Strange Alchemy

by Gwenda Bond

  I pop in the earbuds, hit shuffle mode, and learn something else about Grant — he keeps the volume cranked way too loud. Jumping at the blare, I drop the iPod on the vanity.

  I bend to retrieve it, and then look up, into the mirror. I’m not even really intending to look at myself. I just do. There’s my tired face. My hair’s frazzled. Dark circles linger beneath my eyes. In short, everything I expect to see.

  Except for one thing.

  A thin, strawberry-colored snake crawls along the top of my cheek toward my temple. Unmistakable. A birthmark, but it’s not mine. It’s Dad’s.

  I scream.

  Chapter 10

  GRANT

  Mom holds the door as I shimmy inside carrying a plastic laundry basket filled with Miranda’s things. The house is dark and quiet. Has Miranda gone to bed already? It’s getting late, and she has to be exhausted.

  A confusing twinge of disappointment spikes through me. I dismiss it. You’re just helping her. You don’t need to say good night to her.

  Mom must read my mind — she’s way too good at that — because she clucks her tongue and closes the door. “We have to take her things up regardless, so just be quiet.”

  The thought of seeing Miranda asleep makes me uneasy in a different way, but I follow Mom to the staircase. The sound of running water meets us at the top of the steps. Mom looks over at me. “You wait out here.”

  “What? Oh.” I stand in the hallway outside the guest room, balancing the basket. Waiting.

  I hear Mom say, “Oh, honey.” The water turns off, and an awful sound — gasping, keening, like death — rises up in its place.

  It’s Miranda.

  I drop the basket and rush through the guest room to the bathroom. The water surges at the lip of the tub, sloshing onto the floor. It’s not full enough to completely overflow, so this hasn’t been going on that long.

  This is Miranda in tears. I take one look at her in a fuzzy blue robe big enough to swallow her whole, rocking back and forth on the floor, heaving like waves in the ocean. Mom ineffectually pats her back and tries to lift her face, and I know.

  This is heartbreak.

  Miranda Blackwood, heartbroken, right in front of me.

  I go to my knees in front of her and join Mom’s tentative chorus of coos with words. “Miranda? We’re here.” I put my hand on her shoulder and say her name again, “Miranda?” I don’t know how to get her to talk to me. “What can we do to help? You can trust me.”

  But if Miranda hears a word I say, she gives no sign of it. I’ve never felt this helpless in my life, and as spirit-magnet boy, that’s saying something.

  Mom stands. “You stay with her. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get a glass of water.”

  I move to shift my hand to the side of Miranda’s face, but my fingers tangle in the cord of earbuds. I blink at the iPod they’re connected to. There’s a gold-star sticker on the back. It’s mine, my backup music source for those times phones aren’t allowed at school.

  “That’s mine. Did you go in my room?” I ask.

  Miranda rocks for another moment, then stops and tips her face toward me. Her green eyes are wide and bloodshot, her hair a mess falling forward around her cheeks.

  I almost lose my breath, cliché though it is. In the years I’ve been away, Miranda has become, well, beautiful.

  “Are you mad?” she says, through ragged breaths. “I just… borrowed them. I’m s-sorry.”

  I need to keep her talking. “Did you find anything else interesting in my room?”

  She scowls.

  Look at that backbone. Definitely beautiful.

  She says, “Of course not. I was looking for some music. To listen to in the bath…”

  “And my taste in music made you completely freak out?” I joke.

  A flash of pain crosses her features, and for a moment I think I messed up and she’s going to start howling again. I need to distract her.

  “So, I get most of them,” I say. “Battlestar Galactica, those old Joss Whedon shows, Supernatural, but… why do you own the first three seasons of The Vampire Diaries?”

  Miranda blinks, but I can’t tell if my diversion worked until she says, “You snooped in my room?”

  I have her.

  “I had to help pack your stuff.” I wrinkle my nose. “You have a thing for brooding vampire brothers?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “You’ve seen it?”

  Keep her talking. I shrug. “The study lounge at my school has a TV. Doppelgangers are hot, and the dorm has a huge Team Damon contingent. I’m not proud.”

  “It went downhill after Elena left.” She sniffs. “The town reminds me of this one. Repressed and… full of secrets. Everybody in everybody else’s business.” Her eyes widen. She’s still scared. “Wait, where’s Sidekick?”

  “He’s in the car — I’ll go get him.” But instead I stay where I am, crouched in front of her. “I brought that antique gun too. I stuck it in Mom’s trunk when she wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to just leave it at your house. It must be valuable.”

  Miranda nods, and we stay where we are, silently, until I hear Mom’s footsteps start up the stairs. She’ll be back any second.

  “Will you be okay alone while I go get Sidekick?” I ask.

  Miranda blinks again and hesitates, and I see the exact moment when she decides to tell me something. What it is, I have no idea.

  “This is why I’m freaking out,” she says. She finally turns toward me and pushes her hair back, pointing to the top of her cheek.

