The Raising (27 page)

Mira managed to nod.

Ben Hood said, “Yeah. Or, like, we—”

Melanie Herzog jumped in:

“
I’m
afraid. I think it’s just so scary, you know, thinking of
never existing
—so everybody wants to know about what might happen afterward. I mean, I think the class isn’t about death. I think it’s about the afterlife.”

Mira couldn’t help but feel revived then. These were interesting thoughts. They’d come up with nothing new, but they were earnest, and expressing themselves fairly well. She nodded, and then Karess (who had her long, smooth legs wrapped around each other a couple of times) scooted to the edge of her seat and said, “You know, I think maybe we’re still young enough that we might have it right. Like, we haven’t given up hope. I mean, old people think it’s scary to die because they’ve seen other people die, but we haven’t, so we don’t have all this baggage, so we still know you can, like, maybe,
live
after you die.”

There was a bit of laughter—mostly inspired by her California accent, Mira thought. Karess couldn’t say anything without sounding like a character in a Disney sitcom.

“Well, okay,” Mira said, and folded her shaky hands on her desk. “I guess I haven’t asked this question yet, and maybe now’s a good time to ask it. How many of you think you will live beyond your deaths?”

It took a little time (some people always took a bit longer to search their souls before answering such a question) but, eventually, every hand was in the air.

Mira looked at her class.

The room was full of hands held above heads, acknowledging the saddest, most personal hope of all the sad, hopeless, personal hopes in this hopeless world, and this caused Mira to put her own hand over her mouth to keep herself from sobbing, or crying out, or even laughing. She shook her head a little, took her hand away, and said, “That’s all. Class is dismissed. We’ll meet here Tuesday to walk together to the morgue.”

46

K
aress Flanagan followed Perry out of class, down the hall, and around the corner. He’d turned right when Professor Polson hurried out of the room, following at what he hoped was a considerate distance. He didn’t want to annoy Professor Polson, but he also needed to speak with her. Often she stuck around until all the students were gone—erasing the board, packing up her things, turning off the lights, and closing the door behind her. But today there was something wrong. She’d said it to the class, although she hadn’t needed to. They could all see it in her expression when she’d walked in. Her eyes were puffy.

Perry thought of her husband and that angry slamming of the phone.

Something had happened—and besides wanting to talk to her about the postcard, about Craig (he had to ask her what he should do: was it okay to tell Craig about the photograph, about Lucas, about Patrick Wright?), Perry also didn’t feel right not going up to her office, asking her if there was something he could do. He knew they weren’t friends exactly, but he was not, any longer, just her student either.

And the look on her face: her hand over her mouth, staring back at the class. He’d wanted to stand up right then and go to her. He’d imagined, so easily, putting his arms around her, maybe kneeling in front of her, taking her heart-shaped face in his hands.

He hadn’t, of course, but he’d followed her out of class. After all the other students had turned left out of the classroom, Perry headed to the nearest stairwell, the one that led to the hall where Professor Polson’s office was (she was still close enough that he could hear her heels clicking on the stairs), and because the others were leaving from the other direction, Perry couldn’t help being aware of Karess behind him, her pointy black boots striking the linoleum sharply, in quick succession. She was hurrying after him, it seemed. Perry began to walk faster himself, and it occurred to him that if he turned around he might find that Karess was actually running to catch up with him. He hoped not. He had absolutely no interest whatsoever in having any kind of conversation with Karess Flanagan at the moment.

“Hey!” she called out just as he reached the foot of stairwell. The heavy fire door was propped open. “Hey. Perry! Can I talk to you a sec?”

Reluctantly, he stopped and turned around.

There she was, the whole glittering thing of her, only a few feet behind him: Karess Flanagan in some kind of purple leggings and thigh-high boots, some kind of blousey top that was half shirt, half dress. Her hair was floating around her shoulders in luxurious curls, ablaze with expensive highlights and lowlights and whatever else brunettes like Karess got done to their hair to make it too dazzling for mere mortals to behold. She had tiny silver half-moons dangling from her ears, and was wearing a sheer red lip gloss that made it look as if, recently, she’d been kissing a raspberry patch so deeply that her lips had begun to bleed. “Okay?” she asked, stopping, taking a step toward him. “Can we talk?”

Perry didn’t answer. He tried to look at her as if he didn’t understand her, as if that might make her go away, but it didn’t. She stepped closer.

“Like, can I ask you what’s going on?”

She said it in the same tone in which she said everything: “Do we need, like, a blue book?” “Are we supposed to, you know, have a title page?” “Is there, like, a special font or something we’re supposed to type in?” “Is the universe, like, expanding?” No matter what she said in class, she always sounded half-exasperated, half-confused, and pretty stupid. Apparently she sounded that way outside of class, too.

“What?” Perry asked.

“Well?” Karess said, holding up her palms. They were pale, and for a crazy second Perry considered looking into them, and felt pretty sure that if he did they would be completely unlined. “What’s going on with you, and this class?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Perry said, although he was afraid he might.

“First, like, why are you
in
this class? It’s a freshman seminar. You’re not a freshman.”

