Angel of Death

by Ferguson, Alane

  “You shouldn’t have paid for dinner,” she’d said.

  “Hey, my old man gives me an allowance and I never spend it. It was good to finally put the card to some use other than groceries. Besides, this was a tough day. For both of us.” Seconds later he added unexpectedly, “My dad wasn’t a fan of Mr. Oakes.”

  “He wasn’t?” Cameryn asked, surprised. “How come?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, then apparently thinking better of it, said, “That’s not true. I do know. I guess it’s because I liked Brad . . . better than my own father.”

  She stared at Kyle, gaping.

  “I know that sounds bad. But my dad’s not been around much and I’ve been left on my own. Not that I’ve minded. But there’ve been times when his disappearing act sucked. Like when I was made an Eagle Scout—parents usually go all out for their kids when they get that far. But my dad did nothing. Brad’s the one who put the whole ceremony together, with food and everything. And instead of being grateful, my dad got pissed.”

  "Why? ”

  “Because he told Brad it wasn’t his job. Which was so much crap—Brad only stepped up because my dad checked out. Later, my dad said I worship at the throne of Mr. Oakes. He called him ‘Saint Brad.’” Kyle snorted softly. “One of the few times my old man was right. Mr. Oakes was a saint.” He turned toward her with sudden intensity. “Cameryn, I really want to know what happened to Mr. Oakes. What did you find out in the autopsy? Can you tell me?”

  She hesitated. Part of her wanted to go over everything she’d seen, but she knew it was unethical. When she told him she couldn’t talk about the case, he nodded, then fell silent. She liked that he didn’t press.

  Now, as the moon drenched the inside of his car, silvering the dashboard, he leaned closer, conspiratorially. “We’ll have to stay quiet,” he said, and his voice was hushed. “If the neighbors hear us they might call the cops. See the sign? The cemetery’s closed at night.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “There was some trouble a while back. A couple of guys on the team had some beers, got a little crazy, and knocked over a few headstones. That chain’s supposed to keep out the partiers. So how do you feel about breaking the law?”

  “Usually I’m a straight-arrow kind of girl. But that’s a pretty dumb law.”

  “My feelings exactly. Follow the rules, except when they make no sense.”

  “I thought you were a Boy Scout,” she said.

  “I see myself as a thinking man. So let’s do it.”

  When Cameryn stepped outside, she realized how cold it had become. Her coat wasn’t heavy enough for a trip among the headstones. She looked at the chain barring their way and the flimsy, hand-painted sign listing hours, and pictured Justin roaring up to the cemetery with his red-and-blue lights flashing like a mirrored ball.

  Hesitant, she asked, “Tell me again why we’re here?”

  “Because I want to show you something.”

  “Why not show me where you live instead? I bet you’ve got central heating in your house,” she kidded, “which is a big plus.”

  She sensed, rather than saw, Kyle stiffen. “My dad’s home now, so I don’t want to take you there. The cemetery is a place where we can be alone. If you don’t count all the dead people.” Tugging on her coat sleeve, he said, “Come on, I didn’t figure you to be a wimp.”

  “You think I’m wimpy? ”

  “I’m just calling it like I see it.”

  And then it was too late. Throwing the veil of her hair over her shoulder, she said, “I’m all over it.”

  Cameryn easily stepped over the chain, her footsteps crunching in the gravel road as she began to hike along the path. She looked back to see if anyone had noticed the two of them, but all seemed quiet. A few neighboring houses, the kind made from logs with pitched green roofs, seemed to stand guard. Lights blazed inside them, but she saw no faces blotting out the windows.

  “See? Piece of cake,” Kyle told her.

  Twenty feet up the path, the actual graves started. The moon was three-quarters full, and its light filtered through the headstones, casting eerie shadows against bright patches of snow. She noticed tattered cobwebs moving gently in the air, catching the silvery light like lace. As they trudged farther and farther along the gravel path, Cameryn felt her toes growing numb. Kyle, who walked one step ahead, didn’t seem bothered by the cold.

  “I see dead people,” he said hoarsely.

  “I see stupid people,” she countered. “You and me.” The cemetery was old, and it was big, and wherever it was he was taking her must be located in the farthest possible corner. When her feet felt like blocks of ice she cried, “Kyle, where are we going?”

