Kill Me Once, Kill Me Twice

by Clara Kensie

  tired

  so

  tired, and it was getting

  dark

  so

  dark.

  There was a pulling, a yanking ascent, and then a pressure on my chest, squeezing in mighty thrusts, forcing a huge amount of water from my lungs. That’s when I realized sunlight filtered through my closed eyelids, and I was surrounded by air, not water. Lying on the hard ground. I gasped deep, deep raspy breaths. It took a few seconds for the shakes to begin.

  “Jesus, Lily. I thought you were dead.”

  I blinked the water from my eyes. When the spots cleared from my vision, I saw my hero was none other than Will Duston. Soaked, shivering, and pissed off. The heat from the anger in his eyes could have warmed me up faster than the thickest blanket. “I knew it,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “I knew you’d jump. Damn it, Lily, you are so…” With a frustrated roar, he punched the ground, the tattoo of two crossed hatchets on his wrist landing just inches from my head.

  Javier ran over, perfectly dry. “Holy crap, Lily, you okay? I can’t believe you did that!”

  I spit more foul creek water from my mouth. “C-C-Call the p-p-police.”

  “No way,” Will said. “Do you want everyone to know how stupid you were?”

  “Th-Th-There’s a body down there,” I said through chattering teeth. “In the creek. I think… I think it’s Neal Mallick.”

  Chapter Five

  Ever ~ Present Day

  Joey tugs my hand at the crosswalk outside the high school as I breathe away the deathpain in my head, trying to focus on the street in front of us. But the image of the crossed-hatchet tattoo is burned into my memory as permanently as it’s inked on Principal Duston’s wrist.

  “Come on, Ever!” Joey says, excited to get to the drug store and pick out the new Matchbox car I promised him.

  “Look both ways before you cross the street,” I say automatically. As anxious as I am to get away from Principal Duston, I wait until there are no approaching vehicles before stepping off the curb. Four thousand pedestrians are killed while crossing the street each year in this country alone. And globally, 1.3 million people are killed in car accidents annually. Since cars were invented, they’ve killed me twice. Four deaths ago, I was an old man in Japan chasing a pickpocket across the street when I was hit by one of those fancy new passenger cars. Two deaths ago, I was a woman fleeing her wedding ceremony, driving from Oregon to New York City. My car skidded on the icy winter highway into a UPS truck, right outside of Ryland, Indiana, a few moments before Lily Summerhays was born.

  I stifle a cringe at the memory of my yellow Puma, packed with Hefty bag luggage and a discarded poufy wedding dress, careening into the brown delivery truck. I close my eyes to breathe through the pain.

  One…

  Two…

  Three.

  I am not scared of death. I know that when I die, I’ll be immediately reborn into the nearest, newest body. What I am scared of is leaving Joey all alone. I need to do everything it takes to stay alive for him. I need to stay alive, as Ever Abrams, and the only way to do that is to be vigilant. Organized. Meticulous. Follow the rules. Wear sunscreen. Look both ways before crossing the street.

  At Kammer’s Pharmacy and Gifts, Joey goes straight to the toy aisle and chooses a shiny Matchbox police car. I check for loose parts and choking hazards. Five thousand people choke to death every year. Food is the worst culprit, but toys are ranked second. But this police car is safe, so I approve. He skips happily beside me as we get the rest of the items on my mental list:

  1. A new blue notebook for AP Lit and a new red notebook for Trig because the old ones are filled already.

  2. A box of SpongeBob Band-Aids for Joey and a box of plain ones for Dad and me, in case we need them.

  3. A historical romance novel from the magazine stand. Mom loved books, historical romances especially. I’m too busy studying to read as voraciously as she did, but I do read a lot in the summertime. I’ve had my eye on this book because the woman on the cover kind of looks like Mom—small and sweet; long, golden hair; and a twinkle in her eye. She’s wearing a yellow ball gown, and yellow was Mom’s favorite color.

