As Dead as It Gets

by Katie Alender

But I had to make him happy. He had to agree to see me.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Can’t we just talk about it?”

  He sighed. “I don’t understand what there is to talk about.”

  “Jared,” I said, my voice breaking, “my sister is missing. And Laina came after me last night. She almost killed me.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “But she really should have minded her own business.”

  I stared at the phone as if it were emitting poisonous gas.

  Don’t scream at him. If you scream at him, he’ll hang up, and Kasey will die.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Please. Let’s talk. Please.”

  “Fine. We can talk.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Meet me in twenty minutes. At the overlook at the top of Stewart Canyon.”

  He hung up.

  The overlook?

  “Call Carter,” Megan said.

  I looked at her.

  “Lex, I can’t get to the overlook.” Her face was white. “My knee—I can’t climb up there. Call Carter and have him meet you.”

  I tried Carter’s cell and got his voicemail immediately. “No signal,” I said. “He’s in the canyon.”

  “Then call the police,” Megan said. “You can’t go up there alone.”

  “What are the police going to do?” I asked. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. I’m the runaway mental patient, remember?”

  “But—they can at least keep him from hurting you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They can’t stop Laina.”

  Megan had turned the car back in the direction of the canyon, but her hands tensed on the wheel.

  “I have to talk to him,” I said. “I have to get him to understand about Laina. And he’d never do that if anyone else was there. He’s too stubborn. My only chance is to talk to him alone.”

  “I hate it,” Megan said. “I hate this idea.”

  It wasn’t my favorite idea, either.

  But there were no other options.

  “Will you wait here?” I asked.

  Megan had parked on the side of the road. We had a few minutes to spare.

  The lookout at Stewart Canyon wasn’t an official part of the park. In fact, going there was highly discouraged because the trail was rough and steep and there were sections where a careless hiker could slide over the edge and fall a couple hundred feet.

  But everyone still went there. It was especially big on summer nights, when groups of kids would meet there for parties. The police knew about it, but they hadn’t done anything yet—because no one had gotten hurt there.

  Yet.

  “Yes, of course I’ll wait,” Megan said.

  “All right. If I’m not back in…” I checked the time on my stolen phone. “Forty-five minutes, then you can go for help.”

  She winced. “Forty-five minutes is a really long time, Lex.”

  “It takes almost twenty minutes just to get up there and back,” I said.

  She leaned across the seat and hugged me. “I’m so sorry. If I’d just listened when you needed me—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You were doing what you thought you had to do.”

  “No. That’s an excuse,” she said. “Not a reason. I was just afraid. I wanted to be safe…and keep everyone else safe.”

  “Keep everyone else safe from ghosts?” I wanted to tell her that no club in the world could manage that. There were too many ghosts. And too many unlucky people.

  She looked confused. “No—safe from me.”

  “What?” I sat back and looked at her. “You were never a danger.”

  She shook her head. Her mouth was open like she was going to speak, but it took a while for the words to come out. “I lied to you—when you needed me. When you trusted me. And I tortured your little sister. I would have killed you, Lex. I can never trust myself again.”

  “Megan,” I said. “Seriously? No one thinks you’re responsible for that. You were possessed.”

  “But I remember doing it.” She sniffled, holding back her tears. “I wanted to kill you.”

  “I tried to murder my whole family. In their sleep. With a butcher knife.”

  She made a confused noise. “It’s different. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “And what you did wasn’t yours, so stop feeling bad about it,” I said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with you, and I never once worried about my personal safety.”

  So that was why she was so desperate to be part of Brighter Path. She wasn’t being self-righteous.…She was just scared that somebody else would get hurt and it would be her fault.

  Now that I could relate to.

  “I mean it,” I said. “Stop feeling bad.”

  She gave a minute nod of her head, then glanced at the clock. “You should get going.”

  “Yeah,” I said, opening the door.

  “Lex,” she said, as I was about to shut it.

  I leaned down to look at her.

  “If you don’t come back safe…” She gave me a wry smile. “I’ll kill you.”

  “WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY is probably going to be hard to believe,” I said. “But if you’ll listen to me, I think it makes sense.”

  I’d said it aloud five times, but I knew I could have repeated it to myself a thousand times and that wouldn’t make it any easier to say to Jared’s face.

  I’d made it halfway up the trail, stopping every hundred feet or so to rest. The adrenaline that was keeping me going had begun to run out, and my legs felt like hunks of stone. Climbing was especially hard—some of the steps were three feet from the previous rock. Much better navigated by summer-energized kids than me.

  Still, I knew I’d make it. There was no question in my mind that I would be able to climb to the top.

  Finally, after dropping to my hands and knees and crawling up the sloping hill like a baby, I reached the wide plateau that looked over the crevasse of the canyon below. City officials had at least put a guardrail at the top, knowing that kids would come here and drink.

  Jared was sitting on the guardrail, facing me.

