The Lonely Dead

by April Henry

  My feet slipping on the wet grass, I tear up the rise, zigzagging my way through the spirits. I push between a middle-aged couple and then leap over their tombstone, which is shaped like an open book.

  When Luke starts chasing me, he’ll have it easy. He just has to avoid the tombstones. I have to avoid the dead.

  A woman dressed in blue, bald and far too thin, points to the right. “If you keep going that way, I think there’s a road.”

  I charge off in that direction. But almost hidden in the grass, a baby lies on its back, gurgling. I switch course in midstride to avoid stepping on it—and instead end up tripping over its tombstone that’s topped with a lamb.

  Wham! I land hard, knocking the air out of me.

  “He’s coming,” a man’s voice behind me calls. “Hurry!”

  I scramble to my feet, hoping the soft rain falling around us will cover my gasping breaths. But Luke’s a legend on the football field. I’ll never be able to put enough distance between us.

  Frantically, I look for something I could use to defend myself. There’s a metal trash can, only it’s chained to a pipe. Next to a tree sits a stack of orange cones and a half dozen plastic gallon jugs filled with water. None of it looks useful.

  Hoping the spirits hear me as well as Tori does, I whisper an appeal. “Is there any kind of weapon I can use?”

  “There’s a flag stuck on my grave,” a man’s voice calls off to my right.

  I change course and run toward the man dressed in fatigues. There’s a black hole in the middle of his forehead. Leaning down, I grab the flag from his grave. As I run, I use my index finger to test the point that was stuck in the ground. It’s sharp, but it’s not like it’s a knife. It’s just a wooden stake. I imagine trying to stab Luke with it. Too bad he’s not a vampire. It would probably only truly hurt him if I stabbed him in the eye. And even if my aim in a fight could be that good, I’m not sure I’m capable of it.

  “There’s an open grave over here,” calls a middle-aged woman dressed in just her underwear. Her body is pockmarked with stab wounds. “Maybe you could hide in it.”

  But when I reach it, it’s just a narrow, open rectangle about five feet deep. Each of the four sides is draped with a strip of Astroturf that falls a few feet into the grave. Next to it is a pile of dirt covered with a green tarp. Three boards are laid widthwise across the grave, either to hold down the Astroturf or to warn people away or both. I think about jumping in. I could crouch down and pray Luke runs past.

  But if he finds me, there will be nowhere to go.

  Instead I kick two of the boards out of the way and pick up the third. Then I dart behind a double gravestone that’s taller than me. “Tell me when he’s coming,” I whisper to the elderly couple buried there.

  “He’s about twenty feet away,” the old woman says a half minute later.

  But even tucked behind their tombstone, I can see the cone of light from Luke’s phone pushing ahead of him, hear his hoarse, panting breaths. He stops at the foot of the new grave and peers down.

  Which is when I jump out behind him, holding the board like a bat. I swing it as hard as I can.

  It hits his head with a sound like a cantaloupe falling to the floor. Luke takes a step forward into the empty air. He tumbles into the grave.

  And then down the hill, I hear someone yelling, “Adele? Adele? Where are you?”

  It’s Charlie. His voice sounds close. At the entrance to the cemetery are red and blue flashing lights.

  “Watch out!” the lady in her underwear screams.

  Just as a hand closes around my ankle.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 11:58 A.M.

  ENERGY IS NEVER LOST

  It’s amazing how much can change in three weeks, I think as I clump up the cemetery hill on my crutches. This is the first time I’ve been here since the night Luke tried to kill me. This time Charlie’s at my side. And Tori now has a white marble headstone.

  She’s sitting with her back against it, legs crossed at the ankles. Charlie and I are bundled up against the December chill, but Tori’s comfortable in her halter dress. We wave at each other and exchange smiles. “Hey, Tori.”

  Charlie looks from me to the grave and back again. He’s agreed to visit, but I think it’s still a struggle for him to believe.

