“’Aldridge pride,’ you mean. The women of our family have kept the Orifice closed for three hundred years, with a few exceptions. But we don’t talk about those.”
“That explains Lindsay Lohan.”
“No comment.”
Bone walked over to the closet and rummaged in Crystal’s clothes. “We’re best friends. Why shouldn’t we spend time together?”
“I don’t know what happens over there when you break curfew. But I’m guessing it’s not pretty.”
Bone pulled out a white blouse with a bit of frilly lace on the neck and cuffs. She draped the blouse over her chest and swished a little. “What do you think? Won’t this look great with nobody inside it?”
“This is serious.”
“Come on, Crystal. How can you expect me to care if Darkmeet dumps all its fangs and tentacles and bad actors over here?”
As if something just beyond the wall took that as an invitation, a glimmer of light appeared on Crystal’s desktop. Crystal thought her computer had powered up on its own, which wouldn’t have surprised her because she was convinced it was haunted.
But the glow spread outward to the size of a pizza, lighting up the room. Unlike the portals, which oozed and glistened like black tar, this one held as steady and warm as the sun-dappled waters of a summer puddle.
Crystal glanced at Bone, who shrugged and said, “New one on me.”
“I’m not touching it.”
“That’s gotta be for you. It’s your room.”
“I’m not the one breaking curfew.”
“Well, we can sit here and ignore it and hope it goes away—”
“This isn’t geometry class. This is real life.”
Sure, you could close your eyes, but the bad stuff just kept right on rolling toward you like a UPS truck.
Bone grabbed the tennis racket from the closet. “Poke it with a stick. And if something weird flies out, Venus Williams that sucker.”
“Why are we assuming this is bad?”
Bone gave the open-mouthed Whatever Stare. “What’s the other option?”
Crystal took the racket and approached the puddle, Roy Orbison wailing “Only the Lonely,” the faint stench of Momma’s magical mishap still tainting the air. She wondered what her high school classmates were doing. Texting, cussing at algebra, road tripping to college football games. Making out, smoking cigarettes, and sipping stolen liquor. Sending off college applications, pirating movies, and joining social network groups to save the world.
Well, Crystal already had the job of saving the world. And her weapons were a tennis racket and a pocketful of mumbo jumbo.
She sighed. Beats dying of boredom. I guess.
“Hello,” she shouted at the glimmering white puddle, wondering if her computer would be gunked up. It looked like the mess had soaked her GED papers as well.
“Crystal Aldridge,” the puddle said, tiny ripples vibrating across the puddle. The voice was mellow and calm, somehow ageless yet mature, clear enough to penetrate the Orbison.
Crystal lifted the racket for a forehand smash before answering. “Maybe.”
“This is Arveleta.”
Great-back-to-however-many-greats-grandmother Arveleta? Riiiiight. That’s just the kind of thing an evil demon would say to get you to let down your guard.
Crystal felt a chill on the back of her neck and turned to find Bone pressed close behind, peering over her shoulder. This was even creepy to a ghost.
Crystal addressed the puddle again. “If you’re Arveleta, what are you doing messing in my school stuff?”
“Just sort of laying here.”
“I see that.”
“You ever heard of guardian angels?”
Crystal groaned. This was all Orbison’s fault. The dude sang like the choir leader in heaven, and it drew the angels like flies to chicken dookie.
“As if I need another boss,” Crystal said.
“Might be a bait and switch,” Bone said. “Ask it a question.”
“Okay, ‘Arveleta,’ or whatever you are. If you’re my guardian angel, then I bet you’ve been watching me grow up. So who was the first boy I ever kissed?”
“That’s easy,” Bone said. “Tommy Hartzog in the fifth grade. The whole school knew that.”
Crystal nudged her elbow into Bone’s gut, glad her friend was solid enough to feel the hint. Bone grunted and shut up.
“No, it wasn’t Tommy,” the Arveleta-puddle said.
“You can hear me?” Bone said. “And see me?
