The Dead Girls Detective Agency (30 page)

The elevator door was opening. David was getting in.

“Fine,” she said in a tight little voice. “I trust you, but please be safe. We’re here to call on the Living for help if you need us.”

“I know. And thanks,” I said, running over to Tess.

The doors were shutting. We had to move.

“Here we go,” she said. “Let’s bring home your Key.”

We jumped through the doors.

The last thing I saw as they closed was a small ghost walking slowly across the room, shaking her head every step of the way.

Chapter 28

BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, bong, bong
…

The bells in Saint Bartholomew’s Church echoed around the city as David stepped out of the elevator. Eight p.m.

“Showtime,” Tess said.

“Kristen?” David called out into the darkness. “You up here, you crazy girl? What’s with all the notes and the mystery? I could have just picked you up in a cab like everyone else.”

The roof was silent but for the noises of the city below. We were nine stories up, but that was barely kneeling in New York terms.

“Kinda claustrophobic up here, isn’t it?” Tess said, looking around. For once I totally agreed with her. It was suffocating.

Our eyes began to adjust to the light, which was only coming from the glare of the buildings around us. There were a couple of old broken tables up here and some rain-rusted chairs. Overgrown plants dominated one corner of the space. The roof didn’t look like it was hotel-guest ready. It felt more like a disused scrap yard than somewhere you wanted to hang out.

“It looks like no one’s been up here for months,” I whispered to Tess.

“Which, at the risk of sounding like Nancy Bossy Pants, isn’t exactly making me relax,” she said.

David must really have wanted to see Kristen. Because if I’d been him, I would have turned right around.

I scanned the roof. Dead girls and ex-boyfriends aside, I couldn’t see anyone else up here. But then, I couldn’t see a whole lot.

“Maybe Library Girl’s just playing a trick on David, to get him back for not noticing her or opening her letters?” I said.

“Charlotte, if she’s the one who pushed you, I think that’s about as likely as Ed not using sarcasm as a defense mechanism.” Tess walked to the edge of the roof and looked down at the street below.

I wasn’t sure I’d heard Tess use his nickname before. The way she did was different from how she talked about Lorna or Nancy. She sounded less … neutral.

“Edison
is
kinda difficult to figure out.” I opened my mouth before I could stop the words escaping and instantly regretted them. I hardly dared make eye contact with Tess.

A strange look passed over her face. Tess turned and sat on the roof’s edge, swinging her feet over the side. I wondered what would happen if she slipped and fell. Nothing could hurt her now, but would she scream? Or calmly fall to the concrete below, then pick herself back up again, like something from an old
Road Runner
cartoon. I wondered if the sidewalk would stop her. Or if she’d fall straight through it and down into the subway and sewers underneath.

“Do you want to figure him out?” Tess kept her face turned away from me.

I felt myself blush in the darkness. I hoped she wouldn’t whip around and see.

“No, it’s-it’s not that,” I said, stuttering. “It’s just that it’s strange, him living with us in the hotel, but not being part of the Agency. I wonder what he does with his time. That’s all.” I tried to make my voice sound confident and final. Like that was it. Mild curiosity. Conversation over.

“He was here when I got to the Attesa, you know?” Tess said, looking out into the night. There were no lights on in the office just below us. It made the building look sad and empty. “We’re the two longest-serving residents.”

I kept quiet and let Tess carry on talking. Was this why Nancy had put her on my team? To make us talk and maybe she’d see that I wasn’t so bad after all.

“If things go your way tonight, you could be gone—you’ll never know what this is like,” she said. “Some people never go over to the Other Side because they don’t want to, but some of us aren’t lucky enough to find our own Keys.” She looked back at me with an exhausted expression in her eyes.

“Then let’s make sure Charlotte isn’t one of them, shall we?” Edison ported onto the roof next to me with a
pop!
and half smiled. “What, you really thought I was gonna miss the big showdown?”

There was a screeching sound as the fire-escape door creaked open. Tess jumped up. Light, watchful footsteps echoed on the metal steps.

“Kristen? Is that you?” David called into the darkness.

