Dead Rules

by Randy Russell

  The Sliders walked down the hallway. Jana followed. Mars’s thick dark hair was shaggy in back. His jeans fit too tightly and were practically worn through at the seat. There was a hole in his rear pocket and a corner of his wallet peeked out.

  Guys had an advantage over girls when they died, if they died with their pants on. They got to bring their wallets with them. Photos, IDs, driver licenses, and all sorts of things. It was like a memory book for them. She couldn’t even remember the name of her town.

  At the end of the hall, Mars pushed open a metal door under an Exit sign in red letters. The tall Slider stepped outside.

  Mars stood back a half step and held the door open for Jana. He started to smile, then dropped his eyes. She slipped by him, feeling an aura of warmth. Heat radiated from the Sliders, Jana was learning. Especially from Mars.

  They stood under a dull yellow light mounted on the brick wall above the door. Jana’s feet were cold. They were on a second-story fire-escape balcony. The stairs that led to the railed landing above had been taken away. Maybe third-floor dead kids didn’t catch on fire, Jana thought.

  The breeze was chilly. Jana got goose bumps.

  “Three things,” Mars said without looking at Jana. “First, this is Wyatt.”

  The tall, disfigured Slider now had a name.

  Mars kept talking. “Wyatt’s here to apologize, aren’t you, Wyatt?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry about the thing in the library. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  In the dying sunlight, Jana could see how his face might have looked before half of it was scraped away. She felt sorry for him.

  “Show her your arm,” Mars directed his companion.

  Wyatt held out his forearm toward Jana, the one he had sliced open in the library while sitting next to her. There was a red mark where the blade had pressed against his flesh, but no wound from a cut.

  “It’s okay,” Jana said. She put her weight on one foot, then the other, feeling the cold iron grate through her socks. She worked her toes to keep them warm.

  “Did you tell anyone?” Mars asked.

  Jana shook her head.

  Mars nodded to Wyatt and the tall Slider hoisted his good leg onto the railing. Teetering on his bad leg, Wyatt reached high over his head until he grabbed the bottom rail of the third-floor balcony. He pulled himself up.

  She watched his legs disappear above her head. The Sliders were obviously practiced at moving between the floors of the dorm this way. He was gone in seconds.

  “I have a question for you,” Jana said now that she and Mars were alone. “Did you write those messages in my class notebooks?”

  She stepped toward him as she spoke. The taste of strawberries grew stronger in her mouth.

  “What messages?” Mars seemed confused.

  Jana decided not to give away too much information. “Just messages,” she said. “Did you write them?”

  “Ask Henry. He writes notes all the time, Webster.”

  Clever, Jana thought. Mars had dodged her question.

  She waited. She breathed in slowly. It was an actor’s trick, a purposeful pause intended to make Mars speak. As she breathed, her head swam with the smell of ripe strawberries. Her mouth tasted like sugar.

  “Do me a favor,” Mars finally said. He stood between the railing and Jana.

  Mars was deadly handsome this near. His eyebrows were perfect dark arches over blue eyes. His eyelashes were dramatically dark and swept down, then back up like delicate wings. Just for a second, Jana wished she was as beautiful as her mother.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Don’t tell anyone what Wyatt did. He could get into trouble. Real trouble.”

  So could I, Jana thought, if Mars moved one inch closer. She was cold on the iron fire escape. Mars was warm. His breath smelled of mint. When he smiled, his face created that disarming dimple near the edge of his mouth.

  “I won’t tell a soul,” she promised. “If . . .” Jana raised her eyebrows and held them there.

  “If what?”

  “If you help me get my cell phone to work.”

  “There’s no signal here or on campus,” he said. “Your battery goes dead trying to find one.”

  “The roof?”

  “Won’t work,” Mars said.

  “But there is a way, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have a deal,” Jana said, smiling brightly.

  “I guess we do. When you’re ready, Webster, I’ll show you how. It’s risky.”

