Dead Rules

by Randy Russell

  Jana glanced at the clock, surprised to see that the hour hand had finally moved. It was an hour later now than when she’d sat down. There were no minutes in Dead School, she thought. Only hours. It was the first time Jana had thought the words Dead School.

  But that was it. She was dead. And she was in school. They should put the name over the door so you didn’t have to guess when you first got here.

  Chapter Four

  SECOND PERIOD.

  It was just like first. There were the same students sitting in the same places. This time there was a textbook along with a new notebook on her desk. The teacher was named Skinner. He wore glasses and was busy drawing boxes on the chalkboard, muttering to himself.

  Beatrice still wore the yard dart in her head. Henry said hi and then turned around in his desk in front of Jana. The girl who sat in front of Arva had quit jerking her shoulders and saying “ouch” for a while. Mars stared at Jana from his desk at the back of the room.

  Jana opened her notebook. She caught her breath when she saw the note on the first page. This one read: It was murder. The words were in pencil, in the same precisely printed letters as the message in her first-hour notebook.

  She turned quickly around and glared at Mars. Their eyes locked. Jana’s eyes were daggers. Mars tilted his head to one side, as if he didn’t know what daggers meant.

  Arva reached across the space between their desks and touched Jana’s arm. Jana jerked her arm away and stared angrily at Arva.

  “I will if I want!” she said to Arva. “I don’t need a mother.” If Jana wanted, she would march to the back of the room and tell Mars to stop writing in her notebooks.

  She had spoken too loudly. Mr. Skinner stopped talking and turned from drawing boxes on the chalkboard to look over the class through his thick glasses. Students at the front of the class turned in their seats and stared at Jana.

  Jana ducked her head over her open notebook and doodled. She traced her hand on a blank sheet at the back of her notebook. She drew in the lines of her palm and wrote J. W. + M. H. on the line that represented her heart. Then she cried. Jana couldn’t help it. When she read her palm, her future didn’t look so good. Her life line was blank.

  She was very quiet about crying, letting the tears fill her eyes, forcing herself to breathe evenly. Her fingers trembled. She placed her hands in her lap. She kept her head down with her hair covering her face from both sides. She hoped no one would notice.

  Jana cried because she was alone. Not because she was dead. She could get along with being dead if only she weren’t so alone. Without Michael, she would always be alone.

  He had left her in this awful place.

  He was half of her and he was gone. Just like that.

  Teardrops made wet circles on the pencil outline of her hand. Jana put an end to it by biting her lower lip as hard as she could stand. It was her first day of school and so far all she had to show for it was a sore dot on her arm where she’d jabbed herself with a pencil, an empty heart, and trembling fingers. And she still couldn’t get the taste of strawberries out of her mouth.

  Jana blinked rapidly, trying to bat her eyelashes dry, when the Virgins came in and sang their three-bell song that signaled the end of class. She’d cried in class. Other students must have seen her. She might as well have thrown up on herself.

  The Sliders from her class walked down the hall between second and third period in a group.

  Arva and Jana stood still as they passed. Some of their faces were a mess. One of them limped severely. His left leg barely seemed to work at all. There were two girls with them. They were Sliders too. Jana absentmindedly smoothed the front of her plaid skirt with her free hand as they walked by.

  Jana held her second-period notebook in her other hand, wanting to show Arva what was written on the first page. Maybe Arva could tell her who was doing it.

  “You have to believe me,” Arva said urgently. “You can’t talk to them.” When Arva was excited, she sounded like a duck, quacking out one word after another. “Don’t even look at them. If they see you looking, they’ll try to talk to you. And you can’t do that.”

  A thin boy wearing a wrinkled school shirt showed up from nowhere and stood in front of Jana with his hand out. He kept his eyes on his shoes. The boy looked gray to Jana. His shirt was grayish instead of white. His black school tie was faded and knotted wrong.

  He didn’t say anything. Just stood in front of Jana with his hand out.