Step by step, more and more of the person who’d just opened the door came into view. Her sandy hair caught the moonlight as she climbed up onto the roof.

“You’re not Kristen,” David said unnecessarily.

“You’re going to wish I was,” she said as the fire door slammed below her.

Chapter 29

“
SORRY, WHO ARE YOU?” DAVID ASKED AS LIBRARY
Girl walked across the roof toward him. She wore a simple black knee-length dress and tan wedges. She’d carefully tied back her hair in a ponytail, but already wisps of sandy curls were breaking free. She’d even put on some mascara. Library Girl must have been preparing for this moment all day. For the first time—seeing her in the moonlight instead of buttoned up and scowling in the library stacks—I noticed that she was actually really pretty.

Pretty unhinged?

Her face fell. “Who am I? Who am
I
? This is
exactly
what I’m talking about,” she muttered to herself. “After everything I’ve done.” She stopped, realized she was rambling and focused on David again with an intense smile. “Come on, do you really still have no idea who I am, David?”

“Um, no,” David said, looking at her as if she were potentially a psychiatrist’s-couch escapee. “I’m up here waiting for someone special, actually,” he said. “There’s this girl and we’re sort of dating. Well, she, like,
really
wants us to be. She’ll be along any second, so you might want to leave before then—I think she’s got something big planned, so we’ll need some alone time.”

How rude.

“The girl you’re ‘sort of dating’?” Library Girl said. Her smile faded. “How can you be ‘sort of dating’ someone? What’s wrong with you? Your girlfriend only died last week and already you’ve ‘sort of’ replaced her? You seemed so into Charlotte every time I saw you together in the library.”

David clicked his fingers in the air. “That’s where I’ve seen you,” he said. “You’re that sophomore who works in the library! I remember you now.”

“You do?” she said, her voice switching back to happy mode.

“Yeah, you’re always in there, like a busy little bookworm.”

She shook her head indignantly. More curls escaped. “A
what
?” she asked, upset.

“I mean, you must work real hard in there,” David backtracked. “I’ve never even seen you in the hallway or the cafeteria.”

“Maybe that’s because you weren’t looking hard enough,” she said. “Maybe I’ve been in all those places all along.” She put her hands behind her back and swung her hips.

“Look, it’s nice to meet you properly and all, but my date, Kristen, you know, the head cheerleader, she’s going to be here any second.” David looked at his watch.

“Really?” Library Girl asked. “Are you sure about that?”

David nodded like a dumb puppy. Library Girl walked over to the roof edge where Tess, Edison, and I were standing. She was a couple of inches shorter than me, with a birdlike build. Could my murderer really look like this?

“And how do you know? What did Kristen do? Leave a note in your locker asking you to meet her up here?”

“Yeah, she did actually,” David said, starting to look confused.

“Before the Scream King and Queen were announced?”

“Yes, but how do you know—”

“And was it on pink notepaper, like this?” She pulled an identical piece out of her pocket.

She had David’s full attention now.

“With little kisses and hugs under her name?” Library Girl asked.

“Yes, but …” Somewhere inside David’s head the cogs crunched into place.

“The note—it wasn’t from Kristen, was it?” Watch out, David was up to speed now. “It was from you.” He pushed his dirty blond bangs off his face. I noticed a purple bruise where the library door had hit. “But why? I’ve never really spoken to you before. Why did you pretend to be Kristen to get me up here?”

Library Girl sighed and sat daintily on the edge of the roof beside Tess. Ed shot me a WTF? look. I felt like I was part of some weird open-air play—the kind that takes place around the audience. How would I know when I heard my cue?

“But David, you and me, we go way back,” she said. “Don’t you remember me at all?” She swung her feet back and forth, banging her heels on the brick. It was weird to see her out of our usual uniform of plaid skirt and blazer. “We were at summer camp together in seventh grade, and we slow danced to Maroon Five. We had that connection.”

Now David was really looking at her like she was not playing with a full deck.

“It was only one dance, but you asked me my name. I thought, there and then, that you were the cutest boy I’d ever seen.” She smiled at the memory.

“Whoa,” Edison whispered.

