As Dead as It Gets

by Katie Alender

  Elliot’s alert, questioning expression didn’t change at all. “No, sorry, I don’t think so. Have a nice day.”

  She started to turn away.

  “Wait!” I said. “Are you kidding? You know she died, right?”

  Elliot shrugged. “Even if I didn’t, which I did, the request for a memorial would have been a pretty good clue.”

  “And…” I decided to change tactics. “It would really mean a lot to…people.”

  “Oh, I see.” She blew air out of her nostrils. “Well, that doesn’t actually change anything.”

  “Come on, seriously?”

  Elliot put her hands back on her hips and leaned ever so slightly forward. “All right. Let’s move this along. Here’s the part where you say, ‘What did she ever do to you?’”

  “Um, no,” I said. “That’s probably not a good question to ask about Lydia.”

  “You’re right,” she said, moving closer. “Because I’ll tell you what your little friend did to me. Last year—I don’t know if you know this, but I doubt it, because obviously you’ve never deigned to notice me before—my older sister was a senior. And she was diagnosed with cancer, so she had to miss the last two months of school.”

  My hands were suddenly slick with sweat. I didn’t see what this had to do with Lydia. Had Elliot’s sister died and not gotten a yearbook memorial? Why did everything end with death and misery?

  “She’s in remission now, thank God,” Elliot said a little more gently, probably after seeing my face. “But anyway, her greatest wish was to have her senior yearbook signed by all of her friends and teachers. So I brought it to school, carried it around for a week, made sure everyone wrote in it. And the stuff people wrote? Epic, Alexis. Poems, song lyrics, quotes—so much amazing material.”

  A vague sense of dread began to churn in my stomach.

  “So on the last day of school, Lydia Small—who I kind of knew in junior high—comes up to me and asks if she can write something for Dale—yes, my sister also has a boy’s name.”

  Lord, here it comes.

  “She signed it, I said thanks, took it home and gave it to my sister. It was a huge surprise—Dale was so happy, we were crying…and she opened it up and started to read, and it was, like, better than I ever imagined.”

  She was telling the story with such relish that I couldn’t bear to interrupt her, even though I knew I didn’t want to hear how it ended.

  “And then she gets to some random page…and stops smiling.” Elliot’s face turned from rapturous to deadly serious. “And the next page after that, she’s frowning. And so on, until she’s in tears, and she gets up and throws the yearbook in the trash. Because Lydia Small took a bright red Sharpie and wrote on, I don’t know, I never actually counted—fifteen pages? Stuff like, ‘Sorry you had to miss school because of the chlamydia,’ ‘Hope those crabs clear up before bathing suit season!’”

  Now Elliot’s eyes were bright and cold and diamond-hard, and everyone in the room was staring at us.

  “So, yeah,” she said. “Forgive me if I don’t want to devote a two-page spread to your little friend who didn’t give a flying—”

  “Language, Quilimaco,” said a voice from the corner. A teacher was sitting with his feet up on a desk, reading a magazine.

  “A flying foot,” Elliot said primly, “about what could have ended up being my sister’s dying wish.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “She’s not my friend. I couldn’t stand her, for the record.”

  Elliot shifted her weight and looked at me with blank curiosity. “Then why are you here?”

  “I promised her mother I’d ask. But whatever.” I turned to go.

  Elliot heaved a mighty put-upon sigh. “Okay, fine.”

  “Wait, really?” To be honest, if I’d been in her shoes, I don’t think anything could have changed my mind.

  “Yes,” Elliot said. “Mostly because you didn’t try to go over my head and ask Mr. Janicke about it.”

  I glanced at the teacher, whose shirt was covered in doughnut crumbs. He gave me a wave. “I have no authority here,” he said. “Carry on.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said.

  She turned and looked at the board. “We’ll probably put it after the junior class photos. Just try to have it finished by Valentine’s Day, because, no offense, it’s probably going to need some tweaking.”

