On the Day I Died (4 page)

Of course, I wasn’t. But if I told her what was happening, she probably wouldn’t believe me, either. I dropped onto the edge of my bed, gulping big mouthfuls of air. Hugging myself tightly, I rocked back and forth, back and forth, until finally, slowly, the panic left.

Still, a sense of dread remained.

Anthony wasn’t in homeroom the next morning. Looking at the empty seat across from me, I should have felt relief. But I didn’t. Instead, I felt itchy and on edge.

Halfway through the period, he appeared, making a big show of the Bible in his hand. “Please excuse my tardiness, Sister,” he said as he slid into his chair, his face all false innocence, “but I was so busy memorizing my New Testament verses that I lost all track of time.”

Sister Mary Henry nodded understandingly. In her world, Anthony Delvecchio could do no wrong.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he smiled at some secret thought. The dimple in his cheek deepened.

Minutes later, the classroom door began to clatter.

Curious, Tommy De Luca opened the door. “Hey, there’s smoke in the hallway!” he hollered, just as a cloud of black smoke swirled into the classroom.

Sister Mary Henry hurried over to where Tommy
stood. Quickly, she slammed the door. But more smoke began seeping in through the transom.

Everyone looked nervously toward the teacher.

Everyone, that is, but me. I slowly turned to Anthony, my eyes wide with horror.

There was a moment, and then … he winked.

I leaped to my feet, the sudden movement knocking over my desk, just as the fire alarm went off.

Kids were scrambling now, bolting toward the classroom door, years of fire drill practice instantly forgotten as the smoke in the room grew thicker and blacker.

“Get down on your hands and knees!” shouted Sister Mary Henry. “Crawl out through the door one after another.”

Everyone did as they were told. One by one they disappeared into the churning darkness of the hallway.

I raced to join them, but Anthony grabbed me. His strong arms held me back.

“Let me go!” I twisted and struggled.

“Enjoy it!” he shouted above the sounds of the fire. “Enjoy it for one more minute.”

The room was growing hotter every second, the paint on the walls beginning to change from white to brown.

“Sister,” I called weakly, choking and coughing.

Then the big globe lights that hung from the ceiling exploded, sending a rain of glass crashing to the floor. Anthony let go of my arm, and I fell to my knees.

His Bible.

In the chaos, it had been knocked to the floor. Now I snatched it up, held it over my head as if it could provide some sort of heavenly protection against the fire. But within seconds, its golden-edged pages began smoldering. They curled, became burning wisps that drifted to the floor. I put out my hand. The pages fell like snowflakes into my palm. So did a folded piece of paper—
Anthony’s confession
. My fingers closed around it just as he grabbed my arm again, this time with less strength. He was making rasping, hacking sounds as he pulled me toward the windows. He wrestled one open, and we hung our heads out, gulping the cold, fresh air. Below us on the asphalt we could see Sister Mary Henry and our classmates. We could see the other students, too. Everyone had escaped—except us.

I looked at Anthony. There was a feverish light in his eyes, a strange smile on his lips. And even in the room’s ovenlike heat, I shivered.

Suddenly, with a bright orange flash and a loud boom, the fire exploded. It crashed in at the door and burst through the walls. Then everything was on fire—desks, tables, books.

My hair began to smoke. I could feel my nylons melting to my legs.

“Climb up here!” shouted Anthony.

He half-dragged me out onto the wide window ledge. For a moment, we both perched there, looking down at the terrified faces below. Anthony reached over and took
my clenched hand in his. “This is fun, isn’t it?” he said, his voice raw. That’s when the windows blew out, knocking us off the sill.

***

I don’t know how long I lay there on the blacktop, unconscious. When I finally opened my eyes, I was looking up at Sister Mary Henry, my head resting in her lap. Father Frank bent over me, anointing my forehead with oil. “ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil …’ ”

Evil
.

I moved my blistered lips, forced words up from my parched throat. “Anthony.”

“He’s alive,” soothed Sister Mary Henry.

Father Frank leaned in even closer. “Why, Gina?” he asked, his kind eyes probing mine. “Why did you do it?”

“Anthony.”

A look of sadness washed over Father Frank’s face. “Oh, Gina,” he sighed.

Slowly, my blackened fingers relaxed, revealing a folded paper, its edges burned—the paper that had fallen from Anthony’s Bible.

Sister Mary Henry took the paper and opened it. “ ‘I did it,’ ” she read aloud. She gasped, and I knew she recognized Anthony’s handwriting. She turned to Father Frank and whispered something in his ear. Their eyes met, then slowly grew wide with understanding … just as mine closed for the last time.

Gina fell silent.

And slowly, Mike returned to himself, the hazy edges of the ghost’s story rolling back like fog to reveal the present. Once again, he could see the gravestones bright in the moonlight; could feel the saddle shoes, cold and wet and lumpy, beneath him. Nothing had changed—except for one thing. While Gina had told her story, the other ghosts had gathered around to listen, settling themselves onto nearby gravestones or sitting cross-legged in the grass. They were close enough now for Mike to make out their expressions—some sad, others hopeful, still others pitying, or sympathetic, or—in the case of the boy stomping toward him—angry.

