Dead Rules

by Randy Russell

  “Your rule or theirs?” Jana asked.

  Mars stopped his descent. “Mine,” he said. “And theirs. If you steal something, it won’t go through the fence.”

  They were going downstairs again.

  “But you and Wyatt make money finding what students want and bringing it to them.”

  “Money?” Mars said. “What’s money here, Webster?”

  He stopped on the landing between floors and turned to look at her. Jana was on the last stair. She and Mars were the same height now. His blue eyes held hers.

  Jana was slightly unnerved. There was heat in his eyes and she’d never been this close to them before. His face was closer to hers now than when they’d been in the pool together. Jana feared he could feel her breath when she spoke.

  “So you just give them contraband for the heck of it?”

  “No, Jana, I don’t.”

  He used her first name. He felt the closeness too, she thought.

  “I’m not stupid,” he continued. “I know the difference between what people want and what people need. You said I bring them things they want. It’s not like that. They want everything, Webster. I bring them things they need.”

  “People need makeup?”

  “Yes. Most girls do, if you haven’t noticed. They need it to feel normal. You said it yourself when you were sitting on the lawn after your funeral. You said you just wanted to be normal. And almost everyone’s a little blue. Makeup helps them take the edge off being dead.”

  First impressions can be so wrong, Jana thought. And so could Arva.

  Jana hadn’t given Mars enough credit. As her eyes moved back and forth, watching each of his watch her, she wondered again how he had died. She wondered what bad thing he had been doing at the time of his death to have become a Slider.

  “That’s your cure for cancer, then, Dr. Dreamcote.” Jana tried to smile, but her mouth opened only slightly instead. She drew in a shallow breath of air. “You take the edge off being dead.” Her voice was soft and low.

  Before he could turn away from her, Jana placed her hand on his shoulder and brought her face to his. She kissed him. It was meant to be a little thank-you to Mars for liking her, for putting up with all her questions, for helping her. And for helping others.

  Mars blushed. It was a small kiss with her lips closed. She’d taken it away almost as soon as either one of them had felt it. It was just a quick kiss, but it melted her lips. Jana’s heart raced. Her toes tingled.

  In a world without Michael, Mars was a possibility. Jana wasn’t ready to go to that world yet. It would mean giving up on Michael. It would mean giving up on endless love.

  Mars was away before either of them could say anything.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he led her outside. The night was cool. Jana was too excited to notice. There was a bench beside the door. A Gray stood next to it. Mars and Jana walked quickly through the squares of yellow light that fell from the dorm windows across the concrete sidewalk at their feet.

  Wyatt waited around the corner of the building.

  “Okay,” Mars said to Jana. “Watch us leave. There’s a hole in the chain-link fence back this way. Watch where we go, and when it’s time, you’ll come out the same way. Go back to the bench out front and wait. We’ll be in a car, that way.” Mars pointed. “I’ll blink the headlights.”

  “Can a Riser do that? Just go through a hole in the fence?” Jana asked.

  “Until you’re off campus, you have a body, Webster. The front gate is locked. Unless you want to climb over the fence . . .”

  “But can a Riser do that? Just walk away and be on the Planet?”

  Mars stared at her, then looked at Wyatt.

  “We’ll see,” Wyatt answered for him.

  “It’s been done,” Mars said.

  “We think it has, anyway,” Wyatt added.

  “Don’t get up,” Jana said.

  The Gray was sitting on the bench when she got back. She wondered if he would be there all night. She sat down next to him. At night, he was almost invisible. A shadow.

  Jana stared at her clunky shoes. She had time to kill. She thought about Sherry Simmons. Her father was a locksmith. Jana remembered seeing the can of silicone spray in Sherry’s purse when they had been in the restroom together. The sophomore had lied to Jana and told her it was pepper spray. Wasn’t it just a joke, something to make Jana look stupid when she started to bowl and couldn’t stand up?

  Jana thought about the messages Mars had written in her notebooks. She wondered whether it was murder when someone did something that kills you when they didn’t think it would.

  It was over now. A prank gone wrong. Jana had other things to think about. Brave things. Bold things.

  Once she was off campus, Jana could use her phone. With Mars’s help, she could talk to Michael. Tell him to be somewhere in the next day or two where she could kill him quickly. Webster and Haynes were destined to be together again. And it had to be soon. As soon as she became a Slider.

  Jana stared into the darkness. She fought silently to remember Michael’s voice. It wasn’t there.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the Gray without looking at him. They seemed to prefer it.

  “Barry,” he said.

  “Cool name,” Jana lied to be nice. “There are actors named Barry, you know. Barry Bostwick, for one. He was in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My name is Jana Webster. I’m an actor. That’s why I remember old movies when no one else does.” But she couldn’t remember Michael’s voice.

  The Gray kept his chin on his chest.

  “Will you try to stop me when I leave?” Jana asked.

  “No,” he replied softly. “But I’ll tell. I have to.” His voice sounded like leaves.

  “That’s okay. I need demerits. Loads of them and in a hurry too.”

  Jana wished someone knew how many demerits it took for a Riser to become a Slider. If she had to do five hundred things against the rules, she would do them all tonight if she could. Since she had earned only three demerits for skinny-dipping, she knew she needed to do something much more extreme.

  “Do you know what jumping is?” Jana asked. She looked at him this time.

  Barry shook his head no.

  “Me neither.” She sighed. “But I’m going to do it tonight if I can. Maybe six or seven times.”

  The Gray got up and slowly walked away.

  While she waited, Jana reconsidered Mr. Skinner’s mazes.

  The first five mazes conditioned you to turn left. Then you had to turn right to move correctly into the final maze. You were reluctant to do it and it messed you up. You had to turn the wrong way to go the right way.

  Life had conditioned Jana, she realized. And everything life had conditioned her to do didn’t necessarily work any longer. She had to turn the other way. Now that she was dead, life was different. Jana was in the sixth maze. Here, the bad boy needed to save a life. The good girl was going to take one.

  About the time her teeth were starting to chatter, Jana saw the headlights blink on and off. And on and off again. She jumped up and nearly ran around the corner of the building, crossed the grass to the back fence, and found the hole in the chain-link. The night seemed darker here at the edge of the Planet. The trees rising behind the dorm emerged from impenetrable black shadows.

  She thought of the Rogues as shadows in the night, shadows at the base of the trees, shadows with eyeballs and teeth. The thoughts chased her all the way to the car. Mars was in the driver’s seat. Jana rushed to the passenger side. The window was down. She reached for the door handle, but her hand wouldn’t work it.

  “Just get in,” Mars said. He patted the empty passenger seat. Mars sat with a bottle of flavored pop between his legs. It was from the six-pack they’d hidden in the weeds just off campus.

  Jana stepped through the closed car door and sat in the seat. She was warm again.

  “I watched you walk here,” Mars said. “What you do naturally still applies. You ju
st can’t move anything with your hands. Just like when you left the funeral. Your feet touch the ground and you can walk. You can sit on things. You can touch things when you don’t think about it. Eventually you’ll be able to do more.”

  “When I’m like you,” Jana said.

  Wyatt sat sideways in the backseat, chewing a piece of gum. He even smacked the halves of his lips that would smack. Jana ignored him. Wyatt returned the favor.

  “Hold my hand, Mars. I want to call Michael,” Jana said. She leaned back and to one side to remove her cell from her pants pocket.

  “Not yet,” he told her. “We have to get away from here.” The car moved along the street.

  “Why? Are they watching us?”

  Wyatt snickered in the backseat. “Someone might recognize the car,” he said.

  “Drive with one hand,” Jana said. “Hold mine with the other.”

  “Can’t, Webster. I have to focus on one thing at a time or we’ll go off the road.”

  They’d found the car just a few blocks away. When Mars concentrated, he could start and turn the engine off without a key by partially materializing and by keeping part of himself a ghost. His fingers slipped through the steering column. Once there, his touch naturalized just enough to push the wires together until the engine started. Then he took his hand away and focused on gripping the wheel and pressing his foot on the gas and brake pedals.

  Jana held her cell phone and stared at it.

  “Wyatt,” she said loudly. “Give me your hand.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  JANA SQUEEZED WYATT’S HAND.

  The heat from pressing her palm against his was similar to holding hands with Mars. It moved through Jana in a wave, like drinking hot chocolate.

  But it was different too. Jana’s heart didn’t race. Her toes didn’t tingle. Wyatt was warm like an electric blanket. Mars was warm like the real thing. His was the heat of a large breathing animal about to leap.

  Jana flipped open her cell phone and turned it on with her thumb. Soon Michael was staring at her from the lighted viewing screen. She punched Send.

  He answered. A new warmth came to Jana’s neck and face.

  “Michael,” she nearly sang. “It’s me. Michael . . .”

  “Who are you?” he said. He could hear her. Jana flushed with excitement and relief.

  He disconnected.

  She squeezed Wyatt’s hand as hard as she could. Jana’s other hand was shaking when she pushed Send again. Six rings and it switched to voice mail.

  She pushed Send again. Voice mail. She pushed Send again. Voice mail. Then dead silence.

  Jana slumped. She let go of Wyatt’s hand. Her lips trembled.

  “He won’t answer,” she said. The back of her throat clinched. Tears burned her eyes.

  “He’s scared,” Mars told her.

  “So!”

  “We’ll go see him tonight. I promise. We’ll find him for you.”

  Jana tried to stop crying.

  “Not right now, okay? We have to do something first.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you want to do, Webster. I don’t think you should become a Slider to get it done.”

  “I think I should.” She sniffed. “I want to be a Slider. Tonight. I want to jump. Will you show me how?”

  Wyatt swallowed his gum.

  Michael didn’t want to touch the thing. He stared at his cell phone for the longest time.

  “Who was that?” Sherry asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Michael said. “I’m calling Nathan. Hey, get dressed. Let’s go get a pizza or something.”

  Jana recognized the road.

  They were driving into the mountains. A fine mist appeared on the windshield as the elevation increased.

  “What do you do when you jump?” she asked.

  Mars didn’t answer.

  “We jump,” Wyatt eventually said from the backseat.

  “I know it’s not like jumping jacks in third-grade gym,” Jana said. “And I’m guessing it has nothing to do with hurdles. Do you jump over things? Do you jump on the backs of cars and go for rides? Do you jump on girls?”

  “No,” Wyatt snarled. “We jump off things. You can’t feel things on the Planet like we do. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Bridges, waterfalls, cliffs,” Wyatt recited for her. “You name it, we jump off it. As long as it’s high enough.”

  Jana thought he was joking.

  “It’s like flying,” Mars told her. He turned on the windshield wipers.

  “Sure,” Wyatt said, “just like flying. Until you land.”

  They didn’t jump off cliffs, Jana decided. Or bridges or waterfalls. That would be suicide.

  Mars turned on to a winding, climbing two-lane road. “Where’s the ridge turnoff?” he asked.

  “Two and a half miles on the right. Watch the odometer,” Wyatt said. “There’s a sign, but she said you wouldn’t see it.”

  They’d risen above the fog. Jana could see glimpses of stars between the trees. They looked like shooting stars, flashing on then disappearing as the mountain trees slid by the window. Every-one came to Asheville to see the mountains. Jana didn’t like them much. There were snakes. And spiders.

  “Where are we going?” she finally asked.

  “To a meet and greet,” Wyatt said. “With witches.”

  Mars didn’t talk much while he was driving, Jana noticed. He almost never looked at her.

  “No way,” Jana said.

  “It’s for Christie,” Wyatt said. “You know, ‘Ouch, ouch’? These witches, they’re picking on her. We’re going to ask them to stop.”

  “Witches, real witches?”

  “Worse, actually,” Wyatt said. “Conjure men.”

  He told her all about it. Up in the high hills, there were male witches. Most were called cunning men. Cunning men were healers and herbalists, like granny women but men. They could remove the heat, and sometimes the scar, of a burn by rubbing it with their hands. Cunning men could cure a sore throat by blowing in your mouth. They could make chickens lay eggs and cows give milk. They helped you find lost things.

  “Do they make potions?” Jana said.

  “Ointments mostly,” Wyatt said. “There are no doctors up here. People don’t have money, anyway, or health insurance. They go to cunning men for everything. They can find wild honey by following a bee, and tell you where to dig your well to hit water.”

  “What are they doing to Christie?” Jana asked.

  Mars found the turnoff to the ridge road. It was gravel. And it was a climb. He switched the headlights to bright. They seemed to point up at the sky as often as they did the winding road in front of them.

  “They aren’t,” Wyatt said. “Cunning men are good witches. But the ones we’re going to see tonight, these are conjure men.”

  “They’re evil,” Mars said, as if it was a normal thing to call someone.

  Conjure men practice the black arts, they told Jana. They were the witches that put curses on people. They could make something catch fire. Or make a fire go out. People were deathly afraid of them.

  “Sometimes people need them for one thing or another,” Wyatt said. “Christie’s parents went to them when she died.” Wyatt pulled himself forward with his hand on the front seat. “For the right price, Webster, conjure men resurrect the dead.”

  “At least they try,” Mars said without looking at Jana. He was leaning over the steering wheel, watching the road. It turned every which way now.

  Wyatt laughed. He dropped back sideways in the seat.

  “Really?” Jana asked. “Can they do that?”

  “No,” Mars told her.

  “Well, if they could . . .”

  “They can’t,” Wyatt said. “They’re not very good at resurrection. But they try. Right now, they’re bringing tiny little bits of Christie back to life for just a second or so when the
y cast their spells. She said it’s like being pinched in different places or pricked with a pin. And for some reason, the conjure men are keeping at it.”

  “What are we going to do?” Jana wanted to know. “Ask them to stop it?”

  “They want resurrection. I’m going to give them a sample of the real thing. They ain’t seen nothing till they get a look at me. They might stop conjuring altogether.”

  “I would,” Mars said.

  Jana smiled despite her fear of visiting conjure men. They probably had a house full of snakes and spiders.

  “How did Christie die, anyway?” she asked.

  “You don’t tell that on other people,” Mars said.

  “Your death is your last real story,” Wyatt added. “It’s the one thing everybody gets to tell for themselves.”

  She hadn’t liked Wyatt in the beginning. He was always mean and snarly to Jana. That thing he did in the library didn’t help any. Now, she realized, there was another way of looking at him. Wyatt had held her hand when she told him to. And he was the one who had talked to Christie in the hall. This errand belonged to Wyatt, not to Mars.

  Mars pulled over to the side of the road and parked.

  He and Wyatt got out of the car. Mars stood by Jana’s window.

  “We walk from here,” he said.

  “Okay,” Jana said.

  “Wait here.”

  “No way!” Jana didn’t want to be alone.

  “Please?”

  “They won’t see me anyway.”

  “They’re conjure men, Webster. They’ll see all three of us.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. “And that’s all there is to it.” Jana got out of the car with her door still closed. The Sliders had no choice.

  Wyatt was already on his way. It didn’t take Mars and Jana long to catch up.

  “What are you going to do when we get there?”

  “Shhh,” Mars said. “They’ll hear you.”

  “Really?” Jana liked the idea that somebody on the Planet could hear her, even if it was nasty old conjure men.

  There was a light on.

  “Keep her here,” Wyatt said. “I’ll go in alone.”

  Mars and Jana waited at the picket gate in front of the little house in the woods. A dog howled and wouldn’t stop. The air smelled like pines. Jana looked up at the stars. There were a million of them.