Thirst No. 3 (44 page)

HERE’S A PEEK AT ANOTHER SERIES BY

Christopher Pike

REMEMBER ME

M
OST PEOPLE WOULD
probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead. But I don’t think of myself that way. It wasn’t so long ago that I was alive, you see. I was only eighteen. I had my whole life in front of me. Now I suppose you could say I have all of eternity before me. I’m not sure exactly what that means yet. I’m told everything’s going to be fine. But I have to wonder what I would have done with my life, who I might have been. That’s what saddens me most about dying—that I’ll never know.

My name is Shari. They don’t go in much for last names over here. I used to be Shari Cooper. I’d tell you what I look like, but since the living can see right through me now, it would be a waste of time. I’m the color of wind. I can dance on moonbeams and sometimes cause a star to twinkle. But when I was alive, I looked all right. Maybe better than all right.

I suppose there’s no harm in telling what I
used
to look like.

I had dark blond hair, which I wore to my shoulders in layered waves. I also had bangs, which my mom said I wore too long because they were always getting in my eyes. My clear green eyes. My brother always said they were only brown, but they were green, definitely green. I can see them now. I can brush my bangs from my eyes and feel my immaterial hair slide between my invisible fingers. I can even laugh at myself and remember the smile that won “Best Smile” my junior year in high school. Teenage girls are always complaining about the way they look, but now that no one is looking at me, I see something else—I should never have complained.

It is a wonderful thing to be alive.

I hadn’t planned on dying.

But that is the story I have to tell: how it happened, why it happened, why it shouldn’t have happened, and why it was meant to be. I won’t start at the beginning, however. That would take too long, even for someone like me who isn’t getting any older. I’ll start near the end, the night of the party. The night I died. I’ll start with a dream.

It wasn’t my dream. My brother Jimmy had it. I was the only one who called him Jimmy. I wonder if I would have called him Jim like everyone else if he would have said I had green eyes like everyone else. It doesn’t matter. I loved Jimmy more than the sun. He was my big brother, nineteen going on twenty, almost two years older than me and ten times nicer. I used to fight with
him all the time, but the funny thing is, he never fought with me. He was an angel, and I know what I’m talking about.

It was a warm, humid evening. I remember what day I was born, naturally, but I don’t recall the date I died, not exactly. It was a Friday near the end of May. Summer was coming. Graduation and lying in the sand at the beach with my boyfriend were all I had on my mind. Let me make one point clear at the start—I was pretty superficial. Not that other people thought so. My friends and teachers all thought I was a sophisticated young lady. But I say it now, and I’ve discovered that once you’re dead, the only opinion that matters is your own.

Anyway, Jimmy had this dream, and whenever Jimmy dreamed, he went for a walk. He was always sleepwalking, usually to the bathroom. He had diabetes. He had to take insulin shots, and he peed all the time. But he wasn’t sickly-looking or anything like that. In fact, I was the one who used to catch all the colds. Jimmy never got sick—ever. But, boy, did he have to watch what he ate. Once when I baked a batch of Christmas cookies, he gave in to temptation, and we spent Christmas Day at the hospital waiting for him to wake up. Sugar just killed him.

The evening I died, I was in my bedroom in front of my mirror, and Jimmy was in his room next door snoring peacefully on top of his bed. Suddenly the handle of my brush snapped off. I was forever breaking brushes. You’d think I had steel wool for hair rather than fine California surfer-girl silk. I used to take a lot of my frustrations out on my hair.

I was mildly stressed that evening as I was getting ready for Beth Palmone’s birthday party. Beth was sort of a friend of mine, sort of an accidental associate, and the latest in a seemingly endless string of bitches who were trying to steal my boyfriend away. But she was the kind of girl I hated to hate because she was so nice. She was always smiling and complimenting me. I never really trusted people like that, but they could still make me feel guilty. Her nickname was Big Beth. My best friend, Joanne Foulton, had given it to her. Beth had big breasts.

