Dead Rules (15 page)

“Hey, Mars, let me do the girl,” Wyatt said. “I'm on a roll. Then you can do the other one before we catch up with this Romeo guy.”

Jana wanted to see Sherry's face when she saw Wyatt, when he talked to her with half a mouth. Then Jana wanted somebody to punch the girl's lights out. She let the Romeo comment slide.

“I'm coming with you,” she insisted.

“Why not?” Wyatt said. “They're your people.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

THEY WERE ALMOST THERE.

The fog lay on the streets in west Asheville. It wrapped the trees and bumped against the houses. Porch lights and the streetlights all wore halos. The stars had gone away. It was a perfect night for ghosts.

“Man, I love flipping people's houses,” Wyatt said as they searched for the right house numbers.

“Flipping? What's that?” Jana asked. “Do you do cartwheels?”

“You know, flip. Show up, walk through, leave. When you flip something, you're getting it done, like flipping a page in a book.”

“You don't turn over the furniture or things like that?”

“I just like people's houses,” Wyatt said. “They're different inside than what you expect. They're not like your own, you know what I mean? I like thinking I live there when I walk through, or that I might have grown up there. My house, we just had junk all over the place. These other houses, it's like everything has been arranged. I like seeing how different people do that.”

Jana smiled. Listening to Wyatt, she felt less dead than usual. Being around him was almost like being alive again.

When they found it, the Simmons house was like the others: shrouded in fog. Wyatt, Mars, and Jana walked inside without opening the door. A golden retriever was on the couch. It raised its head and stared in their direction. Mars had forgotten to tell her that although most animals couldn't see them, dogs always knew when dead people showed up. This one didn't seem to care. It put its face back down on the cushion and stayed where it was.

The room was dark. Jana walked through one corner of the coffee table before she noticed it was there.

Sherry's bedroom was at the front, they discovered. They stepped inside. Mars, focusing only slightly, pushed her bedroom door closed and leaned against it with his arms crossed. Jana stood near him, just in front, staring at the bed where Sherry slept. A night-light glowed in a nearby outlet.

“Look at this,” Wyatt said.

He pointed at the dresser top. In the middle of all the things on Sherry's dresser sat the aerosol can of silicone spray lubricant. Someone had tied a two-inch black ribbon around it. The bow wasn't done right, Jana noticed.

Wyatt approached the bed. He leaned over Sherry, concentrating. He placed his hand on her mouth. Sherry felt the weight of his flesh. Her eyes shot open. At the same time her feet kicked wildly, like they were on fire and she was just noticing it. Wyatt pressed down.

“Stop it,” he said. “I'm not going to hurt you unless you scream. This is a friendly visit. I just want to talk.”

The red and yellow streaks in her hair quit moving. He took some pressure off his hand, studying her reaction with his one eye.

“Okay?” he asked.

She seemed to agree. A little less pressure, then.

“I mean it!” Wyatt said, lifting his hand entirely from her face.

Sherry gasped for air. She whimpered. Tears came to her eyes.

Jana didn't care. She hated Sherry for having tied that black ribbon around the can of silicone spray.

Wyatt's conversation was brief. Sherry had to tell someone about Jana's accident, he said. She had to tell or he would come back.

“Who?” Sherry managed to ask. “Who do I tell?”

“You know who,” he growled at her.

“My parents?”

“Shit no,” he said. “Parents don't matter. They'll just say it was all right. You know who you have to tell.”

Wyatt turned around to look at Mars. Wyatt flung his hand in the air. He'd forgotten her name.

“Sherry,” Mars told him.

“Sherry,” Wyatt said solemnly. “You have to tell the cops. I'm a monster from beyond the grave. I will be here every night until you tell.”

He backed up. He walked to the dresser, leaning down hard on his bad leg and back up straight again. “Say okay, Sherry.”

“Okay,” the sophomore said quickly.

