As Dead as It Gets (20 page)

“I hope you stop and think,” he said quietly, when I was standing on the front porch. “And realize that you’re hurting people. And that you need help.”

“Please just tell me one thing,” I said. I took it as a good sign that he didn’t slam the door in my face. “What was Laina’s favorite thing in the world?”

His face contorted with pain. “Easy,” he said. “Me.”

I sneaked in the front door, shutting it an inch at a time and keeping my hand against it tensely until the lock clicked into place. Then I crept down the hall and into my room.

Lydia was sitting on my bed.

“Were you there?” I asked.

“No, I was watching Leno with your parents,” she said.

I sighed.

“I’m kidding. Yeah, I was there. And I gotta say, Alexis, he clearly loved her.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Way more than he likes you.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“You know what I mean. He
luuuurrved
her. He likes you all right. Mostly because you do whatever he says, in my opinion, but whatevs.”

“Do you have anything helpful to contribute?” I asked.

“I guess not,” she said. “Just that it’s weird that he locks his closet.”

“I know, right?” I said. “What’s up with that? Couldn’t you look inside?”

She gave me an exasperated look. “I’m a ghost, Alexis, not a magical see-in-the-dark cat.”

I rolled my eyes.

“But he’s clearly in denial,” she said. “It has to be her. The dress, the funeral home, the roses, targeting you out of jealousy that you’re moving in on her man…It all adds up.”

“But what did Kendra and Ashleen do?” I asked.

“You tell me.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

I remembered Kendra fluffing her hair in front of Jared at the nature preserve. And Ashleen simpering over him at her house.

“They flirted with him?” I said. “That was enough to get them a death sentence? Then how bad is what I’ve been doing?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Lydia said. “Anyway, it seems clear that we’re dealing with the most psycho of psycho ex-girlfriends.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And the only way to get rid of her…”

“Is what?” Lydia asked.

So she hadn’t been at the front door when Jared told me he was Laina’s favorite thing.

Lydia didn’t know…

That the only way to stop Laina was to destroy Jared.

I
SLEPT SURPRISINGLY WELL
once I managed to fall asleep, and awoke to see Lydia snoozing lightly above my dresser. I felt energized by the discoveries of the previous night, no matter how dark they were. At least now we had information. A place to begin.

“Look alive!” I said, patting Lydia on the head. My fingers turned to ice.

She woke with a start, looking around. I headed out to the kitchen, where my parents and Kasey were staring at a breaking news report on the TV.

I stopped at the end of the hall, goose bumps erupting all over my body. “What now?”

“Another local teen is missing,” the female reporter said. “Her parents say they last saw her when she went to her bedroom to study after dinner.”

I took a step forward.

“Wait, Lexi—” Kasey said.

A photograph came onscreen—a smiling girl with a sharp jaw, black eyeglasses, and short curly hair.

Elliot.

“No,” I said. “No.”

Mom rushed to my side. “Alexis? Honey. It’s okay.” Her voice sounded like it was coming through water.

I began to feel faint, like my legs might give out. Kasey hurried over with a chair from the dinner table, and Mom eased me down into it. Dad brought me a glass of apple juice, which I couldn’t hold because my hands were shaking so badly.

She doesn’t fit the pattern,
said the voice inside my head. I shook my head, banishing the voice. I didn’t have the strength to deal with it right now.

“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Mom said. “The police will find her.”

Like they found Ashleen?

“Alexis, are you all right?” Mom backed away, leaving Kasey to pat my hand. “Let me call the office and tell them I’m not going to make it in.”

“No.” My voice echoed in the room, as though someone else were speaking. “I need to go to school.”

“Lexi!” Kasey said. “You don’t have to!”

“I want to,” I said. “I need to be with my yearbook friends.”

“I don’t know,” Mom said, but she was disarmed by the word
friends
. “Maybe you should stay here and—”

“Stare at my hands? Cry all day?” I asked. “No. I’m going to school. They’ll have counselors there. Besides…you have your board meeting.”

Mom looked hurt. “Oh, honey. That means nothing. Not if you need me.”

A couple of years ago, I would never have believed I’d hear my mother speak that way about a board meeting, the holiest of holies.

Now, as much as I appreciated it, all I wanted was for her and Dad to go to work, and for Kasey to go to school and surround herself with popular kids.

Because I needed them all out of my way.

My parents were so used to seeing me take my camera to school that when I came out of my bedroom ten minutes later with my backpack over one shoulder and my camera bag over the other, they didn’t even notice.