  Mom loved books so much that she and Dad owned a little bookstore on Main Street across from the movie theater. The Secret Garden, it was called, named after the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I loved it there. It looked like a garden inside, with flowers and trees painted on the walls. If you looked closely at the bark on the trees, you could find etchings of classic literary characters. But when Mom got sick and we started getting all those medical bills, Dad couldn’t afford to keep the business running. Now The Secret Garden Bookstore is the Twinkle Toes Nail Salon. The new owners painted over my mother’s beautiful garden in a single afternoon, making the place a garish bright pink.

  I know there’s something else I need at Kammer’s, number four on my mental list. But I can’t focus. I can’t get the image of Principal Duston’s hatchet tattoo out of my head. Could he really have killed Lily Summerhays? I don’t know much about him, other than he grew up here in Ryland and taught agriculture classes before becoming dean, then principal. He yells a lot. He seemed to dislike the Summerhayses today at the interview. Probably because he doesn’t want them to find out that he killed their daughter.

  Batteries. That’s it. The last item on my mental list: Nine-volt batteries for our smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. Almost three thousand people die in fires every year. I myself died in a fire in the 1700s when I was a man living in France. The barn was on fire, and I’d run in there to rescue the horses.

  My lungs tighten like they’re filling with smoke, my skin burns hot, and I slowly sip in air until the death-memory fades.

  That pain is why, in my current life as Ever Abrams, I replace the batteries in our smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors every three months.

  Joey and I go to the front of the store to buy our items. The gum-smacking cashier starts ringing them up. Someone grabs me around my waist and I freeze—Principal Duston, oh God, he knows I saw his tattoo, he knows I know he killed Lily—until cool lips nuzzle my neck.

  “Keith!” I say, turning around in his arms. “You scared me.”

  Still in his maroon practice uniform, dusty from the baseball field, my boyfriend chuckles. This close to him, I can see the scar under his right eye from when he fell off his bicycle in third grade. “You didn’t come get me after your interview,” he says. “I was waiting for you. Glad I saw you come in here.”

  “Sorry, I forgot. I had to get away from the school.”

  “The interview went that bad, huh?” He brings me in tighter. “But you don’t need college anyway. Now you can come work with me,” he says with a smile.

  Keith is going to work at his family’s diner after we graduate high school in May. The Batter’s Box has been a Ryland institution since his grandfather opened it sixty years ago, and Keith is going to own it one day. His parents offered me a job there too, as hostess, but I told them I’ll hold off until after I get my degree so I can be the accountant.

  “$18.57,” the cashier says.

  Keith hands her a twenty before I can reach into my purse. “You don’t have to pay for my stuff,” I say. “My dad left me cash.”

  “I like to pay for you.” He grabs his change, the bag, and me, and we leave the store.

  Outside, I give Joey his Matchbox car. He rips open the package immediately, and as I’ve taught him, tosses the package in a recycle bin that’s been hand-painted with flowers and grass. Then we head for home. That’s another nice thing about Ryland: it’s small enough that I can walk everywhere. My house on Pierce Avenue is only a few blocks away from Main Street, and Joey’s daycare is right next door at his best friend Hayden’s house. The high school is on Jackson Boulevard, and the park and library are on Madison Avenue. My best friend Courtney lives a block away on Adams Road, and my boyfriend Keith lives directly across the street from me. Everything I need
is within a six block radius. I have no reason, or desire, to ever move away.

  Keith takes my hand as we head down Main Street. His hand is cool to the touch, and he’s been biting his nails again. As we approach The Batter’s Box, he says, “Let’s go tell my parents that you can start right after graduation.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “The interview wasn’t great, but I still got the scholarship.”

  “You did? For real?” He stops in his tracks and lifts his hat, runs his hand through his floppy brown hair, then pulls the hat back on his head. It’s a newer, brighter maroon than the old, faded one that Joey’s wearing. “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know, not officially, not yet. But guess who had the other interview?”

  “The 4-H kid. Michael Granz. Did he drop out or something?”

  “No. The other finalist is Ash Morrison.”