  He stopped and turned. “What? Seriously, are you scared? ”

  “No, I’m cold. Kyle, I’m freezing.” Hugging her sides, her bare hands tucked beneath her armpits, Cameryn danced while she talked. She could see him clearly in the almost-full moon, and its radiance had a dual effect: it glanced off his hair while creating planes of light and dark on his face. His eyes, lost in shadow, were impossible to read.

  “How about if I keep you warm? ” he asked.

  Her heart skipped inside her chest. “What?”

  “I’m offering you my coat. Boy Scout, remember?” He unzipped his parka and draped it around her, even as she protested. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m cold-blooded. ”

  The inside of his coat felt warm, and it smelled good. A hint of wood smoke clung to it. Pulling it tight, she felt her blood flow again. He was standing very close. After he’d given her his coat, he hadn’t moved away. Then, touching her cheek with his hand, he said, “Your skin is like ice, Cammie. Maybe we should go back.”

  “Maybe,” she said, and turned her face toward his ever so slightly.

  Kyle’s breath made puffs of steam. “Whatever you want,” he said.

  Her practical side told her to go home. But she had to admit she liked the hint of danger in this. She, who almost always followed the rules, was bending them with a boy. Her father would not approve. Her mammaw would be scandalized. But above all this, she’d just discovered an important truth: that when her body was in motion, her mind was at rest. As she’d wound her way among the headstones, she found that it wasn’t only her feet that went numb. She liked this—the not thinking. It felt good.

  “I’m not a quitter, especially after I’ve pinched a warm coat,” she told him. “And by the way, I don’t think you meant to say ‘cold-blooded.’ That’s like a reptile. A lizard would die in this cold.”

  He laughed, and she liked the sound of it, deep and masculine. “I stand corrected. Hanging out with you is like dating a teacher.”

  “Gee. Thanks.” But his words made her pulse beat faster. He’d said the word “date.”

  “That sounded sarcastic.”

  “Really?” She grinned. “You think I’m sarcastic? Watch me pretend to care.”

  “Oh, you’re funny, Cameryn. I like that. I like someone I can laugh with. And since I am a Scout and I have pledged to help those in need, I’ll now selflessly help keep your fingers from freezing off. It’s the least I can do.”

  He held out his hand. Timidly, she placed hers in his. Inside, her mind was awake again. Now it was screaming, Too fast, too fast, too fast!

  “Your hand is so small,” he murmured. “It’s like a kid’s.” His felt surprisingly warm as it closed around hers. “Let’s move out,” he told her.

  Leaning back as if on a rope tow, Cameryn raced after him through the graves, weaving around headstones as though they were buoys in water. It was fun to run this way. She felt the last of the day’s horror fading away as her feet churned through patches of snow.

  She’d always thought this was the place she’d like to be buried. Unlike most cemeteries, Hillside, as its name implied, had been carved into a foothill. Layered like a wedding cake, with snow instead of frosting and headstones in place of confectioners’ roses, it had a history o
f miners and prostitutes, mayors and madams. They wove around a mass grave from the flu epidemic of 1918. Farther along was a mausoleum boasting a Russian princess, a woman named Edna Harris who’d been embroiled in a bizarre love triangle that included the man who became the chief architect of Silverton. Silverton had always been strangely proud of its scandalous past, and Cameryn was proud, too. She’d like to spend her after-life talking with such an eclectic group of corpses.

  They raced past plots where whole families were buried behind spiked fences, hemming them in like a prizefighter’s ring. Some, like the family she streaked by on her right, seemed cheerful in death: moonlight revealed their headstones decorated with beads and glass trinkets, whirligigs, and Hawaiian leis. Other graves, though, told a different story—headstones erased by a century of harsh weather, or tipped over by gravity and neglect. It saddened her to realize that even under the cover of night, she could easily tell who’d been forgotten.

  “We made it,” he said. “Come on, have a seat.”

  He sat down on a wooden bench positioned to face a tombstone. Cameryn squeezed in beside him. There was barely room for the two of them, so their legs pressed together again, as they had in the restaurant, but this time she couldn’t move away. And she wasn’t sure she would have, even if there’d been miles of room.

  “Okay,” she said, “what am I supposed to see?”

  Kyle hesitated. "There,” he said, pointing to a head-stone.

  It was an old-fashioned grave marker made to look like the pages of an open Bible. Carved on the granite were letters denoting someone’s death. Since it was too dark for Cameryn to read, she asked, “What does it say?”

  “It says, ‘Mary Fitzgerald, 1966. My anam cara.’”

