Dead Rules

by Randy Russell

  “Do you really want that?” Mars asked. “To be a Slider?”

  “Of course I do. I want Michael. And I want me. It’s why I’m here tonight, Mars. You keep saying we’re here to learn something. That we have to find out things for ourselves. Well, for me, being a Slider is the way I’m going to learn. I know that sounds backwards to you, and that Wyatt thinks I’m a total ass clown. But being a Slider is my chance. It’s my chance to be me again.”

  Mars couldn’t argue with that. Jana was always smarter than he thought she was going to be.

  “I can’t do it without you,” she added. “If I jump alone, it will only be my spirit. If you jump holding me, I’ll have my body back. You make me real, Mars.”

  “You have to ask me,” he said quietly. “You have to ask me to hold you when you jump, or I’ll be interfering in your fate.”

  “Will you please hold me, Mars? All the way down?”

  Jana took his hand in hers.

  “Run with me,” she said. “And when we’re off the edge, put your arms around me.”

  As they ran, Jana grabbed as much bodily life from Mars as he had to give her. But falling was not flying, no matter what they say. It was much faster than that. Her body locked against Mars, Jana forced herself to breathe to keep from passing out.

  The two Sliders who made up the retrieval and recovery team loaded Jana’s broken body into the bed of the pickup, next to Mars’s.

  Wyatt didn’t feel like talking yet. He stood next to the truck and leaned over them. Mars was still unconscious, but moving his hands.

  Jana was dead still. Wyatt realized that she had managed a legitimate jump. She’d felt the slam.

  Mars had to have been holding her for her body to be such a bloody mess. A Riser couldn’t be damaged like that falling alone. They could barely touch the earth at all.

  She’d felt every wisp of the fall, from start to finish. It seemed impossible what they had done.

  The moon had risen above the roving layer of clouds and mist along the mountaintop. Wyatt watched Jana’s left hand, crossed over her chest at the end of a broken wrist and a shattered elbow. As pools of fresh blood were sucked back inside her body, beads of blood rolled from the surface of the large class ring she wore, leaving the metal of the ring glinting in moonlight. Because the ring and the clothes she wore, the cell phone in her pocket, were items she had died with, they would all be good as new soon.

  Clothes taken in trade by Sliders from the Planet stayed damaged, stained and torn, when you wore them on the Planet. Wyatt changed into a fresh shirt from clothes stored in the cab of the pickup. He selected one for Mars, who had rolled onto one side already and had drawn his legs up.

  Mars would be sitting soon. Jana would take longer to recover. First-time physical recovery was always slow. They wouldn’t know whether or not she was a Slider until then.

  Jumping, for a Riser, was an act well beyond those that merely earned demerits, Jameson had said. He’d told Mars and Wyatt that the chances were good that Jana would shift status if they could figure out a way she could jump physically, torturously in touch with earth, and not as the lighter spirit body that a Riser usually occupied on the Planet.

  If a Slider jumped holding her, there was a good chance Jana would change status at the end of the fall. But they wouldn’t know for certain until it was over. No Riser had ever jumped before.

  Mars sat up. Wyatt reached across the tailgate to give him a hand. Soon, Mars had changed shirts and was able to stand. He and Wyatt leaned on their elbows on the side of the truck bed and watched Jana.

  “Did you tell her?” Wyatt asked.

  “Part of it,” Mars confessed. “She knows her boyfriend did it. It didn’t change her mind about anything.”

  “Her heart, you mean. It didn’t change her heart.”

  “I didn’t think she really wanted to kill her boyfriend.”

  “Now you know.”

  “I thought she was going to turn back at any point,” Mars said. “Even while we fell, I thought she was going to let go.”

  “Juliet never let go,” Wyatt said. He shrugged. “It’s love, man, what can I tell you?”

  Jana moaned.

  Wyatt and Mars shot glances at each other. Still unconscious, Jana’s body felt the pains of recovery, the residual internal bruising and incomplete mending from the jump.