  “What the hell? Ash Morrison?” Keith asks. “That asshole used to beat me up all the time.”

  “I know. Miss Buckley snuck him through. She said the committee needs to be impartial. The other judges were furious.”

  He brings his fourth finger between his front teeth and bites the nail. “But wait. Ash Morrison’s father is the one who killed Lily Summerhays.”

  “Right,” I say. “Which means they have to give the scholarship to me.”

  An image of the crossed hatchets tattooed on Principal Duston’s wrist slices through my vision, and my skull feels like it’s splitting open.

  “Unless,” I say, rubbing my head and breathing through the pain, “unless it turns out that Vinnie Morrison didn’t kill Lily Summerhays after all.”

  Chapter Six

  Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago

  Trying not to let my parents see me shiver, I kept my head down in the backseat of my dad’s car as we drove home. Every time I glanced up, they were glaring at me through the rearview mirror. Their initial hugs and cries of relief that my plunge into the creek hadn’t killed me had quickly turned into tight-lipped scoldings. Now the air inside the car was cold and fragile, like a thin sheet of ice that would

  shatter

  with one breath.

  “Neal was my friend,” I mumbled, “and he’s dead. Why are you so mad at me?”

  “It’s tragic,” Dad said, “and we’re very sorry you lost your friend. But you almost died right along with him, Lily. I’m so tired of you doing things like this. You know it’s illegal to be on that bridge. And jumping from it? What were you thinking?”

  “She wasn’t thinking.” Mom shook her head, an apology to my dad for giving him such a disobedient, disappointing daughter. “She never does.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The truth was, she was right. My impulsive jump into the creek this morning had also been a huge jump backward from proving to my parents that I was mature and responsible. All because I’d wanted to show that jerk Will Duston that he couldn’t tell me what to do. What should have been my first day at Agri-So had been spent by the creek on the edge of Duston Farm. Will and I were both examined by EMTs and then questioned by Officer Paladino. Our parents came, Mr. and Mrs. Duston running down from their farmhouse and Dad sprinting out of his office, the two buildings just a few hundred feet away. Mom left her Ryland Beautification Committee meeting. The four parents had barely acknowledged each other, not even after Javier told them that Will had saved my life.

  Neal’s family had come too. His father stood stoically, frozen in denial and disbelief. His mother had wailed. I’d struggled to hold back my tears, but when his little sister started crying, I lost it. Neal was sweet. Trustworthy. So, so smart. He had never hurt anybody. Had never said an unkind word. And now he was

  gone.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Officer Paladino had decided that almost drowning wasn’t punishment enough for me, so he issued me a citation. “Do you finally understand why it’s illegal to be on Railroad Bridge?” he’d admonished me as emergency crews pulled Neal’s body from the creek, zipped it up in a body bag, and drove it away. No need for the siren.

  As impulsive as I was, I’d stopped myself from reminding Officer Paladino that he used to jump from the bridge too. When he and his friends were seniors and my friends and I were middle-schoolers, we’d watch them play chicken on the bridge. They’d dodge the oncoming trains at the very last second by jumping into the creek, much to my friends’ horror and my delight. Back then he was Ricky, the boy with the whitest teeth and brown eyes so delicious and deep they were like bottomless mugs of hot chocolate. But his dazzling smile had faded and the warmth in his eyes had cooled when he became a cop.

  I’d discovered the dead body of my friend, and instead of sympathy and hugs, I got a citation from the cops and anger from my parents.

  Dad turned the car onto Adams Road. Our house was visible on the incline at the end of the street, stately and majestic with its red brick and two stories and dormer windows. Compared to most of the shoe-box houses in Ryland, our house was a mansion. But who needs marble countertops and hardwood floors? In West Africa in the 1300s, I had died a peaceful, uneventful death as an old woman, inside my home, which had been built from clay and straw.

