Remember Me (4 page)

Did she believe in all that stuff? I don't know. When I was alive, I never gave it much thought, and now that I'm dead, I consider myself too close to the subject to voice an objective opinion. But Jo was no one's fool, that I can say.

"Dan's got the car running," I said as I stepped into her room. Friends at school who knew of Jo's interest in the supernatural were often disappointed when they visited her house and discovered that her bedroom was perfectly normal.

In fact, it was usually the cleanest place in the house. The only things in her room that suggested her hobby were a box of incense and an incense holder on top of her chest of drawers.

Her appearance was also fairly normal. Although we resembled each other, her hair was dark enough that I made fun of her every time she described herself as a blonde. We had the same petite builds, the same kind of mouths that laughed at the same kind of jokes. But whereas I did have striking green eyes, hers were at best hazel. She did have great taste in clothes, however. I was forever borrowing outfits from her. The yellow blouse and green pants I wore to Beth's party actually belonged to Jo.

"Tell him I'm going to be a minute," Jo said, finishing her hair and hurrying to the closet.

"It'll take me more than a minute to walk down to the car," I said, sitting on her rock-hard bed. Jo also practiced yoga and would never stand for a mattress that would let her spine sag.

"You look fine. Let's just go. I don't think Dan's in the best of moods."

Jo glanced up from digging in her closet and grinned.

"Does Spam feel uncomfortable around you now that you two have engaged in bestial activities together?"

"I didn't say we had sex." Jo always called Dan "Spam."

I had long ago ceased trying to free her of the habit. It is interesting that I was one of the few people Jo never gave a nickname to, and I was her best friend.

"Yes, you did," Jo said, finding what she was looking for, which appeared to be a lump of metal. "You said he undressed you, you undressed him, and then the two of you let things take their natural course."

"Stop," I pleaded. "We have to drive to the party in the same car in a few minutes, for Christ's sake." I paused.

"What's that? Another magnet?"

"Yeah."

"What happened to the last one?" I asked as I picked up a small pile of typed papers lying on her bed.

"I still have it. But this one's stronger. It's used for a different purpose." She squeezed it into the pocket of her black pants. Like any good witch, Jo loved to wear black.

"We can talk to the universe with this one. We'll play with it at the party." She gestured to the papers in my hand. "You know what that is?"

"What?"

"A short story by Peter Nichols—Jeff's brother."

A couple of years back, when I was a sophomore and he was a senior, I had shared a biology class with Peter. He was great—he could crack me up like no one could. He would tell me these totally ridiculous stories about all the weird things that kept happening to him. For example, once he told me how he picked up an old man with a white beard hitchhiking, and how the old guy started telling Peter his whole past history, beginning with when Peter was in second grade right up until Peter helped the Hazzard High baseball team win the city championship.

Peter had an amazing arm—his coaches said he had pro potential. He also had an incredible way with words. I could picture the old man and his story perfectly. Before the old man got out of Peter's car, he also told Peter what his future would be. I remember how Peter smiled and shook his head when I asked what the guy had said.

I must emphasize that Peter was not—at least to the best of my knowledge—

interested in the occult. I don't know why he told me that story. Usually his stories were about crooked cops and crazy people he constantly ran into while simply walking down the block.

Peter died not long after that—some kind of car accident.

I missed him terribly. He had been the best part of my day, and I always felt I'd know him all my life.

I instinctively dropped the papers when Jo said his name.

"Oh, God," I whispered. "Peter. How did you get this?"

"Jeff gave it to me," Jo said, picking up the sheets and sorting them into a neat stack. "He gave me a whole bunch of Peter's stories. He wanted to see if I could help get some of them published."

"Peter wasn't a writer. He was always playing baseball.

When did he have the time to write? He never showed me any of his stuff."

"He never showed anybody. Jeff only found the stories a couple of months ago at the back of Peter's closet. You should read this one."

I don't know why the news disturbed me so. I brushed off Jo's attempts to hand the story to me. "Why are you reading them? Are you trying to get on Jeffs good side?"