  It isn’t that I memorized Miranda’s face or anything like that, but I know in an instant that the birthmark doesn’t belong. It’s the snake I yelled at her about all those years ago. The flurry of the dead’s voices was so intense that day I don’t really remember what they said and barely what I repeated, but the snake part was loud and clear. The main reason I left school was because I couldn’t stand the idea of listening to jerks taunt her with ammunition I gave them.

  “Where did that come from?” I ask.

  “I think it’s my dad’s,” Miranda says, watching to see if I believe her. With everything that’s happened, I do. “I need to see his body.”

  Just then I hear footsteps outside the bathroom, and Mom calls out, “Here’s the water coming right up.”

  I quickly consider the options. “Say you’re sad about your dad and go to bed. I’ll come get you later.”

  “To go where?” Miranda asks, frowning.

  “To see the body.” I reach out as Mom crosses the threshold and pluck the glass of water from her hand. “Now drink this.” I hold it to her lips to make sure she does.

  If she needs to see the body, then my next move is decided. I promised to help her. I won’t go back on that. So we’re going to visit a dead man.

  I’ll just have to pray the rest of the dead aren’t there waiting for me too.

  Chapter 11

  MIRANDA

  I’m convinced I’ll never be able to get to sleep, not while I expect Grant to come in and wake me. Visions of drooling on my pillow dance in my head. I don’t know if I snore or talk in my sleep or anything else embarrassing. No one has ever told me, but then, who would? Dad? Sidekick?

  I pat his head where he lies sprawled next to me on top of the covers. Sara was nice enough to let him sleep in here with me, even though the Rawlings don’t have any pets. I rub Sidekick’s belly, glad to have him with me while I do my best not to obsess over the thing on my skin.… I feel myself growing drowsier and drowsier.…

  When Grant shakes my shoulder, I can tell by the reluctance on his face he’s been trying to wake me up for a while. “We can do this tomorrow,” he says, the whisper apologetic, “if you need the sleep more. I just figured you’d want some privacy. If we go now no one else will be there.”

  I yawn, which sen
ds Grant to his feet and scrambling a few steps back.

  Okay, so I do look scary when I wake up.

  I match his whisper. “You’re right. I don’t want anyone else there. But…” I climb out of the bed, already dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. “This means we’re breaking in?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Grant says. “I’ve got experience.”

  The more I learn about Grant, the more of a mystery he becomes. “Why’d you start doing all that crime stuff?”

  “Later. We’ll wake up Mom,” he says. “Let’s go, sleep talker.”

  I thank the low light in the room for concealing the way my cheeks flame traitorously. Don’t ask what you said, don’t ask what you said…

  “What’d I say?”

  “Later,” Grant repeats.

  I slip on my sneakers. “What about Sidekick?” Whispering with Grant like this in the middle of the night is kind of fun, like a secret mission or a conspiracy. Then I remember why we’re doing it, and any hint of fun disappears.

  Grant asks, “He’ll be quiet if he stays here?”

  I lean in to pat his head. “Stay,” I tell him, half wishing I could crawl back into bed beside him and forget about doing this. But I have to know the truth.

  Grant reaches over and touches my cheek. I manage not to flinch, but it’s a surprise. And then, for a second, I let him comfort me. “It’ll be okay,” he says.

  “Good lie.”

  He drops his hand and motions for me to tiptoe out of the room in front of him. Once we’re both through, he pulls the door silently closed behind us. He takes the lead on the steps, and I follow his path exactly. Not a creak sounds on our way down and out the front door.

  The night is dark and warm as Grant leads me across the yard, then past its borders. I discover he’s already moved his mom’s car to a spot up the road. The noise of the car starting will be at most a distant cough from the house. Clearly he knows more about sneaking out than I do.

  Once we’re settled in, Grant cues up a playlist and puts the car in drive. I say, “You’re crazy good at this, Double-O Seven. Why?”

  He doesn’t answer, just taps his fingers along to the song that’s playing. The lyrics are something about a guy being handcuffed to a fence in Mississippi. Finally, he says, “I wanted to get sent away.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t stand it here.”

  We’re passing a spot where the sound becomes visible. The water sparkles in the moonlight. “I get it,” I say. “Small town. Everybody always in everybody else’s business.” Stop talking. “I was jealous that you got out of here. Got to go somewhere no one knew you.”

  “When nobody knows you, you miss out on things,” Grant says, though he doesn’t sound like he fully believes it. “You miss getting to know who the people around you are. That’s a lonely way to live.” That he sounds like he believes.

  I’m already the definition of loneliness. Alone. Lonely. I reach up and touch the trespassing birthmark on my cheek.

  “Well, there are worse things than being alone,” I say, though I’m not sure if I fully believe that. “Hey, why do you know so much random stuff like matchlocks and music and ahem, The Vampire Diaries?”

  For a long moment Grant doesn’t answer, instead focusing on pulling the sedan up to the curb so the weepy hanging branches of a big tree offer us cover. Not that there’s anyone else on the street to see us. Then he turns off the car and looks over at me. His eyes are a black gleam in the barely existent light.

  “I had too much I didn’t want in my head. I thought maybe if I…” he stops, obviously searching.

  “If you filled it with other stuff it would crowd out the bad,” I supply. It makes a strange kind of sense to me. It’s not that different from how I fill my downtime with stories about places far away from here. “Did it work?”