  “Oh,” Arva said. “Your notebook. You can’t take them out of class. You have to give it to him. He’s a hall monitor.”

  “But I wanted to show you . . .” Jana began. She fumbled the notebook open, to show the first page to Arva, to show her how precisely the letters had been written. As Jana moved the open notebook toward Arva, the boy reached out to stop her.

  “Leave the girl alone,” a male voice said. “It’s her first day,”

  Arva froze, her mouth open to speak. Nothing came out.

  Jana looked up to see Mars Dreamcote standing behind the boy, his hand on the hall monitor’s shoulder. Mars had on an old pair of jeans without a belt. The collar of his white shirt was unbuttoned. The knot in his tie was two or three inches lower than his collar.

  Mars studied Jana’s face. His blue eyes sparked like matches being struck. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead. The side of his mouth dimpled one cheek when he smiled.

  Jana was embarrassed. She hated her clothes. She tried to think of her school uniform as a stage costume. It didn’t work. She looked stupid and she knew it.

  Mars wore a small teasing smile that Jana had thought of as a snicker when she saw him on the bus and in class. This time the smile felt different. He was trying to be nice to her. He must have seen her crying.

  She closed the notebook. Jana gave him a little smile back and leaned her head to one side. His eyes followed the movement.

  Mars reached around the boy and slipped the notebook from her hands. She barely noticed he was doing it. He gave her notebook to the hall monitor and turned the smaller boy around with both hands on his shoulders and gave him a push to get him started.

  Mars glanced at Arva, daring her to speak. Arva’s mouth closed. He turned and walked away.

  Arva let out a long breath. It sounded like a sigh being squeezed out of a balloon. “Oh no,” she said in her usual foggy rasp. “He likes you.”

  Arva had said on the bus that Mars had a smile that would melt the buttons off your blouse. Jana realized that she had felt warmer while he was standing there, when he looked at her. When he reached his hand toward her to take away the notebook, heat from his hand moved across the top of her fingers. Jana checked her buttons. They felt hard and smooth between her fingers. Maybe Mars wasn’t so dangerous after all. Or maybe he had used only his little smile and not his big button-melting one.

  Jana and Arva stood in the cafeteria line.

  Hospital gurneys lined the walls. Occasionally one of the students on the wheeled stretchers would raise a hand and wave at someone coming into the cafeteria. Many of the tables in the room were already occupied. The room was filled with voices.

  “First, second, and third period,” Jana was saying, “they all have the same students in the same seats and the one vacancy.”

  “That’s our class,” Arva told her. “There are four junior classes. Mornings are the same courses for all of us. Afternoons, the Sliders aren’t there. Fourth hour is your elective. Fifth and sixth periods you’re back with your homeroom class again.”

  “I get an elective?”

  When Arva talked rapidly, Jana had to listen closely. Some of her words were barely whispered, while others were sharp little croaks.

  “You know, art, music, journalism, gymnastics . . . whatever you want. Today you go to the library for fourth period and choose your elective.”

  Drama would be Jana’s elective, of course. Drama or speech. They had to have one or the other.

  The two girls picked u
p trays as they reached the service counter.

  “What’s your elective?” Jana asked.

  “Journalism,” Arva said. “I’m on the newspaper and yearbook staffs.” She coughed, then added in a hoarse whisper, “It’s easier for me to write than talk.”

  “Does it hurt to talk like that?”

  “Not at all,” Arva croaked. “I just can’t get enough air out and my vocal chords are jammed. Anything that happened to your body before you got here doesn’t hurt now.”

  “But you’re stuck like that? For all time?”

  “Pretty much,” Arva said. “And I guess you figured out what you do to your body once you’re here can hurt like crazy.”

  Jana nodded. Arva must have seen Jana jab her arm with a pencil.

  Two of the grayish-looking students stood behind the service counter in the cafeteria. The first food bay was filled with bottles of water. The girl behind the counter set three bottles of water on the countertop without looking at Jana. The girl had dark circles under her eyes. She wore the same school uniform blouse that Jana did, only instead of the blouse being clean and white, it was gray and wrinkled.