Jo didn't flinch at my remark. It took a lot for her to show she was hurt. "I'm doing this because I want to," she said in a normal tone of voice. "He was a pretty good writer, and he had great ideas. But he seldom finished anything.

That's one of the things Jeff asked if I could do for him—put some endings on Peter's stuff."

I continued to feel uneasy about the whole thing but couldn't pinpoint the reason why.

Could it have been that the mention of his name had triggered a wave of painful memories? I asked myself.

Jo wrote for the school paper and was acknowledged to be Hazzard High's sole master of grammar. She tried to hand me his story again. "You should read it,"

she said.

I finally took it and glanced at the title: Ann's Answer.

"What is it?" I asked reluctantly.

"It's about a girl our age who buys a VCR and then discovers it can tape tomorrow's TV

programs today. She starts out taping the local news, spotting all the tragedies that are about to happen, and then she goes out to try to prevent them."

"How does it end?"

"He never finished it."

"But what was the last thing that happened to this girl?"

So my middle name was Ann, I told myself. He hadn't written the story about me. Yet the icy breeze that had blown through my brother's window earlier that night felt as if it had taken a detour into Jo's bedroom. And her windows were all closed. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Omen might be the word for what Jo said next, and for the balloon Jimmy watched float away. I suppose it was all a question of interpretation. A part of me must have seen the black ax rising slowly into the air above my head.

Maybe Peter had seen the same ax.

But of course he'd seen it. Far more clearly than I.

"She taped a program of a news story that was about herself," Jo said.

I swallowed. "Had she died?"

"The tape was jammed in the machine. She didn't get to see the entire piece, only the beginning where her name was mentioned and her picture was shown.

Then Peter stopped.''

"He stopped?"

"In midsentence. But read it. It's fun."

I handed the papers back to Jo. "I'll wait until you write the ending."

CHAPTER

III

JL HAD FORGOTTEN to tell Jo that Amanda was in the car.

The fact didn't seem to faze Jo. She may have had little in common with her cousin, but there was no known hostility between them. Jo climbed into the backseat with me, however, a seating arrangement that may have been unwise.

Dan had once complained to me that whenever Jo and I got together, we drowned out the rest of the world. Remembering the remark, I endeavored to be quiet. Jo immediately took it upon herself to make up for my silence.

"Spam," Jo said to Dan as he pulled out of her driveway.

"What did you get Big Beth for her birthday?"

Dan frowned. I could tell he was frowning even though I was looking at the back of his head. He frowned whenever Jo spoke to him. "Why don't you call people by their real names for once?" he asked.

"All right, Daniel," she said. "What did you get Elizabeth for her birthday?"

"Earrings," he said, flooring the accelerator and racing up the street as if he were late to his own wedding.

"What?" I asked, amazed. "I got her a present from both of us. You didn't have to get her something."

"What did you get her?" Jo asked me.

"An old Beatles album," I said.

"Beth has a CD player," Daniel said.

"Elizabeth hates the Beatles," Jo said.

"Oh," I said. I had been aware of both facts, but there had been a sale on Beatles albums at the store.

"What did you get her, Bliss?" Jo asked Amanda. Jo had once explained the choice of nicknames to me. Apparently, in India, the Sanskrit word for "bliss" is ananda, which Jo obviously thought was close enough. Her reasoning might have had an element of sarcasm in it.

Amanda seldom smiled.

"I didn't have a chance to stop at the store," Amanda said softly. If I hadn't been so overwhelmed with disgust at Daniel's having gone to the trouble to buy Beth a separate gift, I probably would have told Amanda she could put her name beside mine on the album.

"Isn't anyone going to ask what I got her?" Jo asked, fiddling with the pink tissue paper on the package in her hands. A moment of silence followed.

"Specimen jars," Jo said finally. "My mom got them from the hospital for free."

"You can't give Beth that," Daniel said, irritated.

"Sure I can," Jo said. "She'll think they're crystal."

"She's not that stupid," Daniel said.

"She's pretty stupid," I said.

"And we'll tell her they're crystal," Jo said. "Hey, slow down, Spam. The party won't start until I get there. What's the hurry?"