“I’m an angel.”
“Wow. So who did Crystal kiss?”
“Try Lee Roy Stamey. In kindergarten.”
Crystal was embarrassed. Memories of white paste and construction paper came rushing in. That paste. The fumes made you goofy. That explained it. “How did you—”
Bone snorted in laughter. “Lee Roy? The buck-toothed boy?”
“His teeth hadn’t come in yet,” Crystal said in defense.
Bone backed away. “You’re serious. In kindergarten? You slut.”
“You gals can argue later,” the Arveleta-puddle said. “Right now, I’ve got an important message for Crystal. Assuming you believe me now.”
“One more question,” Crystal said.
“I got a question first,” Bone said, looming over the puddle in anger. “How come I have to be some kind of Tweener Ping Pong ball and you get to be a guardian angel? I didn’t sin all that much, and I said I was sorry once in a while, and I went to church a few times.”
The Arveleta-puddle quivered with a grandmotherly chuckle. “I don’t make the rules, I just work here.”
Crystal didn’t know why Bone was complaining. Better to occasionally wear flesh, hang out in a video store, and smooch up to Royce Dean than lay around in a puddle without any arms or legs.
Crystal’s cell phone rang, bleating in cadence with the Orbison tune.
“It’s Pettigrew,” the Arveleta-puddle said.
“I’m mad at him,” Crystal said.
“He’s an important part of your life.”
“Let me guess. We’re going to get married and have eight kids and I’ll end up on food stamps.”
“I don’t make predictions,” the Arveleta-puddle said. “I only see the past and the present, not the future.”
What a cop-out. Momma, Bone, Pettigrew, my guardian angel, everybody had their cute little excuses.
The phone quit ringing, and Crystal wondered if he’d left a message. Part of her was anxious to pick up, because he was probably calling to apologize for acting like a big grease monkey.
But he might have wanted to say he was done with her waffling ways and she could drop off his class ring at the shop next time she was on that side of town.
“So, all you can offer me is some toothless folk wisdom, huh?” Crystal said to the puddle.
Bone gave her a cold nudge in the spine. “Respect your elders.”
“Lay off, Bone. Since when have you ever trusted grown-ups?”
Bone’s face was sallow and sad, as if someone had eaten the last piece of birthday cake at her party. “She said she had a message. She’s trying to help you.”
Message. Oh, yeah. Like it’s my job to let people feel better by helping me?
The Arveleta-puddle just sat there, invading her computer, GED papers chicken-scratched and splotched and curled among the gooey angelic ectoplasm.
This was her life. This was her future. Her dreams didn’t matter, because she wasn’t allowed to sleep.
Fairy tales were for rich kids. The best she could hope for was paranormal fantasy.
Crystal crossed her arms. “Okay, Guardian Angel. Get to the point. I’ve got some studying to do.”
The puddle contracted, shimmered for a moment, and then squirted across her desk as if shot from a mustard bottle. The ectoplasm arranged itself in letters across her desk:
B WARES.
“’Bewares’? Crystal said. “Don’t they have any dictionaries in heaven?”
Crystal leaned in a dramatic hunch and imitated an old woman with a gurgly mouth full of snuff. “I sez bee-wares! Bee-wares what gonna happen.”
The letters shriveled a little in disappointment.
“You hurt her feelings,” Bone said.
“I’m going to get a dish rag and some Lysol, and let’s see if it spells ‘scram.’”
The puddle gathered into itself again, only now it was smaller and less radiant. “I tried,” said the voice, now weary and defeated, as if it had used up all its energy delivering the message.
A wave of guilt washed over Crystal. She had a right to be annoyed, because she’d never asked to be born an Aldridge and stuck in trailer-trash hell with a bunch of witches and ghosts. But she didn’t have the right to take it out on other people. Nobody was to blame.
Except Momma. For getting pregnant in the first place, knowing her daughter’s life would be as sucky as her own.
