October Girls: Crystal & Bone (18 page)

Tim motioned her forward with his free arm. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to thrust the thing in the Judge’s face-hole or not. He might not have eyes, but she knew he had teeth, because he’d smacked and snacked on the Milk Duds she’d smuggled from Earth.

She wasn’t ready to risk any fingers because she wasn’t sure if they’d regenerate.

“I command you to release him,” she said, waving the silver cross with an ominous flourish.

“Or what?” the Judge said.

“Or I’ll send you to the fiery pits of hell.”

The Judge let go of Tim, who slumped on the cool stone floor.

“Why not Waikiki Beach?” the Judge said. “Or the Antarctica? Or the Andromeda Galaxy?”

“It’s the rules,” she said. “You’re the devil, right?”

The Judge took a step toward her. She lifted the cross higher, wondering if this was going to blow her reputation.

“You’re certainly one to worry about rules, Bonnie Whitehart. Do you recall what you were doing the night you had your nasty accident? Why you were in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

I never told anyone about that. Not even Crystal. How could he—

The Judge took another step. “Come now, Bonnie. Pretending to have post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia may work on the Counselors, but not on me.”

Her hand trembled, the cross reflecting a glint of candlelight against the hood’s opening, but it revealed nothing of the face inside. “G-get thee behind me, Satan.”

The laughter filled the mausoleum as if it were spilling from every crack in the stone, and maybe even through the portal to Earth. Bone wondered if Crystal was standing near an Orifice and listening.

“The devil is in the details, little dumpling.”

Tim raised himself to his hands and knees, but he looked like he’d just undergone a major round of chemo. He dry heaved, sweat beading his pallid forehead.

“Not in front of the kid,” Bone begged. “Please.”

“False chivalry. If I
were
the devil, and frankly, that’s below my pay grade, then I’d take advantage of your pride.”

Another step and he was in front of her, a low rasping noise issuing from the face-hole like a lost breeze over a bleak desert night. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And you say she’s your best friend.”

He reached out and plucked the cross from her limp fingers, the chill of his glove penetrating her substance. She swayed, feeling disconnected from her spirit body, and wondered if she were finally moving on to the afterlife—the
real
afterlife, because there had to be some kind of reward for all this pain and suffering.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” someone boomed from the mausoleum entrance. “Did I miss the cast party?”

Bone sagged against the wall as the Judge concealed the cross in the folds of his robe.

“You’re late, Royce,” the Judge said.

“Had to press the flesh down at the Rock’n’Roll Café,” he said. He was wearing a deerskin jacket that looked pretty fresh, and his hair was a carefully crafted mess. “Hey, Dollface, you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Take that line out of your repertoire,” the Judge said.

Bone ignored both of them and went to Tim, who was still dry heaving. She’d only visited him in the hospital once, when her mother made her go with Crystal and a couple of classmates from Sunday School. That had been a couple of weeks before he took a turn for the worse, and even then he’d been waxy, his cheeks sunken and hair falling out from the chemo. But his eyes had burned with a fierce intensity, and Bone had wondered how such a light could ever be extinguished.

But, being kids, they mostly wondered what it was like for someone to hold a pot for you to poop in.

She knelt beside him as Royce worked the room. “Tim, are you okay?” she whispered.

He gave one more retch and a tuft of vapor came out and curled away in the candlelight. “Yeah,” he managed. “Never been deader.”

“Hey, that’s good,” Royce said. “Can I use it?”

“You’re supposed to be alive, remember?” the Judge said. “If you go to Earth and start getting typecast, you’ll lose your star power. Don’t be eccentric. Nobody likes eccentric.”

“If Johnny Depp can do it, I can do it.”

“We’re a long way from Netflix, Royce. We’re still at the Tan Banana & Movie Emporium level.”

“Do you know how
he
started out?”

There was so much venom in the word “he” that it could only mean Jimmy Dean, and not the sausage-king version, either.

“High school theater,” Royce continued, jumping the cue line. “Such immortal classics as ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ and ‘Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.’”

Tim wiped his mouth. “And now your heart is a geriatric drag queen,” he said, though he lacked the energy to put any real malice in the comeback.

