Sydney Mackenzie Knocks 'Em Dead

by Cindy Callaghan

  “Good morning,” said the groundskeeper. He was younger than Joyce and Cork. He wore well-worn mid-calf Doc Martens, tight black jeans, a turtleneck wrapped in a checkerboard scarf, and a long black cloak. You don’t see many cloaks around Hollywood. As unusual as that was, the style worked for him.

  He reached out to shake, but his hand was palm down, almost like he wanted me to kiss it, which I didn’t. His hand was cool and felt like a soggy noodle. “I’m Elliott, landscape designer.”

  “I’m Sydney, daughter of owner.” I was close enough to suspect that he might’ve been wearing a splash of makeup—his thin lips were extra red, and his eyes stood out like they were enhanced with liner. If he was going for the vampire look, he was doing a good job.

  He said, “Your dad told me you have plans this morning, but when you get back, I’m supposed to show you around because you’re going to have a few jobs around here.”

  I said, “That sounds greeaat.”

  “Wait,” Elliott said, “you don’t sound like you mean that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “It’s just that this is all a little new to me.”

  “I guess it’s pretty different from LA.” Then he said, “I hear your mom is taking you over to the school. It’ll be a good opportunity to meet the other kids. Just tell them you live here and they’ll love you.”

  Sure they will.

  * chapter six *

  CASTING CALL

  ON THE WAY TO BUTTERMILK River Cove Middle School, I cranked the heat in the Jeep, slicked gloss on my lips, and smoothed my hair that I’d flat-ironed.

  “Roz, I think we’re in the wrong place,” I said when she stopped at the elementary school.

  She double-checked the address and it was right.

  In the office, Dr. Perkel, the principal, explained, “We consolidated and closed the middle school building.”

  “So this school goes from kindergarten to eighth grade?” I asked.

  “That’s right. It’s economical.”

  I was going to be in the same school as the Dumb-Os. Great.

  “My, how convenient,” Roz said.

  “I don’t want to forget to tell you about our time capsule project. Everyone will add something, and we’ll open it in twenty-five years. It’s a big deal.”

  “Exciting.” Roz tried to sound excited.

  “And the cell phone policy. One word: none.”

  Roz said, “That won’t be a problem, right, Syd?”

  “None.” . . . Because I didn’t have a phone.

  Then Dr. Perkel called a girl named Johanna Stevens to give me a tour. Meanwhile, Roz hung out in the office to sign papers.

  While I waited for Johanna, I looked into the hallway to check out the kids. They were all different ages. I saw a lot of no-brand jeans, snow boots, bad hair, and pale skin.

  Johanna came into the office. “So, you’re the new girl?” She was petite and wore jeans that looked too big for her. I was glad I’d chosen jeans myself.

  I made my best Gigi smile. “Yup, I’m the new girl.” I followed Johanna down the hallway. It was lined with cubbies instead of lockers.

  As I walked next to her, I could see that Johanna was not wearing any makeup, which made me self-conscious. When she wasn’t looking, I blotted my lip gloss on the top of my hand and ran my finger over my eyelids to lessen the shadow.

  “We don’t get many new kids. I mean, we just don’t get many people moving to Buttermilk River Cove. Maybe that’s how come I know everyone. If you wanna know who someone is, you can just ask me. I guess not many people leave Buttermilk River Cove either. Maybe that makes sense, because if no one leaves, then there won’t be any houses for new people to move into,” Johanna said. “So, why did your family re-habitate?”

  “Um, I think, um. Do you mean relocate?” I casually slid a jeweled clip out of my hair and buried it in my pocket.

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant, but I like to make up new words. Re-habitate has a nice sound to it.” Johanna shuffled on the hallway floor in well-worn nylon boots that might’ve been good in the snow but weren’t what I would call cute.

  “My dad’s uncle died, so we—”

  “Oh my gosh! That is soooo sad. I am so so sorry. Was it sudden? Was it expected? Was he sick? He probably led a full life, you know.” She tilted her head sympathetically. “And now he’s in a better place.”

  “Right. Uh, thank you. I’m sure he is,” I said.