Wyatt picked up the can of silicone spray. “One more thing. I want you to give me this. You have to give it to me or I can't take it.”

She didn't want to. Her face was wet with fear, but she didn't want to.

“Sherry,” Wyatt said, “if you don't give it to me, I'll have to come back and ask again.”

“Okay,” she said.

Wyatt slacked off. She could see only his outline now.

Jana reached behind her to take Mars's hand. She touched his jeans instead. Mars put his hand on her shoulder. His warmth tumbled through her. She was filled with the heat of the earth. She materialized. Sherry screamed when she saw Jana standing in her room. Mars took his hand away and Jana disappeared.

The scream woke up the house. Sherry's father rushed from the master bedroom into the hall.

The three of them left. The dog watched the can of silicone spray float through the living room and out the door. Mars backed the car up the street with the headlights off.

•  •  •

It was Mars's turn to go to work.

The television was on at Nathan's house. They saw him through the window. Nathan sat in a chair bathed in the light of the TV. He was still dressed, but his shoes were off.

Mars stuck his head through the door and said, “Nathan, come here a sec.”

Nathan looked at the door. He climbed out of the chair and opened it. Wyatt stood off to the side to watch. Jana kept near him for warmth. Nathan stepped outside in his socks.

“Over here,” Mars said from the edge of a rhododendron bush. He moved quickly away.

Nathan stepped into the grass. “Michael? Where are you? Come on, my feet are wet.”

He took one more step. Mars tackled him from behind.

Nathan hit the ground and went limp. Mars, fully naturalized to the Planet now, rolled him over for their little talk. Nathan recognized Mars as the guy from the bowling alley. Nathan's hair was coated with droplets of fog that looked to Jana like spiderwebs. Nathan licked the corners of his mouth while Mars talked to him. There were webs there too.

•  •  •

Michael was next.

“His dad works the graveyard shift,” Jana told Mars. “His mom's married to someone else. He'll be home alone.”

Wyatt traipsed through the house with his peculiar gait. With each step, it looked like he was leaning in to peer at something on the wall, then leaning out again. Jana took Mars to the bedroom. Michael was asleep. Mars turned on the lights. Michael didn't wake up. He was sprawled on his back in bed.

Jana had been in his house often enough. She knew the books on his desk, the posters on the wall. The brand of cereal he kept on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. His toothpaste and his shampoo.

She sat on the edge of Michael's bed and watched him sleep. He was beautiful. His breathing was so soft, so quiet. Did she really want him dead?

Yes.

And he wanted to be dead too. Once they were together, Michael would never be alone again. The sooner the better, for both of them.

“I want him to hear me,” Jana said. “I want him to see me.”

“To see you he'll have to see me too,” Mars said.

“If I talk to him, will he think he's dreaming?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, I want him to see me first. Stand behind me, Mars. Put your hands on my shoulders.”

Mars pressed both his hands on Jana. She kept her eyes on Michael as wave upon wave of smoldering warmth entered her, held her.

“Wake him,” Mars whispered in her ear, his breath as warm as his hands.

Jana opened her mouth slightly to take in more air. She pulled the covers away from Michael. He slept bare-chested. She placed her hand there, her breathing trying to catch up to the heat lowering itself into her body, over and over like the tide. She massaged his chest with short gentle strokes.

“Michael, wake up,” Jana said softly. “Wake up, Michael. It's me.”

His eyes came slowly open.

Michael jerked away from her, bolting himself against the headboard. He screamed like a little girl. The crazed look in his eyes could have knocked down bowling pins.

Mars took his hands away.

Jana flung herself on top of Michael.

“Shhh,” she said. “It's okay. It's me. I'm here.”

Jana faded before Mars did. She faded quickly. Michael could barely hear her, could barely feel her weight on top of him.

Wild-eyed and panting, Michael stared at Mars. He'd left the automatic locked in the glove compartment of his car. He wouldn't do that again. Mars slowly disappeared.

