The Death Catchers (9 page)

 

Redundancy and Repetition

Maybe I'm way off base to keep comparing life and literature, but each is supposed to resemble and inform the other, right? I know redundancy is high on most teachers' What-Not-to-Do List, Mrs. Tweedy. In fact, I think you said that it's the sign of an “undisciplined” writer. But the fact of the matter is, life is pretty redundant. Even when the facts change, some experiences feel so much like other stuff that's happened, it's hard to tell everything apart. Things repeat. Then they repeat again. People try to convince themselves that things won't repeat yet again, but they often do.

There are the obvious things in life that always feel the same—sunrises, trips to the dentist, the piercing sound of an alarm clock in the morning, stubbing a toe. You'll have to take my word for it when I tell you that death-specters are the same way. When I had my second death-specter, the beginning of it felt almost exactly the same as the first.

Then it got much worse.

I remember the sentence I was reading when the page went blank:
King Arthur and his passengers sailed from Avalon on the eve of the Feast of Samhain.

At first, I thought the bulb in my bedside lamp blew out.

I blinked hard and refocused on the page.

The letters had disappeared completely.

I gasped.

I slammed the book shut.

I closed my eyes as thoughts raced around and crashed against the inside of my skull. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and I went into all-out-panic mode. I stared at the plain leather cover of the book.

I pressed my elbows to my chest, wishing that this was a dream. My arm settled on my collarbone and I heard the soft crinkle of Bizzy's note in the pocket of my shirt.

I pulled it out.

Write it all down. Dates, pictures. Everything. We'll deal with it together.

I knew exactly what Bizzy wanted me to do.
We'll deal with it together
, she'd written. After what Agatha had told me, I wasn't sure if I wanted to deal with it at all … but I'd decide on all that later.

I opened up the book to the page I'd been reading. This time, there was no normal book print. There was large, bold print at the very top of the first page.

D
RAKE
W
ESTFALL
'
S
B
ODY
D
ISCOVERED
AT
C
ANNERY

The entirety of Crabapple was stunned Monday by the loss of Drake Westfall, honor student and captain of the Crabapple Knights water polo team. At four in the afternoon on Tuesday, officials announced that Westfall's body had been discovered among the rubble of the burned-down Del Monte Cannery. Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the fire, though some locals reported hearing a large explosion in the early morning. An autoposy will be performed. Local authorities have not ruled out foul play, though the preliminary cause of death is believed to be smoke inhalation. Westfall was beloved by many and is survived by his parents, Mark and Melody, and his older brother, Damon. Memorial services will be held this Friday, December 18. The family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Westfall Memorial Scholarship Fund.

I squeezed my eyes shut once again. I counted to ten, hoping I could write all of it off as a very bad dream.

When I opened them again, the letters were still there, floating in the middle of the blank page, reporting the death of Drake Westfall. Then I saw something gradually appearing on the other side.

A faded color photograph.

Of Drake Westfall.

It was his water polo picture. He looked tan. His hair was dark, with a golden shine to it from a constant barrage of chlorine and sun. Drake was smiling his perfect white smile. He looked very alive. I tried to swallow but found my throat closing up. I remembered the look in Drake's eyes when he handed me Bizzy's note. My eyeballs bounced from the words in the book to the note. Without thinking, I rushed to my desk and grabbed the first thing I could—my copy of the
Crabapple Intermediate Yearbook.
Frantic, I flipped to a blank page in the back and began jotting down notes.

-Drake Westfall, Del Monte Cannery—body found

-Explosion?—Early morning on Tuesday

-Official announcement, 4 p.m., body discovered

-Authorities think foul play???

-December 18—Funeral

As I read the words about Drake Westfall again, making sure I didn't miss anything, they faded away.

“Come back!” I shouted, as if the words could hear me. Within a few seconds, they were gone completely. I shut
The Last Descendant
again and then opened it slowly, peeking in at the pages as if I was spying on them.

The headline had disappeared. In plain text, there it was again:
King Arthur and his passengers sailed from Avalon on the eve of the Feast of Samhain.

The first sentence of the page I'd been reading reappeared. In fact, all the words, the regular words from the book, were back. I flipped through every page. All were intact. The image had come and gone in a matter of minutes.

I'm not sure how long I lay there on the bed,
The Last Descendant
in one arm, my
Crabapple Intermediate Yearbook
in the other, in a complete daze. My mind had blown a fuse. I needed to reboot. It was all too much.

My head felt like a hot air balloon that was about to lift off and separate from my body. I tried to calm down.

I felt a slight tingle at the base of my left palm. I remembered the Hands of Fate and slowly lifted my hand within view.

The crimson letters were back. The same as before. Bright as day. Like someone had taken a tiny hot poker and branded a name there.

Drake Westfall.
The
Drake Westfall.

If someone saw Drake's name on my hand, I'd never hear the end of it. Instantly, what Bizzy had said about death-specters came to mind.
A Hand of Fate only has death-specters about people she cares about
, she'd said. Sure, I had a few conversations with him, but I didn't really even
know
Drake Westfall, yet alone
care
about him.

Or did I?

Had Jodi's teasing in the hospital been closer to the truth than I wanted to admit? Though I was alone, I became self-conscious, covering up Drake's name with my other hand. I had no way of knowing then that my death-specter about Drake had nothing to do with our immediate pasts and everything to do with our futures.

So I continued to rack my brain for possible reasons why I might have had a death-specter about Drake. When we were little, before he left for boarding school, Drake and I used to play together. But that was only because he lived across the street and Mom wanted to make sure I was properly socialized since I was an only child.

Restless, I went to my window overlooking Earle Avenue. Directly across the street stood the Steins' house, named Let the Good Chimes Roll because of the forty or so wind chimes that hung from the porch and two large elm trees in the front yard. Drake's old stone house, Happy Landing, was next to it on the south side, opposite The House of Six Gables. I pressed my face to the windowpane, peering across at the window on the second floor that I knew was Drake's.

That's when I spotted her in the middle of the street, standing there, motionless.

Though I couldn't see her bloodred eyes, her long flaxen hair and dark robe identified her immediately. I was beginning to think Vivienne le Mort was following me. Or was I following her? Vivienne seemed focused on the same point I'd been staring at moments ago—the window of Drake's room. I ran downstairs, unsure of what I was going to say to Vivienne le Mort once I met her in the street.

 

The Archetype

When I finally reached the street, out of breath, nobody was in sight. Vivienne le Mort was gone and I wondered if I'd really seen her at all. My eyes turned upward to Drake's window. I raised my hand to my face. The name was still there, in red letters.

DRAKE WESTFALL

I ran my index finger over each of the bumpy letters, trying to rub them off. But it was useless. I pulled the sleeve of my hoodie over my palm as I thought about what I knew about Drake and what it meant that his name was now on my hand.

Let's just say that if an archetype of “popular” exists in Crabapple, Mrs. Tweedy, it's Drake Westfall. Everyone likes Drake. Seniors, teachers, Mayor Gilroy, Kenny the Quack (Crabapple's eccentric cafeteria worker). Other people's mothers fawn over him. He has dimples and a perfectly symmetric smile. He was recently elected sophomore class president. It's sickening, really.

Most people who have that much success turn into total jerks—but not Drake. He isn't just a jock. See, Mrs. Tweedy, I have a theory about Drake I started developing the day I saw him in the park with Roger Riley.

I'm sure you know who Roger is. Everyone knows him. He's undersized with straggly shoulder-length hair and is, by most accounts, a little odd. Not like I'm one to talk, but Mom says a lot of Roger's oddities are a result of his Asperger's. Mom says Roger's brain isn't wired like yours or mine. When he talks, his words come out in this strange syncopated rhythm.

Roger loves trees more than anyone I know—to the point that he'll stop in the middle of the sidewalk on his way to class and point at a tree and rattle on about it.

“The
Acacia pendula
or weeping acacia,” Roger said on the first day of school this past September, looking up at one of the newly planted trees in the quad, “requires clay, loam, or sand as soil, grows at an average rate of twenty-four inches per season, and is not native to California.”

You can never be sure who he's talking to, but behind his quizzical brown eyes, Roger's harboring a tree encyclopedia. It's pretty amazing. Still, high school can be a cruel place for someone like Roger, because although he's a lot smarter than most of the people here, he's also a very easy target. A couple of times, I've seen Drake stick up for Roger when Garrett Edmonds (who is, by all accounts, a bully of the worst order) was taunting him.

When we don't want to go straight home after school, Jodi and I head to Cedar Tree Park, named after the grove of cedar trees at the top of the largest hill there. Early in the year, when everyone was still buzzing about Drake's return to Crabapple, we saw Drake and Roger at the park.

The strange thing was that they were flying kites. Or one kite, to be exact. Jodi and I were sitting on a bench on the hill overlooking the grassy field below, the ocean at our backs, when we spotted Drake. He was walking away from Roger with a large, multicolored triangle kite in his hands. Roger held onto two spools of string that were attached on both sides of the kite Drake held. After putting thirty feet between himself and Roger, Drake tossed the kite up in the air. It took off, climbing higher as it danced in the wind. Drake ran back to Roger and carefully showed him how to manipulate the two strings to keep the kite flying. Soon Roger had his arms extended straight out, flailing as they gripped the two kite strings, while he shuffled his feet back and forth in an odd dance. The rainbow-colored kite cut across the sky, flipping over, diving, and then rising once more. Drake clapped enthusiastically with each trick Roger pulled off. Roger grinned in response.

“Drake Westfall
flies kites
?” Jodi said, her voice disbelieving as she sat next to me on the bench.

“What's wrong with that?” I asked.

“Other than the fact that the last time I flew a kite, I was about five … nothing, I guess,” Jodi added sarcastically.

“For someone who prides herself on thinking the uncool is cool, you seem kind of judgmental about kite flyers.”

Jodi arched an eyebrow and considered my argument.

“You know what?” She paused. “You're right. And bonus points go to Drake for hanging out with Roger. He's definitely a lot more interesting than the meatheads Drake hangs out with at school.”

Jodi and I must've watched Drake and Roger fly that kite for at least forty-five minutes. The push and pull of the strings, the slashing angles of the kite, the way the kite would get so small that it looked like nothing more than a discolored pixel on the blue display of sky—it was transfixing.

My theory even before I knew what I know now, I guess, was that although Drake was the prototype of the popular jock, he was also more than that.

Drake Westfall was capable of totally surprising you.

I doubt I would've been able to ignore any death-specter, and I was absolutely certain I couldn't ignore one about Drake.

Once I was back in the house after I couldn't find Vivienne le Mort in the street, I crammed the
Crabapple Intermediate Yearbook
in my backpack, then headed out into the backyard. My old fifteen-speed rested against the back wood fence. The bottom bracket clicked as I wheeled it through the back gate. I figured I'd better put on the helmet hanging from the handlebars. I always hated wearing it, but I'd be much less conspicuous that way. Or, at the very least, I'd be law abiding (consistency has to count for something, right?). I headed down to Ocean Boulevard toward the hospital and Bizzy.

Normally, I loved bike riding. The feeling I always got when I was riding with the wind whipping around me was pure happiness. Though most of my friends had stopped riding their bikes to school, walking or getting a ride instead, I couldn't give it up.

It was one of the things that Jodi and I bonded over. She's even more into bikes than I am. In fact, she has her own “fixie,” which is a lightweight single-gear bike that lacks the ability to coast. The pedals go as fast as you're going. There are no brakes on it, either, which means it's superdangerous. Which is just fine by Jodi. Her fixie is painted hot pink and the wheel rims are bright white.

Some afternoons, if we don't go to Cedar Tree Park or the cemetery, Jodi and I ride our bikes to the beach and lie on the sand for a little while before heading home. Most mornings, I ride solo. I usually put in my headphones and play Jodi's latest mix while coasting down Delores Avenue. It's my favorite part of the day. If I pick up enough speed, I feel like I might E.T. it right off the ground.

I estimated it would only take about seven minutes to arrive at the hospital. My estimate may have been dead on, but it seemed like twenty.

It was the middle of the school day and I was obviously not in school. So I kept my head down and pedaled on the uneven sidewalk through town—past the Rip Tide Inn, past Miss Mora's Market, through the town square, and toward the hospital. As I zipped past Crabapple Lens & Camera and the Camelot Theater, I tried to keep breathing.

Each time I heard a car approaching, my heart felt like it might try to save itself by tearing through my rib cage, sprouting legs of its own, and running for safety.

As soon as I saw the first sign for St. Joseph's, I pedaled faster. The small hospital rested on top of one of Crabapple's many hills. There was barely any breath left in me when I reached the top of Ocean Drive. Through the fog, I could make out the sparkling whitecaps of the Pacific in the distance. I hopped off my bike and searched for a suitable hiding place for it and my helmet. I shoved them under the hedges that lined the parking lot and ran to the emergency entrance.

Fortunately, I'd memorized Bizzy's floor and room number the last time I was at the hospital. No one gave me so much as a curious glance as I strolled into the elevator and pushed the “four” button several times. Without bothering to stop at the nurse's station, I followed the path through the maze of white hallways and double doors that led to Bizzy's room.

The door was cracked open when I arrived. I pushed gently, in case my grandma was sleeping.

Bizzy's eyes popped open as if she'd suddenly been possessed. She rasped and wheezed and she tried to speak. I stepped toward her bedside tray and held the sippy cup of water to her lips. She gulped three times and then nodded for me to set it down.

Bizzy clutched my wrist with her hand. She pulled it closer to her eyes.

“You seen another, haven't ya?”