I'd Rather Not Be Dead (5 page)

“It's not a short.” The woman
shakes her head forcefully. “That's a brand new remote.”

“See?” The man shrugs. “New
stuff's always quirky. Them Asian factories don't test anything.
You know that.”

I sigh and go to the front door.
The rain's gone down to a lazy drizzle and it doesn't bother me too
much to step out into it. If they're not going to let me watch
their TV, there has to be something better to do than hanging
around with the downtrodden tavern keeper and his big-haired
sidekick.

Downtown's deserted. A veritable
ghost town. Ha ha.

I follow Main Street past the
school, then turn on the route I always take home from there. It
leads me through the oldest part of town, the section dominated by
large Victorians. Cooper Finnegan's truck stands outside of his
house, but I keep to the other side of the street and refuse to do
more than glance at the place or the harvest-themed decorations in
its yard.

The large homes give way to
smaller ones, two bedroom places slapped up when World War II came
to an end and the town was flooded with soldiers coming home in
search of brides and VA loans.

And then I come up on Fort Jesus
and it's packed-to-overflowing parking lot. With three stories of
solid stone, the church is more like a military stronghold than a
place of holiness. The only indicators it's a place of Christianity
and not something owned by the National Guard are the billboard in
front and the lone glass window depicting Jesus on a cross. Ten
times larger than life, the messiah looks down on us with
condemnation and repulsion. Whoever designed the window clearly
didn't get the “Jesus is love” memo.

After that, I finally get to my
neighborhood. The oldest house on my street was built three years
ago. My own home's a couple months younger. They aren't any more or
less patterned than the post-war homes, but somehow they manage to
have less character.

I stand outside my cookie-cutter
nightmare house. Do I really want to go in? It's not like anyone
can see me. That's why it's taken me so long to come out here. Mom
ignoring me in the shop was one thing, my entire family looking
straight through me at home would be another. And for them to be
doing it while that other girl, that previous version of me, walks
around living my life... Frankly, I don't know if I can take
it.

Bike wheels whoosh on the
pavement behind me and I turn to see my youngest sister peddling up
the driveway. Rain. Such a hippy name. I never figured out what Mom
was thinking with it. The name fits her though. She's our mediator,
the one who just wants everyone else to get along. And, unlike me,
she's never thought the best, if not only, way to achieve that is
simply to kill everyone else.

She props the bike up on the
side of the porch and trots up to the front door. Drawn to her, I
cross the lawn and hop up the stairs.

And come crashing to the ground.
Just like when I tried to get on the bus yesterday. What the hell?
I've been interacting with buildings the whole time I've been dead.
Yet, here I am flat on my face in a pile of dirt underneath my
front porch. Above me, the door opens and closes as I roll over to
stare up at the wooden planks I should be standing on.

I prop myself on my elbows, then
reach up slowly. My fingers pass through the floorboards. I lie
back down for a few minutes, then move back onto my stomach and
close my eyes before crawling out.

The house looks as real as any
of the other places I've been.

I walk around the porch to the
side of the house proper. A curtain ruffles and my cat, Miss
Whiskers jumps into view. My heart races as I wait for her to
notice me, but she doesn't. She looks right past me in search of
something furry to daydream about tracking. So much for cats being
better psychics than humans.

My fingers pass through the
glass. Then they pass through Miss Whiskers. And my vision goes
blurry from tears.

I turn and walk away.
Quickly.

I keep walking until I find
myself at Cris's house. Am I trying to hurt myself or something?
What happened with Miss Whiskers didn't hurt enough?

Cris's porch steps support me,
though I sink a little. It feels like the steps sag, but when I
look down I see the bottoms of my feet sunk halfway though them. I
look away from that fast and rush through the door. Walking down
the hall to Cris's room reminds me of being in a bouncing castle,
minus the little kids making the ground buck and heave. The floor
has more give than it should, but I don't fall into the crawlspace
under the house, so I call it a win.

The first time I saw Cris's
room, I found the chaos a little appalling. It boggled my mind that
he'd brought me there without bothering to pick up at least some of
the dirty laundry, used dishes, and empty soda bottles. But then I
convinced myself it was a good thing that he was comfortable enough
with me to let me see how imperfect he was.

It occurs to me now that maybe
he just didn't care enough.

He's sprawled over his bed,
sound asleep, and the only part of him visible from the mass of
blankets heaped on the mattress is one lonely foot. My hand goes to
it, passes through it. The mound shivers and the foot slides up
under the covers with the rest of Cris.

I try to lay down with him, but
his bed isn't there for me, so I have to settle on the floor,
between a crumpled sweater and an empty chip bag. I lean back
against the wall and stare at the ceiling. When will he figure out
I'm dead? What's my death going to do to him? Will it crush him or
slide right off his back like water on a duck?

His phone rings after a while
and his hand slinks from the blankets to grab it. The phone
vanishes for a second, falls silent, and gets tossed back onto the
nightstand unanswered.

Whoever it is calls back right
away. “I'm sleeping,” Cris says before hanging up on them, still
without emerging from his cocoon.

The third time it rings, he sits
up, eyes livid, and jams his finger against button that picks up.
“Back the hell off! I'm sleeping!”

He blinks, then runs a hand
through the mess of his hair. “Oh. Hey, Drew. Thought you were
someone else.”

It's me. He doesn't seem too
happy about that. Looks nervous. Who was the other caller? A girl?
The idea makes my stomach clinch. But I'm jumping to conclusions.
It could be one of our out-of-town friends or one of Cris's drug
connections. He's the leading supplier of just about everything
illegal in our school.

“No,” he tells the me on the
phone. “I just feel like ass.” His hand rubs over his face as he
listens to whatever I am saying. “No, it's not about that. Although
I don't appreciate your attitude.”

He doesn't appreciate my
attitude. A classic Cris sort of statement. There's an intensity
behind the words that I find hot, although the other me reacts with
yelling.

“We've been through this,” he
says. “I gave you the bag Monday. I remember doing it.”

The bag... They're arguing about
misplaced weed, like they were at lunch the other day. I wouldn't
have taken it. Sure, I'll share when he offers, but I've never been
the one to suggest getting high and it's not something I do alone.
Undoubtedly, he misplaced it. Possibly while stoned on something
else. He never could admit when he's been a dumbass.

Cris hangs up the phone after a
curt goodbye and stomps into the shower. I resist the urge to
follow him. That seems wrong. More wrong than hanging out in his
room without him knowing it.

While he's gone, my eyes drift
close. When they open again, Cris is running madly around the room.
His mother yells from down the hall that he's going to be late for
school and that he's grounded if he gets any more detentions.
“Yeah, right,” he mutters under his breath, knowing full well it's
an empty threat.

The phone rings again and he
grabs it quickly. “Hey, Babe,” he answers in a sexy purr.

My teeth bite into the side of
my cheek. I don't think he's talking to me. It could be more
conclusion jumping, but I'm fairly sure he's still too mad at me to
use that seductive tone.

“No, I was about to leave the
house.” He laughs. “Naw. I have a test in calc this morning. Still
on for this weekend though?” In the mirror, he gives himself a
smile and pulls on a leather jacket. Black with lots of zippers. We
bought it in Asheville a few weeks ago.

He's obviously not talking to me
or he would have said we have a test in calc. We. Plural. So, who
is he talking to? Without thinking about it, I grab the phone and
pull it from his hand. It comes out, but I can't hold onto it. It
rushes to the floor, smacking against the boards with an ominous
crack.

Cris curses himself. Then he
curses the hardwood floors, claiming if the phone had hit carpet,
it wouldn't have broken. He messes with it some, trying to get it
to work again before tossing it into his backpack in disgust.

“Crispin!” his mom calls.

He curses her too before yelling
back. “Yeah. I'm out.”

I don't leave with him but sit
down on the floor and try to reason with myself. Okay, maybe he was
talking to another girl. No. He was definitely talking to another
girl. The only alternative would be that he was talking to another
boy and he just doesn't swing that way. But so what? He's not my
boyfriend, so he can't be cheating on me. But if he's not doing
anything wrong, why's it hurt so much?

Chapter Five

Calculus is probably my least
favorite class. Not only does it make zero sense to me, but I don't
have any clue how any of this is going to make my life even
slightly better. But it was important to my dad that I take it.
Important enough that if I pass the entire year, he's promised me a
car at graduation. A used car, and not one I get to pick out, but
any wheels at all would be an improvement over my current life. Of
course without classes like calc, I might be able to get a job and
buy my own car, but it seemed easier to go along with Dad's plan
than to listen to him complain about me wasting my potential for
the rest of my life. That was back when I had no idea how short my
life would be. If I'd known I wouldn't survive the school year,
there's no way I'd have wasted my last months fighting with
derivatives.

It's not surprising that the
other me doesn't look happy to be in calculus, but she seems more
upset about Cris than the class or the impending test. She's trying
to talk to him but he's ignoring her so completely that she could
be me. I lean against the wall behind them and shake my head. “Give
it up, TOM.”

Cooper Finnegan looks up from a
page of notes to squint at me.

“The Other Me,” I translate for
him. “TOM.”

He raises and lowers his
eyebrows, then goes back to his cramming.

At the front of the room, the
teacher clears his throat and tells the class to be seated. In
theory, he's talking to the whole room but TOM and I are the only
two standing. She sits. I stay where I am in the dim hope he's now
going to say, “I told you to sit down, Drew. Hey, why are there two
of you?” But he just produces a stack of papers from inside a
briefcase and starts handing them out.

TOM looks sick, then wings a
lethal glare at Cris. She obviously didn't know there was a test
today. Maybe if Cris hadn't been so busy being a jerk to her and
hitting on other girls all weekend, he'd have told her about
it.

The living start to work and I
hover over TOM's shoulder. She's completely bombing this thing even
though it's multiple-guess, but I know how to do it. Is it
something I'm remembering or could she have passed if she wasn't
upset and nervous?

I let out a groan of frustration
as she falls for one of those traps math teachers love to set up to
exploit common mistakes. “It's D, you idiot. It could only be A if
x isn't zero. Which it probably isn't, but you don't know
that.”

I fall silent when I realize
Cooper Finnegan's staring at me. His mouth opens a little and he
looks away. His eyes narrow on his paper and then close as he
shakes his head.

“You missed it too, didn't
you?”

He nods, then continues to work
further down the page.

“Well, change it.”

He shakes his head again.

Though it leaves a string of
people shivering in my wake, I cross through the rows to his desk.
“You'd have noticed when you went over it. You always ace these
things.”

Cooper Finnegan just shrugs and
keeps puzzling out a later problem. Guess one question isn't all
that important to him anyway. But then I pay attention to his
answers. He has at least as many wrong as I do. What the hell?
“Forget to study?”

He shoots me an annoyed
glance.

“Sorry. I'll just let you get
back to failing then.”

I go lean against the wall next
to TOM again, but my eyes keep drifting back toward Cooper
Finnegan. He doesn't look right. He's too pale and there are huge
circles under his eyes. His hair's clean and combed, but it lays
flat and lifeless, looking depressed. His nails are chewed off. His
clothes are looser than usual, more casual, more skater-influenced
and less preppy than what he normally wears. Is he alright?

He looks at me when he tosses
his test on the teacher's desk. The other me bristles and glares.
He looks away from her, stares at the floor for the rest of the
period, then rushes from the room.

Cris gives TOM a haughty look
before he departs, but she doesn't notice because she's frantically
circling random answers.

“Drew,” Mr. White says gently.
“You forgot about this test, didn't you?” He lets out a long
breath. “You can do better than this.”

Not a good thing for him to say
if he really wanted to talk to me. Anyone who deals with teenagers
on a daily basis should know that. TOM rolls her eyes at him.
“Whatever,” she grumbles before thrusting the paper at him and
stomping out into the hallway.