Wyatt came into the room. He walked to Michael's computer and touched the mouse. The screen saver popped off. There was a Google search on the browser:
How to fire a pistol.

Half of Wyatt's face found humor in Michael's current research project.

Jana rode in silence for the longest time.

Michael had screamed when he saw her. He was supposed to have smiled warmly, to have reached for her. Jana had tried to hold on to him, to hug Michael's body with all of hers. It was no use. Once Mars let go of her, Michael didn't know she was still there. Jana had felt Michael's heartbeat, but he couldn't feel hers.

Jana could touch, but she couldn't hold. She might as well have been the fog.

The Sliders decided not to jump. It would be light in an hour and the guy whose car they drove might be up soon. Besides, everyone was exhausted. Jana's thoughts were drowsy. She couldn't concentrate.

“I just have to be a Slider,” Jana finally said.

Wyatt was tired of hearing it. “She doesn't even know what she's asking,” he said to Mars.

“I'm right here, Wyatt,” Jana said curtly. “And I can hear you.”

“But can you listen, that's the question,” he barked at her. “Look, let's get this over with. You do
not
want to be a Slider. It's going backwards. It's going the wrong way.”

“Yes, I do,” Jana said. “I want to be a Slider just like you.”

“No, you don't. You just think you do. Look, it's Chutes and Ladders once you're dead. And Sliders aren't sliding up. What do you think happens to us when we graduate or get kicked out, whichever comes first?”

Jana was silent. There was nothing he could say that would change her mind. She didn't just want to be a Slider, she needed to be one.

“It's not all angel cake and ice cream, I can tell you that much,” Wyatt continued. “They don't have Twinkies where we're going. They just bake them there.”

Wyatt was angry for some reason. Mars wasn't saying anything to help. It was the end of the argument. And it was the end of their night on the town.

The Sliders dropped her off out front.

“Just walk through the gate and don't stop,” Mars told her. “You can walk through it while it's closed from this side. You'll be good as new once you're on campus.”

As good as dead, Jana thought. “Okay,” she said.

“Drink some water before you go to bed.”

The dorm looked different from outside the fence. There were weeds everywhere; there wasn't concrete. Windows were broken, some with boards nailed across them. No lights were on. To the real world, the Dead School dorm was a vacant building. A yellow school bus, spotted with rust, sat on flat tires inside the fence. A metal No Trespassing sign at the front gate had been tagged with black spray paint. A heavy chain and a heavier lock held the gate closed.

Fog shadowed her feet as Jana left the Planet. She walked through the gate as if it wasn't there. When she did, lights came on in the building and over the lobby doors. The windows were repaired. The bus looked new. She felt her body's physical presence return.

The Gray named Barry wasn't waiting for her on the bench. Instead, a trio of Virgins greeted her at the entry to the dorm. They sang a song to twenty, then floated away. It was probably a Riser record for demerits earned in one night, but it wasn't enough to satisfy Jana. She'd have to jump, or something worse. She'd have to do a lot of things.

As she climbed the stairs, Jana considered how she would kill Michael once she was a Slider. She couldn't cut his throat or he'd look like that in Dead School. She could shoot him while he slept. It would leave just a little hole in the back of his head if she did it right. But if she didn't do it right, it would blast a ragged hole in his face when the bullet came out the other side.

She thought of Beatrice. Jana might be strong enough to push an ice pick through his skull. Or, with practice, she could use a hammer and give the handle of an ice pick one solid hit. Would he jump around until he died? Would he struggle if she strangled him? Probably, she decided.

If she plunged the ice pick into his chest until it pierced his heart while he slept, he might wake up and pull it out. She'd have to hide his cell phone so he couldn't call 911 for help. What if he struck out at her before he died? She didn't want Michael hitting her to be the last thing he remembered from real life.