  “You have to take three,” Arva told her, urging Jana along. “You don’t have to drink them all right now, but they want you to take three.”

  The next station at the counter had decks of cards and stacks of board games instead of food. Arva picked up a deck of cards and placed it on her tray, then stepped away from the line and started walking toward a table. Jana quickly caught up.

  “Why are those students gray?” Jana asked.

  “Suicides,” Arva said. “They’re depressed. We call them Grays.”

  Beatrice and the girl who said “ouch” were already seated. Arva and Jana joined them. Jana tried not to stare at the yard dart sticking out of Beatrice’s head.

  “This is Jana Webster,” Arva said, introducing Jana to the ouch girl.

  “Hi. I’m Christie. Wow, you’re pretty.”

  “Me?” Whoever this girl was, she had been dead too long. Or maybe, Jana thought, you looked better when you first got here.

  “What color are your eyes?” Beatrice asked. “They’re just gorgeous. The right shade of eye shadow and I bet they’d look turquoise.”

  “Hazel,” Jana said.

  “Not quite hazel,” Christie said.

  “Smoky green,” Beatrice offered.

  Olive drab, Jana thought.

  Arva unscrewed the cap from one of her bottles of water and held it carefully to her lips. Tipping the bottle just so, she let a trickle of water run into her mouth.

  “Jade!” Christie concluded. “Your eyes are jade. Absolutely, perfectly jade. Now that that’s settled, I hear you have a boyfriend.”

  “I do,” Jana said. “Michael Haynes. Everyone calls us Webster and Haynes. He’s a senior. We’re in drama together and he’s district student council president.”

  “Sounds like he’s going places,” Christie said. “I mean, he’s not here, is he? You didn’t die together in an accident or anything like that?”

  Christie wore a delicate silver chain around her neck and a narrow dark pink ribbon tied across her forehead. The reddish ribbon was at a slant, high on one side and nearly touching her eyebrow on the other.

  “No, he’s not here.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Christie continued. “I was worried he might be one of the Stretchers. Or you know . . .” Christie let her words trail off as she watched the Sliders come into the cafeteria. Beatrice and Jana followed her gaze.

  Arva made disturbing noises in her throat and the three girls turned their attention back to their own table.

  “Did you have your purse with you when you died?” Beatrice asked Jana.

  “No,” Jana said. “I left it in the car.”

  “Too bad,” Beatrice said.

  “She just wants your makeup,” Arva told Jana. “You can use what you have with you when you die but when it’s gone, it’s gone. You’re not supposed to loan it to anyone else or give it away. Makeup here is contraband.”

  “It is not,” Beatrice said. “You’re just making that up because you don’t have any.”

  “You can get demerits for contraband,” Arva insisted. “It’s a rule.”

  “It’s an Arva rule,” Beatrice said. “Not a real rule.”

  It took Jana a moment to realize the girls were fighting. Thankfully Christie was quick to change the subject. “Were you wearing cute underwear when you died?” she asked Jana.

  Jana shook her head no, puzzled by the question. She realized the pink-red line across Christie’s forehead wasn’t a ribbon, after all. It was a scar.

  “Too bad,” Christie said. “You get to keep the clothes you died in.”

  “Have you looked at your school underwear yet?” Beatrice asked.

  “Granny panties,” Christie said.

  “Maximums,” Beatrice countered. “You can sleep a family of four in these things. And I think they put starch in them. It’s like wearing armor.”

  Christie giggled, which only encouraged Beatrice to continue. “I swear, the boys in this school don’t want to get in your panties. They just want to pull them off you. As a community service.”

  Everyone laughed. Arva even squeaked a little.

  “My mom’s a beautician,” Christie said. “Her shop was in the house. I think I can do something with the back of your hair, if you want me to try.”

