The Once-Dead Girl

by Laer Carroll

  “Now let’s eat,” she said. “I’m hungry!”

  ·

  Lunch was at a gourmet hamburger place in the middle of the outdoor mall part of Burbank’s half-mile-long mall area. She ordered two fat juicy burgers and spread them with condiments. She came back to the table with a small salad and a large fountain drink. Kendall did the same, looking at her food with raised eyebrows when he sat down.

  “A little ambitious there, aren’t you?”

  “No.” She took a sip of her drink and a big bite of one burger.

  “Don’t make yourself sick.”

  “I won’t. Besides, like yesterday one burger is going to be a midnight snack.”

  He laughed. “Some snack!” Then for a time both were silent as they tended to their food.

  “So,” Ken said. “Did you do your situational assessment?”

  “Behind on my right,” Beth said, a bit smugly, “is a crowd of guys celebrating something. But the only danger is they’ll stumble over me on the way to the bathroom.

  “On my left are some teens from school. A little young; I don’t recognize them. And there’s a family with real young kids. The one I’d worry about is the one older guy at one table by himself, hunched over and kind of brooding. Maybe a serial killer choosing his next victim. Or nursing a hangover!

  “Not that I’d recognize a hangover,” she said over-virtuously. “That’s something YOU’D recognize.”

  ·

  At 4:00 Bethany and her parents met with her teachers in a small conference room in BurbankHigh School. They arrived early and were escorted to the nice but spare room by a secretary who asked them if they wanted something to drink. Bethany and all four adults said No, sort-of parent Miri holding up a bottled water as answer.

  The parents were a bit on edge. Beth was not. She’d been able to turn emotions on and off since her accident. She was sure this wasn’t always a good practice, but it was useful now.

  Then the assistant principal came in, followed by Beth’s five teachers. Her Advanced Dance and Pep Squad teachers were the same person, Rosita Quiroga, medium height and lithe and with dark chestnut hair which looked deep auburn in the sun and black inside. It was out of her usual pony tail and framed her face with its dramatic dark eyebrows and eyes. She hurried to Beth and opened her arms. Beth stood and her teacher hugged her carefully.

  “I was so happy to hear you are well. Are you well?” She stepped back and held Beth by both shoulders at arm’s length while she searched her face.

  Bethany laughed. “Yes. I was doing handstands yesterday. Nothing hurt.”

  Her surgeon mother frowned at her daughter. “You said nothing about this. You must be careful.”

  Beth sat down and said, “I was. I warmed up with some stretching exercises and I did forward bends and then back bends. Very slowly and cautiously. I worked up to the handstands.”

  This was a lie. Beth had KNOWN in a deep sure way that she was in superb condition. But even so she felt a twinge about lying to her mother.

  Her Honors English teacher Trevor Burnett shook her hand and welcomed her back to school. He was a tall thin Englishman with grey hair, very erect. He was very strict in his grading, on both little things and big things. But he was also lavish with his praise when you deserved it. He was very popular and his students worked hard to deserve his regard.

  Her Biology teacher Eleanor Hildegarde had sent an email to Beth and her parents saying she couldn’t make the meeting. She welcomed her back to school and said she would be happy to let Beth back in class if she passed a test that showed Bethany had indeed caught up on all her reading.

  World History was short stout Rupert LaRosa. He shook hands all around and sat down. He seemed preoccupied and not quite here, understandable since his wife had just had a baby. Beth could tell from lots of tiny symptoms that he was not getting enough sleep and he was worried about something.

  Last of the teacher parade was math teacher Emile Hirsch. He was muscular and quite handsome in a blond surfer way and very tough in his grading and brusque in his manner. Bethany sometimes thought he was trying to make up for being so very good looking.

  Dr. Durand, the assistant principal, was a tall thin black woman with a distant but friendly manner. She’d gone immediately to the head of the table with only nods to Bethany and her parents. She now called the meeting to order and everyone standing sat, Beth and her parents on one side of the table and the teachers on the other side.