  But I couldn’t tell my parents I thought our big house was unnecessary and pretentious, nor could I tell them I still had death-memories. When I was six, my mother brought me to a therapist in Eastfield, so concerned was she by the morbid, macabre “little stories” I’d told of my own deaths. Car accidents, burned in a fire, drowned in the ocean, shot in a war. She thought I was obsessed with death, or suicidal, or a future serial killer. But her biggest concern was that everyone in Ryland would think I was weird or delusional. I’d learned to shut up about my death-memories and people stopped thinking I was a weirdo. But I never gained back my mother’s approval.

  Throughout that entire ordeal, Dad had worked. Long hours, then longer, until he never stopped.

  From the front seat of Dad’s Lexus, Mom continued to scold me for jumping off the bridge, using the same words she always did when I disappointed her:

  irresponsible

  reckless

  impulsive

  uncontrollable

  thoughtless

  stubborn.

  When she paused her word-assault, I said, “It was a stupid thing to do. I’m sorry. But at least I’m alive. Neal Mallick is dead. Imagine what his parents are going through right now.”

  “Of course I feel horrible for the Mallicks,” she said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you wouldn’t have had to walk to Agri-So in the first place if you hadn’t crashed your car last night, you wouldn’t have had to take the shortcut across the bridge if you weren’t running late this morning, and you wouldn’t have almost drowned if you hadn’t jumped. Honestly, Lily. I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I was ruining everything for myself. “I promise I’ll be better.”

  Dad let out a frustrated sigh, and Mom placed a consoling hand on his arm. He shifted away, the movement a bit too brusque to be casual. She turned to stare out the window, blinking rapidly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, for the millionth time. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ever ~ Present Day

  I tuck Joey into bed that night, his little teeth brushed, his little hand clutching his new Matchbox police car. On his dresser, Cheeks the hamster runs on her wheel. I worry the squeaking noises will keep him up, but they don’t. He falls asleep quickly.

  I go back down the hall to join my friends. My dad called earlier that afternoon to say he was stuck in Dubuque and wasn’t going to make it home until tomorrow, so I asked Courtney to come here instead of me going to her house so I could stay home with Joey. Keith came over too, with a pizza from The Batter’s Box. None of us were surprised my father didn’t come home. If he had, he’d be too tired to help me anyway. But my best friend and my boyfriend will help me figure out what to do.

  “So. Guys,” I start, crossing my legs on t
he couch next to Keith. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “You’re always thinking,” Court says with a laugh, tossing her black braids behind her shoulders. “That’s why you get straight A’s.”

  Kind, supportive Courtney, with her warm green eyes and her easy, full smile. We’ve been best friends since second grade, when she pitched a softball to me during PE and it smashed my fingers. Nothing was broken, just swollen, but she felt so bad and cried so hard that when the school nurse gave me a lollipop, I let Court have it instead. She doesn’t have a mom either. Her mother is still alive, but she lives in Cleveland with her second husband. For the past five years, it’s been just Courtney and her dad, the Coach. But as sweet as she is, she’s a killer on the softball field. She’s ranked the number one high school pitcher in the state, and next year she’s going to University of Illinois on a full softball scholarship.

  “I’m serious, Court,” I say. “I need to talk to you guys about something.”

  She immediately puts down her pizza slice. “What’s wrong?”

  I take a breath, suddenly unsure how I’m going to tell them about the hatchet tattoo without telling them about my death-memories. “I’ve been thinking about Lily Summerhays.”

  “The scholarship?” Court asks. “You said you got it. There’s no way the Summerhayses will give it to Ash Morrison.”

  “But what if we don’t know everything about how she was killed? What if they got some of the facts wrong?”

  “They solved it the same night she died,” Keith says, his mouth full of pizza. “We’ve heard about it our entire lives. Vinnie Morrison. Burglary. Smash. Dead.” He mimes smashing his fist into his own head, which makes my head ache.

  One…

  Two…

  Three.

  He must see something in my expression because he says, “You don’t have to be scared, babe. He’s in prison. Death row.” He puts his arm around me protectively. “Are you worried about Ash? I won’t let him near you.”