Bone helped him stand, resisting the impulse to put her wrist to his forehead and check for fever. Any heat would be an illusion, though she could have sworn the banked coals of rage glowed deep in her belly.

“Okay,” Bone said to the Judge. “Make him better, and I’ll help.”

“Oh, you’re helping anyway,” the Judge said. “What good is a shepherd without sheep? What good is a star without a supporting cast? What good is—”

“Take the cancer,” Bone said. “Just let him be a boy.”

“What is this?” Royce said. “’Pinocchio’?”

“Bonnie Whitehart, you think it’s that simple?” the Judge said. “That I can just wave my hand and undo the great, grinding wheels of time and Fate? That I can just—”

She cut him off before he could get rolling again. “Fix it.”

“No, Bonnie,” Tim said. “I’d rather puke my guts out for a billion years than owe Hoodie Boy here any favors.”

The Judge chuckled, which sounded like a dozen knucklebones rattling in a China cup. “We all get on our knees sooner or later, Tim.”

Royce stood there looking cute and confused, as if waiting for the director to yell “Action.” Bone considered another run for the cemetery gate, but Tim was barely able to stand, much less run or float.

And what if I did run? Crystal needs me as much as Tim does. Christaroni with cheese sauce, I’m too young and dead for responsibility.

“Okay,” Bone said. “I get it. I’ve been working for you the whole time and didn’t know it. You let me slip back because you knew I’d want more. Like any good pusher, you gave me the first hit for free.”

“Then we have a deal?” the Judge said.

“Hey, wait,” Royce said. “I thought you were
my
agent.”

“We’re all on the same team here, Royce,” the Judge said. “Do you want to get typecast as a B-movie extra, or do you want Sunset Boulevard and red carpets?”

“I want a sports car.”

“You got it.”

“And cigarettes.”

“It’s in the job description.”

“Hairdressers. I’ll need lots of hairdressers.”

“All that will happen if you just concentrate on your art.”

“I thought I was an actor.”

“The
art
of acting. The craft of drama. Performing arts.”

“Forget it,” Tim said. “You might as well be talking to a turtle about turtle wax.”

Bone was glad to see Tim had returned to his usual sickly self. He’d probably be okay if she left him alone for awhile. After all, he’d been dead four years before she came along, so it wasn’t like she had anything to teach him.

“I leave the fine print to you guys,” Bone said. “Right now, I’m anxious to get over there and get Dempsey’s movies out where they can do some good. I mean, do some
harm
.”

“Excellent,” the Judge said. “But there’s another rule: you only get to go solid three times.”

“Why?” Bone knew why, but she had to ask anyway.

“The Rule of Three,” the Judge said. “In the meantime, Royce, why don’t you and Tim rehearse that scene from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’?”

As Royce began spouting lines, the Judge slipped up behind Bone and gave her the silver cross. “You might need this over there.”

“Thanks for not ratting me out.”

“’Yet.’ I haven’t done it
yet
.”

“You’re all heart.”

The Judge, with his back to Tim and Royce, parted his robe just a bit to reveal a wedge of hard darkness. “I gave my heart away. Just like you did.”

Bone gripped the cross and crawled toward the vault opening in the back of the mausoleum. She had a plan for dealing with the Judge, and it all started with Tan Banana & Movie Emporium.

The emporium had a special on Milk Duds, and she’d need a lot of them.

“I
n Royce we trust,” Pettigrew said.

Crystal’s Diet Sprite stopped halfway up the straw and the bit in her mouth nearly went out her nose. “Huh?”

“This cheeseburger’s greasy,” he said, wiping his hand on the dashboard. He was driving her to work, since her Toyota needed a new timing chain and that was at least two paychecks away. Pettigrew would do the work, but she wanted to buy the part herself. With him putting on the pressure for a “committed relationship,” the last thing she needed was to owe him any more favors.

“That’s not what you said.”

Pettigrew glanced sideways at her. It was the “Women come up with the weirdest notions” look. Or maybe it was “Women. Shrug.”

“I think you been watching too many bad movies,” he said.

“Don’t be telling me what I do too much of. Probably, if anything, I’m doing too much of
you
.”

