Three Quarters Dead (4 page)

“I know, I know,” Tanya said. “The Hotties thing is a little bit ditzy. It’s a little like Shannon’s cheerleaders poking all that crepe paper into a homecoming float. But it’s for a good cause. Guys love awards—remember all those Cub Scout badges? They like their gold stars. It’s not that much work for us, and it helps with their self-esteem.”

Also it meant that the guys didn’t decide who was top ten. Tanya did. If I’d noticed that, I’d have thought it was great.

Somewhere in all this Joanne brought in the dessert and a silver pot of coffee.

“She won’t be joining us,” Tanya said when Joanne was barely back in the kitchen. “Eating disorder. The only way you can be that thin at her age is to keep sticking your finger down your throat.”

“Gross,” Natalie said as Makenzie reached for the bowl of whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. She was our heartiest eater, but Natalie was always hungry.

“Is your dad dating again, Kerry?” Tanya said, out of the blue. She could catch you off guard every time. You never saw Tanya coming.

Dating again? How did she even know my parents were divorced? But then, she knew all kinds of things about adults. She practically was one.

“No, Dad’s not dating,” I said.

“Don’t be too sure,” Tanya said. “They always start sooner than you think. And they always go for somebody younger. And younger. And younger, till they’re practically your age.” She looked at the kitchen door. “Or think they are.”

She held up the silver pot. “How do you take your coffee?”

And of course I didn’t know how I took coffee.

“The best thing about you, Kerry, is that nothing ever happened to you before you met us,” Tanya said. “You don’t have to be retrained.”

I REMEMBER NOW how that part of the evening seemed to go on longer than it could have. And the little black candy coffins and the pumpkin-shaped gift bags we were going to deliver them in: orange and green foil with handles to hang on doorknobs. I saw that far. We’d drive all around town, delivering the coffins to the Halloween Hotties’ houses. We’d be going in Natalie’s Audi because Makenzie’s GPS had a bug in it.

Then when we were slipping the coffins into the pumpkin bags, I realized something. I don’t know why.

“Isn’t Spence Myers a Halloween Hottie?” I said, surprised. “How come he’s not on the list?” He was surely up high in anybody’s top ten. Editor of the newspaper and into a lot of things. Triple 800s on his SATs. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was good. And the looks. He so had the looks.

Makenzie and Natalie watched Tanya, waiting.

“We’re talking really just top ten, Kerry,” she said, explaining, patient. “Spence isn’t quite there yet. He falls a little short. Let’s think of these not only as awards to the top ten, but as an incentive to others, maybe to work a little harder, like take closer looks at themselves.

“You know how un-self-critical guys are. They really do let themselves off too easy. You see?”

I guessed so. But not really. Besides, there was more to the evening. Another part of the . . . agenda.

I THOUGHT WE were ready to go. But Tanya was looking for something among the coffee cups and clutter. For once she wasn’t holding me with her gaze. “Where’s the baby?” she said.

Baby?

But she must have known, because she reached under some ribbon ends and held up something. It was a plastic baby doll, three or four inches high. Naked and too pink. Like something from the dollar store. Natalie was watching me, and Makenzie was looking away. I think so. I was mainly staring at this cheapo little doll that looked all wrong for the room.

Tanya held it up to the light, and there was a line of red across its neck and a drop or two of red, like blood. Maybe nail polish. It was the first really eerie moment of Halloween.

The room got too quiet, so I said, “What’s that an award for?”

“You could think of it as an award, I suppose,” Tanya said.

“Please,” Natalie murmured.

“You really could.” Tanya came up with a plain little cloth bag with a drawstring top. She slid the plastic doll into it, up to the bloody neck, and drew the drawstring tight.

“Kerry, you’re going to deliver this one personally to a girl named Alyssa Stark. Think of it as kind of a joke thing. We don’t have time to go into it. Let’s just say it’s a long story, and Alyssa has this coming to her.”

Me? “Me?”

“Yes,” Tanya said. “Kind of an initiation type thing.”

“You mean like initiation into a sorority?” I said, not really getting it.

Natalie sighed.

“Well, sororities are kind of tacky,” Tanya said, “unless you’re pledging Kappa at the University of Virginia. That sort of thing. Let’s just say this is something you can do to make yourself a part of us. You have something to decide, Kerry. When we pull up the drawbridge, which side of the moat do you want to be on?”

We sat there, and all I could see in my mind were drawbridges being pulled up. Tanya’s hand rested on the table beside the doll in the drawstring bag, looking at the ceiling with its pinpoint eyes. Makenzie was a little pulled back from the table. I wondered if she’d had to do something to prove herself.

But Tanya was saying, “Makenzie, get a picture of this with your phone in case we want to e-mail it to everybody. We’ll have that option.” And Makenzie was scavenging around for her phone.