“Um, I remember camp and the dance, but I don’t remember Maroon Five and I don’t remember you,” David said. “I’m really sorry, but it was, like, five years ago. And I sometimes have trouble remembering what I had for dinner last night.” He smiled apologetically.

Library Girl ignored him and continued her story. “Then I moved schools—to one downtown—and you stayed on the Upper East Side. To be honest, I thought I’d never see you again. I mean, how many kids live in Manhattan? I can go weeks without going to my old neighborhood. I lost contact with a lot of my friends from that time. So imagine how excited I was when—all these years later—you transferred to Saint Bartholomew! I could tell it was you right away. I’d know those sea-blue eyes of yours anywhere.”

Okay, so now she was creeping me out too.

“And that’s when I knew,” she said, looking up at him now. “That’s when I knew we were meant to be: It was
fate
.”

“Um, there’s obviously been a mix-up,” David said, trying to back toward the stairs and way away from the psycho sophomore. “Maybe I should go downstairs. Kristen’s gonna be pissed if I miss the Scream King crowning. And if you’ve ever seen her mad, you know we don’t want
that
on our hands.”

“Oh, I took care of her already.” Library Girl jumped off the wall and ran to block David’s path. “I left Kristen a little locker note too: one telling her you’d pick her up from her place at eight fifteen.” She looked at her watch and smiled. “Which would be around about now. I guess she’s waiting there, all alone. Boo hoo. The thing is, it’s taken me so long to get this time on my own with you, David,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want Kristen popping up and ruining it.”

“And I
have
tried to talk to you before,” she said. David was not getting away from her and down those stairs. “Like that time Camels on the Freeway played amateur night at Arlene’s—I came up to you after that and said how great I thought they were.”

“You did?” David asked, momentarily distracted simply because someone had heard of his stupid band.

“Or when you had that lit essay on Fitzgerald due. You spent hours in the library researching it, and I saved all those extra books for you to make sure you got a good grade.”

If what she was saying wasn’t so goddamn stalker, it might have been kinda cute.

“And when we walked past each other in Rockefeller Plaza all those times on your way to class, I always waved hello.”

“Really?” David was looking creeped out again. As Library Girl was speaking, she’d edged a few steps closer to him. He backed away even more—not realizing he was heading away from the stairs and toward the other end of the roof.

“Is it just me, or is she
Girl, Interrupted
wacko?” Tess asked. “Like, worse than all the cheerleaders put together?”

I couldn’t say anything. The words were stuck somewhere between my brain and my tongue.

“And we have so much in common,” she said. “Emily Dickinson’s my favorite poet too. I know you love her because you’ve kept her book out even though you’re racking up fines on it every day. I adore the Clash and the Stones and Nirvana. Every time I see you in a new band shirt, it’s like you’ve looked on my iPod and worn it especially for me. So I thought, I have to get David on his own so I can finally talk to him—we’re made for each other. I figured you hadn’t read my letters because they were in library envelopes. So that’s why I planted the Kristen note in your locker. To get your attention. To get you up here.”

“Oookay,” David said, taking another step away from her—and another one closer to the edge. Why wasn’t he looking where he was going? “I’m really glad you did, because it’s been super-nice catching up, but I think we should get back to the party now. Though you’re not dressed for it, are you?” He motioned down to her black dress. “Maybe we could talk another time? Like when I stop by the library maybe?”

Library Girl turned her back to him. Her shoulders slumped. “Maybe we could talk? Maybe you could stop by? Is that all I get? A
maybe
? I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” she said under her breath.

Uh-oh.

Library Girl whirled around. Her eyes weren’t soft anymore, they were blazing.

“I think someone just flipped the switch.” Edison had a worried look on his face I’d never seen before.

“You see, David, I really hoped this would work out between us. But now I’m not so sure. And I’ve come too far to let you just go back down those stairs and make out with some reality-TV star wannabe, after all the work I’ve put in.” She took two more steps toward him. David was way too close to the edge of the roof for comfort.

Tiny as she was, Library Girl stared him down. “I’m sorry …,” she said, and pushed David in the stomach so hard that he fell backward onto the concrete floor, less than a hand’s span from the nine-story drop. She was strong for such a little thing.