  “I’m ready.” Jana was filled with new hope. She could call Michael. She could tell him everything. They’d find a way to be together.

  Mars considered it, then shook his head no.

  “Not now,” he said. “It doesn’t work the way you think. It doesn’t work the same way it used to. Nothing does here. Give me a day, okay? I’ll fill you in on everything, but we can’t stay here long. The Grays walk a circle around the dorm every so often.”

  “Okay.” Jana gave in.

  “The Grays are snitches,” he added quickly. “Never tell a Gray anything you don’t want the school to know, Webster. And be careful when you talk to other students in front of them. They have no choice. They tell.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t tell Arva either. She’s scared of everything. She’ll rat you out too. Not on your first day or anything. But later, once you’ve been here awhile.”

  Jana listened intently. Mars spoke with such quiet urgency that she believed everything he told her. She moved closer to him as he spoke. With every inch, the warmth increased.

  “Risers who rat are worse than Grays,” Mars said. “Grays have no will. Risers make a choice to do you in. They think it keeps them safe.”

  Mars leaned back against the balcony railing. Jana felt his warmth being pulled away and was suddenly very, very cold. He crossed his arms over his chest. His upper arms bulged under his shirt.

  He looked powerful and fit, but not bulky like bodybuilders. His body reminded her of boys on the swim team at her old school. Jana looked him over from top to bottom without being obvious about it. His death had left no telling mark or sign that she could see.

  Standing this close to Mars, Jana’s usually keen sense of self disappeared. It was a new feeling for Jana. Michael never made her feel this way.

  When she looked into Michael’s eyes, she saw herself. Jana saw herself as someone stronger. Someone bigger. When she looked at Mars, Jana got lost in his eyes. His gaze drew her inside and held her captive. Jana wanted to know what he was thinking. She was seemingly without a thought of her own.

  “The second thing,” Mars said. “I wanted to ask where you’re from. I think we’re from the same area but not the same school.”

  “I don’t know,” Jana confessed. “I’ve been trying to think of it all day.”

  “Charlotte? Knoxville?”

  “Is that where we are?”

  “In between,” he said. “We’re at the edge of Asheville, in the mountains. Black Mountain is east. Knoxville is west. And Charlotte’s south. You should be from somewhere around here.”

  “I am,” Jana said, scrunching her mouth. “I just can’t think of it.” Her toes were too cold for her to think.

  “It happens. You forget things here. There’s no pattern to it. Some things just disappear. Big things, little things. One thing you’ll remember forever is your own death. That never goes.”

  “That’s not so wonderful,” Jana said.

  “Tell me about it. Some kids . . . well, they don’t want to remember.”

  “What else?” Jana didn’t want to forget anything.

  “You’ll remember people your own age best and people you’ve known a long time, like your family. And things you paid a lot of attention to over the years, hobbies and stuff. But other things will just disappear. Over time, a lot of it is gone if you don’t work at remembering.”

  Not Michael, she decided. Jana wouldn’t fo
rget Michael. Not for a minute. He was a part of her. “Webster and Haynes,” Jana said out loud to keep it fresh, to keep the two of them alive in her heart.

  “Webster and Haynes,” Mars said. “What’s that, a law firm?”

  “My boyfriend,” Jana stammered. She was too cold to talk. How could she tell him everything about Michael when she was going to freeze to death any minute now?

  “Oh yeah, I saw his ring,” Mars said absently. “Hey, wait. His ring, it has your school on it.”

  Jana lifted her hand close to her face to see the ring better in the dim light. It was the hand she’d been using to hold the waist of her plaid school skirt closed. The ring had a cat’s face in the middle. You could see it under the blue stone. The initials CHS were molded into one side and Michael’s graduation year in the other.

  “Apparently I am from CHS and our mascot is either a tiger or a lion, or a fat man with whiskers.”

  Mars laughed. “Central High School,” he said. “And you’re the Panthers. One of your football players is in homeroom. He’s a Stretcher. There are a couple others you’ll recognize when you run across them.”