  “Wait—have it finished? Me?”

  “Yes, you. Who else? We’re understaffed. Here, let me give you the specs.” She reached for a pad of paper. “We’ll need a PSD with all the layers, and include the files of any exotic fonts you use. Eight by ten and a half, three hundred DPI, and obviously nothing with a copyright, please.”

  I stared at her, not even sure where to start. “Um…what’s a PSD?”

  “It’s”—she blinked, momentarily stunned by my ignorance—“a Photoshop document. This isn’t going to work, is it?”

  “Please,” I said. “Isn’t there any way someone who knows about that stuff can do it?”

  Elliot scanned the room. “Of course there’s a way. Chad, want to do this memorial page? Make it glorious.”

  Chad turned to us and shrugged, then went back to his work.

  “He looks like a hoodlum, but he’s brilliant with graphics,” Elliot said.

  “Thank you. Again.” I still couldn’t believe she’d changed her mind.

  Her eyes were lit up, like she was enjoying this. “So. Chad does your layout, you do something for us.”

  “But…I don’t know how to do any of this.”

  “You know how to take pictures.”

  True.

  “Here’s the deal. We devote two pages to making Lydia Small look like a dearly missed pillar of the school community, and you take on some photography work. Chad’s pictures suck, anyway.”

  Without taking his eyes off the monitor, Chad held up his middle finger in our direction.

  I was about to say no…and then I remembered Mrs. Small.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Great,” Elliot said, looking pleased. “Perfect, in fact.”

  “What am I going to be shooting?”

  “Nothing too exciting,” she said, turning to walk back to her desk. “Clubs, teams, Student Council stuff.”

  I followed her. “Um, I can’t do that.”

  “Okay.” She sat and stuck the end of a pen in her mouth. “Then I can’t do your special project.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  “I’ll bet I do,” she said, not even looking up. “You used to go out with Carter Blume. And now he’s dating Zoe Perry. And they’re both on Student Council. But somehow, you’re going to rise above all that and take really good pictures of them.”

  I glanced at the teacher, hoping he would speak up.

  “No authority,” he said.

  I turned back to Elliot.

  “Deal?” she asked. “Or no deal?”

  I looked at the ceiling, thinking of the bird necklace Lydia’s mother was never going to get back.

  “Deal,” I said, turning and walking toward the door with as much dignity as I could muster.

  “Our weekly meetings are Thursdays at two thirty-five!” she called. “Don’t be late!”

  SUDDENLY, MY LIFE WAS awash with meetings. On Thursday, I went to my first Wingspan staff meeting. And the following Tuesday, I drove across town to Sacred Heart Academy to join Megan’s new club, whatever it was.

  I was ten minutes early, but the school day was well over, and the spacious, tree-covered campus was mostly deserted. A few kids wandered by my car, spectacularly preppy in their private-school uniforms, all plaid and blazers and kneesocks.

  Me? I was in a blue-and-white-striped sweater with a hole in the shoulder and an unraveling hem, ripped jeans, and a ratty pair of Converse.

  After a few minutes of people-watching, I got out of my car and found the community room, but I didn’t go inside. Considering I didn’t know
what I was getting into, I wasn’t eager to jump in alone.

  Megan arrived a few minutes later, limping up the wheelchair ramp, holding her books to her chest with one hand and keeping the other one suspended over the railing. She gave me a small smile and waved with the tips of the fingers that were wrapped around her books.

  “Hi,” I said, hugging her. But she didn’t hug back; the most you could really say was that she let herself be hugged.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Can I get your books for you?”

  “No, I’m okay.” She turned to me, shifting them in her arm. Her mouth was turned down in a slight frown. “I wish you would have let me tell you what this meeting is. I wanted you to know what you were getting into.”

  “I told you, I don’t care,” I said. “How bad could it be?”

  “Yo.” A man in wrinkled khaki pants and a worn dark-blue polo shirt shuffled up the aisle between our rows of folding chairs. “What’s the word, young’uns?”

