The Sweet Dead Life

by Joy Preble

  Me: Does Casey seem different to you?

  Mags: Different how? Taller?

  Me: Yes! And nicer maybe?

  Mags: Idk. Cuter? Seriously. What did he do to his hair?

  Me: Idk! Gag. Do you really think he’s cute?

  Mags: Um. Oddly. Yes. Too weird, right? I mean it’s Casey.

  Me: Yes! Too Weird. Going to pretend I didn’t read that. Do you think it’s a brain injury? Maybe he hit his head during the accident and now he’s acting all strange?

  Mags: Maybe. But how does this explain the hair? And did he whiten his teeth or something?

  We would have gone on, but our teacher Mrs. Weiss caught us. She also informed us that our knowledge of the parts of speech was more crucial than my “personal crisis.” Her words. Thanks for that, Mrs. Weiss. Asshat is a noun, by the way. In case you were wondering.

  Then the bell rang.

  “I don’t know what got into me,” Maggie said as we slogged through the crowded halls to science class. “He just looked nicer or something. Not like himself.” She blushed a little and tugged her hoodie over the henna tattoo. “No offense to your brother or anything. Plus even if I was older, Casey’s not the kind of guy I’d go out with. Unless that’s what the universe wants for me. I guess then I’d have to embrace it.”

  I decided there was a lot of momentary insanity going on. “No worries.” I said.

  “What did your mom say about the car?”

  I frowned. “If you had to take a guess?”

  Maggie nodded, her face softening. She knew the deal with mom. But she was hopeful enough to keep asking. She truly believed that at some point the universe would take pity on the Samuels family and cough up an explanation. “So what are y’all going to do?” she asked. “Borrow Dave’s grandma’s car forever? You and Casey can’t just go on taking care of everything by yourselves. You had a car accident for God’s sake.”

  I shrugged. What could I do? Mom was Mom. Other than that brief moment yesterday, the last time she had acted like an actual parent had been when Casey quit football. She’d stopped going to work about six months earlier, but she hadn’t yet removed herself from our lives. Six months ago, she still occasionally cooked a meal or did laundry or asked us about school. So she knew that our bank account was draining faster than our household income, even if she either wouldn’t or couldn’t explain how there had been such a sizeable amount of money in there in the first place. Dad had been gone a long time.

  “Tell your coaches,” Mom had begged Casey when he let it slip that he’d given up football and started waiting tables. “Maybe they’ll let you work something out.”

  Casey refused. It wasn’t like he was the star of the team, he’d told Mom. What went on in our house was none of their damn business.

  But people knew we were in trouble. Like Mr. Collins, asking if we were okay. Or Dr. Renfroe stopping by to say hi every few weeks or so. For a while he encouraged Mom to get a checkup, to see if the doctors could figure out why she was slowly melting away from planet Earth. I think he knew she wouldn’t go, though. He extended Mom’s health insurance—which also covered Casey and me—as long as he could, but eventually, she stopped going to work altogether. There was nothing he could do.

  Maybe I needed to adopt Maggie’s universe philosophy after all. It might make things easier when my family continued to act like a pack of lunatics. Although what did that say about me? Did the universe think I needed this? Maybe the universe needed a kick in the ass from my boots.

  Mags patted my shoulder as we slunk into the science room. If I had false teeth like Mamaw Nell, they would have fallen out of my mouth. (Mamaw Nell has three fake molars on the left side. She blames this on a lifetime obsession with cane sugar Dr. Pepper, which—this part is totally gross—she prefers to heat on the stove before she drinks.) Standing in front of the room wearing her EMT uniform and talking to Mrs. Drummond—I shit you not—stood Amber Velasco.

  She flashed me that pristine cheerleader smile. “Hey Jenna.” She waved. Her ponytail gave a little bounce, but those perfectly smooth bangs stayed perfectly smooth. It annoyed me. She annoyed me. What was Amber Velasco, EMT and likely weed dealer, doing in my Ima Hogg honors science class?

  “Who is that?” Maggie whispered.

  “Amber. The paramedic who rescued me from the Prius.”

  “I’m today’s guest speaker,” Amber announced, as much to the class as to Mags and me.

