The Lonely Dead Read online

  When my grandpa opens it, he’s going to be wondering why I’m late. What if he figures out I’m off my meds before I have a chance to start taking them again?

  I need to stop that thought before it starts. I need to give him something else to worry about.

  The door creaks open. Turning, I put my palms on either side of Charlie’s face, my fingertips just under his jaw. I ignore his sucked-in breath. My improvised plan is to cover his mouth with my thumbs and then kiss them. It’s a game kids used to play on the playground when we were in fourth grade. Making out passionately with our thumbs while our onlooking classmates gagged dramatically.

  But Charlie doesn’t know this game. His shoulders stiffen as I move in to press my lips on my own thumbs. He suddenly lifts his head so my thumbs are no longer stacked on his lips but just underneath.

  And instead of kissing my thumbs, I press my lips against Charlie’s warm, soft ones. He smells like peppermint.

  Something light drops on my foot. His basket is spilling again.

  “Adele!” Grandpa sounds shocked.

  “Coming!” I yell. Then I push past Charlie and run up the stairs.

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 5:22 P.M.

  STILL SHARP ENOUGH TO SLASH

  I race up the staircase. Behind me, Charlie makes a soft noise. Of protest? Confusion? Regret?

  My mind is whirling. Talking to a hallucination, kissing a boy—what’s wrong with me? If I hadn’t stopped taking my pills, none of this would have happened.

  And what about tomorrow, when I see Charlie in health class? What exactly am I going to say? I had to kiss you to cover up how I’d just been talking to a dead girl.

  “Hi!” I hurry past Grandpa and into our overheated apartment, making my voice bright and avoiding eye contact. “Sorry I’m late getting dinner started. I was doing homework.”

  As I drop my backpack on the floor next to our old flowered couch, I sneak a peek at Grandpa. His face is nearly as red as Charlie’s was.

  “This boy, Adele.” He swallows. “How long have you been—seeing him?”

  “He’s just a friend.” I hang my coat on a hook, then walk into the kitchen and grab a pot from the cupboard. The soles of my feet are slick in my shoes. In the bright light of the kitchen, what I thought happened in the park seems ridiculous. How could I have imagined I was talking to Tori? How could I have actually believed she was dead?

  I just need to swallow a pill tonight. And then tomorrow I’ll wake up without any hallucinations. Without any delusions.

  These past two weeks were a test to see if I could be normal, but I failed. My grandpa and the doctors are right. I’m mentally ill.

  Now I need my grandpa to chalk up any weirdness to Charlie. “We were just doing our homework together in the laundry room.” I turn on the water and let it run until it’s hot, then fill the pot and put it on the stove.

  “Do you kiss all your friends?” Grandpa’s silvery-gray eyes meet mine for a second. “I don’t want you alone with him.” Looking away, he rubs his twisted hands together. The arthritis means he can’t work as a mechanic anymore. And even though all his friends are retired, he can’t afford to. So he’s stuck behind the counter at AutoZone. Because of me. Not that he ever says that. He’s not much on saying I love you, but he shows it in how he acts.

  “We’re just friends,” I repeat as I grab a knife and cutting board. “That’s all.” Even that part’s not true. Until tonight, I haven’t said much more than hi to Charlie. He and I are on the same level at high school, the kind of people who can walk down the hall without attracting attention. We’re both so good at being nearly invisible that we’ve barely noticed each other. And even if we did, I bet he wouldn’t be interested. I’m a little bit shorter, but I’m sure I outweigh him.

  With a thwack, I chop off the root end of an onion. I repeat the move on the other side, then peel off the translucent yellow skin.

  As I start to dice the onion, Grandpa lets out a huff and shakes his head. “I trust you, Adele, but you still can’t have a boy over when I’m not here.” He covers the pot of water so it will boil faster.

  What he probably thinks but doesn’t say is I never thought a boy would be interested in you. Grandpa is good at not saying things. Like: Never talk about your mom and grandma—my daughter and wife—because it hurts too much. Or: Never mention how you used to see things, the same way they did.