Jana would drug him. She'd tie his hands and feet to the bed. Then smother him in his sleep. Michael would be a little blue in Dead School. That didn't matter anyway. Everyone was. Poison, of course. Drugs and poison were the same thing. Everything about
Romeo and Juliet
was just right.

Chapter Twenty-Three

ARVA FROWNED AT THE WORLD.

“I don't want to know where you went last night,” she said.

Jana sat between her roommate and the window on the bus to Dead School. Jana smelled like Ivory soap again. Everyone did. The scent of soap reminded Jana of a song from grade school.
“We're all in our places with bright, shining faces.”
The ones that had faces.

“And I don't want to know what you did.” Arva's usual hoarse whisper turned into a creaking sound when she tried to be adamant.

Jana knew Arva was mad because Jana didn't depend on her for information any longer. Risers thought they had all the answers, but they weren't the only kids who had tried to figure out what they were supposed to do and not supposed to do at Dead School. And, frankly, Mars and Wyatt had done a better job of it.

Climbing up on her knees, Jana turned around and placed her arms on the back of the seat. The student behind her had incredibly pink puffy cheeks. His entire face was puffed out like a marshmallow. Or a balloon. His eyes were swollen shut. Bee sting, she thought. Or poison ivy. Jana looked beyond him and saw Mars. She ate Mars for breakfast with her eyes.

Then she laughed. Jana couldn't help it. Her natural smile took over and stayed there. She batted her eyelashes. Mars stared at her as if she wore clown makeup and a red rubber nose. She wasn't good at being naughty yet. She'd get better at it before the day was through, Jana decided. Twenty-three demerits weren't nearly enough.

“You went walking through the dead of night with those two Sliders,” Arva said without looking at Jana. “I know you did.” Creak, creak, croak.

Mars shook his head at Jana, then looked out the window.

Jana turned around in her seat as the bus began to move. “Arva, we
were
the dead of night,” she said.

Christie caught up to Jana before homeroom.

“Thank you,” she said. “They're through. I can tell they are.” Christie smiled. It made her hair glow. The slightly diagonal red line across her forehead was barely there when she smiled like that.

“It wasn't me. It was Wyatt,” Jana said. “He did it by himself.”

“Isn't he a dream?” Christie asked.

“Just that,” Jana said. She smiled at the thought of a guy who looked like a refugee from a nightmare being Christie's idea of a dream. Jana realized she was smiling more now that she had decided to be a bad girl. She smiled naturally without thinking about it first. It just happened.

There was a flyer printed on blue paper on every student's desk. Jana sat in her seat and read hers.
Sock Hop!
was centered in large block letters.
Third period. In the Gym.
In much smaller type near the bottom it read
Arva Davis, Publicity Committee
.

Jana turned to ask Arva about it, but her roommate wouldn't look at her. She turned around and asked Beatrice instead. It was a come-as-you-are school dance. You had to take off your shoes to dance on the gym floor.

“But we don't have to hop, do we?”

Beatrice tilted the yellow yard dart fins to one side. “Can if you want,” she said brightly. She wore a lighter color of blush on her cheeks today. There was a brush of glitter under her eyes. Beatrice sparkled.

Jana was sure twenty-three demerits were far short of her goal. And she didn't know what that goal was. Maybe two hundred. Maybe two hundred and fifty. She would have to do better. She opened her homeroom notebook and tore out a page from the back. She wrote a short note and passed it to Henry.

She couldn't stop looking at Mars. He seemed brand-new to her. He'd taken her to the world with him and brought her safely back. Now that she was a bad girl, they had something in common.

Jana knew everything about Michael. It was different with Mars. She had no idea what dreams and sorrows lived behind his darting eyes and perfectly arched eyebrows.

It was time to act. Second period, Jana waited until Mr. Skinner had drawn his first box on the blackboard. Jana stood from her desk. A few students looked at her.

She straightened her hair with her hands, tugged up her kneesocks to get them even, then bounced to the front of the class. She lifted the chalk eraser from the tray and, standing next to Mr. Skinner, erased the first maze he'd drawn while he worked on the second.

