Dead Rules (13 page)

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When Arva came back to the room, she was in a much better mood. She and Jana chatted merrily about this and that. Jana even mentioned Rogues to her in passing.

Arva finished her last bottle of water for the evening. “What are Rogues?” she asked.

Jana thought she was kidding. “Rogues, you know. They came to my funeral today. Rogues. The bad guys?”

Arva still wasn't getting it.

“Rogues, Rogues, Rogues,” Jana said. “Dead School dropouts.”

“There are no Dead School dropouts. You can't just quit. It's not in our guidebook. You're here or you're a vacancy. There's nothing in between.”

“What about the vacancy in homeroom, Arva? You said she walked away and stayed overnight. And she was a Riser.”

“It's just a rumor she did that. And if she did, then she's a vacancy.” Arva coughed and sputtered. She spit out her final croaky words like they were poison. “Not an outlaw dropout monkey snatcher . . .
whatever
!”

“Trust me, there
are
Rogues,” Jana insisted. “I saw them. And they saw me.”

“No. It's just not so.”

“Arva, the guidebook the students put together isn't everything there is to know about Dead School.”

“It's good enough for me,” Arva said. She poked her tongue at a small feather stuck on her lower lip. “It's good enough for Risers,” she added in a huff. “So it's good enough for me. And it's good enough for you.”

Jana answered a knock at the door.

It was Mars. She felt his familiar warmth wash over her.

“Close your eyes, Davis,” he said, peering over Jana's shoulder. “I'm coming in.”

Jana waited. Arva sat on the bed with her legs crossed, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She was frowning.

“Webster,” Mars said, “you have to ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“To come in. I have to be invited.”

Arva was shaking her head, but didn't say a word.

“Oh, please come in,” Jana said.

Mars walked to the foot of Jana's bed. “I have to show you something, Webster.” He picked up her bowling shoes.

“Come here,” he said. He held a shoe in each hand. As Jana approached, he flipped the right shoe over and held it out to her.

“Touch the sole. Rub your fingers across the bottom.”

Jana didn't really want to, but she did. Her fingers slipped along the bottom of the bowling shoe like they were greased. She cocked her head, her hair falling over her cheek.

“Now, try this one.” He held the left shoe upside down for her. When Jana rubbed her fingertips across the sole, they found resistance. Her fingers didn't slide easily and she had to push them along the surface.

Mars carried the shoes to the bathroom. Jana followed. He set the right one down on the tile floor and gave it nudge. It slid across the bathroom. He did the same with the left shoe and it didn't move. The left shoe would move across the floor only as long as he kept his hand on it, pushing it. The right one had taken off on its own.

“Silicone spray,” Mars told her.

“The bowling alley sprayed my shoe? Do they charge extra for making people fall down?”

Mars's cheek dimpled. “Not the bowling alley, Webster. It's the kind of spray you use to loosen old locks so the key turns smoothly through the tumblers.”

“So that's your murder plot?”

“Silicone spray,” Mars repeated. “Locksmiths use it all the time.”

“Oh.” It clicked. “Sherry's dad is a locksmith. That's what you meant when you told Nathan you knew what he'd done. Sherry and Nathan did it. He was laughing. I remember that. He was laughing at me.”

She wouldn't believe him if he told her the truth, Mars decided. Not yet.

Chapter Twenty

MARS WAS READY TO GO.

“Let me pack,” Jana said. She wedged her cell phone into the pocket of her striped capri pants. “Okay, then.”

“You can open your eyes now,” Mars called to Arva as he and Jana left the dorm room.

The hallway was anything but empty. Doors were open and lights were on. Girls stood in their doorways and chatted, two or three at a time. They were watching Mars, who had just made his rounds. A Gray stood at the far end, at the door to the stairway, watching nothing.

Wyatt stood in a doorway across the hall from Jana's room. He had handed Beatrice a small package of makeup and now leaned against the wall with his head ducked, speaking quietly to Christie.

Christie looked up and smiled at Jana and Mars. Wyatt pulled away and lumbered toward them on his bad leg. Christie caught Jana's eye and silently mouthed the words
thank you
. Jana was taken by surprise. She pointed to herself and turned her face into a question mark. Christie nodded vigorously.

Jana was warm standing next to Mars. As Wyatt reached them, she noticed the warmth increase. When she was a Slider, Jana thought, she would be warm all the time.