  I’ve been on medication for nearly seven years. Now that I’ve tasted what life is like when I’m really alive, it’s going to hurt so much to go back. Angry tears spring to my eyes. The sharpness of the chopped onion gives me an excuse for my wet eyes, just like Charlie gives me an excuse for my flushed cheeks and the damp half-moons under my arms.

  “Okay. I’ll never have him over.” I sigh like it’s a disappointment, then tip the onions into a frying pan and add a little bit of olive oil. “Could you rinse some lettuce for salad?” It’s one of the few cooking tasks Grandpa can still do. His fine motor skills are shot, especially at the end of the day. But he never complains. Just like he never complains about having to be a parent again when he’s nearly seventy.

  “Charlie was a big help with my homework. I just gave him a peck. There’s nothing more to it than that.” I mince garlic while remembering the softness of his lips under mine. He and his family must have moved into Unit D. Mrs. Jimenez lived there forever, at least until her son put her in a nursing home last month.

  Grandpa twists his lips in a worried way as he tears the lettuce into a bowl.

  I add the garlic to the pan, then hamburger that I break up with a wooden spoon. I rummage around in the fridge. A red pepper still looks pretty good, so it gets diced and added, followed by a couple of zucchini. I add a shake of dried oregano and two of basil.

  “That smells real good, Adele,” Grandpa says as he puts the lettuce in a bowl. “You’re turning into a regular chef.” His praise, meant as a peace offering, just makes me want to cry even more. As soon as I’m back on my meds, the nausea and heartburn that normally plague me will come back. And I won’t care about much of anything anymore.

  When I lift the lid, the pot of water is boiling. I shake in some salt, then pour in pasta. Grandpa finishes the salad while I add some jarred sauce to the vegetables and meat, then drain the pasta and mix it in.

  We eat mostly in silence. As he gets up to put his plate in the dishwasher, Grandpa says, “You just need to be careful, Adele. You don’t need to be stirring things up.”

  What he means is that if I die without ever getting married and having kids, then our family’s curse dies with me. Whether it’s mental illness or the kind of gift no one would want, either way it will be gone.

  “Okay. Right.” I don’t bother to hide my sadness. He’ll think it’s about being kept from Charlie, when really it’s about going back to being the half-alive Adele I was two weeks ago.

  Before I start back on the pills, there’s one last thing I want to check. “I’m going to take out the garbage.” I pull out the white plastic liner before he can see it’s only half full.

  The garbage and recycling bins are in the back of the building, lined up on a concrete pad. It’s also the place where the orange-and-white tabby kitten lives. Or at least its spirit does. It used to watch me from the bushes, so it was a while before I saw the tether and realized it was dead.

  “Kitty?” I call. “Kitty?” My eyes scan the hedge where it used to hide. No answer. Finally I open the dumpster’s black rubber lid and toss in the bag.

  Behind me, I hear a meow. I turn. It’s the same half-grown cat I used to see, even though almost seven years have passed.

  I scratch the cat’s head, run my hand down its body. Under my palm, its back vibrates as it starts to purr. My grandpa acts like only bad things come of seeing the dead, but this one is good. Or at the very least, neutral.

  Before I leave, I give the kitten one last scratch behind the ears.

  Back in the apartment, I lock the door to the bathroom
, then open the medicine cabinet. In the metal back is the slit my grandpa says was for used razor blades. Lost somewhere in between the walls must be a pile of rusty metal, still sharp enough to slash.

  The orange pill bottle is light in my hand. Funny how something that weighs so little can make the difference between sane and insane, between alive and something that’s only a semblance.

  But not taking the pills was like playing with fire. And I got burned.

  After I close the cabinet, I stare into my own dark eyes, set off by my pale skin. I look like my mom. Only she was as thin as a knife’s edge. Even her eyes could cut you.

  I twist off the cap and shake a pill into my hand. In the distance, I hear a siren. And then another. And another.