  “Oh.” Jana meant to smile. But when she moved her mouth, her teeth chattered instead.

  Mars moved closer. Jana felt his warmth like a blanket softly pressed against her. “Your home-town is Asheville, Arden Lake, or Grove Park,” he said.

  Jana made a face. Asheville sounded right. But so did Arden Lake. She couldn’t remember.

  “I’m cold,” she finally blurted out. “I can’t think. I’m too cold.”

  Mars laughed again, but it was a smaller laugh. It stayed close between them like a secret shared. Even his laughter felt warm.

  “It’s you,” he said. “Here, give me your hand.” Mars held out his hand to Jana. She placed hers inside his. He covered it with his other hand.

  “Ah, nice,” Jana said in spite of herself. Her hand warmed instantly. The warmth radiated up her arm to her shoulders and neck. She flushed with heat. If he put his arm around her, she thought, if she rested her face on his chest, she would be warmed to her toes.

  “Didn’t Davis tell you?” Mars asked. “Risers are cold. Something happens to your body when you come here from the Planet. You’re two or three degrees colder, Jana. You’ll adjust.”

  There was a natural kindness in his voice as he spoke. She hadn’t expected it. And he had used her first name for the first time.

  “Do I feel cold to you?” Jana asked. She didn’t like the idea that she was cold to touch. The thought made her seem more dead than ever.

  “Absolutely frigid.” Mars grinned. He took his hands back and let hers fall to her side. “Really, not much at all. You’ll get used to it. The first few days, everything is sort of heightened, magnified. I doubt Davis even notices anymore.”

  Jana wondered if Michael would think she felt cold.

  “I better go now,” Mars said. He hoisted himself onto the railing.

  “What was the third thing?” Jana asked quickly. “You said three things. One was Wyatt’s knife trick. The other was you wanted to know my hometown.”

  “Tomorrow, you’re going to a funeral.”

  “I am?” Jana was trying to see his face as he raised his arms over his head and teetered briefly on the railing before catching his balance.

  “Take me with you,” he said. “You get to take someone.”

  She watched his faded jeans disappear over her head.

  “It doesn’t have to be your roommate,” Mars continued. “I’ll help you talk to your boyfriend. I’ll help you understand everything . . . and . . .”

  He had pulled himself above the top of the second-floor fire-escape balcony and was making his way over the railing to the third floor.

  “And?” Jana called after him.

  “And put your skirt back on,” Mars called down to her.

  Chapter Nine

  JANA SHIVERED.

  Her skirt was a puddle of plaid encircling her feet.

  Sometime during the conversation, she had let go of her unbuttoned school skirt and it had dropped to her ankles. Jana had been talking to the hunkiest Slider in school while standing in her school blouse, underwear, and socks. And nothing else. Without even noticing.

  This balcony scene wasn’t anything like Romeo and Juliet’s.

  Jana jerked her skirt back into place, clamped the waist closed in her fist, and rushed inside the dorm. Mars hadn’t said a thing when her skirt fell. Whenever that was. Jana couldn’t decide if Mars was the nicest guy she’d ever met. Or truly evil.

  She knew, for one thing, that Wyatt’s cutting himself wasn’t just a trick. It was real blood that pumped from his sliced-open flesh. It looked like blood and smelled like blood.

  “This is from Mars,” Wyatt had said.

  There was more to being a Slider than she understood just yet. And there was more to Mars than just being a Slider. He was warmer than the others. She was sure of it.

  Beatrice and Christie were in her dorm room when Jana returned.

  They sat on Arva’s bed. Both girls wore loose cotton pajamas with small stenciled designs in light red and light blue colors. Arva stood by her desk in her cut-down prom dress.

  “So?” Beatrice finally said.

  She stared at Jana who looked back, puzzled.

  “What happened?” Christie asked. “Did he kiss you? Did you kiss him?”

