Over Your Dead Body (7 page)

“You did that,” I said. “Or my mom did, I guess. You died, and I broke, and now I feel things differently but I … am not really good at it.”

“I’m sorry about your mom.”

“She’s not—” And then another wave of emotion gripped me. “She’s not in there too, is she?”

“No,” said Marci, shaking Brooke’s head. “Nobody took your mom after she left Brooke—whatever new thoughts she had in those few seconds, and whatever she gained from your mom, was all lost in the fire.” She put Brooke’s hand on my face. “I’m sorry.”

I pulled away, slower than before but still deliberate. I couldn’t process this yet: Marci, back again. It had always been a possibility, of course, but I had never dared to think of it because I had never dared to think of Marci. I hadn’t made a healthy personal connection in years, maybe in my whole life, but I had with her, and then I’d lost it, and now to have it back in the worst possible way.…

“Do we have a place to stay?” asked Marci. She looked around at the darkened town; we could see streetlights in the distance, closer to the center, but here on the edge it was lifeless and empty.

“How much do you know?” I asked. “A lot of the memories seem to blend together for Brooke; one personality dominates for a while, but they all seem to share certain—” And then I had to stop because I knew she was only going to leave me again. “How long will you be here?”

“As long as I can be,” she said.

“How long is that?”

She spoke softly. “I don’t know.” She looked away again. “I think it’s like you say: I have some of her memories, but nothing concrete. Impressions, mostly. The last thing I remember clearly was the suicide, when Nobody slit my wrists. But it’s not like I jumped straight from that moment to this one, you know? I’m aware, somehow, that time has passed, and that I’m in another body, and that there are other girls in here with us.”

“Did you … talk to them?”

“It’s not like that,” said Marci, “it’s more of a … I don’t know. I think I was aware of everything Nobody did in my body because it was my body, and I was still in there, but now I’m not … I’m not me, I guess. I’m my memories. Maybe I’m actually Brooke and I only think I’m Marci, but I remember everything—things Brooke never knew, things nobody ever knew—and I
feel
like me. The body’s weird, I’ll grant you—I was never this thin—but I really feel like
me
. My personality, my habits, my … self. I guess I just contradicted myself, like, five times in one breath, but … does that make sense?”

“No,” I said quickly, then shook my head and sighed. “But none of this does, and it hasn’t for years.”

“We’re hunting demons, right?” said Marci.

“We were,” I said, “but that’s because Brooke wanted to. If you’re you now—”

“Come on,” said Marci, “remember who you’re talking to. The cop’s daughter and the mortician’s son, together again.” She raised her eyebrows with a mischievous smile, then shrugged. “This isn’t really how I imagined our TV series would go, though.”

“Nothing’s gone the way we wanted,” I said.

Boy Dog wandered toward us, back from exploring the smells of the area, and I gestured toward him. “By the way, this is Boy Dog. Boy Dog, Marci.”

“His name is Boy Dog?”

“I didn’t name him,” I said.

“Obviously you would have gone with Harvey.”

“Obviously.” She knew me better than I remembered.

She crouched down and Boy Dog padded toward her and licked her hands and face. “Good boy,” she said, scratching his ears. “Good Boy Dog. This is…” Her voice trailed off, and she put her hand on the asphalt.

And held it there, seconds ticking by into minutes, closing her eyes and simply … being.

“The road’s warm,” she said at last. “Just a little, but you can feel it. Asphalt traps the heat from the sun. And the breeze is cool, and it smells like … cows.” She laughed, her eyes still closed. “Chlorophyll. I can smell cut grass and motor oil and lilacs. I haven’t smelled a lilac in … how long has it been?”

“Two years,” I whispered.

“Two years.” She stood up slowly, opening her eyes to stare up at the sky. Boy Dog flopped to his belly, resting on her toes protectively. “Two years. The twins’ll be six.”

“You can’t go back.”

Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I know.” She stared at the sky for a moment longer, then looked at me and wiped her eyes. “Anyway. We’re standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, with backpacks that I assume hold all our worldly possessions. Safe to assume we just got here?”

I nodded. “We hitchhiked.”

“So now what?”