  I put the toilet lid down, then stand on top and push aside the dusty cream-colored curtain. In the park, the flashing red and blue lights of at least a dozen police cars light up the air.

  For there to be that many cops, they must have found something. Something real.

  They must have found a body.

  Her body.

  Instead of swallowing the pill, I step down off the toilet, lift the lid, and toss in the pill.

  And then I flush.

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  BURY ME DEEP

  I tried crossing my legs, but it didn’t help. I had to pee. My problem was that the bathrooms weren’t even in this section of the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.

  If I asked to go, Mrs. Whipple would just tell me to wait until our visit was over. Even with a couple of parent volunteers, her head was on a swivel trying to keep track of our class. Several fourth-grade school groups were visiting the museum. Some kids were in the dress-up area, trying on cowboy hats and petticoats. Others were dipping strings into melted wax to make candles or arguing about what to pack in the replica wagon bed.

  “Aren’t you hot?” Tori asked the sweaty-looking guy playing the storekeeper in charge of various boxes and bags labeled FLOUR, BACON, and COFFEE. It was a warm day in late May. We were all in shorts, but the museum reenactors were stuck wearing layers and long sleeves as if it were really 1850.

  “I am quite comfortable, young scribe,” the man said. Tori had a notebook—we all did—because later we had to write a report about life on the trail. Mrs. Whipple had already told us the Oregon Trail was actually the world’s longest graveyard. Ten percent of the people who set out died before making it to their new homes.

  I crossed my legs in the other direction, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t wait any longer. Luckily, the other students provided plenty of cover. I slipped behind them and then out the door.

  The restrooms were housed in a separate building. I pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and headed straight back toward one of the three empty stalls. When I came out, I noticed what I hadn’t been able to see from the entrance: a girl tucked in the corner, under the paper towel dispenser. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. A blue bonnet with a long bill hid her face, but she looked about my age. Her brown hair fell in two tight braids nearly to her waist. On top of her long gray dress was an apron that might have once been white.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. Was she sick? Or maybe she was just tired of having to playact in front of dozens of kids.

  “You can see me?” Her voice sounded rusty. Tired.

  “Of course.”

  “I am shy of trusting you.” The bill of her bonnet waggled back and forth as she shook her head. “You are not real, I warrant it.”

  Her pretending to be confused by me made more sense than the other reenactors’ casual acceptance of a crowd of strange children wearing cartoon T-shirts, carrying cell phones, and peppering them with questions.

  “Do they teach you how to talk all old-timey like that?”

  She sighed. “You take pains to discommode me. Do not be such a wiseacre.”

  I was more and more impressed. “Wow, the other actors don’t talk nearly as good as you. I can’t even understand half of what you’re saying.”

  “Are you here only to vex me?”

  Her annoyed tone let me decipher her words. She was pretending like I was the one who wasn’t making sense. I decided to ignore that part of her act.

  “My name’s Adele. What’s yours?”

  “Rebecca. After all these years, what has made you sensible of me?”

  She must be asking why I was here. “My whole class is here. It’s part of the Oregon Trail unit. So do you tell everyone what it was like for kids on the trail?”

  “Sometimes we drove the teams or fetched water or gathered buffalo chips. But for the most part, we children did as everyone else. Walked. Walked and walked and walked.” She heaved a sigh. “Such a getting to Oregon. And of course, we were not spared perishing.”

  “Perishing? You mean dying?”

  She nodded. “Even the smallest. After Mrs. Kohler died giving birth, her babe passed just two days later. Mr. Turner’s son was only three when the fever took him. My cousin Abigail was on a raft that overturned crossing the Big Blue. I had to stand within call of her and see her drowned.”

  “That’s awful!”

  Rebecca spoke so passionately it was an effort to remember these were lines she had rehearsed.

  “Memories are nothing but pain to me now. I wish to forget, but I cannot. It is why I choose to slumber. And then you appear, waking me, and inquire after things best left forgotten.”

  I shook my head in admiration. “You’re good! You really make me believe all those bad things.”

  “Why should you not, when they are true? And then I took sick myself.”