  “No,” Jana said. “It wasn’t a date or anything.”

  “Close enough,” Beatrice said.

  “Too close,” Arva chimed in, disapproving as always. She brought Jana a bottled water from an open case tucked under the computer table.

  “Well, he did hold my hand,” Jana confessed, accepting the water from Arva. “And it was very, very warm.”

  “Then what?” Christie wanted to know every last detail.

  “Then my skirt fell off.”

  “It’s too early to tell her anything,” Mars said. “She’s in love with this guy. She wouldn’t believe a thing we said about him.”

  “You make everything too complicated,” Wyatt said. “You think too much.”

  “I’m looking for clarity, Wyatt.”

  “Clarity?” Wyatt laughed. “Life’s a mess. Why should death be any different? We could have shown her everything tonight. We have to do the things we have to do. And not think about it so much.”

  “There’s a path here, Wyatt. A road. It’s step by step. You just can’t skip into the middle of everything or you’ll get lost.”

  The Sliders sat on the floor of their room, their backs against the wall. Sliders almost never went to sleep. Their rooms were smaller than the four-person suites on the second floor.

  “Screw the metaphors,” Wyatt said. “Let’s jump. For real.”

  “Hey, I’ll still jump,” Mars protested. “When it’s time, you know I’ll jump. But sometimes it makes sense to look before you leap. She’s smart, Wyatt. She’s strong.”

  “Well, she can handle it, then.”

  “We’re not sure Risers can go off campus on their own.”

  “Sure they can,” Wyatt said. “And so can we. But we aren’t going to if you’re going to sit here all night. It’s time to get out there if we’re going to jump.”

  “Give me a minute, will you? I’ve got things to think about. You cutting your arm open didn’t help matters any. What if she had flipped out and screamed for help? The library Grays would have caught you. And you’d have, what, two hours before the school had you in front of the Regents Council? The Virgins had already been sent to the room to warn you once.”

  “Those old farts like me, Mars. I got the regents beat.”

  “You have them beat until you don’t. You come out on the bottom one time, Wyatt, and it’s for good. It’s instant.”

  “Instant toast,” Wyatt said. “I kind of like that.”

  “No reason to get expelled. If you’re going to be a vacancy, you may as well walk out. At least you’ll have a few days that w
ay.”

  “All right, already. Got it.”

  “Well, get this too. You can’t tell any of the Risers too much their first day. And you can’t show them either. They freak, then they put on their Goody Two-shoes the school gives them and never look up again. You can lose them the first day.”

  “She wasn’t going to scream,” Wyatt argued. “Besides, you said she was sent here for you or something like that. I was just getting her introduced, you know?”

  “I didn’t expect her to be in love with that guy. Not that in love. It was in her eyes when she said his name. It’s deep. It complicates everything. And you were trying to scare her pants off for the hell of it. You weren’t doing me any favors, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m sorry, all right?”

  Mars brushed away the apology as soon as it was offered. “I saw her die,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “You saw her too. On the Planet.”

  “Okay, I saw her.”

  “She walked right through me, Wyatt.”

  “And then she died. So what?”

  Jana had walked through Mars when she picked up her shoes at the counter. He was loitering as a ghost and he should have been more careful. But it wasn’t just that she had walked through him. People on the Planet did that all the time. This girl had walked through him and softly said, “Oh.” She had felt him. In some manner or another, they had touched.

  “That means something,” Mars said.

  “It means she was going bowling, man. That’s all. And you were the one who wanted to flip that place.”

  “Exactly,” Mars agreed. “Don’t you see? I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to save her life.”

  “No, you were supposed to be here tucked in bed with your teddy bear.”

  “I watched her die. I felt her die, Wyatt. And I was watching her when she fell. She had a wild, surprised look in her eyes.”

  “Watching her?” Wyatt asked. “Hell, you were on top of her the second she fell.”

  “I was trying to help,” Mars said. “That’s the ticket, Wyatt. You’ve got to help somebody.”