. If I said it too loud, then it had to be true. But it couldn’t be.

  “What?”

  I plowed around him and out the front door.

  Callum stepped on my heels and followed. “Who has Jo, Leigh? What’s wrong? Where is she?”

  The scream building in my throat threatened to escape. “I left her,” I choked.

  My eyes adjusted to the too bright sun, and I sprinted toward the nearest tree. The grass around my feet blackened with each step. The tree darkened before I even touched it. All of its leaves shriveled into scorched-looking balls before they fell to the ground.

  “Oh, fuck.” Callum’s voice came from behind me. “You’re making this happen?”

  I rubbed my hands all over the dead bark, praying I didn’t have any more spider venom running through me. “Please, Tram.”