  “Wait, so you are sick?”

  “I was. That morn, I reckoned I felt peevish from so much fatigue and vexation on our journey. And then came the gripes in my bowels. We had medicine—laudanum and camphor, physicking pills and castor oil. But none of it would do.”

  Rebecca tilted her head back. I gasped as her face came into view. Her eyes were sunk in gray hollows. Her whole face was barely skin over a skull. Even though she was a child, lines marked her forehead and bracketed her mouth.

  But worst of all, her skin was an odd shade of gray-blue.

  “Oh, Rebecca, you look awful. You need to go to the hospital or something.”

  “You think to gull me? I am hampered here. I cannot move.” She turned her head and tugged at something behind her.

  I looked closer. A mist of rope even longer than her braids ran from the back of her head and disappeared into the floor.

  I understood then, cold horror washing over me. Until now I had only seen dead animals above the spot where their bodies had been buried. “You’re dead. You’re already dead.” I swallowed. “You must be buried here.”

  “I made Papa promise to bury me deep. How many graves have we seen dug up by wolves because they were too shallow?” She looked up, remembering. “That poor woman with a comb still in her hair. And a few days later, an arm lying in the wagon ruts. Just an arm. We never could find the grave from which it came.”

  “So your body is down there someplace.” I pointed at the floor. “Underneath this building.”

  Rebecca nodded. “My papa said being dug out of one’s grave was indeed a dreadful fate, but those who were departed no longer cared. Clearly, he was in error. But he did what I asked, even though it took two days. And I have not seen him since, nor any of my kin. Only strangers who have not deigned to answer me, no matter how many times I called. Until you.”

  She looked past my shoulder. I turned to follow her gaze.

  Mrs. Whipple was standing behind me. And judging by her face, she had been there for quite a while.

  “Adele, who are you talking to?” she said slowly. She edged toward me until one of her legs was in about the same spot Rebecca was already occupying. The two of them overlapped in ways that hurt my eyes and made my head ache. Rebecca wasn’t quite as solid-looking as Mrs. Whipple.

  “You have got yourself into a scrape,” Rebecca observed. “You
will not make her sensible I am here. I know, for I have tried to converse with people over the years, and you are the first to see me.”

  A needle of pain slipped into my temple. “Oh, I was just playing pretend,” I ventured. But Mrs Whipple’s expression didn’t change.

  Other girls had crowded in behind her. One of them was Tori. She pointed her index finger at her own head and spun it in circles.

  Crazy.

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  CURSED

  A few days after visiting the Oregon Trail museum, I was sitting on a brown leather couch, which didn’t seem like something you’d find in a doctor’s office. But then again, Dr. Duncan wasn’t like any doctor I’d met before.

  “So, Adele, your grandpa says that when you were at the museum, you were talking to someone from the Oregon Trail times.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “I’ve spoken to other people who’ve had similar experiences, and I’m wondering what that’s like for you.”

  Relief flooded me. So I wasn’t alone.

  Dr. Duncan was a psychiatrist. After Mrs. Whipple called my grandpa, he had driven me straight to my pediatrician, insisting I be seen immediately because I was hallucinating. When we were finally taken back to her office, she drew blood, weighed and measured me, listened to my heart, and sent me to a special room where they took pictures of my brain. But in between, she and my grandpa talked in low voices about my mom and my grandma and their problems. My mom’s mom had died in a mental hospital. And even before my mom was killed in a car accident, she had lost her interest in living. After my dad died, she forgot to eat, forgot even to take care of me.

  When all the tests on my body came back normal, I ended up at the psychiatrist’s.

  Unlike my pediatrician, Dr. Duncan didn’t wear a white coat, but a pale blue shirt under a dark blue sweater. There was no judgment on his face. Instead he looked … interested. He leaned forward, his eyebrows raised, his expression open.

  And I was so naive I thought he would believe me if I told the truth. He already knew it happened to others, so why wouldn’t he? So I explained about Rebecca. How I had slowly come to realize she was dead, her bones buried under the museum.