“Fine.” He lay on the squeaky brakes, slowing in front of the Gas’n’Gulp & Orthopedic Supplies, which advertised scratch-off lottery tickets and discount cigarettes, as well as 30 percent off wooden legs. “We can fix that right now.”

This section of Parson’s Ford—the side where she lived, where the old paper mill had spawned a collection of cinder-block businesses to serve the working class—had no sidewalks, a weedy railway bed, and the occasional aggressive stray pit bull. Her immediate response was to jump out and hoof the last two miles to the emporium, but then she’d be half an hour late and today she was opening the store. Fatback Bob was easy to please, but he didn’t like refunding late fees, and some people still hadn’t figured out how to work the drop slot in the door.

“Keep driving,” she said.

Pettigrew accelerated in a grumble of busted muffler. “You been acting weird lately.”

As if I’ve ever acted any other way? You might be the aspiring actor, but I can read between the lines.

There was only one way to go, and that was with the perfect and universal excuse. “I’m about to start my period.”

Pettigrew rolled his eyes as if that was
another
thing that would be off limits for a while.

She decided to drop the “Royce” bit, because she wondered if she was starting to get paranoid. When she’d gone through the depression, Miss McMarkus and the Pickett County Behavioral Healthcare counselors had probed her for suicidal or delusional thinking. It took her a while to figure out what they were doing, mostly because she checked out a couple of diagnostic manuals from the public library and did a little research. One thing that jumped out from the case studies was that once they slid you into a file folder under a certain label, you were stuck there forever.

So “situational depression” had been the best choice—it not only allowed the counselors to feel helpful, but it also had a satisfying conclusion upon which they could all agree.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m stressed about this Halloween party. It’s at Cindy Summerhill’s house.”

“Summerhill? The county commissioner’s daughter?”

“And head cheerleader and senior class president and Morehead scholar and the first girl in our class to reach a C cup. And she has the biggest house in town. Indoor pool, game room, movie theater. Party Central.”

“Why in the world do you wanna do that?”

“It’s McMack Truck’s idea. Wants to make sure I’m playing well with others.”

That’s something Pettigrew understood. He was dyslexic, and school had been one long torture chamber. He’d taken his C average and diploma and never looked back. Well, he looked back, but not without a glower.

Pettigrew geared down as they entered the main business strip. He’d already gotten a ticket for the busted muffler and if he got a bad rep, the cops would stop calling him for accident response. Just another way the poor got owned by the Man, he liked to say. But he liked to say it a little too much. Dempsey didn’t have that kind of inferiority complex.

Oops. There you go again. Quit comparing them, darn it
.

“Well, you’re coming to the party with me, ain’t you?” she asked.

“Ain’t been invited.”

“Hello. I just invited you.”

“I don’t know.”

She put her hand on his thigh and gave a playful squeeze. “Come on. It’ll be fun. You’re not 20 yet. It’s not too creepy to hang out with high school kids.

“Not as creepy as that Dempsey dude. Saw him last night with a bunch of 14-year-old Goth wannabees.”

She sat up against the seatbelt. “Where?”

“Standing outside the Cineplex. Had enough eyeliner and leather to build a black cow.”

“Was there a guy with them? Older guy, kind of wavy hair, in a T-shirt?” She wanted to add “dreamy eyes,” but Pettigrew would have no idea what that meant. And she was afraid to say “Royce,” because Pettigrew might fall into brainwash mode.

“Nah. Looked like Dempsey was passing out tickets.”

The Cineplex only had two theaters. Currently, the twin bill featured a Russell Crowe shoot-’em-up and a humorous remake of “Night of the Living Dead.” Since the zombie movie had been cleaned up to PG-13 and starred some wise-cracking kid who’d cut his teeth in cereal commercials, she’d had no interest in seeing it. But if Dempsey was pushing it on the Gothling crowd, maybe it contained some sort of secret message, too.

“Did he say anything about Hollywood connections when he talked to you?” she asked.

“Only the usual. He knew some agent somewhere. Name-dropping without the name.” He gave her another sideways glance. “You sure talk about him a lot.”

“You gotta admit, we don’t get his kind in Parson’s Ford very often.”