  He flashes a smile. I pretend not to notice the fluttery way I feel, like a complete silly girl. This is probably how that dumb reporter, Blue Doe, feels all the time, light and airy, like her head’s a bubble and might float away in a cloud of fizz.

  “I don’t know yet,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Next street over.” He hops out and is around the car and at the passenger door, opening it for me before I can move.

  When I get out, I plant my feet on the pavement. “That’s the funeral home.” I’m confused, and I don’t want to go there. “I can’t afford a funeral. And who would come?”

  “I’d come,” he says, which is sweet. “But no, they won’t have one unless you want it. This isn’t New York — we don’t have a real morgue here, just the funeral home our county medical examiner runs. They’ll be storing the… your dad’s body will be in the cold room here until they can get it carted off to one of the universities for the autopsy.”

  “How do you know this?” I shake my head.

  “Police chief’s son, remember?”

  That hardly explains it, but I nod. “Let’s go then,” I say as my stomach hardens into a small, heavy stone. The funeral home. I stay quiet while we walk there, and Grant doesn’t push me to talk, so quiet must be required, even though the houses we pass seem empty, like so many people’s lives on the island right now.

  The funeral home’s front porch comes into view. It’s where the men and the smokers hang out during the big town social events that occur whenever someone even moderately well liked or well-known dies. Funeral visitations are like church — a chance to see and be seen — without all the pressure to be godly that comes along with sermons.

  A flood of images rushes over me from Mom’s funeral, the people who showed up with whispers and fake sympathy for Dad and me. People who did nothing but gossip for years about why that nice Anna-Marie Johnson — even if she was an out-of-towner, with no family of her own to speak of — went and married a Blackwood. And how her girl, that Miranda, would never amount to anything now.

  “Miranda?” Grant whispers, turning to see why I stopped. Until then, I didn’t know I had. “You okay?”

  I draw in a shaky breath, pushing away the memories as best I can, and catch up with him. “How do we get in?” I ask, careful to keep my expression blank.

  “Around back,” he says, frowning at me in concern.

  “I’m fine.” Just take my word for it. Please.

  He does, and we head around to the rear entrance without another word. When we stop again, the wrinkles of that frown are still etched on his forehead. They vanish as he removes a long skinny piece of metal from his pocket.

  “Where do you get something like that?” I ask.

  “A lock pick? eBay.”

  I trust him, or I’m starting to anyway, but still. “What if someone’s here? Maybe I should just wait until tomorrow.”

  Grant steps back off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, so the whole back of the funeral home is visible. I go along, curious. He points to the upstairs. “When Marlon is here, the TV in that room is always on. See how dark it is?”

  I nod, and he hesitates. “What else?” I prod.

  “I checked the obits for the last week online — there’s no one in the funeral home for embalming or viewing, just your dad. And Marlon’s wife is one of the missing. He’s at their house. Not here.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Grant hesitates, watching me. “But we don’t have to do this. Not if you don’t want to.”

  If I balk at this point, I’ll have to explain the reason — that I’m afraid now that we’re here, I’ll be right. That I’m afraid of what seeing Dad will be like, of how it will hurt. I’d rather get this over with than explain all that. I touch my cheek. “No, I need to see him.”

  Grant gets to work with the tool he brought and has the door open within a minute. He pulls a flashlight out of his other pocket and shines it up the hallway i
n front of them. I see the powder blue walls, worn navy carpet, framed seascapes lining the walls. Another wave of memories threatens to overwhelm me as I walk inside and inhale that too-clean smell, the scent of tragedy being covered up, a smell that pretends this is somewhere besides the house where death lives. That this is somewhere besides a place that means your life is a ruin.

  We make our way up the hall and through a small kitchenette where I hear unfortunate scuttling. Grant unlocks another door, and we pass into a hallway, the beam from the flashlight tunneling through absolute darkness. I can’t help imagining that we’re traveling to the underworld. With each step, the floor creaks. I’m comforted by the fact Grant doesn’t know this place well enough to avoid the noisy ones.

  At the end of the dark hall, he opens a heavier door and lets me go in first, then joins me and flips on a light. The suddenly bright room is cold and reeks of formaldehyde. The flat black sheen of a body bag dominates the center of a metal table. I approach it like I’m levitating, unable to feel my feet moving, but getting closer just the same.

  “It’s freezing down here,” I say.

  “Actually,” Grant says, “it’s thirty-nine point two degrees. Not freezing.”

  I stop at the side of the table. “Shouldn’t it be freezing?”

  “Freezing would be ideal, but this is a funeral home, not CSI. The cold still majorly slows decomposition.” Grant swings around to the other side of the table and checks the surfaces nearby for something, then holds up a thin file folder and flips through it.

  I stare at the black plastic, preparing myself for what’s inside. Like that’s possible.

  Dad. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I should have driven you. I should have…

  Grant makes a noise of interest, interrupting my silent apology, and says, “You want to know what the preliminary ME report says?”

  I manage to look away from the shape of my father’s body beneath that plastic and at Grant. The kindness in his face startles me. “What does it say?” I choke out.