  The assistant principal said, “Bethany, we are so glad you’ve come out of the accident so well. Dr. Corcoran, I presume you’ve been monitoring Bethany’s recovery. We’ll want a signed form from you and your husband saying she is indeed fit to return to school—if in fact she is.”

  Beth’s mother said, “We’ll be happy to give you that form.” She looked at her ex-husband and he nodded. She then looked at the teachers across the table from her.

  “To summarize, Bethany is physiologically sound but still needs to regain muscle mass and do some mild physical therapy to take care of that and to improve her coordination. But mild daily effort is certainly well within her abilities.”

  She placed a hand over Bethany’s nearest hand where it lay on the table and smiled at her daughter. Her father, on her opposite side, did the same. Beth turned her hands over and squeezed her parents’ hands, darting each of them a smile.

  “Good,” said Dr. Durand. “Now, we are here to discuss Bethany’s return to school and how we need to handle that. Let’s go down the table and get your thoughts. Rosita?”

  Beth’s Dance and Pep Squad teacher was just to Durand’s left hand. She said, “I’ll need to coordinate with Beth’s therapist, but I believe she can attend classes and do the academic exercises. Naturally we’re going to be very gradual in introducing her to the physical exercises the class does.”

  She turned to look to her left at English teacher Burnett.

  “As far as I’m concerned Bethany has already rejoined her class. She and I have been in communication about her reading and I’ve had her write a long essay on one subject. She came through with her usual flying colors, I must say.”

  He looked across the table at Bethany and they exchanged smiles .

  History teacher LaRosa sat up from a slump. “Just need to give her a test. If she passes she’s back. Don’t think there’ll be a problem there. She’s already submitted an impressive paper electronically on women generals and war leaders in Europe and the Far East.”

  “Good,” said Durand. “I should add to that Eleanor—” She looked at the parents. “Her Biology teacher has said she’ll also want to give Bethany a test, a lab test, but if she passes she should be ready to resume normal classes Monday.

  “Emile?”

  He looked back at Durand.

  “I hate to be the only naysayer, and naturally each teacher can make their own decision about their own courses, but for mine I don’t see how Miss Rossiter can get back up to speed on Geometry. It’s a difficult subject for many students, and I’m sorry to say that includes Miss Rossiter.”

  Bethany through their linked hands could feel the anger growing in her mother and father, her father hot and her mother cold and all the more effective when the woman expressed it.

  But Beth was no longer just a 16-year-old girl. She was a girl with something extra, something old and mature and very very dangerous. Maelgyreyt and all her Arts of War were part of her now.

  Beth squeezed her parents’ hands hard to break their focus on Emile Hirsch. Then she spoke, words precisely targeted to his weaknesses personal and political.

  “Mr. Hirsch is absolutely right. I have been having trouble with Geometry. And it’s all been my own fault. It’s not that I’m stupid, or even stupid about math. It’s that I’ve been—honest—lazy. I’ve not given math a chance.”

  She leaned forward and sat up straighter. Resolution lent her words impact, and some long ago Irish bard ancestor lent her skill .

  “But coming so clos
e to dying makes you think. About what wonderful things about life you’d miss if you had died.”

  She squeezed her parents’ hands again and sent an esoteric message to their bodies through her hands, emotions of love and gratitude. Then she leaned forward and reached far to both sides to grasp the hands of her step-father and of her father’s girlfriend Miri and repeated the secret message.

  Then she sat back, though still very upright, and put her hands in her lap. She looked at Hirsch very directly, not pleadingly but firmly.

  “I’ve also had a lot of time to think about what I should change about my life and about myself. And getting serious about my schoolwork, especially where I’ve sloughed off, is one of them. I reviewed all of my textbooks, and especially Geometry. There I started all over again from the beginning and worked all the examples. And a funny thing happened.”

  She let wonder enter her voice, just a touch of it, not a lot. She didn’t want what she said to seem fake, for it wasn’t.