  The jagged folds of the rocky walls that bordered the trail were behind him, and beyond that, the small sprawl of Surrey. I could see the high school, where in less than an hour, hundreds of kids would gather for another normal day in their normal lives. I could see the building where Dad worked—the tallest one in town, soaring all of seven stories. The sun had hit its top floor and was reflecting bright orange light off the windows.

  It had been a while since I’d been up here. The view was gorgeous. The almost-spring sky was fighting for color after the washed-out whiteness of winter. Interconnected wisps of pink-and-yellow clouds froze in long streaks overhead; the sky behind them was pale purple.

  As I got closer, I could see that Jared looked rough. He hadn’t shaved. His hair wasn’t combed. And his light brown shirt had yellow stains under the armpits and was streaked with dirt.

  “How long have you been up here?” I asked.

  He gave me a long, distant look before he answered. “Since yesterday afternoon.”

  In spite of myself, I felt a twinge of protectiveness toward him. “Have you had food and water?”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot, Alexis? I wouldn’t come up here without supplies.” His eyes flickered with annoyance. “So you want to talk? Talk.”

  “It’s about Laina,” I said.

  He was staring at the ground, and the left side of his lips almost turned up in a hint of a smile. “Do you know how much I wish that she was here with me…instead of you?”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that he was basically saying he wished I were dead. “Jared, I’ve been thinking. And what you told me about her—how she was so peaceful when she…at the end…People who die that way don’t become ghosts.”

  He looked up at me, confused.

  “That’s good news. Laina
had everything she wanted when she died. She was at peace. She moved on. She went to a better place.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I believed, too.” He bent down and scooped up a handful of gravel and sand and chucked it off the side of the cliff. “Until you started talking to me about her.”

  “But I was wrong.”

  “Wrong? But you know what she looked like. You know about the dress.”

  “I saw something, Jared, yes—but what I saw wasn’t Laina.” I shifted uncomfortably on the curved metal railing. “This is probably going to be hard to believe…but if you hear me out, it makes sense.”

  He was listening, at least. I had his full attention.

  So I ran through the basics of what Savannah had told me. How this spirit wasn’t Laina at all, but a separate creature entirely. And it wasn’t doing what Laina would have wanted—because it wasn’t her.

  And finally, how Jared held the power over it.

  “You can make it go away. Because it…” I was afraid to say the next part. “Because it came from you.”

  He’d watched me intently the whole time I spoke. Now he gave a slow shake of his head.

  “You’re unbelievable,” he said, standing and looking down at me. “I finally find a way to make it up to her—to show her how much I care about her, to give her what she really wants—and you’re trying to make me think it’s all in my head?”

  “No, not in your head at all,” I said. “It’s real, but…you can control it. It happened because you love her so much—but it doesn’t have to be this way. Or go this far.”

  “So I just shouldn’t care so much?”

  “It has nothing to do with how much you care,” I said. “I know how much you love Laina. It’s obvious.”

  His mouth twisted into an ugly frown, and he turned and walked a few feet away. With a violent kick, he scuffed his shoe across the surface of a rock.

  Then he spun around.

  “So what am I, then, a murderer?” He grabbed me by the shoulders, and I thought he was going to push me backward over the guardrail. Instinctively, I grasped his arms and pulled us both away from the edge.

  We stood there, eye to eye.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not your fault. But you’re the only one who can make it stop.”

  He pushed me away, like my touch was too filthy to be borne, and I caught myself before I fell to the ground.

  My temper flared, but I crushed it. Losing control would just make things worse. Jared would know. He would see. And he would get angrier.

  “Laina wouldn’t want this,” I said. “You told me how amazing she was. She wouldn’t want people to be getting hurt. And she wouldn’t want you and me to have to be soul mates when we can’t even get along for an hour at a time.”

  He sneered at me. “If you would grow up, that wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Don’t react, Alexis. “I know it’s easier to believe that you’re making her happy,” I said. “But she would hate this, Jared. She would hate the fact that you’re in so much pain.”

  His face crumpled, and he looked at me. I got a glimpse of him in the half second before he turned away, sobbing.

  I felt like I’d just seen a kid realize he was lost in a crowded mall.

  Jared wasn’t evil…he was just broken. That was what we’d always had in common.

  But I felt like I’d changed. Maybe because of Lydia. Or maybe it was Kasey, or Megan—or even Carter. Somehow, I’d gotten a little less broken. And for Jared’s sake, I wanted him to heal, too. To be better.

  I took a step toward him and rested my hand on his shoulder. “Jared, if you can let it go…If you can stop tormenting yourself with guilt and regret—”

  “That means so much, coming from you,” he said, jerking away from me. “You, the world’s leading expert at getting over things, right? You can’t even look your sister in the eye. You can’t even stand up straight in a room full of people because you’re so worried about what they think of you. I’m not saying I’m perfect, Alexis, but you’ve got a lot of nerve to tell me to get over something.”

  “I know I’ve had problems,” I said, tears threatening to spill on to my cheeks. “I just don’t want anyone else to die. And I truly do want you to be happy, Jared. But it’s not going to be with me. Not ever.”

  I wiped at my eyes and turned away so he couldn’t see me crying.