  Then she moved. Her arms first. One leg. The other.

  Like Mars, she rolled onto her side and curled up as blood rushed through her body, feeding oxygen to her muscles, her brain. She coughed. Jana rolled onto her back and stretched her legs. Her knees worked, her ankles, her toes. “Ow,” she said, opening her eyes. She looked at the two faces looming over her in the moonlight. The pain in her head was rapidly speeding away.

  “Why is it so warm?” she asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  MARS WAS GRIM.

  The hardest part was now. He and Jana stood outside her door. Mars had asked her to wait before going in. He had to tell her. It was going to be bad.

  “I can’t do much out there, can I?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Mars said. “You sort of have to naturalize yourself to the Planet. Concentrate on it. Focus. Practice. It will come.”

  “You’ll show me, won’t you?”

  “Knowing you, you’ll be fully interacting in no time.”

  Jana smiled. The thrill of falling, even the horrific bolt of the total slam, kept running through her memory and her body. Jana shuddered involuntarily from time to time as her bones remembered it on their own. Her skin danced with ghostly touches of physical memory. The fine hairs on her arms lifted at the thought of the long, empty night opening under her.

  It was everything Wyatt had said it would be. And more. Because of Mars, it had been more. More purely physical than she could have imagined. Still, it wasn’t Michael. It was Webster and Dreamcote, not Webster and Haynes.

  “I have something I have to tell you,” Mars was saying. “It’s something you’ve been overlooking. It’s important.”

  She looked at his blue eyes. His face was tired, but his eyes remained intense. Mars turned his gaze away from her.

  “I didn’t understand how serious you were about killing Michael, about wanting him here. I thought you would change your mind.”

  “Oh, he’s dead,” Jana said almost cheerfully. “Count on it.”

  “That’s the thing, Webster. You can’t kill him.”

  “Yes, I can. And I will.”

  “No.” He held up his hand to stop her from talking. Mars looked into her eyes. “If you kill anybody, here or on the Planet, you’re an instant vacancy. If you kill Michael, he’ll be here, but you won’t. If you kill him, it will just be murder, nothing more than that.”

  The inside of Jana’s chest felt like wasps were stinging her. She breathed fishhooks and thorns. There was nothing to say.

  Jana was tired of it all.

  She was tired of trying. She sat on her bed, back against the wall. When she lay down, the night would be over. Jana didn’t want the night to end. She wanted it all to end.

  Arva hadn’t waited up. Both halves of Pauline were dead asleep. Darcee had the best of it, Jana thought. She wasn’t waking up.

  Jana had forgotten Michael’s birthday. What else had she forgotten?

  Had they made love? No, she didn’t think so. Had they come close? She couldn’t remember. She should be able to look at the inside of her hand and see his face there.

  She was a Slider now. Jana had always been one, she supposed. Deep down, she’d always wanted Earth, the coarser touch of life. Deep down, she’d always wanted real life. Just as Christie had when she’d climbed on the back of the four-wheeler. Just as Beatrice had when she gave her bare breast to Brad. Jana had always wanted life and now that was exactly what she didn’t have. Or if she did, she had only the small portion of it that hurt.

  Michael hadn’t saved her. He hadn’t tried. He’d stood and watched her die.

/>   That was the part that hurt. Not that he had sprayed her shoe with lubricant. That didn’t matter. It was that some ghost had been there with her, doing what Michael should have done. Michael should have tried. Jana hated him for not being Romeo. She loved him with all her heart and hated him just the same. He should have killed himself over her.

  “Dammit, Michael, love me!” Jana said out loud. The words flew from her heart. They were the color of blood. “Love me, love me, love me!”

  Yes, he should have killed himself over her. That wouldn’t have worked either. He would be a Gray. But he should have anyway. And now, if Jana killed him, she wouldn’t be here at all. It was a maze with no exit. The last box that Mr. Skinner ever drew would be like that. Dead end. No way out. You just stood still inside the box and let it hurt.

