Queen of the Dead

Then she edged closer to squeeze my foot through the covers. “Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you have to be alone, sweetie.”

Oh. That’s what she thought I was worried about. Better than the truth.

“I know,” I said.

It was her turn to hesitate. “That’s why I think it might be a good idea for you to branch out, spend some more time with your other friends.” She smiled a little too brightly.

In other words, not Alona.

I could have explained that my other friends were a bit scarce these days, never having been plentiful in the first place. Joonie was still adjusting to living at the group home, not to mention keeping up with the summer classes that would let her earn her high school diploma. Erickson was in California with his cousins for one last summer of surf and smoke, and Lily…well, Lily was exactly where she’d been for the last ten months. In a coma at St. Catherine’s.

Her soul was gone, having moved on to the light immediately after the car accident that landed her in the hospital in the first place, but her body was still basically functional. A couple months ago, Alona had saved my life by making it seem as though Lily were communicating from beyond (long story). She’d spelled out a message on a Ouija board, and even managed to put her hand inside Lily’s for a moment to move it. Since then, her parents had backed way off from the idea of removing her feeding tube and letting her fade. At least, her mom had. I wasn’t sure her dad was convinced. I’d visited a few times since that incident, and the tension between them was enough to keep those visits very short. If Lily had been aware and able to, she’d have walked out herself, I was sure of it. Her mother had hovered, always making sure a Ouija board was right at Lily’s lax fingertips. Her dad had looked ready to burst a blood vessel every time her mother even mentioned “communicating.”

But rather than getting into all that with my mom, who knew pieces of it, but not everything, it was just easier to agree. “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

She smiled, pleased at having helped, I’m sure. “I’ve got an early shift tomorrow. You’ll come by for lunch? I think Sam’s got you scheduled for the afternoon.”

Now that school was out, I was picking up a few hours at the diner as a busboy. The work was not glamorous, but the gas money was good. On days that my mom and I both worked, I usually went in early to eat so I didn’t have to worry about fending for myself around here.

“Yeah,” I said. Alona would not be pleased. She hated hanging out at the diner. Claimed she could smell the grease in her hair for hours afterward. Again, highly unlikely, but who was I to say?

My mom nodded and started to leave.

“Hey, Mom? The book club guys…they were from Dad’s work?” I asked. It was probably nothing, but I had to ask.

“What? Oh. Actually, I don’t know.” She frowned. “I don’t remember. I think so. It was so long ago, I’m not sure.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why? You don’t think they were…like that, do you?”

Like the girl from the Gibley Mansion? Like me, Mom?“ No,” I said. Because if so, why hadn’t my dad ever mentioned them to me? It was one thing to refuse to talk much about the gift/curse we both shared. A whole other thing to let me think we were alone in it when he knew otherwise. “Definitely not.”

She nodded again, seemingly reassured, a spark of her Sam-induced happiness returning. “Good night, hon.” She snapped the light off and shut my door on her way out. After a few seconds, I heard her running water in the bathroom and the sound of her footsteps heading down the hall to her bedroom. A few minutes after that, nothing but that heavy silence that comes with someone sleeping.

I wished it could be that easy for me. But my mindwould not slow down, playing back the evening over andover again, in fast-forward, rewind, slow motion, and every possible combination. No additional answers emerged, though.

I was finally starting to doze off when a funny scrabbling noise sounded at the window behind my headboard.

My first completely illogical thought, half-asleep and fuzzy-brained as I was, was that Mrs. Ruiz had managed to pull herself back together, and she was pissed and coming after me. I knew for sure it wasn’t Alona. She always managed to slip in and out of the room without a sound.

I bolted up and off the bed, swallowing back the instinctive and childhood urge to call for help, fumbling and flailingto reach the light on my desk.

The window squeaked upward, and I cursed myself for always leaving it unlocked.

I snapped the desk lamp on and hoisted it above my head as a makeshift weapon, just as a familiar face, surrounded by mass amounts of wild dark hair, appeared in the opening. “Thank God,” the girl from the Gibley Mansion said, bracing herself in the window frame.

I didn’t move, couldn’t move. I wasn’t entirely sure I was awake.

“You know just about every spook in town knows your name, but not where you live?” Without waiting for a response, she clambered in and stepped down on my bed and then the floor. “What are you doing?” she asked with a frown, taking in the lamp with her gaze.

Like I was the one where I wasn’t supposed to be. I couldn’t have been more surprised if Jessica Alba had suddenly appeared in my bedroom. Thankfully, I’d thrown a T-shirt on after Alona had left, and getting caught in boxers wasn’t that big of a deal.

“What do you want?” I asked, when I recovered the ability to speak. Alona’s dire warnings of a vast conspiracy rang in my ears, sounding less and less crazy by the second. Feeling a little foolish suddenly with the lamp above my head, I set it down carefully.

“So suspicious,” she said, still frowning.

Now I was getting pissed. “Were you or were you not the person accusing me of ruining your life just a few hours ago?”

She sighed. “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached forward, and I stepped back, the sharp edge of my desk biting into my back, before I realized she was just grabbing for my desk chair.

She rolled the chair toward herself with a smirk that said she’d seen my retreat and found it amusing. She twisted the chair around backward and sat down, her arms resting across the back.

“Where’s the queen?” she asked.

It took me a second to realize she meant Alona. “Not here,” I said warily. “Why?”

“Good.” She nodded.

“What do you want?” I repeated, still not sure how I felt about her being here now. Yes, I was curious. Not sure I was curious enough for a stranger to be in my bedroom late at night when I hadn’t invited her.

Alona’s voice whispered in my head. Invasion of your territory; it’s a power play. Damn. Maybe my mom was right. I was spending way too much time with her.

The girl didn’t answer right away. She just stared up at me in that cold, evaluating way that made me feel like I was back in Principal Brewster’s office. I took the opportunity to get a better look at her, and though I tried to make it as intimidating and hard a stare as hers, I doubted I succeeded.

She was still wearing her worn-out cargo pants and combat boots. Silver duct tape was wrapped around the toe of one boot, seemingly holding it together. Her dark hair, which I had thought was going to give Alona fits earlier, still stood around her head in a halo, but now it seemed less a result of poor hygiene and more the product of wildly curly hair and possibly being jammed in the hood I could now see at the back of her shirt.

“You know, I had you all wrong,” she said finally, using her toes to spin my chair a few inches in one direction and then back, over and over again.

“What does that mean?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

She settled herself more comfortably in my chair, as though it were her own. “At first, I thought you were just a curiosity seeker, or some no-talent local out to see what he could see.”

Um, ouch?

“Then I thought you were maybe a Casper lover trying to interfere.” Her mouth twisted in distaste.

There was that term again. I understood the meaning from the context — and clearly it was meant as an insult — but it was the way she said it, like it was a real thing. Some acknowledged piece of vocabulary I’d somehow missed during SAT prep.