Kill Me Once, Kill Me Twice

by Clara Kensie

  Only now I realize that the house has been strangely quiet. The hamster wheel hasn’t squeaked all evening. Cheeks lies stiff and still in Joey’s hands.

  “Oh, no. Oh, buddy.” I sink down next to Joey and put my arm around him.

  His little chin quivers. “Is she dead?”

  “Yeah, she is, sweetie. She was very old.” Was she old? How long do hamsters live? I don’t know anything about the lifespan of hamsters. Joey’s only had her for about a year, but I don’t know how old she was when we got her.

  “Is she in heaven with Mommy?”

  “I—” I don’t know what to tell him. I can’t tell him that our mom was reborn into someone else moments after she died. He’s not ready to hear that yet, and besides, I don’t know if that happens to anyone but me. Maybe Mom and Cheeks really are in heaven. “Yeah,” I tell my grieving baby brother. “Cheeks loved you, and she knows that you loved her. You gave her a really good life. She loved being your pet. Now Mommy will take good care of her in heaven.”

  Joey cries while I rub his back, comforting him.

  I wish Ash were here, comforting me.

  We place Cheeks in a shoe box and tuck her in with a soft dishrag. We’ll bury her tomorrow in the back yard.

  I tuck Joey into bed and give him a hundred extra kisses. He falls asleep quickly, his cheeks bright red and warm.

  My heart is hurting, and my head is throbbing. So tired. So tired. I take my laptop into bed with me to resume my search for a lawyer. I just want to sleep, but how can I sleep when Paladino has Ash locked up? He needs me. His father needs me. I have to keep going.

  But my head hurts so much, and I’m just so, so tired…

  A weak whimper, invading my sleep, comes from down the hall. So weak it barely registers. But it’s Joey, so my ears prick up. My head is throbbing, splitting in two, and I’m nauseated. I run my hand over my forehead, willing the death-memory of pain away. But this ache can’t be from a death-memory or a dream. This pain is real because it’s not fading. I wasn’t feeling well after dinner either. Maybe I’m getting sick.

  Is this the flu? Do I have the flu? Eighty thousand people died of the flu last year. But it’s not flu season, and I had my flu shot. I always get my flu shot.

  It’s almost impossible, but I force my eyelids open and check the clock. Just after midnight.

  Joey whimpers again.

  My head is a constant ache, like my brain is pushing against my skull. Joey’s whimper turns into a faint moan.

  I need to check on him. I’ll just go back to sleep for five more minutes, then I’ll get up.

  Another whimper. “Ever…”

  Oh, God. Is he sick too? That thought is enough to force me out of bed despite my aching skull.

  But I’m so weak. Every movement brings waves of nausea. Sitting up makes my head burst. But I need to get to Joey. I pull myself to standing, but my knees buckle and I collapse back to the bed. My head. My head.

  Headache, weakness, nausea. But we can’t have the flu. Food poisoning? No, we’d both be vomiting regularly by now if we had food poisoning.

  An image of Joey’s dead hamster flashes in my mind.

  It’s not food poisoning.

  With a gasp, I fling myself from the bed before the thought fully forms. Carbon monoxide. It’s carbon monoxide!

  Get Joey. Get Joey. Get out. “Joey!” I cry, adrenaline forcing a scream from my lungs. I stumble to my door, grasp the doorframe, pull myself along the wall. “Joey, get up,” I croak, hoping he can hear me. “I’m coming for you.” Dizzy, weak. The floor is warped, topsy-turvy. I dry heave as I crawl. We have to get out, we have to get out, we have to get out!

  The air is clear, clean, no scent, yet it’s poisoning us. The CO detector is plugged into the outlet in the hallway, between Joey’s bedroom and the bathroom. Why isn’t the alarm ringing? I have three carbon monoxide detectors in this little house and none of them are ringing.

  I need to get us out of here. I pull myself down the hall to Joey’s room. He lays in his bed, moaning. He’s so small, so little, so young. If I’m this weak and dizzy and nauseated, he must be overpowered.

  “Come on, Joey. We need to get outside.”

  I unlock his window to let in from fresh air, but I can’t get it open. I can’t lift it. My arms are like jelly. Every movement makes me dizzy.

  If I can’t even open Joey’s window, there’s no way I can lift him. I can’t. I don’t have the strength.

  But I find it. My head is splitting open and the world is spinning and I’m about to puke up everything I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, but I grab my baby brother under his shoulders and pull him out of bed and drag him backward, whimpering and moaning.

  The air feels fine; it’s easy to breathe, it’s clear, but it’s poisoning us. “Hold your breath, Joey. Try not to breathe.” Out his doorway, all the way down the hall. All the way through the family room. All the way to the front door. Every breath we take forces more poison into our bodies.

  With my last ounce of strength, I drag him through the doorway. And drag. Onto the porch.

  Cold fresh spring air hits us, but not enough. I drag again, screaming with effort, down the three concrete steps, his little bare heels scraping on the concrete. Drag again, past the bushes. And finally. Finally. To the grass.

  I collapse. “Breathe, Joey,” I gasp. “Breathe deep.” I suck in great lungfuls of air. It doesn’t smell or taste any different from the air in my house, but it’s cold, and fresh, and clean.

  Already I’m feeling better. My headache and dizziness are starting to fade. Finally, I have the strength to sit up. Joey is still lying on the ground. I pull him into my lap and rub his forehead. “Breathe,” I say over and over again. “Breathe.”

  Cheeks the hamster didn’t die of old age. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Joey and I were breathing in that poison all evening.

  A red car rolls silently down the street, its headlights off.

  A fire truck comes after we ask the neighbors to call 911, along with an ambulance. Inside the ambulance, the EMTs treat Joey and me with oxygen. I feel fine, but I can’t stop shaking as I give them our information. Joey perks up quickly. His excitement about all the cool things in the ambulance extinguish any fear he may have had, and soon he’s chatting away with one of the EMTs through his oxygen mask.

  A little white car with the Citizens Gas Company logo on the door comes next and parks in our driveway. A round-faced man in a mask and a blue work shirt goes inside to find the CO leak, holding a flashlight and a bag. On the sidewalk, a group of neighbors has gathered. Keith is among them, but I can’t see his expression from the ambulance.

  At the EMT’s request, I give him my father’s phone number. He has to call three times before Dad wakes up and answers. He tells Dad what happened, and that Joey and I are fine but he’s taking us to get checked out at the emergency room as a precaution. The gas company is fixing the leak and everything is safe for now, but he should still get the furnace checked out so it doesn’t happen again. I get on the phone with him next.

  He’s frantic, almost crying. “Ever, my God, are you okay? Is Joey okay?”

  “We’re fine now,” I say. He asked about Joey. He does love Joey—Ash was right. Now I’m choking back tears.

  “I’m coming straight home,” he says. “I’m in Seattle, so… day after tomorrow. You’ll be okay until then?”

  “Uh-huh.” I sigh, knowing that he’ll come home for one night and then leave again. I remember my conversation with Ash under his tree and draw strength from it. “But, Dad, we need you home every night,” I say. “Things need to change. Joey needs a father, not just a big sister.”

  “I know,” he whispers, and I can hear the guilt in his voice.

  “You need to talk to Seth Siegel and tell him you won’t accept any more overnight hauls. We need you more than we need the money.”

  He’s silent for a moment, then says, “Okay.”

  “You promise?”<
br />
  “I promise. I’ll be home every night. Put Joey on. I need to hear his voice.”

  I give the phone to my brother. Our father is coming home. Joey and I had to almost die before he realized that he should be home every night. The gas leak was good for something at least. Cheeks the hamster did not die in vain.

  The round-faced man from the gas company is waiting to speak to me next. He climbs into the ambulance and sits next to me on the gurney. He’s wearing a laminated badge pinned to his shirt pocket with his name on it: Jonah Caplan.

  “I counted three CO detectors in your house,” he says, making notes on his clip board. He sounds like his nose is stuffed up. “That’s great, but they won’t work if you don’t put batteries in them.” He sniffs, or tries to.

  I’m about to tell him that there are batteries in my carbon monoxide detectors, that I put fresh batteries in them myself, just a couple weeks ago. The day of the scholarship interview. I bought them at Kammer’s Pharmacy. There’s no reason why the alarms wouldn’t have gone off.

  Unless—

  I snap my mouth shut.

  Jonah Caplan looks at me then, locks his gaze to mine. “Carbon monoxide is a silent killer.”

  He clicks his pen closed. And that’s when I see it: a crossed-hatchet tattoo on his wrist.

  Someone else climbs into the ambulance and clamps his hand on the gas man’s shoulder. Just below it, on the wrist, is another hatchet tattoo.

  “You can leave, Jonah,” Chief Paladino says. He gives me a patronizing smile. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago

  I chanted and cheered with the rest of the Batgirls as the Warriors stepped off the school bus the next day, returning to Ryland High victorious after their latest win. I clapped too, but I didn’t mean any of it. One of these guys killed Neal.

  As Brandon paraded past, Diana whirled around so fast that her hair hit him in the face, showing him exactly how much she didn’t love him anymore.

  Will walked by and our eyes met. “Congratulations, hotshot,” I said, grinning.

  He grinned back. “I only hit a single, and the next time I was at bat, I got an out.” He swiped at the dirt on his uniform pants.

  “Who cares? We won. You helped.”

  I wanted to touch him somehow, so I wiggled the Warriors cap on his head. This whole secret relationship thing was a pain in the butt. The second my dad loaned his dad that money and saved their farm, their feud would be over and I would be free to kiss Will in front of the entire team. The entire school. The entire town.

  Seth Siegel shouldered past Will, knocking into him. “Watch it, asswipe,” he muttered.

  “What’s his problem?” Will asked me. “He’s been like that with me for days now.”

  “Who cares? He’s a jerk. Ignore him.”

  We marched into the building behind a round-faced freshman named Jonah Caplan, who always had a stuffy nose and was dragging a bag of mitts, balls, and bases behind him. The bag was almost as big as he was. He turned left into the equipment room.

  Hmm.

  “Wanna meet me tonight?” I asked Will.

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Under your oak tree. 8:00? But I can’t stay too late. My curfew’s at 10.”

  “You care about curfews now?”

  “More than ever. I’m on my best behavior.”

  “I hope you won’t be on your best behavior under my tree tonight,” Will said, wiggling his brows.

  I gave him a playful shove. “Go on and change, dirty boy. I’ll see you later.” Will went to the locker room, and I went to the equipment room.

  Jonah was kneeling on the floor over the open mesh bag, taking out baseball equipment and wiping them clean with a rag. “Hey, Jonah,” I called cheerfully, breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell of sweat. “Need any help?”

  That night, on the edge of Duston Farm under the big oak tree by Railroad Bridge, Will kept me warm under his arm. He smelled like soap, and his white-blond hair brushed the collar of his Ryland Warriors sweatshirt. “I talked to the equipment manager today,” I told him. “You know, Jonah?”

  “Caplan? That freshman with all those allergies? How that guy can stand to be outside on the baseball field is beyond me. He’s allergic to grass.”

  “I asked him if anyone asked for a new Warriors cap in the past two weeks.”

  “And?”

  “He said no.”

  “Anyone who loses their uniform has to pay to get it replaced,” Will said. “That includes the hat. But Jonah isn’t the only one who issues the equipment. It could have been someone else.”

  “I figured. So I made him show me the records.”

  “And?”

  “Still no. They ordered twenty-one hats at the beginning of the season and gave out sixteen to the team and one to the coach. There were four left in inventory. I counted them myself. No one’s bought a new hat this season. And there are too many hats that’ve been distributed over the years to account for all of them. It’s another dead end.”

  “It was a good idea, anyway.” He pulled me closer to him and kissed my forehead. “Maybe you were a detective in one of your past lives.”

  I chuckled. “Maybe.” Snuggling back into him, I said, “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “The way you said that, about my past lives. Casual, you know? You aren’t making fun of me, and you don’t think I’m lying or crazy.”

  He stroked my arm with his index finger. “I think it’s cool.”

  “I think so too.” I turned my head to kiss him in that soft spot under his jaw where his pulse beat. “Have your parents said anything to you?”

  “About what?” His voice was getting softer.

  “Your farm. My dad. Did they talk?”

  “My dad said something about your dad calling him to set up a meeting. I don’t want to hear about it. Not anymore. You know what I do want to do?”

  “What?”

  “This.” He slid his hand behind my head, then kissed my lips.

  I lay back, pulling him with me, our legs tangling. A part of me wanted to ravish him, to grab him and rip off his sweatshirt and crush my lips to his, but he was so slow, so gentle, his breath so soft on my neck, his hand so warm as it slid under my sweater. I relaxed into it

  and kissed him back,

  slowly,

  gently,

  softly.

  I could no longer deny it.

  I was

  in love

  with Will Duston.

  At 9:40, Will and I reluctantly parted. I had to get home before ten. The old me would have stayed under the oak tree with Will, and told my parents an obvious lie when they would inevitably catch me sneaking back into the house past curfew. But I was mature and responsible now. I didn’t get into trouble anymore.

  Will had offered to drive me home, but with the time it would take us to cross his field to get to his parents’ car and drive around town to my house, it would be faster to walk. The moon was covered by clouds, but I knew my way around Ryland blindfolded. I darted across Railroad Bridge and down the dirt path through the woods, shuffled through the pebbles and weeds behind the used car lot, squeezed through the hole in the chain link fence, and rushed down the alley behind Main Street.

  I paused when I got to the dumpster behind the movie theater. Two guys stood in the shadows, having a low, urgent discussion. Vinnie Morrison and—it was too dark to see the dimple on this chin, but I recognized his height and shape—Seth Siegel. He was trembling and sniveling. What was Vinnie doing to him?

  No. Wait. That was definitely Seth, but the other guy, the one confronting him, wasn’t Vinnie Morrison. He was wearing a police uniform. His badge flashed under the dim light over the movie theater’s exit. Rick Paladino.

  I crouched low behind the dumpster, then leaned closer to listen.

  “Christ on a cracker, are you crying?” Paladino hissed. “If you keep this up
, people will get suspicious.”

  Seth sniveled and wiped his eyes. “S-Sorry.”

  “I’m sick of constantly having to save your ass. Your daddy better make good on his promise to get me a promotion. If anyone finds out about all the shit I’ve covered up for you, I won’t just lose my badge. I could go to prison."

  Seth sniveled again, and then he squealed when Paladino grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against the dumpster. “But remember, if I go down, I’m bringing you down too,” he said. “You’ll go to prison right along with me. So go home and don’t speak a word about any of this to anyone, ever. Keep your mouth shut.”

  I slipped back into the shadows just before Seth rushed past me, terrified.

  I stayed crouched in the dark between the dumpster and the wall,

  heart pounding

  not moving

  not breathing.

  Paladino stepped into the alley, watching Seth run, then

  finally

  finally

  he marched away.

  I waited until his booted footsteps faded completely, then I stood, so slowly my muscles ached, and slowly, silently, tiptoed from my hiding spot, staying in the shadows. I quickened my pace, and soon I was running home. I needed to call Will. He needed to know about this.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Ever ~ Present Day

  There should be no reason for Ryland’s chief of police to come to my house for a carbon monoxide leak. But here he is, standing at the back door to the ambulance. Jonah Caplan gives him a nervous, curt nod, then slips past him. He escapes to his white Citizens Gas Company car and drives away.

  I have no such escape. Paladino says to the EMTs, “I need to talk to the girl before you take them to the ER.” To Joey he says, “I need to borrow your sister for a sec, big guy. We’ll be right outside. You stay here in the ambulance and I’ll bring her right back.” To me, he says, “Let’s go.”