“I got the directions,” Wyatt said to Mars out the side of his mouth that was still there. “It's way up in Madison County, though. You better find one with lots of gas.”

Wyatt's one working eye locked on Jana. “Are you sure she has to come with us?” he asked Mars.

Mars nodded. Wyatt turned and walked away, his tall form listing from side to side with every step, like the mast of a ship on a tossing sea.

“Where's he going?” Jana asked Mars. “You said he was coming with us.”

“To the fire escape. It's easier for him than the stairs.”

The Gray monitor never looked up as Mars and Jana walked past him and into the stairwell.

“So, these are your contraband operations in action?” Jana asked once the door closed behind them. “You and Wyatt steal things from the Planet and make a killing selling them to Risers?”

“It's not as simple as that, Webster.” He talked while she followed him down the stairs. “I don't steal. I can't take anything from the Planet and bring it here unless it is given to me.”

“Your rule or theirs?” Jana asked.

Mars stopped his descent. “Mine,” he said. “And theirs. If you steal something, it won't go through the fence.”

They were going downstairs again.

“But you and Wyatt make money finding what students want and bringing it to them.”

“Money?” Mars said. “What's money here, Webster?”

He stopped on the landing between floors and turned to look at her. Jana was on the last stair. She and Mars were the same height now. His blue eyes held hers.

Jana was slightly unnerved. There was heat in his eyes and she'd never been this close to them before. His face was closer to hers now than when they'd been in the pool together. Jana feared he could feel her breath when she spoke.

“So you just give them contraband for the heck of it?”

“No, Jana, I don't.”

He used her first name. He felt the closeness too, she thought.

“I'm not stupid,” he continued. “I know the difference between what people want and what people need. You said I bring them things they want. It's not like that. They want everything, Webster. I bring them things they need.”

“People need makeup?”

“Yes. Most girls do, if you haven't noticed. They need it to feel normal. You said it yourself when you were sitting on the lawn after your funeral. You said you just wanted to be normal. And almost everyone's a little blue. Makeup helps them take the edge off being dead.”

First impressions can be so wrong, Jana thought. And so could Arva.

Jana hadn't given Mars enough credit. As her eyes moved back and forth, watching each of his watch her, she wondered again how he had died. She wondered what bad thing he had been doing at the time of his death to have become a Slider.

“That's your cure for cancer, then, Dr. Dreamcote.” Jana tried to smile, but her mouth opened only slightly instead. She drew in a shallow breath of air. “You take the edge off being dead.” Her voice was soft and low.

Before he could turn away from her, Jana placed her hand on his shoulder and brought her face to his. She kissed him. It was meant to be a little thank-you to Mars for liking her, for putting up with all her questions, for helping her. And for helping others.

Mars blushed. It was a small kiss with her lips closed. She'd taken it away almost as soon as either one of them had felt it. It was just a quick kiss, but it melted her lips. Jana's heart raced. Her toes tingled.

In a world without Michael, Mars was a possibility. Jana wasn't ready to go to that world yet. It would mean giving up on Michael. It would mean giving up on endless love.

Mars was away before either of them could say anything.

At the bottom of the stairs, he led her outside. The night was cool. Jana was too excited to notice. There was a bench beside the door. A Gray stood next to it. Mars and Jana walked quickly through the squares of yellow light that fell from the dorm windows across the concrete sidewalk at their feet.

Wyatt waited around the corner of the building.

“Okay,” Mars said to Jana. “Watch us leave. There's a hole in the chain-link fence back this way. Watch where we go, and when it's time, you'll come out the same way. Go back to the bench out front and wait. We'll be in a car, that way.” Mars pointed. “I'll blink the headlights.”

“Can a Riser do that? Just go through a hole in the fence?” Jana asked.

“Until you're off campus, you have a body, Webster. The front gate is locked. Unless you want to climb over the fence . . .”

“But can a Riser do that? Just walk away and be on the Planet?”

Mars stared at her, then looked at Wyatt.

“We'll see,” Wyatt answered for him.

“It's been done,” Mars said.

“We think it has, anyway,” Wyatt added.

“Don't get up,” Jana said.

The Gray was sitting on the bench when she got back. She wondered if he would be there all night. She sat down next to him. At night, he was almost invisible. A shadow.

Jana stared at her clunky shoes. She had time to kill. She thought about Sherry Simmons. Her father was a locksmith. Jana remembered seeing the can of silicone spray in Sherry's purse when they had been in the restroom together. The sophomore had lied to Jana and told her it was pepper spray. Wasn't it just a joke, something to make Jana look stupid when she started to bowl and couldn't stand up?