“I’m sorry,” Crystal said, reaching for the pathetic puddle. She didn’t know if she was allowed to touch her guardian angel. So many damned rules.
“I can’t fix you,” the Arveleta-puddle said, a little mollified. “Turn a bunch of angels loose and tell them all to do the right thing, and pretty soon you got hell on Earth.”
“That’s a clue?” Crystal hated the whine in her voice, but she’d expected a little more out of a guardian angel. Even if it was “Use birth control” and “Floss between meals.”
“Wish I could, hon.” The puddle quivered, and Crystal could have sworn she heard a moist sniff. “You got them Aldridge eyes.”
The puddle began shrinking even more, and a thin mist wended up from its center.
“Wait,” Bone said. “One more question.”
“You’re not an Aldridge.” The voice sounded muffled and distant now, as if coming from a drain pipe. “I’m not your angel.”
“Where was my guardian angel when that truck was speeding toward me?”
The response garbled as the puddle vanished and the swirling mist rose up to the ceiling and beyond.
“’Got no brakes’?” Bone said, trying to decipher the muttering.
Crystal stroked her friend’s red hair, no longer feeling so sorry for herself. “I think she said ‘coffee break.’”
Chapter 16
It was the first time Bone had ever been glad to leave Earth.
She held it together in Crystal’s room, but when the black splotch appeared in the wall right after the puddle evaporated, Bone had turned into a bat and fluttered up and away, bumping against the walls a couple of times before she figured out she had wings and sonar. She barely had time to wonder if bat eyes could cry when she flopped onto her belly in the mausoleum.
Cold, unforgiving marble in her cold, unforgiving world.
She huddled in a corner, wings now just stupid old arms, no claws to tear her hair out with, just a stupid dead girl in Nowheresville. She let the pity party begin.
Why me, God? Why not Juanita Salazar or Julie Houck or the preacher’s kid, Deena Rash? They deserved it more. Teen pregnancy, meth addiction, and joining the Unitarian Church—those are worse sins than anything I ever did.
She sucked up a wet nostril rope and shuddered. Her sobs echoed off the cool, dark stone. The tears on her face had no warmth but she let them go anyway.
She screeched and nearly levitated when the hand touched her shoulder. “Here,” he said.
She recognized the voice, though she couldn’t see his face. Tim.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?” She gave a wary sniff.
“You.”
“All this time?”
“Hey, it’s not like I got something better to do. You ever tried to play Ring Around The Rosie with Attila the Hun?”
“I was gone most of the day. This is moving past the creep factor and entering the stalker zone.”
A flame struck and Tim lit a candle with his finger, apparently copying Royce’s trick. The flame stood straight up and illuminated a small golden circle around them. Among the brown leaves, he’d made a little shrine of plastic roses and paper folded in the shapes of doves. His face seemed even paler in the dim light, and the circles under his eyes were as black as the inside of a coffin. He held out a lace handkerchief.
“Here,” he said. “I stole this from some dead person.”
Bone took it and dabbed at her eyes. “You expected me to cry?”
“I always make girls cry,” he said, with adolescent sarcasm. “No, I stole it weeks or months ago, maybe even last year. Just for fun. Just to get caught.”
“Is that why you’re hanging around? To be one of the bad kids? You’re even a screw-up at being a screw-up.”
Tim’s eyes grew even more shadowy and solemn. “Look at you, Bonnie. You still have feelings. Even after being dead for ten years—”
“Two years.”
“Whatever. The point is that you haven’t forgotten. Something keeps you linked to Earth while all the rest of us are wandering around dead inside.”
Bone gave it some thought. “Maybe that’s why the Judge is always on my case.”
“Tears. Snot. Gooey stuff. Man, you’re so lucky.”
Bone didn’t like where this was headed, because she didn’t trust the rest of her bodily fluids and certainly didn’t want Tim thinking about them. Time to change the subject. “Is Royce around?”
“That jerk? He’s probably signing autographs down at the courthouse.”