  “You look good, Tori,” I say. “If you have to be stuck in one outfit forever, that’s not a bad one.” I turn to Charlie, who’s spreading out the tan plaid blanket he carried up here. “It’s this halter dress that’s an amazing shade of blue-green. Like a peacock feather.”

  “Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Isn’t that what they always say?” Tori shrugs one shoulder. “Only now I realize how caught up in appearances I was. Like with Luke. I overlooked a lot of things he did just because he was so beautiful.”

  “You’re not the only one who was guilty of thinking Luke’s beautiful outside must have reflected his inside,” I say as Charlie takes my crutches.

  “Yeah, but I was pretty shallow in general. Like I stopped being friends with you because I was worried what people might think about me. But even though I pretended not to care, you know what? I still have—I mean had—that SpongeBob SquarePants squirt gun you gave me on my sixth birthday. That was your favorite thing ever. And you gave it to me without hesitation.”

  “Because you were my best friend.” Rather than repeating everything Tori says to Charlie, I’ve decided to stick to the important stuff. I figure he can pick up the rest from listening to my half of the conversation.

  After taking my crutches, he helps me lower myself to the blanket. Luke broke my ankle when he tried to yank me down into the empty grave with him. When the cops and Charlie showed up, I was dangling half in and half out of the hole, kicking Luke with my unbroken leg.

  At school, I’ve gone from pariah to hero. I’m not comfortable with either role. But I’ve started hanging out with Laquanda. It turns out she makes all that jewelry she wears, and she’s been showing me how. I also signed up to take an Italian cooking class over winter break. I don’t know exactly where my life is going, just that it’s opening up.

  Charlie’s part of that. Later that night, he insisted on riding with me in the ambulance. We’ve talked every day since. About Luke. What we were like as kids. My mom. His mom, who left when he was just a baby. What we want to do after we graduate. And about what I can see and why that might be.

  Now the other dead eavesdrop as Charlie and I catch Tori up on what happened after the police came.

  “Okay,” I say to Tori, “Luke told the police that after you kicked him out of the party, he sat in his car in front of your house, trying to decide whether to break up with you for good. And then you came out and tapped on his window. You guys ended up in Gabriel Park, making out in his car. But then you told him about Mr. Hardy, and he snapped. He strangled you with the charging cord that was plugged into his lighter. Later he noticed he had bruises on his fingers from wrapping the cord around them, so he pounded the wall at school to cover them up with more bruises. And when he realized that I was becoming the main suspect, he planted your sandal and some of your hair in my grandpa’s truck.”

  Charlie takes up the story. “They didn’t find any of your fingerprints, Tori, in the truck itself. But they did find smudges on the passenger side window that looked like they were made by gloves. And they recovered a pair of gloves from a storm drain near the apartment. When they turned them inside out, they found Luke’s prints. They think he used a coat hanger to open the door lock and then planted the hair and shoe.”

  I chime in. “The thing is, Tori, I can see how he had your shoes, but that clump of hair? When did he take that?”

  Tori leans forward. “What about when he bent down and hugged my body at the viewing? I was crying so hard when he did that, but I remember seeing my head kind of jerk. He must have been yanking out some hair. He was already thinking about framing someone.”

  I relay what she said to Charlie, then echo her next
words: “Tori is asking how you knew to come to the cemetery to rescue me.”

  “Adele had bought this recorder that looks like a pen. It’s voice activated, and she’d been questioning people she thought were suspects, but without really learning anything. I asked if I could listen to it. Not only did I hear her talk to your neighbor and your mom and Mr. Hardy, I also heard this big fight at school that ended with Adele and Luke getting suspended. And afterward, Luke told Adele that they should each make a list of why the police might think they were guilty. That recording ended when Adele said she had to go to the bathroom.” His eyes cut to me and then back in Tori’s direction. “I was about to unplug the pen’s USB when I heard this scrabbling sound. It was Luke searching through Adele’s backpack, looking for her list. I heard him rip it out, and then he muttered something under his breath like, ‘Wait till the cops read this. Once you’re taken care of, Tori’s murder’s going to be an open-and-shut case.’