Jana turned to the class and bowed from the waist. Two of the Sliders clapped. Others laughed. Mars looked down and massaged the center of his forehead with the thumb and fingers of one hand. Arva buried her head inside her arms crossed in front of her on her desk.

A Virgin appeared inside the classroom door. She was a little wider and taller than the others and she sang in as low a voice as Jana had ever heard a girl sing. Then she motioned Jana to the door. Outside, a Gray escorted her to the library. Jana had earned detention for the remainder of the hour.

She was surprised to see Jameson sitting at the table where she'd first met him. He was alone this time. Jana asked if she could sit down. Books were spread out in front of him. He glanced up at her, then returned to his work. His straight brown bangs touched the tops of his glasses. His cowlick looked like a little hand of hair waving hello.

“You aren't in class,” Jana said.

“This is my class,” Jameson told her. “I'm a full-time student librarian. I'm good at languages.”

“That must be fun,” Jana said politely. “Do you graduate and everything?”

“Well, no. Not really,” he mumbled.

“What, then?” Jana asked. “If you don't graduate, what happens to you?”

“I shouldn't tell you.”

“Go ahead,” Jana said. “I won't rat you out.”

“I'm a regent,” he whispered.

“A what?”

“A regent. Right now I'm the student representative on the Regents Council. I died too young, I guess.”

Jana's mouth dropped open. “You run the place?”

“No,” Jameson said. He looked up from his books, pushed his glasses against the bridge of his nose, and looked back down. “Not yet,” he added.

She asked about demerits. Jana told him everything she had done and that she had earned three for skinny-dipping and twenty for leaving campus.

“Then I got detention,” she said. “That's why I'm here.”

“I see,” Jameson said absently.

“I need more demerits,” Jana told him. “A lot more.”

He leaned back in his chair. “For starters, don't disrupt class,” he said. “You'll just end up here. Detention is meant to keep you from bothering other students. You can't do that in Dead School. Every student gets equal opportunity to learn, to achieve.”

“To change?” Jana suggested.

“That's what you really want, isn't it?” This time Jameson looked into her eyes, his stare magnified by the lenses in his glasses.

“I want to be a Slider.”

“That's going to take some doing. Demerits are meant to warn Risers. Not much more to it than that. The easiest way to get more is to do the same things again. Since they're a warning, it won't be too much the first time you do anything. When you do it again, it is taken much more seriously because you have already been warned.”

“I got three demerits for skinny-dipping,” she said. “If I do it again, I'll get a bunch more?”

“First of all, you earned three demerits for taking your underwear off at school. They don't care that you went swimming, and you didn't know you were skipping class, so they didn't see that as a choice you made. If you do it again, you'll get nine demerits or maybe ten. It's rather subjective.”

“How many demerits until I go before the Council? Will they make me a Slider?”

“It's unclear,” he confessed. “Look, you're a Riser. You're one of the good kids. They allow for you to mess up and joke around. That's why they have demerits in the first place. If you were a Slider, your actions would have more dire consequences. Sliders don't get demerits. They just get expelled. And that's an instant vacancy. But as long as Sliders don't disrupt other students here, they let them do about anything until they finally do something that is . . . bad enough.”

“How much do I have to do to get the regents to make me a Slider?” Michael had better appreciate this, Jana thought.

“Risers don't go before the Regents Council. So you have to become a Slider on your own. Then . . . well, then you don't want ever to be called before the regents.”

“I'll be a good Slider, I promise,” Jana said. “I won't bother anyone on campus. Just tell me what to do, Jameson. You know it can happen and you know how it's done.”

“Yes, it's possible,” he said. “I can tell you that much. But I can't tell you exactly how to do it. That would make me a collaborator. Besides, it would be different for everyone. Whatever it is, it would have to be egregious.”

Having to figure out everything on your own was getting old fast, Jana decided. No wonder Arva wanted to believe in a simple set of rules other students came up with.