I stared at her helplessly. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“You know what,” I said. “You…” I sighed, feeling like every word was a struggle. “I couldn’t let Brooke get taken over by a demon, and now…”

“I’m not a demon.”

You’re the only person I ever loved
, I thought, but I couldn’t say it. I’d only ever said it to her corpse. “You’re one of the most important people in my life,” I said at last. “I want her to be herself, but I want you more than anything, and that’s … this is too much.”

“I won’t be here forever,” said Marci.

“You think that makes this better?”

“We can’t just stand here in the street all night,” said Marci. “I’m guessing we don’t have a place to stay, so do we just … find one? Look for a motel, start knocking on doors—”

“We can’t afford a motel,” I said quickly. “We stayed in one two nights ago.” One hundred and four dollars and eighty-six cents. The money we’d spent that night could have fed us for a week. I bit my lip, pained by the thought of Marci sleeping in the dirt, and tried to talk myself into splurging again. This was a special occasion, right? But no. At the rate Brooke flipped personalities, Marci might not even be around until morning. I rubbed my eyes and pointed toward the empty drive-in theater. “I was going to try that, but if you want to head further into town maybe we can find a … I don’t know. A YMCA or something.”

“In a place this small?” asked Marci. “Come on, John, I’m, like, the outdoor queen. We have a tent?”

“Just open air.”

“Sweet,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

We walked to the gate of the drive-in, and I couldn’t help but study the way she moved. Was she walking like Marci? That slight sway of her hips—was that Marci or had Brooke always walked like that? In my memory Marci would swagger around, sensual and confident. Was that gone now, replaced by Brooke’s physical mannerisms? Or had I exaggerated it all in my mind, remembering a girl who would never walk anywhere, ever again?

The gate was locked and not especially climbable, so we followed the fence around, looking for an easier access point. Despite Marci’s statement that it was the middle of the night, it was only 9:30 or 10 at the latest; if the theater were still in use, there’d have been a movie playing. We found a pair of broken boards in the wooden wall and slipped through to find a wide, flat field full of four-foot metal poles, parking spaces between them. The top of each pole held a small speaker on a curled cord—or at least they did back when the drive-in was still operating; now most of them were broken, dangling, or missing altogether. The inside of the wooden fence was covered with graffiti—no murals or gang signs, just scrawled names and cuss words. The ground was littered with broken bottles.

“Looks like it’s been abandoned for a while,” said Marci.

“And we’re not the only ones to use it since,” I said, looking at the garbage. “Let’s hope we’re the only ones who use it tonight.”

A low brick building stood in the back, just inside the gate, and I walked toward it. “Careful of the glass, Boy Dog,” I said. We walked silently, worried about disturbing other squatters, but I couldn’t imagine a little place like Dillon had a lot of those. The building was closed and locked. It had a metal door, and a wide metal plate with hinges at the top, which I assumed used to swing open for the concession window. The short wall closest to the gate had a ticket window; its glass was broken and the opening was blocked by metal bars. I rattled the padlocks, but they were all solid. “We need a—”

“Whooooooo!”

The loud holler soared across the empty lot, and I looked up just in time to see a glass bottle smash into the ground. Someone had thrown it over the wall, and a figure was coming in through the same fence hole we’d used.

“Stay quiet,” I said, but Boy Dog barked at the intruder. “Dammit.”

“Dog!” shouted a voice, and the figure by the hole stood up abruptly, looking for the animal.

“Since when do they have a guard dog?” asked another voice, and another figure climbed through the hole.

“Get behind the building,” I whispered, but the first figure pointed to us.

“It’s not a guard dog, it’s just more people. Hey, people!” He waved, and a third person came through the hole. “You got any booze?”

“All three male,” said Marci, though I couldn’t see any of them clearly. “Teenage boys, it looks like.”

“Be careful,” I said, watching the figures approach. We were trapped, though they didn’t appear to be intentionally cutting us off—as quickly as my paranoia had thought “someone followed us,” I discarded the idea. This was just three teenage guys out for a good time.

Though that could be just as dangerous.

6

Boy Dog barked again, and Marci whispered under her breath, “I don’t like this.”

The three boys walked closer, coming slowly into focus. I guessed they were about our age, probably seniors in high school. The smell of alcohol was strong.