  An uneven chorus of hellos echoed back to him as he took his place behind a podium at the front of the room.

  “New face today—groovy,” he said, smiling at me. “Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Brighter Path family. I’m Brother Ben, and I hope that you’ll find all the support you need here. Never be afraid to speak up or ask for help.”

  I pressed my spine against the vinyl padding of my chair and averted my eyes from Brother Ben’s by looking around the room. About half of the kids in attendance wore Sacred Heart uniforms, and the rest were dressed pretty much like me.

  “First of all, thanks for coming.” Ben seemed like he was in his early forties, but his hair was blond and as fine as a baby’s, and his round face dwarfed his tiny, too-close blue eyes. “I know it’s not always easy to make a change, and I’m not kidding myself—we’re swimming upstream here. This culture wants you to believe that the easy way out is down a very dark and dangerous path. But we’re here to support each other on the brighter path.”

  The way out of what? Was this some kind of twelve-step meeting? Maybe Megan had started drinking or doing drugs and wanted me here for support. I glanced at her, but she was staring straight ahead.

  “I’m going to pass around the box.” He pulled out a shoe box with a clamshell top. “If you have anything you’d like to turn in, please drop it inside. Remember, no one is judging you. We’re all here to help each other get stronger.”

  His eyes found mine.

  “Think of the box as a safe,” he said. “Anything you might own or acquire—any books or trinkets or just anything, really, you can put in there and it will disappear.”

  Books about drugs? Alcohol trinkets? Like…a bottle opener or something?

  He handed it to one of the kids and looked around. “Now, would anyone like to speak?”

  A mousy girl stood up and went to the front of the room, her head bowed so low that her chin practically touched her chest.

  “I’m Savannah,” she said.

  I waited for everyone to say, “Hi, Savannah!” like they do at addiction meetings on TV and in movies.

  They didn’t.

  She braced her hands against the podium. “This Saturday was a hundred days since my last experience with the occult.”

  The occult?

  I stared at Megan, who glanced at me, swallowed hard, and then pointedly looked back toward the front of the room.

  Brother Ben was applauding Savannah’s hundred days with a thick, moist-handed clap, and a few other people halfheartedly joined in.

  Savannah turned bright pink. “Yeah, thanks…So my mom and dad took me out to dinner to celebrate. But they didn’t know that the nail place next to our favorite restaurant closed and got replaced by a palm reader.”

  “Uh-oh,” Ben said, shaking his head. “That is not good.”

  Before I could stop myself, I started to laugh. I managed to turn it into a fake cough, which still attracted the attention of every single person in the room.

  “You okay back there?” Ben asked.

  I nodded and looked up at Savannah, vowing to keep better control of myself.

  “My dad got totally stressed out, and we ended up fighting, even though I said I didn’t even care. But we had to leave, and when I got home, I was super depressed, and I…I really, really wanted to look at my tarot cards.”

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  “But I didn’t,” she said, letting out a huge breath. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic bag filled with gray powder. “Dad helped me burn them, and I brought the ashes for the box.”

  I turned to Megan. “Seriously?” I whispered.

  She didn’t look at me. Brother Ben started clapping again.

  This time, Megan joined in.

  I sat back, self-conscious.

  Next, some junior high kid talked about how he finally realized his friends are Satanists and he had to stop hanging out with them and listening to their rock band rehearsals.

  I started to feel twitchy.

  Look, don’t get me wrong. In the grand scheme of things, I’m right there with Brother Ben.

  The occult, the dark side, the netherworld—I believe in them. I’ve lived them. I believe—no, I know, through direct, horrible experience—that they’re dangerous. And I think, one hundred and fifty percent, that people should leave them alone.

  But sue me: after going toe-to-toe twice with ghosts who wanted me dead, the idea of a garage full of twelve-year-old quote-unquote devil worshippers striking terror in my heart just seemed a little ridiculous.