  Jana raised a hand to her hair. “Thank you,” she said, wondering if it looked that bad. That’s when Jana noticed that she wasn’t hungry.

  She’d been hungry since the seventh grade, when she first realized that all famous actresses were thin. She hadn’t eaten anything but a piece of celery with peanut butter on it before going bowling. And now she wasn’t hungry even a little. If it wasn’t for the taste of strawberries in her mouth, Jana wouldn’t have thought of food all day.

  “Okay,” she said to the three juniors sitting with her, “tell me this. Why is there no food in the cafeteria?”

  “Dead people don’t eat,” Christie said.

  “But you have to have water or else you dehydrate,” Arva said. “Better drink yours now. You can take only one bottle with you when you leave. Sliders drink out of the fountains, so it’s best to consider those one hundred percent contaminated. You don’t want to get what they’ve got.”

  “If you don’t drink water, you’ll crack,” Christie added. Jana wanted to reach out and straighten the ribbon of scar that crossed Christie’s forehead. She had such pretty hair. It flowed over her shoulders and fanned out gorgeously to either side of her face. The scar line ruined the whole effect.

  “Sliders eat,” Beatrice said in a hushed tone. “When Sliders sneak off campus, they get something to snack on. They smoke too, if they want to. They can do all sorts of things we can’t.”

  Christie nodded in agreement. Then she jerked her shoulders and quietly said, “Ouch.” Jana decided Christie had hiccups that went away for a while, then came back. She must have been nervous when she died.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Arva said to Jana as if Beatrice wasn’t there. “All that stuff is just stupid rumors. Besides, she has a dart in her head. You can’t believe a thing she is saying.”

  Beatrice turned quietly and picked up the deck of cards. She opened the flap on the box and slid the cards out. Jana could tell her feelings were hurt. It showed in her eyes. Jana set down her half-full bottle of water and rubbed her arms with her hands. The cafeteria thermostat was set too low.

  “The dart’s partially my fault,” Beatrice said, placing the deck of cards in the middle of the table.

  “How could it be your fault?” Jana asked.

  The plastic yellow fins leaned in closer to Jana as Beatrice began her story. “It was summer and I wanted to be in love,” she said.

  Chapter Five

  BRAD HAD HIS OWN CAR AND A TATTOO. He was everything Beatrice wanted in a boyfriend.

  She invited him to her churc
h picnic. He said he might make it.

  Beatrice was surprised when he showed up. She was in the pool. Brad stood at the chain-link fence and watched her until she finally noticed him. Her hair was soaked from swimming. She smelled like chlorine and coconut butter.

  The picnic was at one of the park pavilions. The charcoal was lit, but they wouldn’t put on the hot dogs and burgers until everyone was out of the pool.

  Beatrice stood at the fence. It was too noisy at the pool to talk.

  Brad asked her if she wanted to go for a ride somewhere. Beatrice couldn’t leave the picnic. But they could go for a walk.

  The two of them walked through the part of the park that had swings and a slide. They walked around an open sloping area where some guys were throwing a Frisbee. Four kids were off to one side, near the woods, throwing yard darts high in the air.

  Summer was when girls could snag a boyfriend for the rest of the year. Beatrice had come close last summer to going steady, but it fell apart just before school started. This summer would be different.

  “Let’s go to the river,” Beatrice said. There was a path through the trees, she told him.

  They held hands on the walk to the river, except when they passed through a spiderweb and had to brush it away.

  It turned out there was nothing romantic about the river. It had been raining and the water was brown. It smelled like fish. Small swarms of gnats hovered nearby.

  It was now or never, Beatrice decided. If they came out of the woods without kissing, they weren’t going to. Beatrice wanted to kiss Brad hard and long enough that he would have to ask her out.

  She stopped walking. Brad turned to look at her. She took his other hand in hers and kissed him. It was an easy, simple kiss. To get things started. Then she pressed up against him and his hands went around her back. When they leaned back from each other, Beatrice realized that the left strap of her swimsuit had slipped over her shoulder.