  The sun had risen over the ridge to the east of town, spilling pale light over the winding grids of the neighborhoods in the distance.

  Jared’s voice came at me from only a couple of feet away—closer than I’d expected, and much softer. “Then…what about a compromise?”

  His demeanor had changed. He was sweet, soft, understanding Jared again. And though I’d never be totally comfortable around him, I was disarmed.

  “What kind of compromise?” I asked.

  “The kind where we both get what we want.”

  I turned toward him and waited.

  “You want Laina to stop hurting people. And honestly, Alexis, I want that too. I feel terrible that those girls have died. I don’t want anything to happen to your sister.”

  Then forgive yourself, I wanted to say. Let Laina go.

  “And I want…I want to know that she’s happy, wherever she is. That she’s at rest. Not worrying about me for all eternity.”

  I didn’t see a compromise. “I don’t understand.”

  He was totally relaxed now, as beautiful in the light as if he’d been placed there by an artist for admirers to gather around and gaze upon. He reached out and took my hands, swinging our arms slightly between us in a childlike gesture.

  “We jump,” he said.

  Wait.

  “We what?” I said.

  “We hold hands, and we don’t hesitate. We don’t let fear stop us. We leap. A leap of faith. And that way we’ll be together forever, and Laina will be happy. She’ll leave your sister alone, and she won’t hurt anyone else.”

  I took a step back away from the cliff.

  “Jared,” I said. “I’m not going to jump.”

  “Listen to me.” Now he was the one who was pleading. “Life is so hard for people like us. And it’s never going to get easier. Believe me, Alexis. You will never have a day when you wake up and don’t think about the people who have died because of you.”

  I started to turn my face away from his, but he reached up and grabbed my chin, preventing me from moving.

  “It’s not just Lydia now,” he said. “It’s Ashleen. And Elliot. And in a few hours, it’ll be your sister. And then it will be more of them. Maybe Carter. Maybe Megan. Who knows? Don’t you see? It’ll never stop.”

  “Jared, you’re hurting me.” I tried to pull away.

  But he didn’t let go. “It won’t ever stop, because what she wants is for me to be happy—and I’m never going to be happy.”

  He finally eased his grip, and I reached up and rubbed my sore jaw.

  “You’ll never be happy, either,” he said quietly. “I can see it when I look in your eyes.”

  I jerked my eyes away from his gaze.

  “Think about it.” He rested his head on my shoulder. “There’s no other way.”

  I’d thought there was another way.

  I’d thought I could talk to him and change his mind. But I’d failed.

  Just like I’d failed when I tried to save Elliot, and when I went out to help Ashleen. And now I would fail my sister. And by failing her, I would break my parents’ hearts.

  “Look at how beautiful the city is. Look how clean and bright and innocent.” His fingers wove through mine, and he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. “We don’t belong there.”

  I couldn’t speak. The English language had deserted me.

  “What do you say?”

  Now that he’d made up his mind, he was happier than I’d ever seen him. There was a lightness to his spirit that had never been there since we’d known each other—as if Laina’s death had been an invisible thousand-pound
weight that he carried around, and it was suddenly gone.

  Still holding my hand, he hopped the guardrail and stood on the narrow strip of rock on the other side.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll be free. We’ll be brilliant. We’ll be angels.”

  Somehow, I found myself standing next to him.

  The breeze blew in, a seductive blend of cool and warm air.

  “This is perfect.” Jared lifted his head high and laughed into the wind. “This is perfect!”

  His shout echoed through the canyon, and he turned to me. “This is what she deserves.”

  But—“It’s not what we deserve,” I said. “I don’t deserve to die. I don’t want to die.”

  I tried to pull my hand away from his, but we were linked like two pieces of a chain.

  “Let go of me,” I said. “You can jump if you want, but I’m not going to.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “It has to be both of us.”

  I shook my head. My neck was stiff. My body was flooded with the exhaustion of the past ten hours.

  “Trust me.” He took a half step forward to look over the edge.

  No.

  I don’t trust you.

  He was wrong about too many things for me to trust him. And one of the things he was wrong about was that killing ourselves was the only way.

  Because if he wouldn’t come to terms with Laina…If he refused to shut off the faucet…

  “Does your sister want to die?” he asked. “Does she deserve to die? Because if you don’t do this with me, that’s what’s going to happen. And then they’ll lock you up, and Laina will never quit.”

  But you could make it stop. You could turn off the faucet if you wanted to.

  “It’s what she wants,” he said. “And it’s what I want.”

  “Jared,” I said.

  He turned to me, a question in his eyes.

  Blow up the kitchen.

  I yanked my hand out of his grip.

  And I pushed him. Hard.

  HE CRIED OUT AS HE LOST his balance and began to slip backward. I reached behind me and grabbed the guardrail with my left hand—

  And somehow Jared got hold of my right one.

  He fell, but his hold on me stopped him from plunging into the canyon. The jolt made my left arm, which was hooked over the wide metal bar, feel like it would rip from my body, but I held the railing and didn’t let go.