  “Anybody else?” Ben asked, looking straight at me.

  Um, no. I leaned back and tried to smile in a convincingly apologetic manner.

  But to my utter shock, Megan said, “Okay,” and went up to the podium. “Hi…I’m Megan.”

  I watched her, powerless to stop the frown line from spreading across my forehead. Knowing she saw it.

  “As a lot of you know, I’ve had some trouble,” she said. “The thing I struggle with is, I’m more than willing to leave behind the bad stuff, but what about the…good?”

  I pressed my fingertips into my jeans so hard the skin turned white.

  Megan’s mother had been a ghost—a good one. Good ghosts are rare, but there are a few out there. In the end, she’d helped save us all—Megan, me, my entire family, and the dozens of people Kasey would have killed if the evil spirit living in her doll hadn’t been stopped.

  How could anyone ask a daughter to turn her back on the memory of her own mother? And how could Megan even begin to think that was a good idea? If it had just been the two of us hanging out, like in the old days, I would have told her right to her face to get real—that remembering her mother could never be a bad thing.

  But that’s not how things worked at Brighter Path.

  Ben sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at weird angles. “If something isn’t of this world,” he said, a patronizing twinge of regret in his voice, “then it’s of the other world. And if something is of the other world…”

  From the audience, a half dozen unenthusiastic voices finished: “Then it’s not for us.”

  Megan looked anxious to explain. “But—”

  “You can leave a door open for your ‘friends,’” Ben said, air-quoting with his fingers. “But the truth is, anybody can come in through that open door. And how do you know these friends are who they say they are, anyway? It’s the nature of those who aren’t of this world to deceive us and betray us.”

  “Right,” Megan said, so quietly I could barely hear her.

  As Ben patted her shoulder, I wanted to bat his hand away.

  Then, like he could sense my anger, he looked right at me. “What about you, Alexis? Would you like to share today?”

  Yeah, I’d love to. I’d share how narrow-minded he was and how stupid and unfair this whole new insulated life of Megan’s was. I’d share a few choice words that had popped into my head when Ben air-quoted about her mom, and
I’d share where he could stick his box of contraband mood rings.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  I could tell that Megan, who had come back to her seat, was watching me. But when I turned to look at her, I found that she was actually glaring at me.

  “All right,” Ben said mildly. “You share when you’re ready.”

  “As if,” I whispered under my breath.

  Suddenly, Megan grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to my feet. With everyone’s eyes on us, she dragged me down the aisle and out the door.

  As soon as we were outside, I took a huge breath. “Please tell me this is a joke.”

  “See?” Her voice was tight. “This is exactly why I was afraid to invite you.”

  “What?” For a moment, I didn’t even understand what she was trying to say. Then it sank in. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m trying to give it a chance, okay?”

  “But why? Is it your grandmother?” Mrs. Wiley was used to getting whatever she wanted. And used to being obeyed. Had she ordered Megan to do this? “If she’s asking you to pretend nothing happened, she’s wrong.”

  “Don’t,” Megan said, her voice like ice. “Don’t talk badly about my grandmother. She’s the only family I have.”

  She’d never spoken to me so sharply before. It felt like being slapped. I looked down at the crack-covered sidewalk.

  “It’s not her, Alexis. It’s me. It’s my choice.” Megan finally looked at me, on the verge of tears. “Maybe you don’t get it, but I want to get better. And I can’t do that if I feel like you’re judging me the whole time.”

  “I’m not judging you!” I protested. “I’m judging…”

  I was judging what she wanted for herself.

  She gazed off into the distance. “This was a huge mistake.”

  “Megan.” I hardly trusted myself not to cry. “You’re my best friend. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what you want.”

  “I want to be normal,” Megan said, her voice rigid.

  “Come back inside if you can understand that. But if you can’t—if you’re going to be like this—then don’t.”

  I spoke before I had time to think about what I was saying. “I’m sorry. I’ll try. I’ll really try.”