The instant my brush broke, I cursed. My parents were extremely well-off, but it was the only brush I had, and my layered waves of dark blond hair were lumpy knots of dirty wool from the shower I’d just taken. I didn’t want to disturb Jimmy, but I figured I could get in and borrow his brush without waking him. It was still early—about eight o’clock—but I knew he was zonked out from working all day. To my parents’ dismay, Jimmy had decided to get a real job rather than go to college after graduating from high school. Although he enjoyed fiddling with computers, he’d never been academically inclined. He loved to work outdoors. He had gotten a job with the telephone company taking telephone poles
out
of the ground. He once told me that taking down a nice old telephone pole was almost as distressing as chopping down an old tree. He was kind of sensitive that way, but he liked the work.

After I left my room, I heard someone come in the front
door. I knew who it was without looking: Mrs. Mary Parish and her daughter Amanda. My parents had gone out for the night, but earlier that evening they had thrown a cocktail party for a big-wig real estate developer from back east who was thinking of joining forces with my dad to exploit Southern California’s few remaining square feet of beachfront property. Mrs. Parish worked as a part-time housekeeper for my mom. She had called before I’d gone in for my shower to ask if everyone had left so she could get started cleaning up. She had also asked if Amanda could ride with me to Beth’s party. I had answered yes to both these questions and told her I’d be upstairs getting dressed when they arrived and to just come in. Mrs. Parish had a key to the house.

I called to them from the upstairs hall—which overlooks a large portion of the downstairs—before stealing into Jimmy’s room.

“I’ll be down in a minute! Just make yourself at home—and get to work!”

I heard Mrs. Parish chuckle and caught a faint glimpse of her gray head as she entered the living room carrying a yellow bucket filled with cleaning supplies. I loved Mrs. Parish. She always seemed so happy, in spite of the hard life she’d had. Her husband had suddenly left her years earlier broke and unskilled.

I didn’t see Amanda at first, nor did I hear her. I guess I thought she’d changed her mind and decided not to go to the party. I’m
not sure I would have entered Jimmy’s room and then let him slip past me in a semiconscious state if I’d known that his girlfriend was in the house.

Girlfriend
and
boyfriend
—I use the words loosely.

Jimmy had been going with Amanda Parish for three months when I died. I was the one who introduced them to each other, at my eighteenth birthday party. They hadn’t met before, largely because Jimmy had gone to a different high school. Amanda was another one of those friends who wasn’t a real friend—just someone I sort of knew because of her mother. But I liked Amanda a lot better than I liked Beth. She was some kind of beauty. My best friend, Jo, once remarked—in a poetic mood—that Amanda had eyes as gray as a frosty overcast day and a smile as warm as early spring. That fit Amanda. She had a mystery about her, but it was always right there in front of you—in her grave but wonderful face. She also had this incredibly long dark hair. I think it was a fantasy of my brother’s to bury his face in that hair and let everyone else in the world disappear except him and Amanda.

I have to admit that I was a bit jealous of her.

Amanda’s presence at my birthday party had had me slightly off balance. Her birthday had been only the day before mine, and the whole evening I remember feeling as if I had to give her one of my presents or something. What I ended up giving her was my brother. I brought Jimmy over to meet her, and that was the last I saw of him that night. It was love
at first sight. And that evening, and for the next few weeks, I thought Amanda loved him, too. They were inseparable. But then, for no obvious reason, Amanda started to put up a wall, and Jimmy started to get an ulcer. I’ve never been a big believer in moderation, but I honestly believe that the intensity of his feelings for her was unhealthy. He was obsessed.

But I’m digressing. After calling out to Mrs. Parish, I crept into Jimmy’s room. Except for the green glow from his computer screen, which he was in the habit of leaving on, it was dark. Jimmy’s got a weird physiology. When I started for his desk and his brush, he was lying dead to the world with a sheet twisted around his muscular torso. But only seconds later, as I picked up the brush, he was up and heading for the door. I knew he wasn’t awake, or even half-awake. Sleepwalkers walk differently—kind of like zombies in horror films, only maybe a little faster. All he had on were his boxers, and they were kind of hanging. I smiled to myself seeing him go. We were upstairs, and there was a balcony he could theoretically flip over, but I wasn’t worried about him hurting himself. I had discovered from years of observation that God watches over sleepwalkers better than he does drunks. Or upset teenage girls . . .

I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.