  “So, where do you live?” she asked.

  According to the S5 plan I needed to avoid the subject of Lay to Rest to secure a good position in the social ecosystem of Buttermilk River Cove Elementary/Middle School.

  “Oh, in town,” I said. Then quickly I added, “This is a nice school,” which was a lie.

  “Yeah. I’ve gone here since kindergarten. My parents went to school here too. We have a good hockey team, the Buttermilk River Cove Bulldogs. They won the state championship in 1974,” she said. “Where did you say you li—”

  “Is that the Delaware State Championships?”

  “Right. Yeah. Delaware. That’s the state we live in. It’s the First State.”

  “So I’ve heard. That’s great.” And then I sprung the line that would launch me into social stardom: “I’m from California.”

  “You are? I guess it’s tough to move away from your friends and stuff. But it’s probably nice to get away from the earthquakes and gorillas. Maybe that’s why people don’t seem to move away from Buttermilk River Cove, because there are no earthquakes or gorillas. Where did you say you lived here, again?” Johanna asked.

  Wait—what just happened? Johanna didn’t care that I was from California. It must’ve been the way I said it.

  “In town. In a house we inherited from my dad’s uncle, the dead one.” I hoped for more condolences, but she just continued to lead me down the dreary hallway. I asked, “So, hockey, huh? That’s played on ice, right?”

  “Right.” She stopped walking and looked right at me. “Which house?”

  I winced. It could no longer be avoided. “In the big Victorian on the top of the hill.”

  [Pause—the long, uncomfortable type.]

  “Wait—you live at Lay to Rest? In the cemetery? In that old Victorian house? At the top of the hill? With those people who work there?” Johanna stared at me incredulously.

  There it was.

  My life was o-v-e-r.

  I thought about saying Just kidding and making up something about living in a hotel until our new house was built, or living on the other side of town, but I didn’t have enough information about this town to tell a good lie. I’d learned in California that the best way to pass as a rich, in-style, future movie star was to know a lot about rich people, style, and movies. But I didn’t know enough to lie about Buttermilk River Cove. I wanted to say that I was a totally normal kid, worthy of being the most popular.

  “Yup.” I slumped. “That’s the house.” I waited for her to laugh in my face, cringe, maybe gag.

  That’s when the unexpected happened.

  “THAT. IS. AWESOME!” Johanna squealed.

  “It is?” I asked, confused.

  “Oh yeah! In a big way. I love that old house. It’s huge. My great-great-grandmother is buried there, so is my great-great-grandfather, my great-aunt Ellie, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. I think everyone at this school has dead relatives buried there. . . .”

  I tuned out her chatter for a minute to process what had just happened: She thought living at Lay to Rest was cool.

  I started listening to Johanna again. She was saying “. . . don’t tell Nick Wesley, because his dad is the sheriff, but sometimes we go there at night and sneak around in the dark.”

  That gave me a thought. “You do?”

  “Yeah. Oh, please don’t tell on us. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No. I won’t tell,” I promised.

  We walked through a big room with long tables. Half of them were low with little pre
school-size chairs. Johanna explained, “This is the lunch room. I have the same thing every day. Chicken spread on an English muffin.”

  “Yum,” I said. I hoped the menu had more variety. I wanted to ask her more about her little cemetery sneaking. “Johanna, did you happen to go to the cemetery last night? Or do you know if someone did?”

  “No. Not last night. Yesterday I studied, hung out with Mel at the Pizza Palace—it was her ninth slice, so she got it free. Then I read and went to bed at nine. We would never sneak to the cemetery on a school night.”

  “Oh.” I’d hoped I could explain last night’s thuds.

  She asked, “Why? Did something happen there last night? I always thought that place was haunted. I mean with all of those dead people, I’d be shocked if it wasn’t. I think people know it’s haunted, but they’re keeping it a secret. I’d love to have a spiritual-aphony and find out. You know, I could totally learn how to do that.”

  “A spiritual-aphony?” I asked.

  “You know, the kind when you summon the dead and talk to them.”

  “Do you mean a séance?” I asked.