Kasey did, though. She looked up at me incredulously. “You’re shooting
today
?”

“Just candids,” I said, even though it felt like a steady electrical current was traveling through my body. It had been there since the moment I’d grasped that Elliot was actually missing—and that I was her only hope of survival.

“Of what?”

“People,” I said. “Being candid.”

“Alexis,” Mom said, “are you sure you don’t want us to drive you to school? Or you can stay home if you want. I know how worried you must be.”

“I’m fine.” I felt as stiff as the Tin Man before he got oiled. “I want to be there.”

Kasey had been planning to ride with me (to keep me from having a breakdown and driving off the road, was my guess), but by the time she remembered to call Keaton and tell him she didn’t need a ride, he was pulling into the driveway.

My sister shot a wary look at me and then grabbed her bag from the couch. “Are you sure you’re okay? Why don’t you just ride with us?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

Keaton stood in the doorway, wide-eyed and earnest. “We have plenty of room.”

“No,” I said. “Thank you.”

I watched them pull away from the house, then went back to my room and shut off the light.

Lydia appeared. “Why can’t you find a non-drama boyfriend like your sister’s?”

I felt like I was made of porcelain and might crack up at any moment—and not in a laughing way. “I can’t do this today, Lyd.”

“I’m just saying. Carter flipped out, Jared’s Mr. Gloomypants—”

In spite of myself, my spine went rigid. “Carter did not flip out. That was Aralt’s fault.”

She made a face. “Whatever. Who dumps their girlfriend because she dyed her hair?”

“Stop. Please.”

“All right, whatever.” She gave a little jump and sort of floated to the bed, like a piece of paper in a breeze.

“Forget it.” My nerves couldn’t take any more arguing. “Just forget it.”

“Let’s go,” she said. “We’re doing the past perfect tense in French class and I don’t want to be late.”

“You’ll have to get yourself there,” I said, picking up my backpack and camera bag. “I’m not going to school today.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“For a hike,” I said. “Want to come?”

“Have you ever thought about writing all of your bad ideas down and selling a book of them? It could be called, like,
Alexis Warren’s Surefire Ways to Die Young.
Hey, I could be your spokesperson.”

I didn’t answer, but not out of stubbornness as much as the fact that I was trying to conserve my energy for the rest of the trail. We’d only gone about a quarter of a mile, and I was already completely out of breath. I took another swig of water and then went back to taking pictures.

“And why do you think she would be here?” Lydia asked.

“Because she hikes here. It’s her favorite trail. She always talks about it.” I stopped, pretending to be looking off into the distance but really just trying to catch my breath so I could talk. “And the other girls ended up in places they knew. Outside of town.”

Lydia floated effortlessly beside me. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” I hauled myself up a set of steep stone stairs.

“She’s probably dead already,” Lydia said. “If she tried to hike this trail without water…and it’s actually kind of hot today.”

I silenced her with a pointed glare.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I see how you are when it’s somebody you like. Talking about death is only funny when it’s me.”

“It’s not funny,” I said. “I wish you weren’t dead.”

She stopped. “Really?”

“Lydia, seriously?” I said. “Of
course
I do. Now keep moving.”

Mercifully, she retreated into thoughtful silence for a while, so I could save the air in my lungs for more important things than talking—like breathing. We made slow progress, stopping every twenty or thirty feet so I could take pictures.

I hadn’t hiked Maxwell Canyon since seventh grade, and experiencing the trail’s difficulty firsthand just added one more level of awe to Elliot’s already mystical aura of superiority. My thigh muscles screeched with pain, and my lungs would have been screeching, too—if they’d had any air to spare.

Lydia drifted away, and I kept going. I got into such a rhythm that it took me a moment to realize there was actually a person in my photographs.

Elliot.

My heart just about imploded.

“Lydia!” I called.

“What?” She came toward me so fast that for a moment she was just a gray blur.

“She’s dead.” My voice came out sounding sandpapered. “I saw her…She’s dead.”

I leaned down to look more closely.

“That? No, that’s not a ghost,” Lydia said. “I can see her, too!”

I dropped the camera. It swung from the end of the strap.

We looked at each other.

Elliot was alive.

I snapped into action. “You go ahead!” I said. “Go up the trail and find her. Stay with her. Don’t leave her. I’ll follow you!”

Lydia obeyed without a word, hurrying up the trail.

I opened my cell phone.

NO SERVICE
.