  We never had guest speakers. Not unless you counted the ex-drug addicts who came for Red Ribbon week and encouraged us to say no to drugs by wearing crazy socks, pinning red ribbons on our clothing, and having a “craziest red hat” contest. Still, following up drug addicts with a drug dealer seemed grossly negligent, even for Ima Hogg.

  On her utility belt, Amber’s cell began to blink its little red light. She pulled it out of its holder. Cell phones were a no-no at Ima Hogg.

  “I’m looking at her,” she said to whoever had called. “I’ll ask.” She turned to Mrs. Drummond. “You don’t mind, do you? This will take just a minute.”

  Mrs. Drummond pursed her lips—which she really shouldn’t do because it makes her lipstick slip into the little wrinkles—but didn’t protest.

  Amber handed me the phone. “Your brother wants to say hello.”

  My imaginary false teeth threatened to fall out again.

  “Hey, Jenna.” Casey’s voice boomed into my ear. “You feeling okay?”

  “Um, yeah?” Was I really standing here in science class with Amber Velasco, talking to my brother on her cell phone about my general well-being?

  “You sure?” he pressed.

  Well now that he mentioned it, I wasn’t feeling that hot. My foot rash was acting up; I was thirsty again, and my pee had resembled lime-aid this morning. (Yes, I was now a person who studied my pee before flushing.) But why was Casey calling? How did he know that Amber and I would be in the same room? Casey did not know my schedule. Casey did not care about my schedule. Casey cared about weed and Internet porn. What the hell did Amber have on him, anyway?

  “I’m okay,” I said. “What do you want?”

  There was silence on Casey’s end. I heard him clear his throat. “I love you,” he said. “I was worried.”

  I love you?!? Okay then. He was stoned.

  “I have to go. Amber is our guest speaker and I think she needs her phone back.” I waited for him to explain why he didn’t sound surprised at Amber’s appearance. Even stoned, Casey always had explanations. Especially stoned.

  “I just wanted to check on you,” Casey said. Somewhere in the background, I heard a familiar voice: “Casey … Oh, my, God. Is that you?”

  I frowned. Lanie Phelps. She didn’t sound pissed. The last time I’d seen her in person, she’d shouted at my brother that she expected a boyfriend who was “sober and part of a team.” Yes, those were two categories that used to include Casey, not that I gave a damn about Lanie’s expectations. When I witnessed that dressing-down, I wanted to kick her with the boots I hadn’t yet bought from Jesus. Casey hadn’t quit; he’d sacrificed. For me. For us. Who wouldn’t want to get stoned with a family to take care of? Okay, not that I condoned, but I understood. Which Lanie didn’t. No, when Casey had given up on sobriety and sports, she had given up on him. I hated her for that.

  “Casey?” I asked. “Casey?”

  Nothing. Dead air. Had he hung up on me?

  I handed the phone to Amber. I walked to my seat. I sat down. I felt as if I were watching myself in a lame TV show, and I was a walk-on character I knew nothing about.

  “Is something going on?” Maggie asked worriedly. She slid into the desk next to mine. Bad move: It was not her seat, so there was a brief but heated negotiation with Ryan Sloboda. “Shoo,” she told him, flicking her wrist. “Go sit in my seat. It won’t bite you in the ass.”

  Ryan did as he was told. I felt momentarily bad for him. He was a cute guy with a straight-A average and a slight overbite. Once the braces did thei
r job, he was probably going to graduate to almost hot. Last year, I’d actually sort of liked him. He played defensive line on the B team of the Ima Hogg Razorbacks. (Yes, our school mascot was also a pig. What else would you expect?) If I hadn’t figured that I wasn’t long for the world, I might have even kept my options open. Ryan struck me as the kind of guy who wouldn’t mind being pursued. He had nicely shaped lips that I maybe once or three times had fantasized about kissing.

  “I have no idea,” I told Maggie. “But I think Amber is going to tell us about the life of an EMT.” Or she’s going to tell us that she has magic powers and is a mind reader with excellent bang-grooming habits, I added silently. Maybe she’ll let us know what hair products she prefers. You wouldn’t want your hair to get in your eyes while you’re following me around like a stalker now, would you Amber?

  The bell rang. Mrs. Drummond introduced Amber Velasco. My brother’s possible drug dealer then launched into a shockingly professional presentation entitled “What Does an EMT Do?” There was even a PowerPoint. After she was done, we broke up into triads (Mrs. Drummond did not like saying groups of three) and brainstormed all the high school classes that might be helpful if we, too, had an urge to save lives. For the record, our triad (Ryan, who migrated over to us, possibly because he missed his desk, Maggie and me) came up with:

  Chemistry

  Anatomy

  Biology

  Physics

  PE

  Forensic Science

  Psychology

  Sociology

  We also felt that participation in a sport would help with overall fitness. By we, I really mean Maggie and Ryan. The Lanie thing had left me with a sour taste in my dry mouth as far as sports went. I was also too distracted by the fact that of all the classrooms in Texas, or at least in the Houston metroplex, Amber had miraculously ended up in mine. Mrs. Drummond instructed us to give our lists to Amber on the way out. She called this our “exit ticket.”

  The Ima Hogg faculty was big on trying to make everything sound like a Very Important Activity. They were not fooling anybody with this chicanery. (Chicanery was my favorite word from last week’s vocabulary list in English. It meant trickery especially by an official person. What is up with all your EMT chicanery, Amber?)

  Here is what Amber did not do during her presentation: She did not acknowledge that she had pulled me out of a car last night. She did not tell the class about the accident. She did not explain why she was following me around. Not that I expected her to come through on that last one, but it would have been nice. Weirder still, however, is that Mrs. Drummond did not ask how Amber and I knew each other. She did not question that Amber had let me use her phone or ask who I had been talking to.

  “How are you feeling?” Amber asked as I handed in the list that Maggie, Ryan, and I had come up with.

  I shrugged, one shoulder only. I appreciated her concern and all, but she didn’t belong here and I could not for the life of me figure out what this was really about. She sure as hell hadn’t behaved like a stalkerish drug dealer in the last forty-five minutes.

  Could she be something else, then? Maybe she’d taken one look at us at the accident and somehow known that we’d basically been taking care of ourselves for over a year. Maybe she was a spy for Child Protective Services. Maybe she was a cop. That made sense. Maybe she was narc. Aha! Yes. That really made sense. She’d been eating at Jack in the Box the night Dave bashed our car through the menu, so all of this could be an elaborate ruse to bust Dave for drug sales. Being an EMT was just a front for her true agenda. She wanted to use Casey as a snitch to get to Dave.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I hissed at her. “To check on me? To use me to blackmail Casey? I mean, you can’t really be an EMT, right? What do y’all do? Take an oath to follow around everyone you save?”

  I figured this would piss her off for sure. Or catch her in her web of crazy cop or narc or CPS lies.

  But Amber smiled. I thought I saw something flash in her dark blue eyes. “We don’t take an oath, exactly.” She placed her hand on my arm. She wasn’t trying to stop me or hold onto me or anything. It was just a casual gesture. I wanted to shake her off. I couldn’t. I was frozen.

  A feeling of total calm washed over me. It was a wave of warmth. All the confusion and frustration simmering inside me, all of the worry about Casey, all of it disappeared. The other feelings that I walked around with all the time—sadness and fear and the occasional moment of hopelessness that just possibly the Samuels family was going to end up some sort of statistic other than happy—they vanished, too. Poof. Gone. In their place, came peace. I felt comforted.

  Like when Casey touched my face, I thought suddenly. But Casey was my freaking brother. I didn’t even know Amber Velasco. What I knew I didn’t like or trust. So why did I feel so relaxed? Nothing pisses me off more than not being able to work up the proper emotion. It’s part of why a piece of me wanted to smack Mom every time I saw her. Not now, though. Thinking of Mom now, I only wanted to hug her.

  “Jenna?” Maggie’s voice broke through my happy cloud. The cement block hall of Ima Hogg’s science wing smacked back into view.

  Amber slipped her hand from my arm. I had the uncomfortable sensation that I wanted her to put it back. That made about as much sense as everything else. I wanted Amber Velasco to disappear. I wanted things to go back to normal. Minus the not-Ebola.

  “You coming to lunch?” Maggie asked. She wagged her finger, a hey, we’ve only got twenty-nine minutes to eat kind of motion.