  “I found math is beautiful. It’s like, like... Like clockwork, all gleaming precise gears meshing and turning. I got so interested I finished all the reading for this semester and began on the next.

  “So give me a test like all the other teachers are going to do. I will ace it. See if I don’t!”

  The math teacher had been watching her stone-faced, though it hid his skepticism not at all to her new sensitivity to tiny body cues. Slowly his face had revealed surprise, then interest. Now it broke into a smile, very small but very definite.

  And sharply attractive.

  Oh, no! She was not going to become another sad statistic, teenaged girl seduced by an attractive older man! She clamped down on her emotional and physical sensitivity with the esoteric powers she’d gained by dying .

  “OK,” said Hirsch, looking up and down the table at his colleagues and his boss. “How can I resist such an eloquent plea?”

  He looked back at Bethany, sternness returning. “I’ll take you up on your offer.” My challenge, you mean , she thought. You damned well know you’ve been dared to fight .

  Or maybe not. She’d have to be careful about letting Mael’s interpretation of events win out over her own. A shapechanger who lived in an era full of war wouldn’t have the same way of looking at the world as someone in a mostly peaceful country.

  “Very well,” said Dr. Durand. “How best can we schedule Beth’s various tests and return to school? Remember that Thursday and Friday are part of the long Thanksgiving weekend.”

  The meeting went on for another half hour from there, with a good deal of everyone consulting their schedules. Durand finally decided that Monday of next week was the proper time for Bethany to begin classes again.

  ·

  That night Bethany was driven by Kendall to Lihua’s home for dinner with her and her family.

  As they got in his car and fastened their shoulder belts she said, “I’ve GOT to get a car. How much does one cost?”

  “More than Mom and Dad can swing, what with the settlement they made on the house and things in the divorce. And all the money they’re spending on Helen’s school.” Helen was going to a prestigious private medical school in San Diego. She was planning a medical career like her mother but in a different field than surgery.

  “I wouldn’t need a new one. Maybe an old one, as long as it was in good shape.”

  “Maybe. Why don’t you bring it up during Thanksgiving dinner? They’ll be all mellowed out on food and drink and having you come back from the dead.”

  “Hmm. What about a motorcycle? An oldie but goody.”

  “Are you kidding? They’d never go for something that dangerous. Not after your near miss.”

  Beth brooded about matters on the way to Lee’s house. Maybe she should buy a good racer’s bike. One that could gear up really high. Her almost-super muscles were getting stronger every day and she bet she could get up almost to highway speeds with the right machine.

  There was even a club for bike racing at school. She should visit some of the members and get the scoop on bikes. Maybe someone would be graduating from school or something and want to sell one cheap.

  At that point they arrived at Lee’s house. It was close to Beth’s but further up the hill in the more expensive area where her neighborhood’s gentle upslope turned sharply upward toward the VerdugoMountain peaks.

  It was four stories arranged in a stair-step architecture so that the top of each story had a long balcony on which people could sit or stand and look south down the hill out over Burbank.

  As they walked up the winding walkway from the street where Kendall had parked she kept glancing down at the view below. It was spectacular just a bit after sunset, with the world all clothed in velvet cooling air and illuminated by the glowing remnants of the sunset.

  Ken rang the doorbell. She heard it chime deep within the house.

  Still gazing downhill Beth said, “Funny I never thought about it. But her folks must be really rich to own this home.”

  Ken snickered. “You don’t know? Boy, to be a kid again and so innocent of everything outside your own little circle! ”

  “What—” But then the door opened and Lihua ran out and threw her arms around Beth.

  “I’m so happy you’re here! Come in! Come in!”

  “OK, I’m leaving now,” her brother said and began to turn away.

  “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re coming in for dinner too!”

  Lee released Beth and latched onto Ken’s nearest wrist and began to pull. She was almost as small as Beth and he was easily twice her size but her determination was strong. Two hands grasped his wrist and her white tennis shoes were snug against the rough green concrete surface of the walkway. She was leaning away from him at more than a 45-degree angle.