“Huh?”
“You know, working the crowd. Keeps talking about his comeback.”
“That’s one messed-up dude.”
“And you better quit hanging out with him.”
She could have sworn his lip twitched and his eyes glistened in the candlelight. “Are you watching out for me or something?”
He nodded.
Please, God, tell me this isn’t my guardian angel…
“I have to keep an eye on him,” she said, wiping her nose on the stolen lace finery.
Tim clenched his fists. “I knew it. A guy uses a little hair gel and pouts a little bit, and suddenly he’s the greatest thing since on-demand video. What part did you fall for? The tortured actor or the ‘I need you’ baloney?”
Actually, both, but I’m not about to admit it. “He’s tied in with something happening on Earth. Lots of apocalyptic rumblings, and my best friend’s right in the middle of it.”
“I thought you hated your best friend.”
“I do. But I still have to watch her back. That’s what best friends do.”
“Sounds like stalker zone to me.”
“I hate it when people use my own words against me. Makes you come off as a smart-aleck. Nobody likes a smart-aleck. Maybe if you weren’t so darned smart, you’d have had more friends in school.”
Tim’s face froze in shock, and then crumpled. Water almost appeared at the corner of his eyes. Out of instinct, she passed him the gooey handkerchief and he took it without speaking, though he kept it in his lap.
“That was cruel, Bonnie Whitehart,” he said in a whisper. “I guess death doesn’t thaw a frozen heart after all.”
Bone had no answer for that, because she’d been wondering the same thing. Crushing on Royce, and even lusting after Pettigrew, had done little to make her feel alive and cute and sexy.
It seemed like the only time she got the juices flowing was when she was spiteful and angry. But at least she’d helped Tim cry a little. Maybe she had a purpose after all.
“Guess I better check in before the Judge gets suspicious.” She stood, brushing the wrinkles out of her blouse. “He’s probably mad about that statue thing.”
“It wore off pretty fast. Karma never lasts.”
“Good. There’s hope for us both, then.”
“You got a new shirt,” Tim said.
“Borrowed it from Crystal.”
“That’s against the rules.”
“What are they going to do? Kill me?” The joke was old but it always fit.
“No, but they might start wondering what you’re doing on Earth.” He pointed to the dark crevice at the back of the mausoleum. “They might lock the gate for good.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Nobody’s above the higher law.”
“Like it’s okay to steal from the dead but not the living?” She giggled. “Besides, I think you’re just trying to get me to take off my shirt.”
Tim’s mouth opened but the smart-aleck response stuck in his throat.
“I’m wearing a bra, doofball,” she said.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t notice things like that.”
The air in the mausoleum grew thick, and Bone was glad neither of them required oxygen. The candle flame shrunk as if in embarrassment. Bone felt a little creepy teasing a 12-year-old, but she’d had enough of being serious. They were young and had their whole afterlives in front of them.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll bet there’s a lovely full moon out tonight.”
“The moon is always full in the graveyard.”
“I win the bet, then.”
Tim stood and stuffed the sodden handkerchief in his jeans pocket. Bone had read about a new type of treatment that probably would have saved Tim’s life if he’d made it another couple of years. But the kid was born poor, and what could you do about that? Fate was fate and, as Royce had said once while trying to cop some tongue, “The end is in the beginning.”
Aristotle had said it first, but that dude had voluntarily drunk poison. She’d seen him once, hanging out by the front gate, sitting on the stone steps in his dirty robe. A group of fresh dead were gathered around as if he were dispensing chocolate. Bone kept going, though she overhead “To err is human, to forgive divine” or some other worthless wisdom.
As they reached the mausoleum entrance, Tim held out his arm and blocked her way. “Let me check first.”
“I told you, they know I’m skipping. I’m just a pawn on God’s big, invisible chess board.”
“Why do you want to blame God for all this?”
“I have to blame somebody, and He’s convenient.”
October Girls: Crystal & Bone Page 12