Jana thought about the messages Mars had written in her notebooks. She wondered whether it was murder when someone did something that kills you when they didn't think it would.

It was over now. A prank gone wrong. Jana had other things to think about. Brave things. Bold things.

Once she was off campus, Jana could use her phone. With Mars's help, she could talk to Michael. Tell him to be somewhere in the next day or two where she could kill him quickly. Webster and Haynes were destined to be together again. And it had to be soon. As soon as she became a Slider.

Jana stared into the darkness. She fought silently to remember Michael's voice. It wasn't there.

“What's your name?” she asked the Gray without looking at him. They seemed to prefer it.

“Barry,” he said.

“Cool name,” Jana lied to be nice. “There are actors named Barry, you know. Barry Bostwick, for one. He was in
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. My name is Jana Webster. I'm an actor. That's why I remember old movies when no one else does.” But she couldn't remember Michael's voice.

The Gray kept his chin on his chest.

“Will you try to stop me when I leave?” Jana asked.

“No,” he replied softly. “But I'll tell. I have to.” His voice sounded like leaves.

“That's okay. I need demerits. Loads of them and in a hurry too.”

Jana wished someone knew how many demerits it took for a Riser to become a Slider. If she had to do five hundred things against the rules, she would do them all tonight if she could. Since she had earned only three demerits for skinny-dipping, she knew she needed to do something much more extreme.

“Do you know what jumping is?” Jana asked. She looked at him this time.

Barry shook his head no.

“Me neither.” She sighed. “But I'm going to do it tonight if I can. Maybe six or seven times.”

The Gray got up and slowly walked away.

While she waited, Jana reconsidered Mr. Skinner's mazes.

The first five mazes conditioned you to turn left. Then you had to turn right to move correctly into the final maze. You were reluctant to do it and it messed you up. You had to turn the wrong way to go the right way.

Life had conditioned Jana, she realized. And everything life had conditioned her to do didn't necessarily work any longer. She had to turn the other way. Now that she was dead, life was different. Jana was in the sixth maze. Here, the bad boy needed to save a life. The good girl was going to take one.

About the time her teeth were starting to chatter, Jana saw the headlights blink on and off. And on and off again. She jumped up and nearly ran around the corner of the building, crossed the grass to the back fence, and found the hole in the chain-link. The night seemed darker here at the edge of the Planet. The trees rising behind the dorm emerged from impenetrable black shadows.

She thought of the Rogues as shadows in the night, shadows at the base of the trees, shadows with eyeballs and teeth. The thoughts chased her all the way to the car. Mars was in the driver's seat. Jana rushed to the passenger side. The window was down. She reached for the door handle, but her hand wouldn't work it.

“Just get in,” Mars said. He patted the empty passenger seat. Mars sat with a bottle of flavored pop between his legs. It was from the six-pack they'd hidden in the weeds just off campus.

Jana stepped through the closed car door and sat in the seat. She was warm again.

“I watched you walk here,” Mars said. “What you do naturally still applies. You just can't move anything with your hands. Just like when you left the funeral. Your feet touch the ground and you can walk. You can sit on things. You can touch things when you don't think about it. Eventually you'll be able to do more.”

“When I'm like you,” Jana said.

Wyatt sat sideways in the backseat, chewing a piece of gum. He even smacked the halves of his lips that would smack. Jana ignored him. Wyatt returned the favor.

“Hold my hand, Mars. I want to call Michael,” Jana said. She leaned back and to one side to remove her cell from her pants pocket.

“Not yet,” he told her. “We have to get away from here.” The car moved along the street.

“Why? Are they watching us?”

Wyatt snickered in the backseat. “Someone might recognize the car,” he said.

“Drive with one hand,” Jana said. “Hold mine with the other.”

“Can't, Webster. I have to focus on one thing at a time or we'll go off the road.”

They'd found the car just a few blocks away. When Mars concentrated, he could start and turn the engine off without a key by partially materializing and by keeping part of himself a ghost. His fingers slipped through the steering column. Once there, his touch naturalized just enough to push the wires together until the engine started. Then he took his hand away and focused on gripping the wheel and pressing his foot on the gas and brake pedals.

Jana held her cell phone and stared at it.

“Wyatt,” she said loudly. “Give me your hand.”