  Laughing, her moose of a brother let himself be pulled inside the house. Beth came in after, closing the door behind her, trapping him.

  Just inside a tall lovely Anglo woman, Lee’s mother Tanya, was smiling at him. She was wearing a red-and-gold silk robe or sari which fit her well though not tightly.

  “Hello, Kendall. Please, we must insist that you stay for dinner. We haven’t seen you in way too long.”

  “Well...”

  The woman was practically exuding sexual desire. At least to Bethany’s almost-super senses.

  Suddenly she was embarrassed at seeing so deeply into people. But she had no time to steep in her feelings, for Tanya had turned and enveloped Beth in scented softness.

  She stepped back and said, “Welcome! Welcome, Bethany, thrice welcome!”

  Anyone else saying something so corny would have made Beth want to laugh. But from this woman it sounded exactly, casually, sincerely right.

  Lee’s mother had been a famous movie star, immensely rich, mostly from roles where she played some sexy woman .

  Beth could understand why she been successful. The sexiness was very real and needed little acting ability to be convincing. But she was also actress able enough to deliver lines like the one she’d just done so effectively.

  Or maybe she was so effective because she was utterly sincere when she said them. Beth’s super-senses could detect no hint of falseness to the words.

  “Thank you, Tanya. I feel welcome.” Lee’s mother insisted she be called by her first name.

  “Come on in and say Hello to Jonathan,” she said and pulled Beth after her.

  Trailing behind Tanya, with Lee bouncing along beside her, Beth glanced back at her brother. And snickered to herself when she saw that his gaze was following the woman’s nicely rounded bottom. She hugged the knowledge to herself for when she could best use it to tease him.

  They traveled up a half-stair of a half-dozen steps and through a short hall which opened into a big kitchen. In it a sturdy Chinese man clad in a suit minus the suit coat was discussing something with two chefs. Tanya left the three younger people and went to join her husband, Jonathan Wang.

  Actual chefs wearing chef hats, she saw. And began to ha
ve a nasty suspicion.

  Bethany turned an accusing gaze on her friend Lee. She looked back with wide-eyed ultra-innocence.

  “What are you getting me into?” Beth tried to add enormous menace to her voice but Lee merely turned demure.

  “I just invited a few people over. Naomi and Brigitte are joining us.”

  Ken came up and lightly cuffed his sister’s shoulder. “So, mobilizing your full fireteam, are you?”

  Ken liked to liken Beth and her three closest female friends to a fireteam, a term the Marines used for its smallest fighting unit.

  “Right! And Jerry. We couldn’t leave him out!”

  “Oh, right. Couldn’t leave out the pouf.”

  Kendall actually approved of Gerard but he wasn’t always as diplomatic as he could be. He did it to annoy his sister, she just knew he did.

  She flicked her arm out and fisted his nearest shoulder, being careful not to use her extraordinary strength, something she was quickly learning to do and make automatic.

  “Ow!” he said, pretending hurt and rubbing his shoulder.

  “Kendall! Good to see you again.”

  Jonathan Wang had left his four-way discussion with his wife and the two chefs. He held a hand out.

  “Jon. Likewise.” Ken shook the hand, perfectly at ease with the head of one of the largest movie studios in the world. Part of that was just Ken, who seemed to like everybody and had known Jonathan for almost half his life. Part of it was that he and Miguel and their two colleagues routinely body-guarded celebrities of all kinds, especially those in the entertainment industry. Any awe he had of the famous and powerful had long since been smoothed away.

  “And here is Bethany! We’re so happy to see you again, dear!”

  He enveloped her in a hug. She relaxed into it happily. Ever since elementary school when she and Lee had met she’d always been made welcome by Lee’s father. Many a time he’d bandaged one of her knees and gravely listened to her earnest explanation of some childish enthusiasm or concern.

  Centuries-old Maelgyreyt recognized the diplomacy of someone who was practically a head of state. Bethany’s super-senses saw the many tiny details that showed his warmth was genuine.