Mike jerked back as the boy raised a fist.

But the ghost whirled on Gina. “So that’s it? That’s the end?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You shoulda gotten even with that Anthony schmuck. You shoulda haunted him to his dying day.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” said Gina. “Besides, I’m sure it all came right in the end.”

“Came right?
You’re
the only person can make it come right. If there’s one thing I learned from my sixteen lousy years on earth, it’s you only got yourself. Ain’t nobody going to help. And I’ll tell you something else—if it’d been me, I’d have haunted that slob until
he was just a shivering little bunny rabbit. Yeah, I’d have reduced him to a quaking mass of tapioca pudding. I’d have gotten my revenge.”

The boy turned his furious face toward Mike. “Revenge,” he said in a low voice. “That’s my story: how Johnnie Novotny got his revenge
and
”—he paused a second before continuing—“how revenge got him.”

I
F YOU WAS TO ask me how I ended up in this cemetery, my life snuffed out like the burning end of some politician’s fat stogie, I’d spit out two words—Officer Funkhouser. That meddling do-good copper practically pushed me into the funeral business. That’s a fact. And … well … if I hadn’t been at the undertaker’s that night, I might not be in this graveyard now.

I was working over on LaSalle Street, relieving the well-to-do of some of their unneeded goods. Already, I’d slipped a greenback-thick wallet out of some rich swell’s coat pocket, and I’d pinched a gold bangle off one of them high-class dames as she bustled off to do some shopping at Marshall Field’s or one of those other swanky department stores down on State Street.

We were in a depression, see, but them hoity-toity slobs didn’t know a thing about it. You can bet your last
dollar they’d never stood in line half a morning just for a lousy ladleful of thin soup. Bet they’d never slept on a hard bench over in Grant Park, neither, using yesterday’s copy of the
Daily News
for a blanket. Nope, life’s miseries never touched them white-breads. But I sure did. And why not? I’m like that Robin Hood guy, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. They had so much. What was wrong with taking a little for myself, for cripes sake? I’m the poor!

So there I was, minding my own business and working the privileged crowd, when—
WHAM!
I found myself facedown in the gutter.

“That’s it, Johnnie Novotny,” bellowed a deep voice. “I’m taking you in.”

I scrambled to my feet, fury boiling in my veins, fists raised. Nobody pushes Johnnie Novotny around, not unless they want a bloody lip. Then I saw who it was and I tamped down my anger. Plastered an innocent look on my face, too. “Whatcha do that for, Funkhouser?” I asked the beefy cop who towered over me. He was a giant dressed in a navy-blue woolen coat with big brass buttons. “You shouldn’t go around pushing citizens, you know that?”

“You shouldn’t have come back here, Johnnie,” Funkhouser replied. “I told you last time that if I ever saw you working my beat again, I’d arrest you.”

“I wasn’t doing nothing, just walking down the street, that’s all. Ain’t a man allowed to walk down the street?”

“A man? You?” Funkhouser’s broad shoulders shook with laughter.

My fingers clenched again. I was almost sixteen, wasn’t I? Old enough to knock that smug grin clean off his stupid mug. And I was itching to do it, too, except I didn’t fancy a month in the cooler. I turned to walk away.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Funkhouser. Grabbing my arm, he held me tight as a vise. We started down the sidewalk, him pushing me ahead through the crush of pedestrians.

“Lemme go!” I shouted, twisting in his grasp.

“I’m doing you a good turn, Johnnie,” said Funkhouser. “I’m going to recommend to the judge that he be lenient, send you to reform school instead of jail. It’s the best thing for you, son. You’ll be off the streets, getting three squares a day. And you’ll be getting an education, too, going to regular school.”

School?

Just the sound of that word made my neck hairs stand on end.

School?

I’d rather be in jail. Heck, in my world there wasn’t much difference.

It was them teachers that put me off, namely one Miss Bolam. Jeez, but she was a real fossil, as musty as that ancient history she taught. Just looking at her gave me the creeps. Her dark eyes, cold like some kind of lizard’s, darted from student to student. She always had it
in for mugs like me—kids who came to class to catch up on their sleep while she droned on about mummies and vengeful gods and Phoenician burial spells.

“Amun cahi ra lamac harrahya,”
she’d babble away in that wise-guy voice of hers. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Sumerian Resurrection Curse.”

Or, “Many ancient cultures believed they could transfer death from one person to another simply by chanting this curse:
Ai oro ramr hvtar
.”

Is it any wonder I couldn’t keep my eyes open in class? And what was the point of it, anyways? How would all that gibberish help put food in my belly? Useless, I tell you.

The whole time she talked, her long, bony fingers would reach up to touch the brooch she always wore pinned to her collar. It was a weird-looking thing, gold with a big red stone, and shaped like a crescent moon. I wondered if it was worth pinching, if I could get anything for it. Rumor had it that it was a present from some long-dead lover, but I didn’t believe that. Not for a minute. Nobody could love that paper bag.