  “Yeah. That’s what I meant, a séance, but I couldn’t think of that word, so I quickly thought up spiritual-aphony. You know, like to call a spirit on the phone?” She put a finger phone—her thumb and pinkie—to her ear.

  I nodded, because I got it.

  She said, “Have you ever been to a séance? Do they have séances in California?”

  “I’ve never been to one, but I’m sure they exist. I mean, we have everything in California. I can’t think of anything we don’t have: movie stars, surfing, sushi . . .”

  “Snow!” Johanna interrupted. “They don’t have beautiful, fluffy, white snow, or snowball fights, or snow forts.”

  “That’s true,” I said. This girl really didn’t care about California. How was that possible?

  I heard basketballs bouncing off the walls. “We have gym now.” I stood by the door and saw eighth graders bouncing balls and dunking them into baskets that hung so low that they didn’t have to jump. A group of boys on scooters were trying to run over each other’s fingers. There was no gym teacher to be seen.

  “This is gym class?” I asked.

  “Actually, it’s more like free time,” Johanna said.

  I followed Johanna into the gym. She stopped at a water fountain and bent very low, Dumb-O height.

  I scanned the room for the popular crowd but couldn’t find them. Everyone looked the same: all jeans, T-shirts, many in baseball or snow hats, both boys and girls. Again, I was relieved I’d gone with jeans and a long-sleeved Brandy Melville shirt, which I very subtly untucked more like everyone else’s.

  A girl with her baseball hat on backward and a 5K FOR KARLEIGH T-shirt walked over, dribbling. “Who are you?” She continued to dribble while checking me out.

  I flashed a smile. “Hi, I’m G—”

  “G? What kind of a name is that?”

  “Oh, no, sorry. It’s Sydney. Sydney Mackenzie.”

  Johanna introduced the girl. “This is Melanie Healey.”

  “Mel,” she corrected. Her face was flat, unfriendly. Mel was taller than me, her legs long and thin. She had hair that looked like it had never seen sun. It was shoulder length with a choppy cut. The only makeup she had on was some black eyeliner. She examined me carefully, but I couldn’t tell from her expression if she liked what she saw. “Welcome to the most exciting place on earth.” I could tell she meant exactly the opposite.

  Johanna said, “You aren’t going to believe where she lives, Mel.” She didn’t give Mel a chance to answer. “At Lay to Rest. The big Victorian. The one in the cemetery at the top of the hill.” As though there were more than one.

  Johanna’s announcement got the attention of the scooter boys. I swallowed and hoped very hard that they, too, would think this was great.

  “Really?” Mel asked without indicating if she meant Really? That’s cool, or Really? That’s yuck.

  Johanna introduced the curly-haired, heavyset boy as Travis. He said, “Hey hey, Cemetery Girl!” and he offered me a high five, which I smacked lightly. “All right,” he said, so I guessed I’d slapped okay. He wrapped his arm around a taller, leaner boy. “This here is Nick. He’s my best bud.” Under his breath he offered me, “The girls think he’s cute. I mean look at him. I think he’s cute.” Travis winked at Nick, who shrugged him off, tripped him onto the floor, and held him down with his foot.

  “He’s an idiot,” Nick, who truly was very cute, said. I smiled at how they messed with each other. “Did you just move in?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  From the ground Travis said, “It must be scary living at Lay to Rest. I heard it’s haunted.”

  Nick pushed his foot harder on Travis’s stomach.

  “Urgh,” Travis moaned.

  “Seriously, ignore him,” Nick said.

  Mel continued dribbling. I still couldn’t tell what she thought about me or the cemetery thing, and something told me that her opinion mattered most. “You live in a creepy cemetery,” she finally said.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just kind of shrugged and looked to Johanna again for a little help. But Johanna and everyone else stared at Mel too.

  I held my breath and crossed my fingers.

  “That’s cool,” Mel said. “I’ve always wanted to go inside that spooky old house.”

  Phew! “Sure, any time,” I replied.

  A voice called from the door. “Here she is,” Dr. Perkel said to Roz. “You’re all set, Miss Mackenzie.”