  It hit her like a hammer. Michael and Jana were no longer Romeo and Juliet. Jana was both. She was Romeo because Michael wouldn’t be. She was Juliet . . . because she just was. She was both parts since she had died. It wasn’t written that way. It would never work.

  They were on the bus again.

  “I can tell,” Arva croaked in her usual feather-and-beak whisper. “You’re one of them.”

  The emotion in her voice was either grave disapproval or ardent disgust. Jana looked at her hands in the lap of her school uniform, stared at Michael’s class ring, and simply nodded in reply.

  “You smell funny,” Arva continued. “You smell like a pine tree. When we come back, your room will be on the third floor. And so will all your stuff.”

  The bus began to move. Jana swallowed the taste of strawberries and watched the houses out the window, wondering who lived there. And why. She wondered what people lived for. She hoped they lived for love. Love could be a good thing. Even if it hadn’t been for her.

  “You’re like a heater now,” Arva complained. “I don’t know why you’re sitting here.”

  “Because I still need a friend,” Jana said quietly.

  Arva started to say something in reply, then stopped herself. She and Jana finished the bus ride in silence.

  When they arrived, Jana let the bus empty without looking up. She didn’t budge. At one point the driver was gone. She could talk to Michael now, but what good was that? She couldn’t have him. It would only hurt more.

  Jana could swallow a bird, if she could find one, and it wouldn’t be as painful as seeing Michael again. Being sliced in half in a tornado didn’t hurt at all compared to being torn to little ragged pieces by love. Jana couldn’t put the pieces back together again. Her fingers, like her thoughts, were useless, awkward things.

  She was an empty house with the windows broken out. Jana stayed on the bus.

  “Look, we told him,” Nathan said.

  “We?” Michael said into his cell.

  “Me and Sherry,” Nathan told Michael. “My mom went with us, and her dad. We told the detective how it happened. It was no big deal to him. He just wants to talk to you. He knows it was an accident and all, just a prank. You know, like hazing.”

  “Hazing? Did he say that? Did he say hazing?”

  “Yeah, I think so. You know, like no one intended anything bad to happen. It wasn’t murder or anything.”

  Michael cursed. Nathan was such an idiot. Hadn’t he seen what happened to those other college fraternity guys when one of them died during a hazing? No, it wasn’t murder. It was manslaughter by reckless disregard or something like that. They went to prison.

  “Oh, and Sherry told her dad about the photos on your cell phone. Well, you know, kind of what they are. They asked the detective about them. He told them you couldn’t show the pictures to anyone without her permission, that it would be a violation of her civil rights or right to privacy or something like that. Anyway, he told Sherry she could sue you in civil court and win if you showed the pictures to even one other person.”

  “Listen to me,” Michael said slowly. “It’s your word against mine. I’m telling them you did it. They got nothing on me. You better think this through, Nathan. Tell them you were lying because Sherry’s dad was there. We’ll both say that Sherry did it. Either that or I will tell them you did.”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. “I already signed the paper that had my statement on it.”

  “Think it over and call me back. I mean it. I’ll tell them you did it and that you and Sherry have this thing and she’ll say anything you tell her to say. She’s just a sophomore. They’ll think she’s lying. And it will all go away. They don’t have anything on you or me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m getting a lawyer, you little prick.” Michael seethed. “And I’m telling him you did it. We’ll see what happens, Nathan. I’m Ivy League, you got that? You’re nothing. We’ll see what happens.”

  As she stared at her empty hands, pieces of Jana’s broken hope slowly gathered into a plan. There was one thing left to do.

  She got off the bus and walked into Dead School. She walked by the Grays who monitored the halls. She walked by the closed classroom doors. She walked by the library windows.

  No one was at the swimming pool this hour. She found the switches. She listened to the pumps come on. She turned on the underwater lights. Jana wanted to see where she was going. She left the overhead lights turned off. The water looked prettier that way. It looked pretty and deep.

  There was nothing to think about. There was nothing left to consider.