“Okay, but I want it to be soon,” Jana said. “Do they take forever to decide?”

“Most vacancies happen instantly. Ditto for any change in student status, I would think.”

“Instantly” would be good, Jana thought.

“He came to my house last night,” Nathan told Michael.

“Who?”

“The guy on Jana's phone. He was saying I had to tell about the accident or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Something about a cliff and what it felt like to fall to your death from real high up. He said you fall so fast, you can't breathe. That you almost black out. Then he said you wished you had. Look, the guy's a lunatic. I had to fight him off. It was a real tumble, but I got him out of the yard finally.”

“Was he alone?” Michael wanted to know.

“Yeah, the guy from the bowling alley. The guy who saw it happen. So listen, I've been thinking about it and—”

“He's just trying to scare you,” Michael interrupted. “You ran him off. It's over.”

“I don't think it's over. Maybe it's time we tell someone the truth.”

Michael closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It would ruin him. There would be an investigation of some kind. There would be a record. It would be in the paper, show up online, and Michael would be an Ivy League leper.

He wasn't guilty of anything, and it would ruin him. His scholarship to Dartmouth would fly out the window. That would mean he would have to stay local for college. Local college was a joke when it came to the goals he had set for himself.

Why didn't she just fall down like anyone else would have and get back up again? It was her fault, really. Not his. It was supposed to be a comedy and she'd made a tragedy out of it.

“You won't do that,” Michael said. “You won't tell anyone anything at all. Because where are you going to go when they fight again? Where are you going to go when your parents start tearing the house apart at three in the morning?”

“Have you known of any Risers who became Sliders?” Jana asked Jameson.

He looked at her for almost a minute without answering. He pushed his glasses on up his nose, although they were already there to begin with.

“Yes,” he finally said.

That was the easier of the two questions she might have asked. Jameson had been researching the other one for Mars. A Slider becoming a Riser was much more difficult and exacting. It involved free-will atonement for a previous act with absolutely no regard for possible reward or advancement. It had to be an accomplishment by the Slider in a moment that was pure of heart. Perfectly pure of heart. Given too much time to consider the outcome almost nixed the deal for anyone. If you even thought you were doing good on purpose, it didn't count.

“How many?” Jana wanted to know.

“How many what?”

“How many Risers have become Sliders? That you know of.”

“One or two.”

“How did they do it?” Jana could use some pointers.

“One of them slept around. She was a Slider for part of her last semester here. She's gone now.”

Jameson bent back over his work.

“And the other one?”

“She committed suicide and it failed,” he said. “She completed the act that would end her existence. It just didn't work.”

“How, exactly?” Jana asked.

“I don't remember the details,” Jameson said without looking up.

Jana thought about failed suicide. You carried it through, but it didn't kill you, for some reason.

“Like firing a gun into your chest and missing your heart?”

“Yes, that's the idea,” Jameson agreed. “You commit the act that would normally kill you and you're convinced that it will kill you. You take a huge overdose that puts you in a coma, for example. That's another way. Of course, a coma induced in Dead School only lasts a little while.”

“And if she had succeeded, she would be a vacancy, right?”

“Oh yes, successful suicide here is instant vacancy. Your status doesn't matter on suicide. You're expelled for good. Grays committed suicide in real life. Once you're here, it's simply not tolerated.”

This path to becoming a Slider wouldn't work at all. She'd have to kill herself for real and then by some quirk have it fail to take. That left her original plan in place: as many demerits in as short a time as possible.

Jameson's talk reminded Jana of an old movie she liked. It was a Julia Roberts one. Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon. And, dang it, she forgot which, one of the Baldwins.

“There is a window when you die,” Jana said. “Sometimes there is. Your body dies but you don't totally leave, or something. Like in the movie
Flatliners
? Have you seen that one? They die and everything, but they can come back from death because that window hasn't closed.”