  That was my cue to leave. “I guess I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  Travis started singing the song from Annie, “Tomorrow, you’re always a day away . . .” Everyone laughed at Jokey Magoo.

  Nick rolled his eyes, elbowed Travis in the gut, and said, “See ya.”

  Johanna waved and smiled big.

  Mel tossed a basketball into the low basket. “See ya, Mac,” she said.

  Mac? Maybe she’d forgotten my real name, but it had a nice ring to it. I had a nickname—definitely a good sign.

  Then Mel added, “At the cemetery. See you at the cemetery.”

  This changed everything.

  * chapter seven *

  THE ARMY-NAVY STORE

  I WAS STILL TRYING TO get my head around the bizarre twist of events that had just happened at the elementary/middle school. I hadn’t even given the spooky, creepy old graveyard a chance, and now it seemed like my ticket to Gigi-ism.

  I mentally revised the S5:

  1. HAVE AN AWESOME LOOK: CLOTHES, HAIR, ETC. . . . BLEND IN.

  2. MOST IMPORTANT: DON’T LET ANYONE KNOW ABOUT THE CEMETERY THING LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT I WAS THE ONE WHO LIVED AT THE STATE’S MOST AMAZING CEMETERY.

  “Roz, we need to go shopping.”

  “Forget it. Sydney, I told you—we’re on a spending freeze. I don’t like it any more than you do. Have you seen my roots?”

  I pushed the heat button in the car and shivered. “Not shopping shopping, I need some warmer stuff. I’m going to get sick.” I sniffled. “Do I have to be cold until May?”

  I only had two or three days’ worth of Buttermilk River Cove acceptable outfits in my California wardrobe. “Do you want me to get pleurisy, eczema, lupus?”

  That got her. Roz pulled up at the army-navy store, which was, as Joyce had indicated, “at the bottom of the hill” from Lay to Rest, along with everything else in the town. “I guess you shouldn’t have to freeze until spring.”

  I had never heard of an army-navy store, but I imagined it was like your average mall store, perhaps military themed, lots of green, tan, and camouflage.

  I was wrong.

  The store was actual stuff that was left over from the army and the navy. I heard Roz say under her breath, “Oh my.”

  “Oh my” didn’t quite capture what we saw.

  It was soldier clothes, plus hunting and outdoor stuff.

  If Leigh were here,
I’d have to call 911, because she’d have a fashion seizure.

  We focused on the outdoors section, picking out two turtlenecks, a sweater, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, wool socks, a scarf, and a hat—all khaki. And a Buttermilk Bulldogs sweatshirt.

  * * *

  When we pulled up at home, Jim and Cork were on the roof of the Victorian, hammering. I don’t think I’d ever seen Jim with a hammer, or any tool. Cork had no jacket and no shirt under his overalls. He pounded nails with the might of a superhuman. Jim wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve and gave me a really happy face and a wave. Lifting one hand off the roof made him lose his balance.

  I watched in horror as he tried to regain his footing, but he was heading toward the edge of the roof.

  Cork grabbed the neck of his jacket to pull him back to safety.

  Phew.

  “Whoa,” Jim said. “Thanks a lot.”

  Cork didn’t answer.

  “Hold on tighter,” I yelled up. “Or you’ll be the next customer at Lay to Rest.”

  “Righto, Syd.”

  * chapter eight *

  NO BUSINESS LIKE CEMETERY BUSINESS

  “COME ON,” ELLIOTT SAID. “I’M supposed to show you the grounds.”

  I followed him to the workroom, where he tossed his cloak over his shoulders. He flipped the switch to turn off the light, but instead it turned on the outside lights. “Hmm. This hasn’t happened in a while.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Uhhh, electrical snafus.”

  “Oh. Maybe I should tell you something,” I said. “My dad is working on house projects. And, well, he isn’t very good at house projects.”

  “I don’t doubt that, but this ain’t him, because he hasn’t messed with the lights.”

  “Then why are they snafued?”

  Elliott struggled. “It happens sometimes in these kinds of places.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant workrooms or houses in general.