The Dead and Buried (9 page)

“You’re just … unfeigned.”

My neck flared now. I could feel the red blotches forming. “Well, there’s an SAT word for you,” I said, rubbing the skin around my collarbone.

“I’m sorry, I just —”

“No,” I stopped him. “I like it. Unfeigned. That’s a nice compliment.”

He fiddled with his pen, twirling it up and over his knuckles nervously. “So do you believe in all the gemstones? What they’re supposed to do?”

“Of course not,” I answered quickly.

“How come?”

I held my hand in front of my neck, though I’m sure the blush had spread all the way up my cheeks. “Because that would just be … silly.”

He stopped twirling the pen and shrugged.

“What … you believe in them?” I scoffed.

“Not necessarily,” he teased.

“Then what are you saying?”

He paused and lowered his face, his hair flopping down over his eyes. “I’m saying that it doesn’t hurt to believe in a little magic now and then.”

I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did next. I reached up with one hand and brushed his hair from his eyes. “You shouldn’t hide those,” I said.

I looked into his pale blue eyes, full of bottomless tenderness. Those were not the eyes of a killer. He had gone through something terrible. Lost someone he loved. And what the kids at school continued to do to him, by shunning him, blaming him … they were killing
him
, too. Except instead of one big push, it was a thousand tiny daily deaths.

I blurted, “I’m having a party tomorrow night. Would you like to come?”

His eyes widened. “At your house?”

Oh no.
My house didn’t exactly hold happy memories for Donovan. I wanted to facepalm myself. “I’m sorry,” I backtracked. “I shouldn’t have even asked.”

“No, it’s okay.” He hesitated, blinking quickly. “I’ll think about it.”

That meant no. He began to fidget. I thought about any way I could save the conversation, get our moment back. I didn’t want him to walk out now. Not like this.

“It wasn’t even my idea. Faye Bettencourt talked me into it.” I forced a little laugh to lighten the mood, but Donovan heard the name and just shook his head sadly.

“Faye’s trying so hard,” he said.

“To do what?”

He gripped his pen tightly. “To replace her best friend.”

I hated to even say her name in front of him, but for some reason, I had to know. “Kayla? She and Faye were best friends?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t an equal thing. More like a leader and follower. Kayla was royalty and Faye was her minion.”

“So now that Kayla’s gone,” I pressed, “Faye’s trying to be the queen bee?”

“She tried to slip right into Kayla’s empty throne like it’d been handed to her. But everyone else seems to realize something Faye doesn’t.”

“What’s that?”

His eyes turned icy. “She’s no Kayla.”

And then it was me who mumbled an excuse and hurriedly left the room.

I
was nuts if I thought Donovan was going to show up at my party. It was obvious he still had feelings for his dead girlfriend. Alexa told me he hadn’t dated anyone since. Yeah, most of the school avoided him now, but even if they didn’t, he wouldn’t look at another girl anyhow.

Thursday night, up in my room, I did it. I shouldn’t have done it, but curiosity had been needling at me for days and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I logged on to Facebook. Donovan didn’t have a page, and if Kayla had, it had since been removed. But it was easy enough to find pictures on other classmates’ pages. Lots of Kayla playing soccer. A few of her at parties. And one of her with Donovan, his arm draped over her shoulder, hundred-watt smiles on both their faces.

Alexa’s voice echoed through my head.
He doesn’t smile anymore.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I examined the picture. I had to admit, they complemented each other well. Her glossy black hair, his startlingly blue eyes. The model and the artist.

I tried to picture myself in the photo, Donovan’s arm around me. His smile meant for me. And I knew it was nothing
but a pipe dream. Hearing about Kayla and how she was so smart, great at sports, popular — the girl who had it all — that was bad enough. But seeing the evidence made me sure. The idea that Donovan would go from her to me? Laughable. In every picture she looked naturally gorgeous. Even in close-ups and from strange angles, her eyes found the lens and she was effortlessly sexy. If I tried that pouty-lipped pose, I’d look fake and awkward.

I shut the computer down and climbed into bed. I slept fitfully, tossing and turning, rearranging the covers and pillows. Eventually, I slipped into a deep sleep, but dreamt about the party.

My living room filled with kids from school and I knew they were there because they wanted to be my friends. The front door opened and Donovan drifted in, his blue eyes ablaze. He was there to get closer to me. I knew it. I felt it. My heart soared. This was all going to work out okay.

I took a step toward the crowd and stopped. Something had me trapped. I could see everyone, but some kind of glass wall kept me from them. I banged on the glass and got no reaction. I yelled but no one heard me. Frustration ate at me. This was
my
party, but I couldn’t join in. No one seemed to notice me, trapped behind the wall.

Suddenly, all heads turned. All eyes focused on a figure descending the staircase. Kayla. Beautiful and full of life. She said something I couldn’t hear and everyone joined together in laughter. She slipped through the room and all the faces followed her, like snakes to a charmer.

Then she slowly turned to me, and I realized she could see me while the others could not. She smiled. A sly, teeth-baring grin that said, “This is
my
life.”

I woke up, panting, and knew. It would never be mine.

Word about the party had gotten around. At school on Friday, people who hadn’t so much as looked at me last week were stopping to chat in the hallway, giving me nods in class. I had no idea who was on the guest list and who wasn’t. Faye was handling all of that.

I thought I’d feel guilty at dinner Friday night, making small talk with Marie while knowing I was throwing a secret party after she went to work for the night. But she was in a nagging mood, picking on Colby and me for little things. So any guilt I felt was replaced with irritation.

Marie left for work and I led Colby upstairs for bedtime. He asked if he could sit on my lap in the rocking chair while I read him a story. He was starting to weigh too much for that, but I couldn’t say no when he asked in his cute, tired voice.

I read his favorite book, twice, as the smell of baby shampoo wafted up from his curls. Toward the middle of the story, his head lolled to the side and rested on my shoulder. By the end, his breathing had slowed and I knew he’d fallen asleep. Grunting, I picked him up and laid him on his bed. Then I covered him with his blanket and backed out of the room, closing the door.

A slow dread built up inside me, some tingling of intuition,
telling me this party was a bad idea. But I pushed the feeling away.

It was too late to back out now.

Faye said she’d bring everything we needed, so all I really had to do was get dressed. I wore my favorite jeans and a purple flowy top. I tied my hair up and put in my sapphire drop earrings. Sapphire — to keep worrying thoughts away.

It wasn’t working.

Kayla hadn’t been too bad the last few days. Only a few cold touches here and there, minor things moved around. But I’d still feel better when I wasn’t sitting alone in the living room.

Alexa arrived first. I had mentioned the party would start around nine and she showed up at nine on the dot. Not that she had been looking forward to it, she just valued punctuality.

She sat on the couch, as stiff as her white, ironed blouse, and looked around. “I can’t believe you’re making me sit here with these people.”

“Alexa, no one’s here yet.”

She crossed her arms. “But they will be.”

I sat beside her and put my feet up on the coffee table. The tightness in my muscles was loosening now that I had someone with me. “You act like making friends is torture.”

“Is that what you think you’re doing?” she scoffed. “They aren’t coming here to be your friends.”

“I know.” I waved my hand. “They’ll go anywhere there’s a party.”

Alexa looked at me like I had four brain cells. “It’s about Kayla.”

I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“They want to walk around in
her
house. Look at the staircase she fell down. Stare at the spot on the floor where she died. None of them would admit that, but that’s why they’re coming. Morbid curiosity.”

I would have rebutted her, but inside I knew it was true. They were using me. For the party and for access to Kayla’s house one last time.

“I just can’t get away from it,” I said with a sigh. “The adoration of Kayla Sloane.”

“Adoration?” Alexa laughed derisively. “Half the kids probably hated her, the other half feared her.”

I pulled my feet off the table and sat up. “Wait a minute. I thought you said she was the girl who had everything?”

“Yeah, but I never said she was nice.”

“Kayla was a mean girl?”

Alexa sat up straight and jutted her chin out. “She was crafty, manipulative. She could be very mean. Even cruel. But she was so smart and gorgeous that she got away with it.”

I hesitated a moment. “Was she mean to you?”

“I was a target,” Alexa admitted. “But so were many others. It’s not a big deal.”

I had the feeling, though, from the hard look in her eyes, that it
was
more than that.

The doorbell rang four times quickly and before I could
scramble to the door Faye let herself in, followed by a burly looking boy carrying a giant box filled with food and drinks.

“You only invited twenty people, right?” I said, following them into the kitchen.

Faye ripped open a package of chips. “Don’t worry about it.”

Easy for her to say.

People started pouring in after that, walking straight into the kitchen for a red plastic cup like kids to the Pied Piper. Kane brought a few guys from the team and Faye’s friends followed them around, giggling.

I lifted myself up onto a counter in the kitchen and sat there, swinging my legs and fingering my turquoise pendant (for good luck), while people came up and talked to me, one after the other. Their tongues got looser as the night went on, and my little corner of the kitchen turned into a confessional.

“One night, I actually prayed for Kayla’s death,” one girl tearfully admitted. “I felt so guilty after it really happened. My therapist had to convince me that I didn’t compel her to fall myself.”

The more the night went on, the more these strangers wanted to talk to me about Kayla. They told me stories, some good, some bad. They shared their opinions. It was like — now that she was gone — it was finally safe for them to be honest about her.

One of Kayla’s self-professed best friends (there were so many I lost count) started a dreamy-eyed monologue on Kayla and Donovan’s relationship. That was the last thing I wanted
to hear about, but for some masochistic reason, I couldn’t tell her to stop.

“Kayla and Donovan seemed like polar opposites,” she said, swaying in place. “He was deep where she was shallow. She was all parties and the popular crowd while he was all art and gamers. She could’ve had anyone at school. But I never once wondered what she saw in him. I knew what it was.”

I leaned forward, nearly falling off the counter. “What?”

“He was different, kind, special.”

I wondered why she spoke of him in the past tense. Like he wasn’t still all those things.

“And those eyes. When their intensity was focused on you, you felt like the center of the universe.” She suddenly snapped out of it, embarrassment shining on her face. “But he totally killed her. We all know that.”

She wandered off and I wondered how much of her insistence on Donovan’s guilt was merely bitterness that he never wanted her like he wanted Kayla.

“So are you, like, dating Kane Woodward?” Keith, the burly boy who’d come in with Faye, asked.

“No, we’re just friends,” I answered loudly, hoping to dispel that myth in case Faye was within hearing distance.

“But you’re going out tomorrow night,” Keith said.

“Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t want to get into the nuances of it with him.

“Hey.” He leaned in closer. “Did you ever, like, see the ghost of Kayla here?”

I fought to prevent a reaction from showing on my face. The answer caught in my throat and I had to force out the word, “Nope.”

I had no desire to tell the truth to people I barely knew. They might call me crazy, say I was making it up for attention. I didn’t need a reputation at school after only two weeks.

I’d only even mentioned the possibility of a ghost to Alexa, and she wasn’t talking to anyone. In fact, she’d told me an hour ago she was going to look at my book collection, and I hadn’t seen her since, so she’d obviously snuck out.

I didn’t really blame her.

I finally realized that if I stayed in the corner and listened to stories about Kayla all night, I’d be driven loony by midnight. I excused myself from Keith and walked into the living room. But I didn’t know who to talk to. They were all chatting about people I didn’t know or making inside jokes I didn’t get. I wished I could really
talk
to someone.

Suddenly, all the loud simultaneous conversations ground to a halt and a chorus of whispers rose from the silence. I followed the collective line of sight to the front door, where Donovan stood half in, half out, like he was making the decision to stay or run at the last second. I held my breath, silently chanting:
stay, stay, stay
.

He crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. His eyes made a quick sweep of the room, perhaps thinking back to the way Kayla’s family had their furniture arranged, or maybe remembering moments he spent with Kayla here, cuddled on the couch, laughing …

“Why is
he
here?”

I looked sharply at Kane, shocked by the intensity of the venom with which he spoke. “I invited him,” I said.

Donovan saw me and I swore his eyes lit up. He wore jeans and a pale blue polo — the only time I’d seen him wear something other than black. And he’d gotten a haircut. His eyes weren’t hidden anymore.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. A few girls were giving him sly looks over their shoulders, and not in a negative way.

Did he do all this … for me?
I wondered.

I was shocked enough that he’d shown up. But he’d freshened his look. He even seemed to be carrying himself differently, not staring down at the floor, but instead looking right at me as he threaded his way through the crowded living room.

I cleared my throat, trying desperately to think of something cool to say, but my mind was racing and my heart was pumping wildly. He’d almost reached me when Kane stepped between us.

“Returning to the scene of the crime?” Kane asked.

Donovan’s face darkened and his fists clenched. My vague worry about a fight at the party had just turned into a real possibility. I pushed myself between them and put my hands on Donovan’s shoulders, forcing him to look into my eyes.

“Go upstairs,” I whispered.

I turned to Kane next, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him into the downstairs bathroom.

“What is wrong with you?” I said, closing the door behind us.

He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make a scene at your party. That guy … he just gets to me. Why did you even invite him, anyway?”

I faltered. “Are you … jealous? You know tomorrow night isn’t a date.” I wanted to make sure that was very clear.

“No. Just protective. I don’t trust him. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

I paused. “You don’t
really
think he killed Kayla, do you?”

“Only he knows what happened. He was the one who was here that day. And he gave a statement to the police, but never spoke a word of it to anyone else. So what does that tell you?”

“That if he did it, the police would have arrested him.”

“Maybe he did do it, but they couldn’t prove it,” Kane countered.

“Or maybe he didn’t and you guys are torturing him for nothing.” My jaw tightened. I shouldn’t have felt so defensive. I barely knew Donovan. But after our talks, I’d grown to feel protective of him. If other people wanted to torment him over Kayla’s death they could … but not in my house.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Kane stepped closer and put a gentle hand on my arm. “Let’s not let Donovan O’Mara ruin your party.”

I stiffened. “He’s not the one who nearly did.”

I left Kane behind and made a quick loop through the kitchen and living room, looking for Donovan, but he wasn’t there. Hopefully he’d gone upstairs like I asked and hadn’t left. I frowned at the crowd in the living room. There were at
least thirty kids in there, plus more in the kitchen. Shockingly, Faye hadn’t kept her word.