  She took off her clothes. Her body felt different than when she’d been a Riser. She was warm now, for one thing. Her body also felt a little heavier. Jana could feel the weight of her skin, her muscles, her blood. Gravity wanted a piece of her.

  Considering carefully what she was about to do, Jana left Michael’s class ring on her left hand instead of nesting it safely inside one of her shoes. She was taking what she had left of Michael with her. As she walked to the edge of the pool, the Virgins appeared. One after another, they showed up out of nowhere and formed a line above the pool. In front of her. Facing her.

  Others appeared behind the first line of Virgins until they were four or five deep. There were dozens of them in their white translucent gowns and their white translucent skin. The Virgins reflected the light from under the water. Flashes of iridescent lavender and silver danced across their gowns and faces.

  Jana pushed her toes over the edge of the pool and the Virgins came closer, as if they could stand on water. Jana could see the looks in their eyes, the pale colors of their eyes and hair. The Virgins held out one arm each and waved their hands, left to right, in front of them. They sang a harmony of one word. It was dull and flat and low.

  The word was No.

  Jana closed her eyes and jumped in.

  Just under the surface of the water, she leaned back and let out all her air. Her eyes open, she could see the Virgins hovering above her.

  She let herself sink. She turned her body over and pulled herself through the water with her arms, following the current at the bottom of the pool until she found the drain. As she reached for it, the suction grabbed her hand and jerked it down until Michael’s ring was against the grate covering the drain. Jana could not lift a single finger from the drain. It held her hand like a jealous lover and would not let go.

  A Slider came into class from across the hall and walked to Wyatt’s desk at the back of the room.

  “She’s not there,” he said. “She got off the bus.”

  “When?” Mars asked. He stood up from his seat behind Wyatt.

  “Another guy saw her. He said she walked into the school a few minutes ago, but she’s not in class.”

  Mars pushed the Slider aside as he rushed toward the classroom door. Wyatt knocked over his desk getting out of it to follow as quickly as he could. He’d nearly caught up to Mars when Mars jerked open the library doors and shouted at Jameson to ask if Jana was there.

  She wasn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  TIME WAS SHORT.

  “Turn off the pumps!”
Mars yelled to Wyatt as the two of them burst into the room.

  Mars didn’t have time to take off his shoes. He ran toward the pool, leaped as soon as he could, as far as he could, and was in the water like a knife.

  Wyatt hit the switches, swung his bad leg around, and cursed when his weight caught it wrong. Despite the pain, he kept from falling over and kept from slowing down. His bad arm wouldn’t allow him to swim well, but he could try.

  Mars surfaced with Jana supine and limp in his arms. She was more buoyant than he’d realized. She’d always said so.

  “Stay there!” he shouted to Wyatt just in time. Mars managed to bring her body to the edge of the pool, pausing twice to blow air into her gaping mouth. Her mouth tasted like strawberries, but he barely noticed.

  Jana’s body came up the ladder between the two Sliders, one pulling from above and one pushing from below. Wyatt clutched her body to him as if she were standing.

  “Use your arm,” Mars was shouting as he clambered out of the pool. “Grip her diaphragm in your arm and jerk! Hard!”

  Wyatt managed it. Water poured from Jana’s mouth as Wyatt lost footing and fell backwards with Jana on top of him.

  Mars’s arms ached and he could barely pull himself from the pool. But soon he was over her on his knees, pulling her chin up in his hand, opening her mouth. Jana’s eyes fluttered and she breathed out a short, hard burst of air. Mars touched her chest and felt it fill with a short gasp of air.

  She breathed in on her own. Jana still existed.

  • • •

  They dressed her in the locker room.

  Jana did nothing to help. She sat on the floor as if drugged from surgery.

  Mars took off his clothes and wrapped himself in towels. He sat on the bench and kept one towel draped over his head. Wyatt remained standing. His clothes drip-dried where Jana had been against him, on top of him. He’d taken the cell phone from her skirt and now carried it in the back pocket of his jeans.