“No, come on,” I said, shaking it.

But no bars appeared.

A minute later, I heard Lydia cry out in a panicky shriek. “Alexis! Alexis, come quick!”

I was already exhausted, but I forced myself to run, hurtling up the steep incline toward the sound of her voice.

Lydia intercepted me. “I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t—and it was so weird, it was, like, hot, and—something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.
Look.
” She held up her arms.

Her hands were much fainter than the rest of her body.

Lydia looked like she was about to throw up. “It’s where I tried to grab her,” she said. “Everything went hot, and then…”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll figure it out. But first we have to stop Elliot. Which way did she go?”

“That way,” Lydia said, pointing with her barely there left hand.

I took off down the trail. Within a minute I saw Elliot—she was maybe seventy-five feet in front of me.

“Elliot!” I called. “Wait!”

She wasn’t running away; she wasn’t even walking fast. In fact, she was stumbling every few steps. Her bare feet were covered with blood and bruises.

I caught up to her easily, grabbing her arm.

“Elliot, stop! It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

But she wouldn’t stop. It was almost like she
couldn’t
. Even when I got in front of her, she ran right into me. I lost my balance and fell, nearly landing on a cactus.

“See?” Lydia said. “She just keeps walking!”

I tried again to pull Elliot out of her stride, but it was useless. She never so much as raised a finger to fight back, but she was so much stronger than I was that she basically shrugged off everything I did to her.

“Come on,” I cried. “Please.”

We were on a long straight stretch of the trail, so I got in front of her and walked backward, thinking I’d be able to reason with her.

But as soon as I got a good look at her face, I knew there was no use.

Her eyes were glazed over. She didn’t even seem to see me. Her face was streaked with dried-out tearstains. She breathed through her mouth in a shaky, shallow rhythm, and her lips were dry and cracked, the corners coated in a crust of dried saliva, blood, and dust.

Her jaw trembled in silent, arid sobs.

She really couldn’t stop.

And she was terrified.

“Elliot, please, wait,” I said, grabbing her arm. It didn’t work; she just dragged me along with her.

If I couldn’t make her stop, I could at least keep her from dying of dehydration. I lifted my water bottle and poured some into her mouth.

But she didn’t make any effort to swallow it. It just leaked out all over her filthy sweatshirt.

“You have to stop her,” Lydia said. “It’s too hot. This trail’s too difficult. She’ll die of exhaustion.”

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know
how
.”

“Can’t you block the path?”

“She’ll just go around me.”

“There’s a narrow pass a little way ahead. If you can block the far side and trap her in there, she won’t be able to keep going. She’ll
have
to stop.”

It was worth a try. I ran ahead.

The narrow pass was about twelve feet long and three feet wide, bordered on its sides by the cliff and a ten-foot boulder. I wedged a bunch of big branches between the rocks on the far side, blocking off the passage just where it started to widen again. Then I hung back and watched the trail for Elliot.

Finally, she came. She was slower now, growing weaker and weaker. In addition to the painful gasp of her breath, her lungs made a hollow wheezing sound, like a little sigh.

She went into the pass.

I stepped out behind her, setting another thick piece of brush across the near opening. I watched her get to the other end, bump up against the branches, and slowly turn around, dragging her left leg.

Her face was flushed red, but there were deep gray circles under her dull eyes.

“Elliot, stop,” I pleaded, as she got closer to me, foot by agonizing foot. “Please.”

Lydia appeared, her face pale with dread. “It’s not going to work.”

“Wait.” I turned to Lydia. “
You
can stop her. You stopped me that night I was walking outside. What did you do? Try it on Elliot!”

Lydia’s mouth dropped open. She glanced down at her hands. “It’s…different than with you. It’s…it’s…
meaner
now.”

Right. It was different because I was Lydia’s power center. She
had
to protect me in order to save herself.

“How can you be so selfish?” I said.

Her eyes flashed with pain.

“You’ll do it if it means saving yourself,” I said. “But to help an actual living person, you refuse?”

Lydia looked at me like I’d slapped her. “What do you mean?” she cried. “I was never trying to save myself!”

“Lydia, I’m begging you!
Don’t let her die.
”

I don’t know if ghosts can cry, but Lydia was about to. She gave me a hurt look, then grimaced, closed her eyes, and charged forward, plowing into Elliot.

But she didn’t go through her and come out the other side.

She disappeared completely.

Elliot stopped walking and swayed on her feet for a moment. Then she looked at me, and there was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes.