Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (45 page)

“No vulgar language, understood?” Ms.
Rodriguez arched a perfect black brow like a raven's wing.

John nodded.

Ms. Rodriguez turned her attention to us and I dry
swallowed.

Jonesy looked ready to crawl up his own ass.

Rodriguez narrowed her eyes at me. “Mr. Hart...
would you,” she pointed a french-tipped nail at my desk, “gather
the trash and food stuffs and get them where they belong?” She
indicated the trash separator by her desk.

Sighing, I trudged back over to my desk. Jonesy
looked like he had been struck between the eyes with a hammer. Funny,
she sorta had that effect on me too. But, since Jade and I got
together, not so much. She was still sweet looking, but didn't take
my breath away like Jade.

John had recovered enough to peer back into my
desk. He slid one lanky arm all the way back and came out with a
colorful ball.

“A hackey-sack!” Jonesy chortled.

“A what?” John asked.

“See, you're not so smart.”

“Give it, it's my Dad's,” I said.

“I want a demo, Hart,” Jonesy said, crossing
his arms across his chest.

“Boys!” Ms Rodriguez almost yelled in warning.

I leaned forward. “Later...”

“Okay,” Jonesy relented.

I stuffed the Hackey-sack in my jean pocket where
it made a disturbing bulge.

“Hey
Caleb,” Jonesy looked down at my pocket. “You may want to put
that in your back pocket.”

“Right,” John agreed.

I stuffed it in the back.

“Better,” John said.

We
went back to work, John using two pencils to excavate an unknown
something.

It was slimy and gray... no, black. Gross.

“Caleb, that is truly disgusting,” Jonesy
said, awed.

“What is it?” John said eyeballing it.

“I don't know.”

“I want to see,” Jonesy said, leaning forward,
giving it an experimental whiff; then he made a barfing noise,
running over to the bin labeled Compost and heaved his breakfast into
it.

Ms. Rodriguez left the room, squealing in disgust.

“That solves it, definitely a food item,” John
deduced.

From the well of the compost bin Jonesy said,
“Banana!”

“Thanks for clearin' that up!”

John walked it over to the compost bin, giving it
a proper burial.

“I'm going to the bathroom and rinse my mouth
out,” Jonesy said.

“Please,” John said.

“Thanks for figuring that out. I'll sleep better
tonight, now that the mystery is solved.”

Jonesy waggled his brows. “Look at how I got rid
of Rodriguez, huh?”

That was true.

Jonesy walked out, John and I scooping out the
remaining stuff.

John said, “How can anyone get three English
texts in here? You should be using your pulse-text.”

“I just like holding the real book.”

“Three of them?”

John stacked them in his arms, placing them on the
bookshelf. We hardly had real textbooks, everything was pulse this
and pulse that. On top were the dedicated pulse readers, all English.

Jonesy returned from the bathroom as we were
leaving. “They're already playing baseball out in the field,”

“What are we waiting for?” I asked, all of us
tearing out of there like our asses were on fire.

****

My belly was full of hot dogs, chips, and all the
chocolate milks that were handed out after the games. Jonesy had got
a home run and John had got to first base, tripping on the way there.
I was busy staring at Jade and got nailed by a bad pitch right on my
shin. My leg was throbbing in a distracting way.

“
Look
what I got,” Jonesy said, making a loose fan of blow pops in one
hand. He looked like one of those magicians who pulled coins
from
behind peoples ears. I grabbed a grape. Mom would have a turtle if
she caught me with sugar. Sugar was evil.

I thought it tasted pretty good.

Jade
grabbed sour apple. Disgusting, but she
did
like licorice ice cream.

John shook his head. “Two for me then!”

I glanced at Jade just as the sun slid behind a
cloud reducing the luster of her hair to shimmering black oil. She
caught me looking at her and smiled.

Jonesy snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“Snap out of it, Hart!”

I swatted his hand away like a buzzing fly,
smoothly changing subjects, “What's the haunted plan tonight?

“I think,” Jonesy smirked, “you can just
show up and scare all the ghosts with that haircut your dad gave
you.”

Jade gave me a sympathetic look.

“How do you know my dad gave me a haircut?” I
asked.

Jonesy looked at me. “Are you really asking that
question? Your dad always gives you The Haircut,” he did airquotes.

“Is it that obvious?”

Everyone nodded.

Well hell.

I ran a hand over my super-short hair.

“I
doubt my hair is going to be enough to scare anyone or anything.”

“I don't know about that, Caleb,” Jonesy said.

“Knock it off,” I said.

“
Caleb's
right, what's the plan? I noticed it's
Friday
the 13
^th
and nothing's happened,” John said, hands spread.

“The day's young,” Jonesy said. “There's
plenty of crap that can still happen.”

“
And
you want to
see.
..
right?”

He pointed his blow pop in Jade's direction.
“She's quick to catch on.”

“Yeah, Jade's been part of enough of your plans
(read: schemes); she's figured out the potential,” John said.

“Well, it's not any good to creep around and do
scary stuff in broad daylight,” Jonesy said, brandishing his sucker
with a flourish. “So, I'm thinkin' we should meet around eight, at
the cemetery, then weasel over to the shack about,” his eyes rolled
up in his head, the blow pop stuffed in his mouth, “say dusk, like
ten.”

John looked up at the sky, partly cloudy. “Maybe
bringing my LEDs would be good.”

Jonesy huffed. “Ah... nooooo... how is it gonna
be creepy if you're wrecking it with LEDs? Think, my man!”

“He's got a point, kinda defeatist,” I agreed.

“It seems safer though,” Jade smoothly sided
with John.

“What could go wrong?” Jonesy commented,
popping a very small remaining sucker back in his mouth.

Jade gave him an astonished look. “Ah...
everything,” in the no-duh voice, crunching her sucker to reach the
gum.

John said, “The gum loses flavor fast.”

“Yeah,” Jade and Jonesy said at the same time.

Jonesy and Jade grinned. The gum fell out of his
mouth. Plop on the ground it went.

“Ah,
damn,” Jonesy said.

“Like I said, it loses flavor, no loss,” John
restated.

“I don't care, it pisses me off, I wanted to
leech the flavor forever,” he scowled.

“You'll live,” I said.

They gave their sticks to me to put in the garbage
separator with a plan for eight at the old cemetery. Jade and I
leaned in and barely brushed lips, mindful of the Js.

Jonesy yelled, “Get a room!”

John gave the regular salute, Jonesy cackling.

After they walked off I said, “Why don't you
pulse Andrea and see if you can stay for dinner?”

“Okay,” she did the flash fingers and was
pulsed and done in less than a minute.

“
It's
okay. But, did ya ask
your
parents?”

“Nah, my mom won't care. She'll think it's a
vacation from the Js.”

“They eat a lot?”

“Ah... yeah.” Understatement!

Walking into the house, Jade leaned in, a fragrant
chunk of hair brushing my cheek as we whispered together. “What's
that funny smell?”

“Yeast.”

“What's that?”

“It's some ingredient my mom puts in stuff that
makes it get bigger, like bread and whatnot.”

“Oh.”

Mom walked through the pass-through that leads to
the kitchen. “Oh... hi Jade.”

“Hey Alicia.”

“Is Jade staying for supper?”

“It's okay, right?”

“You bet. It'll be ready in,” she turned to
the pulse-clock, synchronized to Greenwich Mean Time, “fiveish,
okay?”

“Yeah, we're gonna go up to my room.”

“Doors open, Caleb.”

Jade blushed, awkward-much. “Yeah Mom.”

“Oh!” she paused, turning. “How was your
last day of school?”

I thought about the rotting banana episode. Pass.

“It was good. Jonesy got a home run.”

“Not surprising, he's pretty athletic, our
Jonesy.”

“Yeah he is,” I said.

We all stood there. “Dad will be home shortly.”

“Really?” That was different, Dad didn't
usually get home until supper time.

“He knew it was your last day of school and
thought it would be fun to play some ball or whatever.”

That was great but I looked at Jade.

“Ah, I've got some stuff to do and then I can
come back for dinner.”

“I didn't mean to chase you off, Jade,” Mom
said.

“
No,”
she laughed. “I'm
sure
my aunt has something for me to do since I'm going out with friends
tonight.”

“Oh?” Mom arched a brow, all-sharpness.
Careful, she was really good at getting to the bottom of secret
intent.

“Ah-huh, a group of us kids are going to explore
and walk around,” I said.

“Who?” Mom demanded, hands on hips, eyes
intense.

“
The
Js,” I nodded like,
of
course,
“and
Tiff.”

“That tough girl from Scenic Cemetery?”

“Yeah, she's good to have around, Mom.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because she is AFTD too. It just makes things
better if some weird stuff comes up.”

“Is there a plan for weird stuff?” Uh-oh, this
was getting close to lying.

“No. But we didn't think anything bad was gonna
happen at Scenic and look what happened there.”

Mom looked thoughtful, absently correcting, “Going
to.”

“Right.”

“Okay, who else?

“Sophie and...”

“Bry Weller,” Jade supplied.

“Who's he?”

“He's the older boy that was there.”

“Oh... that was an unfortunate incident for
him,” Mom said, grimacing.

Unfortunate
incident didn't cover it.

“Is there some issue with everyone in that
Weller family shortening their names?” Mom asked suddenly.

Jade
said, “Tiff thinks her name sounds,” she paused, “too
girlie
.”

“What about the boy?”

“I don't know about him,” Jade admitted.

“Look at Jonesy. Why doesn't anyone call him
Mark?”

We thought on that.

Finally, Mom said, “he doesn't seem like a
Mark.”

Yeah, Mark was so wrong for him.

“Yet, he is clearly Mark,” I said.

Mom seemed to shake cobwebs away. “Okay, be back
by around five and we'll have pizza and salad.”

Disgusting. I'd drown it in ranch dressing.

Jade smiled. “I love salad.”

“I know,” Mom smiled.

Rabbit food.

Jade and I did a hug by the front door and she
sauntered off. I looked after her, torn between walking her home but
not wanting to be freaky overprotective.

Mom watched me. “You can't protect her all the
time.”

“I hate where she lives.”

“No,
you hate who she lives by.”

“That too.” I turned away and went to the
bathroom to take a shower. I had a layer of baseball grime on me. I
looked at the pulse-clock, almost two. Good, a few minutes of peace,
then a Jonesy-plan for tonight, with pizza in the middle, a sandwich
of anticipation.

Perfect.

CHAPTER 30

Jade and I arrived around eight at the cemetery,
Onyx in tow. He seemed to know something exciting was going to happen
and wanted to come. The whole group was already there. Bikes were
piled up like sardines in a can. Tiff and Bry lived by Panther Lake,
so they were there first.

I looked around, it wasn't dark yet but the shine
was off the day. The sky had deepened to a polished azure, that color
that only summer can claim.

Jade and I were holding hands and Onyx's tail
would occasionally whack my leg.

Tiff
and Bry had hoodies on (the Weller uniform). My stomach clenched as I
caught sight of him. Our last encounter ended badly, he stood a half
a head taller than his sister. He was John's height but had fifty
pounds on John, definitely a jock. I swallowed nervously, Onyx
lowered his head and I thought at him,
it's
okay Onyx.

The Boy has put the good sounds in the Dog's
head but there was a nervousness that is not typical of the Boy. The
Dog became watchful of this group, a foreign pack.

The
Dog approached the big male that was still young, still smelled like
boy and sniffed his hand, moving his nose to the
female
beside him. They were pack, but the others... not. This pack was not
his
pack. He backed away cautiously, knowing that he must maintain his
rude eye contact when his Boy was nervous with this pack of two. The
Dog understood when the big male, that was still a boy, looked away
that the Dog was dominant.