“You guys from Crosby?” asked one of them. He wore a baseball cap, though I didn’t recognize the logo.

I remembered the map I’d used to find Dillon; Crosby was the next town over. “Just passing through,” I said.

“I know Ms. Glassman has family in town,” said the second boy, brushing his long blond hair out of his face. “You guys, like, grandkids or something?”

“Glassman doesn’t have kids,” said Ball Cap. “How’s she gonna have grandkids?”

“She doesn’t have legitimate kids,” said Blondie, “that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any. It’s like the twenty-first century, man, get out of the dark ages.”

“You’re homeless,” said the third boy. It wasn’t a question, but an observation. Despite the summer warmth he was wearing a dark jacket, though I couldn’t tell what color it was.

“Not homeless,” said Marci carefully, “but you’re right that we don’t have a place to stay. You know of anything here in town?”

“You can stay at my place,” said Blondie, and he grinned wickedly. “I’ll even let you stay in my bed.”

I imagined myself stabbing him in the neck, right under the chin, behind the jaw and up through the skull into his brain. I twisted the knife to the side, and felt the crack of the bones. It was against my rules to entertain those kinds of thoughts and I knew I should push it out of my mind, but this was different—this was a direct threat to Marci, to Brooke, to the two most important people in my life.

“We’re fine,” I said. But I let my right hand hang loosely at my side, ready to stoop and pull my combat knife from where I kept it strapped to my shin, under my pant leg.

“Were you going to sleep here?” asked Ball Cap. “Dude, that’s … that’s kind of awesome. Are you, like, runaways or something?”

“Just travelers,” I said. “Graduated high school last year, didn’t want to start college yet, so we’re just backpacking around for a while.”

“Most people do that in Europe,” said Ball Cap.

“I don’t like flying,” I said.

“This is crazy!” laughed Blondie. “Can you imagine going on vacation to friggin’ Dillon? That’s got to be the worst decision anyone’s ever made.” He jerked his chin at Marci. “Trip not really turning out as awesome as he said it would, am I right?”

Marci smiled. “Actually, Dillon was my idea. I picked it right off the map. Thought it looked cute.”

“Cute,” said Blondie, looking at Ball Cap. “We’re cute.” He turned back to Marci. “I won’t say it was the best decision of your life, but we can show you around if you want. We have a bowling alley, and the guy doesn’t card for beer.”

I had forgotten how smoothly Marci could manipulate people, boys especially. She knew how social interactions worked in a way that I had never understood and still didn’t; she was as good at social deception as Brooke was bad at it. Blondie watched her expectantly. In one sentence Marci had turned his mocking joke into an offer of help.

But Blondie’s help was the last thing I wanted right now. “We’re fine,” I said again. How could we get them to leave, or how could we leave without being followed?

“My name is Corey,” said the boy in the jacket. He pointed his thumb at Ball Cap and Blondie in turn. “This is Paul and Derek.” He looked around at the empty lot, then back at me. “We don’t get a lot of new people in town.”

“I’m Marci,” said Marci, and this is—”

“David,” I said, cutting her off. Marci’s name was fine, but Brooke and I were wanted by the FBI. David was the first name that came to mind, though I realized almost instantly that I had gotten it from David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam. Was that too much of a clue?

I was being paranoid.

My hand itched for the knife.

“So,” said Ball Cap—Paul, the guy said his name was—“this is fascinating to me. You’re just, what, hitchhiking around the country? Were you planning to sleep here?”

“That’s what we were hoping,” said Marci, “but there’s an awful lot of broken glass.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Blondie.
Derek
. “This place is a pretty common hangout for the kids at school—kind of hidden, kind of isolated. Not everyone’s as cool as the dude at the bowling alley, so this is a great place to get drunk.” He leered at Marci. “A lot of guys bring their girlfriends here too, it’s kind of our Make-out Point.”

“It’s been a really long day,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Do you guys mind—”

“The building is full of broken glass, too,” said Paul, walking to the barred window. “Probably a couple of inches of it; people chuck bottles through the bars all the time.”

“Come on,” said Derek, “it’s early! It’s barely ten o’clock! Corey’s got more beer in his bag, let’s make this a party!”