I really didn’t know where this was going. Just for a moment I wished I was home, in bed. But the moment passed. We had to get busy. We had all these coffins to deliver in the right order. Alyssa’s award was going to be the last.

“I have a black sweater that will be better for you, Kerry,” Tanya said. My only bulky sweater was Christmas red. The wrong color of course. She had the sweater ready too, under the table. “Black will help you blend in with the night.”

All she had to do was hand it over. All I had to do was take it.

SURELY WE’D SAT around that table for hours. The remains of the whipped cream were dry in the bowl and at the corners of Makenzie’s mouth.

Then we were hours more, driving all over to leave the awards at the guys’ houses. The night was velvet. Moonless. Most of the porch lights were out since it was past the trick-or-treaters’ bedtimes. The crosswalks were empty.

We drove through every curving street up at this end of town. Chase Haverkamp lived on an estate. You couldn’t see the house from the road. You couldn’t get past the gate. We had to leave his coffin on the doorknob of the gatehouse. I didn’t know where Spence Myers lived. We didn’t go there.

We’d had to give up our witch hats. They didn’t fit in the Audi. Makenzie and I took turns darting out of the backseat of the car to leave the awards. We didn’t buckle up. How could we? We were in and out. Natalie drove, and Tanya sat up front beside her, checking off the addresses on the list by the light of a little pen flashlight. Organized. It was fine. It was fun. But I was getting a little worried. Something was gnawing at me.

Then finally, finally we’d delivered all our coffins. Natalie was turning down the hill to another part of town. She was a cautious driver, always with the turn signal, careful not to attract a cruising village cop car.

We were down low in the town, several blocks below where I lived. We turned on Harper Street, which was a line of tired little ranch type houses, from the 1950s or whenever. Picture windows. A lot of unraked leaves. The Metro-North railroad tracks ran right behind. A city-bound train rumbled through as we made the turn.

The Audi crept along the street where nothing stirred at this hour. The witching hour. Natalie killed the lights and coasted into the curb, mashing leaves. She killed the engine. We sat in the dark for a moment or two. “Here’s the baby. Put it in your pocket. Keep both hands free.” Tanya handed it over her shoulder to me. I saw the shape of it coming toward me, the doll in its little sack, in Tanya’s hand. Makenzie sat there in the back beside me, still as a statue, separate. I took the doll, though I really didn’t want—

“And here’s the key.” Tanya handed it back.

The key.

“It’s to the front door.”

“I have to go inside?” I went cold all over.

“Yes,” Tanya said in her evenest voice. “You’ll be fine. Alyssa’s in the city tonight, and her mother works a late shift. There is no father.”

“I have to go inside?” Me? Into some strange house?

“Yes,” Tanya said. “You’ve got the key. You’re not breaking in. And look—nobody’s around, and it’s dark as pitch except for the streetlight. If anybody did see you going up to the house, they’d just think it was Alyssa coming home. She’s always out all hours. Or her mother. And anyway, who’s to see?”

“But what do I do when I get inside?”

“Well, for a start, you don’t turn on a light.”

I couldn’t breathe. Or believe this. And I couldn’t picture myself in somebody’s dark house with all the furniture around like shapes. And what about burglar alarms? Every house up on Ridge Road had them.

“I can’t—”

“The front door opens right into the living room. All these houses are the same. Very simple layout.” Tanya seemed to be speaking straight ahead, not over her shoulder. But I heard. I heard. “Two bedrooms with a bath between,” she said. “Turn left out of the living room. Then left again, and you’re in Alyssa’s bedroom. She’s got the front one. There’s a ceiling light, but don’t turn it on. You can see enough from the streetlight out here.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” I was trying not to whine. But what was I supposed to do?

“Nothing, really. Just take the doll and put it on the pillow of the bed. Right there where she’ll see it as soon as she comes in and turns on the light. Who knows? She may not be back till morning. Then she’ll find it.”

“But what’s the point?” I said. “I don’t get it.”

“I know you don’t,” Tanya said. “Think of the whole thing as a treasure hunt.”

Natalie sighed.

“A treasure hunt,” Tanya said. “Except you’ll be leaving something, not taking something.”

Silence sort of fell. Was I waiting for her to change her mind?

“And the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”

I pushed open the door. A night breeze scudded the leaves along the sidewalk.

“It’s the third house back,” Tanya said, low. “Count back three houses.” So they hadn’t parked in front of Alyssa’s house. That made sense, I supposed.

“Where’s the key?” Tanya said.

“In my hand.”

“Don’t drop it. You’ll never find it again in all these leaves. Don’t these people ever rake?”

The car door closed behind me with only a click. I was a little dizzy out here, and the wind had turned colder. My feet barely found the sidewalk. But I was walking now, blending with the night in Tanya’s black sweater. I had the key in a death grip. I could feel the doll in my jeans pocket. The houses were close. Now I was in front of the third one. I looked back once at the dark car by the curb, and it seemed miles away.