Then I thought of Amanda, possibly downstairs with her mom, and how awful Jimmy would feel if he suddenly woke up scratching himself in the hall in plain sight of her. Taking the brush, I ran after him.

It was good that I did. He was fumbling with the knob on the bathroom door when I caught him. At first I wasn’t absolutely sure there was anyone in the bathroom, but the light was on and it hadn’t been a few minutes earlier. Jimmy turned and stared at me with a pleasant but vaguely confused expression. He looked like a puppy who had just scarfed down a bowl of marijuana-laced dog food.

“Jimmy,” I whispered, afraid to raise my voice. I could hear Mrs. Parish whistling downstairs and was becoming more convinced with each passing second that Amanda was indeed inside the bathroom. Jimmy smiled at me serenely.

“Blow,” he said.

“Shh,” I said, taking hold of his hand and leading him away from the door. He followed obediently, and after hitching up his boxer shorts an inch or two, I steered him in the direction of my parents’ bedroom and said, “Use that bathroom. This one’s no good.”

I didn’t wake him for a couple of reasons. First, he’s real hard to wake up when he’s sleepwalking, which is strange because otherwise he’s a very light sleeper. But you practically have to slap him when he’s out for a stroll. Second, I was afraid he might have a heart attack if he suddenly came to and realized how close he’d come to making a fool of himself in front of his princess.

After he disappeared inside my parents’ room, I returned to the bathroom in the hall and knocked lightly on the door. “Amanda, is that you?” I called softly.

There was a pause. “Yeah. I’ll be right out—I’m getting some kitchen cleanser.”

Since she wasn’t going to the bathroom, I thought it would be OK to try the knob. Amanda looked up in surprise when I peeked in. She was by the sink, in front of the medicine cabinet and a small wall refrigerator, and she had one of Jimmy’s syringes and a vial of insulin in her hand. Jimmy’s insulin had to be kept cool, and he’d installed the tiny icebox himself so he wouldn’t have to keep his medication in the kitchen fridge downstairs where everybody could see it. He wasn’t proud of his illness. Amanda knew Jimmy was a diabetic, but she didn’t know he needed daily shots of medication. Jimmy didn’t want Amanda to know. Well, the cat was out of the bag now. The best I could do, I thought, was to make a joke of the matter.

“Amanda,” I said in a shocked tone. “How could you do this to your mother and me?”

She glanced down at the stuff, blood in her cheeks. “Mom told me to look for some Ajax, and I—”

“Ajax,” I said in disbelief. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Those are drugs you’re holding. Drugs!” I put my hand to my mouth.
“Oh, God.”

I was a hell of an actress. Amanda just didn’t know where I was coming from. She quickly put down the needle. “I didn’t mean to—” she began.

I laughed and stepped into the bathroom. “I know you weren’t snooping, Amanda. Don’t worry. So you found the
family stash. What the hell, we’ll cut you in for a piece of the action if you keep your mouth shut. What do you say? Deal?”

Amanda peered at me with her wide gray eyes, and for a moment I thought of Jimmy’s expression a moment earlier—the innocence in both. “Shari?”

I took the syringe and vial of insulin from her hand and spoke seriously. “You know how Jimmy’s always watching his diet? Well, this is just another part of his condition he doesn’t like to talk about, that’s all.” I opened the medicine cabinet and fridge and put the stuff away. “It’s no big deal, is what I’m saying.”

Amanda stared at me a moment; I wasn’t looking directly at her, but I could see her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. What is it about a mirror that makes the beautiful more beautiful and the pretty but not exceptional less exceptional? I don’t understand it—a camera can do the same thing. Amanda looked so beautiful at that moment that I could imagine all the pain she would cause my poor brother if her wall got any higher. And I think I resented her for it a tiny bit. She brushed her dark hair back from her pink cheek.

“I won’t say anything to him,” she said.

“It’s no big deal,” I said.

“You’re right.” She nodded to the cupboard under the sink, “I suppose I should have been looking down there.”

We both bent over at the same instant and almost bumped heads. Then I remembered that Jimmy was still wandering
around. Excusing myself, I left Amanda to find the Ajax and went searching for him. When I ran into him, coming out of my parents’ bedroom, he was wide awake.