  “Who’s Mary Fitzgerald?” she asked. “And what’s an anam cara? ”

  “She’s my grandmother. My mother’s mother.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Anam cara is Gaelic. Anam is the Irish word for ‘soul’ and cara is the word for ‘friend.’ So it means ‘soul friend.’ That was my grandfather’s name for her.”

  When he put his hand on her arm, she could barely feel it through the coat’s thick padding, but her nerves began to prickle beneath her skin. He was leaning in, nearer. Too fast, too fast, too fast, raced through her mind again.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

  “I’m warmer, now that we’re close.”

  “I can give you back your coat.”

  “You keep it.”

  The bench was at the edge of the cemetery, next to the tree line, and beyond Kyle’s head she could see branches touching branches, holding hands in moonlight, as if they could keep back the invisible legion of trees covered in shadow. Then she had a crazy thought: She’d been like those trees—not the ones on the edge that were easily seen, but the ones behind, hiding in that vast, unseen, evergreen army marching up the mountainside. She’d been hiding from her mammaw and her father and, most frightening of all, from herself. And here was Kyle, wanting to draw her out.

  “Anam cara,” she said, turning the words in her mouth.

  “I like that.”

  She felt his hand stroking hers. “I was . . . I was thinking that you and me . . . we have something like that now. After today, I think we have anam cara.”

  “We do?”

  “We’ve got a link to each other. I mean, we’re the only kids in school who saw Brad in that room. There’s no one else who can understand it. Just you . . . and I.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” she asked softly.

  "Honestly? ”

  “Yes.” Her one word made a single puff in the cold air.

  “So we could be alone. Where no one could see. And so I could do this.”

  And then he was kissing her, kissing the girl who’d hardly ever been kissed. She could feel the whiskers of his upper lip against her own, rough as sandpaper, and beneath that she could taste the lingering taste of chocolate mint. His hands caressed her neck as he pulled her closer, but then his tongue entered her mouth and she pulled away.

  "Don’t,” she said.

  He didn’t seem to hear. He kissed her again.

  “Wait,” she said, louder this time. “I can’t.”

  Now he did hear. Pulling back from her, she saw he was frowning, but puzzled, too.

  “What’s the matter? Are you going with someone?”

  “Going? No. That’s not it.” A picture of Justin flashed through her mind, but she quickly dismissed his image. Her father said Justin was too old for her, and maybe that was true. But more importantly, Justin had already seen inside her head. He understood her weaknesses. No, if she ever began a relationship, she’d want to be able to show herself in the most flattering light, then slowly reveal herself. She couldn’t do that with Justin. He already knew too much.

  “If it’s not another guy, then . . . why?”

  “Kyle, I just can’t. I just can’t get involved with someone—anyone—right now.”

  “Why not?”

  How could she tell him about Hannah, and how she couldn’t squeeze out one more drop of herself for anyone? That her life was already too difficult and was about to get more so. She felt herself fading back, away from the lights and into the trees, but Kyle was holding on to her tightly.

  “If there’s not another guy then there must be a reason. ”

  “My life is . . . complicated.”

  “Whose isn’t?”

  “Really? What’s complicated about yours?” she challenged.

  “You really want to know?”

  Cameryn nodded.

  “Okay, then I’ll make a deal. I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours. But it has to be the truth. Anam cara. All right?”

  She thought only a moment before saying, “All right.” Silently, she added that she could edit her own story, airbrush it until it became whatever she wanted. For her, the deal was struck because she was curious about Kyle. Kyle O’Neil, the boy no girl in Silverton could get, who was sitting beneath a frosted sky wanting to kiss her.

  “All right,” he began. “But first, I don’t want you reporting what I say to Lyric or any of the other girls you run around with. I know how girls are.”

  “Hello, you’re sounding sexist. Not okay! ”

  “No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m just asking—do you keep secrets?”

  Now Cameryn smiled. “More than you’ll ever know. So tell me.”

  Resting his head on the back of the bench, Kyle looked up at the stars. Then he began to tell his story, and as he did, Cameryn started to see the pattern of his life. Its design surprised her. His mother had gone away with another man, and he hadn’t seen her in over two years. “I get postcards,” he said. “Freaking postcards with one line on them. Like that would make everything all right. And then my dad, it’s like he left me, too. He drives his trucks from one end of the country to the other, weeks at a time, and he takes our dog Skooch with him. My dad loves that dog—if he had to pick me or Skooch, Skooch’d win. For me, he just deposits cash into my account and then he disappears. But it’s really better that way. Two men together can end up killing each other.”