  “I went to warn Adele, but she was already getting into Luke’s car across the street. The cops had taken her cell phone, so I couldn’t call her. I jumped on my bike and followed Luke’s car. I kept thinking I’d lose them, but with rush hour traffic, I was able to keep them in sight. I was also trying to call my uncle, who’s a detective, but it’s not that easy if you’re riding your bike in the rain in heavy traffic.”

  Tori looks from Charlie to me and back again. “Adele can see me, but you’ll never be able to. What made you believe her?”

  After I repeat her question, Charlie says, “To be honest, I didn’t. Not at first. I thought she had mental problems. But that didn’t change the fact that Luke was trying to frame her.”

  He explains about how Lisa McMasters made him change his mind. After I told Charlie about her forty-year-old murder, he’d decided to take a chance and send his uncle an anonymous email about Lisa. He included links to John O’Reilly’s Wikipedia page and the list of graduates from a North Carolina high school.

  That email was the reason I hadn’t been able to see Lisa during my second police interview. Her skull had already been taken away for more tests. A few days after Luke’s arrest, his uncle mentioned to Charlie that an anonymous tip had ended up solving a forty-year-old case.

  “He thinks whoever sent it must be someone who knew what happened back in the day but was afraid to come forward.” Charlie sighs. “But when I heard the outcome, I had to ask myself how you knew all these details about a death that happened before we were born. It’s like solving a crime. When the evidence and facts lead you away from your working theory, you have to be willing to see things in a new light. So what you had said about being able to see the dead had to be real.”

  Charlie and I have discussed what would happen if people found out about my ability. The living would surely demand that I interrogate the dead—find out who killed them, or where the money went, or even just ask for assurances or advice from their loved ones. Historians would want me to corroborate details. Scientists would want to study me.

  And some of those people might not want to give me any choice in the matter.

  I’m going to have to figure out how to navigate the world without ever giving away my abilities.

  Some people are born with perfect pitch or are able to multiply two five-digit numbers in their heads. Charlie thinks that what I have is a genetic twist on schizophrenia. And that it must be dominant, since my mom and grandma had it.

  But what about people with real schizophrenia? The drugs that work for them are the ones that stopped me from seeing the dead, so are schizophrenics also telling some kind of truth?

  Like so much else, I just don’t know.

  Sitting on the blanket, squinting in the bright winter sunshine, I suddenly realize that I don’t have a headache, even though I’m surrounded by the dead. But for once I’m no longer fighting the idea that they are there.

  I risk asking the question that’s been bothering me. “So, Tori, are you disappointed that you’re still here, even though Luke’s been caught?”

  She shrugs. “Now that I know what happened, it’s gotten a lot easier. It feels like the world’s fading away, or maybe I am. I sleep most of the time, or whatever you want to call it. In fact, you being here is the only reason I’m awake right now. I know I kept asking you to visit me, but I think I’d rather just stay asleep and wait to see what comes next. I don’t think I’ll be here forever.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Tori waves a hand to indicate the other spirits. “Have you noticed that some of us are see-through? And people who’ve been here a long time say that folks from really old graves keep getting fainter and fainter. A couple have just disappeared. And people who’re cremated—they say you never see them at all, even if the cremains are buried here on the grounds.”

  Charlie looks thoughtful as I catch him up on what Tori said. “In physics, the law of conservation of energy says that energy is never lost. It’s just transformed. And the skull holds the brain, which runs on electrical impulses. Maybe even after death some energy is left behind. Something so small that only certain people can perceive it if the skull still exists. That’s only a hypothesis, but it fits the evidence.”

  “So then what happens when those spirits completely disappear?” Tori asks. While I repeat the question, the dead around us lean forward, all awaiting Charlie’s answer.

  “I don’t know,” he says simply. “I guess it still comes down to the same question humans have always asked: What’s next?”