"I always drive this fast," Daniel said.

"Is he always this fast?" Jo asked me.

"Always," I said without thinking. The question, and answer, might have been innocent enough, to start with.

Except Jo suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.

"Always?" she asked, gagging.

I gave her a hard poke in the side—too late. I didn't have to see Daniel's face. I could feel the vibes. They were bad.

He knew mat Jo knew he had not performed up to expectations when we had gone to bed.

"What's so funny?" Amanda asked.

"Nothing," I said.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

Big Beth met us at the door. Her parents' condominium was on the top floor of a four-story building that overlooked the ocean. It had a view, of course, and it had been built with lots of money. My father had been involved in the construction.

The soundproofing in the walls between the condos was excellent. Beth had her CD

player up loud and pumping, and there wasn't one complaint. I handed Beth my gift as we went through the door. A fool could have told what it was.

Beth glanced at it after saying hello and smiled.

"It's not a painting, is it?" she asked hopefully.

"It'll never wear out on you," I said, remembering her CD player. My eyes flickered to Daniel. Whenever someone is madder at me than I am at them, it is hard for me to stay mad.

Guilt, I suppose. Daniel handed Beth his tiny box, and you would have thought he had given her an engagement ring. She planted a kiss on his cheek, gushing.

"You shouldn't have," she said. "No problem," he said, by no means pushing her away.

"It's your birthday, for God's sake, he had to get you something," Jo said, quickly scanning the room for Jeff Nichols. He was standing alone in the corner of the room, a beer in his hand. He didn't even glance over at us. Why a shy, intelligent fellow like Jeff Nichols was going with someone like Beth was beyond me. Jo's eyes lingered on him a moment before she turned back to Beth and handed her the specimen jars.

"Whatever you do, don't shake the box," Jo said seriously.

Beth nodded and pressed her ear to die package. Don't ask me to explain it.

Yet I'm giving the wrong impression of the girl. Beth was not totally stupid, nor was she a complete knockout. She did as well as I did in school—A's and Bs—

and her SAT score was high. It's my belief that she had cultured her air-head qualities to pacify her subconscious anxieties about her looks. Guys often say there's nothing sexier than a girl with brains, but just watch them drool over Playboy's Miss September, whose turn-ons are sincere guys and windy nights and whose turn-offs are rude people and dogs that bite. I mean, it's no wonder that a girl like Beth with breasts out to the moon would develop the idea, while growing up in a society as superficial as ours, that if she just smiled a lot and didn't demand regular cerebral stimulation, guys would be more likely to ask her out. That's my theory, at least, but then again, what the hell do I know?

Beth had more to her body than a chest. She had a bumpy nose, two ordinary brown eyes—devoid of even a hint of gorgeous green—and a head of brown hair which, although long and straight, didn't shine in any light. All the guys at school thought she was sex incarnate, and she wasn't even that pretty. And as I said, I think she knew it. Studying her as she stood next to cool, soft Amanda, I thought Beth looked like nothing to worry about.

"I'm sorry," Amanda said to Beth. "I didn't have a chance to get you a present."

"That's OK," Beth exclaimed, hugging Amanda, whom she scarcely knew. "I'm just glad you're here!"

"You're shaking the box," Jo warned Beth, silently muttering Christ under her breath. For his part, Daniel kept silent.

And so the party began, and at first it was a fairly ordinary affair. I won't go into every blessed detail. Beth's parents were gone for the night. We ate a little.

We danced a little.

We ate some more. We gossiped; lots of people came and went, so there was plenty to gossip about. And all the time I kept my eyes on Daniel and Beth, and Jo kept her eyes on Jeff and Beth, and the world went right on turning.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened.

There are, however, a few things I should mention before I get into Jo's idea of entertainment. Beth opened her presents close to eleven o'clock, and even though it was early, the party had begun to thin out. There couldn't have been more than a dozen people left when Beth sat in the middle of the floor in her pink summer dress and proceeded to break every one of her nails. She really did—each time she dug into a fresh package, she ripped another manicured nail. It was excruciating to watch.