Perry just stared at her.

“I mean, maybe it’s none of my business, but—”

“
Maybe
it’s none of your business?”

She laughed good-naturedly about this, maybe even blushed a little. She was wearing so much blush already that it was hard to tell, but he gave her credit for it. He’d sounded hostile, even to himself, and she seemed unfazed. Or maybe a little genuinely embarrassed by herself.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s
definitely
none of my business. I’m just, I guess, really curious. I don’t expect you to tell me, since, like, why would you, since we don’t even know each other, but something really weird seems to be going on here. I mean, I don’t necessarily believe it, but a lot of people in the class think you’re sleeping with Professor Polson.”

Spontaneously, Perry choked out a wild little laugh, and then he could feel
himself
blushing, a rising burn from his chest to his scalp. Karess shrugged and made a wistful little smirk, as if she’d caught him at something and felt a little bad about it. She crossed her arms, waiting, it seemed, for him to speak, but Perry couldn’t even take a breath. Finally, she cleared her throat, and said, “Well,
that
was awkward.”

Tucking a dark ringlet behind her ear, Karess licked her lips and went on, “Well, I’m not saying anyone cares. You’re a big boy, and she’s obviously got some domestic issues, but between that and all this shit in the dorm about
Nicole Werner
and
Alice Meyers
and that girl who
ran away
”
—
she emphasized every few words with both her intonation and a rolling motion of her hands, as if to churn the air around each new item on the list—“and all the
Internet photos
of Nicole Werner’s roommate having metro-sex with the music prof, and then this weird-as-fuck class, going to the morgue next time, and Professor Polson having, like, a nervous breakdown in front of us today. I for one am starting to wonder what the hell kind of college this is. I mean, I got into
Columbia.
I came
here
because I thought it would be
calmer
.”

“Josie?” Perry managed to ask after moving backward through her monologue, searching it for meaning.

“What?” Karess asked.

“Nicole’s roommate. Josie?”

“I guess so. That sorority chick. It’s been all over the Internet. I got it forwarded to me from like four hundred different people. I don’t think her name is there, just all these disgusting pictures, but people have been saying she was Nicole Werner’s roommate.”

“That’s Josie,” Perry said.

“Well, whatever,” Karess said. “So, like, my parents hear about this, and they want to know what the hell is going on down here? I was in a parochial school before this. I mean, we might be from Hollywood, but we’re Catholic
.
”

“Who’s Alice Meyers?” The name was familiar to Perry, but he couldn’t attach a face to it.

“Oh, God, you don’t know?
Everybody
knows. She’s the ghost of Godwin Hall.” Karess opened her eyes wide and made a fluttering gesture in the air with her hand, which Perry supposed was meant to indicate ironic spookiness.

“What are you talking about?” Perry asked.

Karess tossed her book bag onto the floor against the wall, as if she intended to stand there in the basement of Godwin Hall talking to Perry for a very long time. She jerked her thumb behind her.

“The study room,” she said. “You know. Alice Meyers? She disappeared in, like, the sixties or something? No one’ll go near that study room because they say she’s still in there.”

The Alice Meyers Memorial Student Study Room. Of course.

“We used to study in there,” Perry said. “Last year.”

“Well, whatever,” Karess said, batting her eyes and raising her eyebrows at the same time, as if to say, “
That
figures.” “
Most
people don’t. I guess they’d finally gotten a grip on the whole ghost rumor thing in the last few years, before Nicole Werner. So, maybe you missed it last year, and didn’t know. You’re not living in the dorm this year, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, Alice Meyers is showing up all over the place—but mostly, you know, it’s this group of girls. These cutters. They have this club. They’ve done all this research on Alice Meyers, and they go down there to the study room, supposedly, and do voodoo and Ouija board and shit. I mean, I don’t know. I just know there’s a girl across from me in the hall walking around with all these razor scratches on her arms, and somebody told me she was part of this club. It’s sick.”

Karess made a face that portrayed genuine horror, but Perry wasn’t too surprised by any of this. Even in Bad Axe there’d been some Goth girls who were into Wicca and cutting. There were always rumors that they’d go to the cemetery and lie naked on the graves of dead teenage girls. Perry had never taken as much interest in those rumors as some of his classmates had, but now he thought of Professor Polson, and her book. This would be exactly the kind of thing she’d want to hear about. Something else he needed to talk to her about. Perry nodded, hoping it might conclude the conversation, and turned back toward the stairwell, but Karess reached out and grabbed his arm. She said, “Hey, I’m not done talking to you.”

It was so preposterously demanding that Perry actually guffawed, and Karess, who at least seemed to understand, again, how ridiculous she was being, stammered, “I’m sorry. I just—you know, I’m curious about you. I’ll buy you some coffee, or breakfast, or whatever. I just want to talk. Do you have an appointment or something? I mean—”

She nodded to the stairwell, and was clearly indicating Professor Polson’s office.

”I mean, Professor Polson didn’t seem like she was in much shape to talk about whatever it is the two of you are always in there talking about. Why don’t you come talk to me instead?”

She lowered her eyes then, still looking up at him, and batted her heavy eyelids in a parody of flirtation. Perry opened his mouth at the outrageousness of it, and tried to speak, but he couldn’t manage even to shake his head. Karess waited, and when it became clear that no response from Perry would be forthcoming, she pretended to pout, and then she said, “I’ll let you carry my ten-thousand-pound book bag,” gesturing toward it on the floor.

47

T
he girl with the sprained ankle was standing near the mailboxes when Craig hurried down to check the box. He’d been watching from the front window for the mailman to leave ever since he’d heard his boots stomp across the front porch.

The girl, whom he and Perry now called the Cookie Girl, apparently hadn’t heard Craig come down the stairs—he was in his socks—and she jumped, stifling a little yelp, and whirled around as fast as a person can on crutches.

“Jesus,” she said, “you scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” Craig said. He tried to smile politely, but he was hoping she’d hurry up and get out of his way so he could get the mail, and she wasn’t budging, just sort of sagging there with her armpits pressed hard into the crutches’ rubber rests, letting her left foot dangle loosely over the floor.

“You never leave the apartment,” she said, not to him, exactly, but to a spot over his shoulder, “except to get your mail.”

Craig shook his head, feeling the smile freeze on his face. “Sure I do,” he said. “I go to classes.”

“Do you?” she asked. “I mean, I guess you must, but not much.”

Craig shrugged, his discomfort growing as she continued to regard him. She hadn’t even gotten her own mail out of the box yet. It would be a long time before he could get to his unless he pushed her out of the way, which he obviously couldn’t do.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

At this, Craig consciously tried to turn the smile into a straight line. He never had been that clear on what the expression on his face revealed about him, and had been accused by his mother a million times of smirking or grimacing, accused by girlfriends of rolling his eyes. Once, in middle school, one of his teachers (Ms. Follain, Language Arts) had actually stopped in the middle of a little lecture she was giving on phonemes and asked Craig what was so funny.

Craig had looked up at Ms. Follain, completely taken by surprise.
Nothing
had been funny. And he wasn’t even stoned. He hadn’t even been
thinking
about anything funny.

“What are you laughing about?” Ms. Follain asked.

“I’m not laughing,” Craig said—but then, of course, he couldn’t help starting to laugh. The irony—and the absurdity of it: that he hadn’t been laughing when she accused him of laughing, and now he was going to start laughing his ass off. He’d put his face in the crook of his elbow, but was helpless to stop, and the rest of the class started in then, snickering at first, followed by outright hysterical laughter, until finally Ms. Follain, hollow cheeks blazing, tossed him out of class and into the hallway, where he managed to get hold of himself only after about twenty minutes of gasping. Luckily, the bell had rung before he had to either go in and get a hall pass from Ms. Follain or go down to the office. When his friend Teddy got out of class, he’d said, “Jesus, man. What the hell was so funny? We could all hear you still laughing in the hallway. I thought Follain was going to shit her pants.”

“Nothing,” Craig said. “I was laughing because I
wasn’t
laughing.”

Of course, that started him laughing again.

“You are so fucked up,” Teddy had said.

T
he Cookie Girl seemed disinclined to say more, but she was looking at him as if maybe the expression on his face was very strange, or a little threatening, and when Craig tried even harder to straighten it out, she opened her eyes in alarm, and then she looked away, hopped around with her back to him, and managed, after a lot of struggle with her keys, finally to open her mailbox and take out a flyer for the Hungry Hippo (“Buy One Hungry Hippo Sub and Get One 1/2 Off!”). When she was able to turn back around, Craig was already trying to inch around her to get to his and Perry’s mailbox, and she froze in front of him and blurted out, “I know who you are, and I just want you to know that I don’t believe you killed that girl.”

Hand poised with the key at the mailbox, Craig felt what could only have been his blood running cold. Literally, there was the sensation inside him that some faucet connected to a frozen river had been turned on, and icy stuff had been let to flow. He did not move.

“What happened to you—something like that happened to me,” she said under her breath. She wasn’t looking at him, but he could feel her presence burning into him nonetheless. “Ran a stop sign,” she muttered. “Didn’t even see it. I killed a guy on a bike. I was sixteen. Got my driver’s license the week before. His sister still sends me hate mail. I think about it every, fucking, minute, of every, fucking, day.”

Her voice was a deep, wild, awful sob with the last sentence—and although she was on crutches and it had to have taken her at least five minutes to make it up the stairs, Craig had the sense that she had been blown away in gust of wind, taken off in a cloud of dust, far too quickly for him to say anything in response or to reach out to touch her shoulder. And by the time he’d turned around with his mail trembling in his hands, he was beginning to wonder if the Cookie Girl had been there at all—had he hallucinated her?—and also to hope that if she actually existed she hadn’t paused at the top of the stairs, turned, and seen how he’d dropped to his knees after he’d flipped through his mail. The Hungry Hippo flyer, a piece of first-class mail for Perry, and a postcard from some tourist spot:

The Frankenmuth Glockenspiel
.

And on the back, Nicole’s unmistakable handwriting.

Visited this place, know you would laugh, I miss who you were, I am what they say.