  Tori bites her lip. “What do you think will be next for Luke?” She looks down, feigning disinterest, but as I repeat her words to Charlie, I can tell she still cares.

  “The law says that he has to be tried as an adult and that the minimum term for murder is twenty-five years. My uncle thinks that’s probably all he’ll get. He presents well, he’s young, and his parents can afford to buy the best defense attorney. Plus, your death wasn’t premeditated, even though the attack on Adele was.”

  I half expect Tori to protest, to say that her life is worth more than twenty-five years, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “What about you two?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask Adele as Charlie gives me a questioning look.

  “It’s obvious that you like each other. What’s next for you?”

  Charlie is watching me expectantly, waiting for me to repeat Tori’s words. I look at his intelligent brown eyes, his sharp cheekbones, his lips that I suddenly remember are soft and warm.

  “Something good, I think. Something very good.”

  Charlie turns to me. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Just a little girl talk,” I say with a smile. And then Tori gives me a wink.

  * * *

  The parking lot is empty except for Charlie’s dad’s old sports car. Charlie opens the passenger door and tosses the folded blanket on the tiny rear seat. With a couple of awkward hops, I turn my back to the open door and put one hand on the roof and the other on the doorframe so he can take my crutches.

  As Charlie leans in to maneuver them past my seat and into the back, his shoulder brushes my stomach. I can feel the heat from his body even through our coats. When he straightens up, his face is just a few inches from mine. I suck in a breath. Slowly, as if afraid he’ll startle me, he puts his cool palms on either side of my face. For a long moment we just look at each other.

  Partly to steady myself and partly to lose myself, I put my arms around him. Then I close my eyes and press my mouth to Charlie’s. Just as I remember, his lips are soft and warm, and he tastes like peppermint.

  If the dead are watching, I don’t care. This is about us, and we’re alive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Therapist Helen Paris told me how she would approach an adolescent who thought they could talk to the dead. Caron Pruiett, a forensic scientist who providentially sat next to me on a plane a few years ago, answered my question about ligatures. And former cop and current author Robin Burcell advised me in many
ways large and small.

  I’d also like to thank staff at the Multnomah County Library, who helped me obtain copies of many Oregon Trail diaries. Author Cat Winters offered advice about using historically accurate language. And Lizzy Knobel of the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive & Visitor Information Center patiently answered some strange questions.

  My editor, Christy Ottaviano, helped make this book the best it could be. I can always count on Jessica Anderson to be unflaggingly cheerful as she keeps everything organized. April Ward designed the beautiful cover. At various times, Morgan Rath, Molly Brouillette, and Amanda Mustafic coordinated events across a dozen states. Other wonderful folks at Henry Holt include Jennifer Healey, Lucy Del Priore, Katie Halata, Kathryn Little, and Allison Verost.

  OTHER MYSTERIES BY APRIL HENRY

  Girl, Stolen

  The Night She Disappeared

  The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

  The Girl I Used to Be

  Count All Her Bones

  THE POINT LAST SEEN SERIES

  The Body in the Woods

  Blood Will Tell

  HONORS FOR APRIL HENRY

  Edgar Award Finalist

  Anthony Award Winner

  ALA Best Books for Young Adults

  ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults

  Barnes & Noble Top Teen Pick

  Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Book Award Winner

  Missouri Truman Readers Award Winner

  Texas Library Association Tayshas Selection

  New York Charlotte Award Winner

  Oregon Spirit Award Winner

  Oregon Book Award Winner

  One Book for Nebraska Teens

  Nebraska Golden Sower Honor Book

  South Dakota YA Reading Program Winner

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  April Henry is the New York Times–bestselling author of many acclaimed mysteries for adults and young adults, including the YA novels Girl, Stolen; The Night She Disappeared; The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die; The Girl I Used to Be, which was nominated for an Edgar Award; Count All Her Bones; and The Body in the Woods and Blood Will Tell, the first two books in the Point Last Seen series. She lives in Oregon.