  My head was suddenly foggy and my legs felt heavy in my boots. I think I said goodbye to Amber. Maybe I didn’t. She looked like she wanted to tell me something, but I turned and trudged behind Maggie to the cafeteria. The free and reduced lunch line was already snaking out of the food area toward the tables. What I wanted (even though I felt like I was going to puke) was a slice of pizza or maybe a chicken sandwich. What I was going to get was the soft taco plate because that’s what the kids in the free and reduced lunch line got on Thursdays.

  “See you at the table,” Maggie said, heading off to the paradise of food for purchase.

  I would have nodded but my vision was going wonky again, and I didn’t want to risk more dizziness.

  I swayed. Someone grabbed my elbow. Mr. Collins’s face swam into view as he hauled me upright. His eyebrows were scrunched tight. Did I look that pathetic? At least he had kept me from being the girl who fell in the Ima Hogg cafeteria.

  “You okay, Jenna?”

  “No,” I said. I was so tired that I couldn’t even work up a proper lie.

  “You don’t look okay,” he continued.

  “I need to eat my tacos,” I squeaked.

  “Do you want me to take you to the nurse?” I pulled my arm away. I could feel the Ima Hogg lunch-eating population watching us. My almost passing out might not be as exciting as last week when Jordan Vanderslice beaned Kendall Estes on the head with a burrito, but it was better than nothing. I thought Mr. Collins would argue about the nurse, but instead he tilted his head. His gaze aimed over my shoulder toward the vending machines.

  I turned. Casey? Amber and my brother were striding in unison across the cafeteria toward me. Their right legs stepped and then their left, like they had rehearsed for a parade or had joined the military. What was Casey even doing here? My vision was bouncing. They looked oddly alike, tan and toned and no hair out of place. How was that possible? Was Amber actually some long-lost Samuels cousin? How was Casey’s shirt still so crisp and clean? Wouldn’t it have been stained with bong water by now?

  Casey landed on my left and Amber on my right. Mr. Collins eyeballed them like they’d arrived from Mars. So did I. They might as well have.

  “We need to talk to you, Jenna,” Casey said. I really was losing my mind. Casey and this weird chick were a “we” now.

  “About what? I have to eat lunch. Why aren’t you in school?”

  “Did you sign in at the front office?” Mr. Collins stood up ta
ller.

  “I need Jenna, Coach,” Casey told him. Casey hadn’t called Mr. Collins “Coach” since he quit football. “Please,” he added.

  This was disturbing for two reasons: 1) Casey never said please to anybody. 2) Mr. Collins said, “Okay.”

  “Thanks,” Amber added helpfully. “It’s important.” She locked her dark blue eyes on Mr. Collins. Then she looked at me. “C’mon,” she said.

  Like I was going to follow her?

  “Maggie’s waiting,” I said. My insides felt oddly conflicted. Part of me wanted to kick Amber in the shin. The other part wanted to let her hug me. Narc, I thought again. Only explanation: My brother’s an idiot. He’s been suckered in by her supposed concern. Or he’s already been read his rights. Any second now she’s going to flash her badge. We’ll be arrested. We’ll lose our house. We’ll—

  “You’ll talk to Maggie later. Do you need help walking?” Casey took my hand. Normally, I would not have held my brother’s hand in the middle of the school cafeteria. Normally, he would not have offered it. In fact, normally, he might have been the one in need of propping up. But out we walked, hand in hand, Amber trailing behind.

  “Your blood test results came back,” Casey stated without any small talk. “Dr. Renfroe called me. Jenna. We’re taking you back to the hospital.”

  “Um, what? Why?” I tried to process what was going on.

  “We need to get a move on,” Amber said, more to Casey than to me.

  I dug the heels of my boots into the scuffed tile floor. “What the hell are you talking about? I can’t go. I have detention later.”

  “Detention can wait,” Casey said. He extricated his hand and laid that warm, peaceful palm on my shoulder—as still as a glassy pond. “Jenna, someone’s been poisoning you.”

  Here is What Happened After I Found Out I’d Been Poisoned:

  1) I did not go batshit crazy in front of the student body and faculty of Ima Hogg, although I did make a few panicked vowel sounds and I think a couple of nervous consonants snuck out while I was at it. It sounded like: “Uhoheepm.”