I clasped my hands together to keep them from shaking. “Put Squeaky in his cage and get ready for school, Olivia. We’ll… pretend this didn’t happen, okay? And go brush your teeth.” I paused. “And don’t even think about wearing your princess dress to school today.”
She stopped in my doorway. “But I
“Not at school. Go.” I pointed toward her bedroom, ignoring the way my stomach was churning.
Olivia skipped down the hallway, completely clueless to how messed up both of us were. “Normal” didn’t have a place on my list of words describing us. I wasn’t even sure “human” would get a vote.
Alone in my bathroom, I stared down at my shaking hands, at the charcoal smudge on the tips of my index finger, and ordered myself to pull it together. I couldn’t afford to lose it. Olivia needed me to be strong. I glanced at my reflection and forced a smile. It was broken.
And I also had the hugest zit ever on my temple.
Awesome.
After a quick shower, I padded out to the bedroom, yanked on the first clean pair of jeans I found, and grabbed a cardigan off the back of my desk chair. A slinky top would have been so much prettier, but the scars patchworking across my arms would have been visible. Apparently Olivia’s healing touch didn’t fix everything.
In gym last year, one of the girls—Sally Wenchman—had seen the scars while I’d changed. Sally had called me “Frankenstein,” and the nickname had stuck ever since.
I snatched my sketchpad and shoved it into my book bag. On the way out, I grabbed the flesh-colored gloves off the chair and slid them on. The long-sleeved shirt hid most of the gloves, and the kids thought I was trying to hide the scars.
It was partly true.
“Are you ready?” I yelled, stomping down the steps. “We have, like, twenty minutes.”
“Yeah,” came the muffled response.
Following the sound of her voice, I found Olivia at the table eating cereal… in her princess dress.
Dammit. The kid was weird enough without wearing the same damn dress every day. “Olivia, what did I tell you?”
She hopped up from the table and dumped her bowl in the sink, turning back to me with an impish grin. “It’s too late for me to get changed.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You’re such a brat.”
She came to my side, a tentative look on her face. Slowly, she reached out and wrapped her fingers around my glove-covered ones. When I nodded, her grip tightened and all was right in her world.
Two years had passed since I’d been able to touch Olivia without some sort of barrier between her skin and mine. When she fell and scraped her knee, I couldn’t kiss it and make it better. If she cried, I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t even remember what the closeness of someone else felt like. This whole super-special-touch-of-death crap sucked.
Olivia was currently on this kick where she thought she had superhuman strength or something, so I pretended to let her pull me through the house and out to where my Jeep was parked. The dull, black paint gave it a world-weary look, and it needed new tires and brakes. Still, it was my baby. I could caress its smooth, outer frame and roam my hands over its soft interior all I wanted. My heart fluttered to know it wouldn’t keel over and die from my toxic touch.
All the way to school, Olivia obsessed over a new toy she had seen. It took everything for me not to beat my head against the steering wheel. Before jumping out in front of her elementary school, she leaned forward for her obligatory air-kiss. Up close, we were undeniably sisters—with the same deep, auburn curls and freckles.
“Be nice to the other kids today,” I reminded her. “And, please God, don’t touch anything dead.”
She sent me a rather adult look before racing across the walkway in a flurry of pink and glitter. I sat there for a moment, watching as she disappeared among the other pint-sized people. Dad used to say that Olivia had an old soul in her, and I hadn’t really understood that until lately.
I glanced at the clock in the dashboard—five minutes to make it to homeroom without getting another tardy. Collecting tardy slips had become sort of a hobby of mine. One day, I would have a pretty collage of pink paper with angry red writing. I’d hang it on the fridge for Olivia. She dug pink things.
Ten minutes later, I slid into my seat with another late slip in my hand and a disgruntled look on my face.
“Again?” whispered the tawny-haired boy beside me.
I sent him a haughty look, only to be met with a broad grin. “What does it look like, Adam?”
He shrugged, still grinning. “Maybe you shouldn’t oversleep?”
Adam Lewis was the only person in Allentown High who hadn’t stopped talking to me after the accident. Sandbox love—that was what we had—but it wasn’t like I could tell him I was late because my little sis had dug up her dead hamster this morning and brought him back to life. I kind of wanted to keep him as a friend.
Adam gave me a puzzled look. He was cute in that nerdy kind of way, but nothing other than friendship lay between us. There couldn’t be more. Ever.
Our teacher narrowed her eyes, her lips drawn in a tight line. Mrs. Benton had a no-talk policy during homeroom, which added to her unpopularity among the students. I turned back to my notebook and started scribbling, waiting for the first period bell to ring. I kept thinking about what Olivia had done while I started to sketch the old oak tree outside our classroom window.
My version of the tree looked nothing like the one outside. Maybe it was the fact I’d opted for thick clouds in the background and turned each branch down so the edges were jagged, instead of capturing how the early morning sunlight illuminated the red and golden leaves.
My sketch lacked life. Like me.
I had no idea how Olivia could bring back the dead. For all I knew, she could’ve been born this way, but it had taken a careless driver and the twisting of metal to spotlight her unique talent two years ago.
I had died in the car, along with Dad.
Those new-age people totally lied. There was no bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. No angels waited to cart me off; no dead family members lingered in the shadows. There was nothing, absolutely nothing… until I felt
When I’d pried my eyes open, I’d seen Dad first. He’d looked a mess—really dead, and Olivia couldn’t reach him. The paramedics, the doctors—none of them had had problems touching me. I remembered thinking maybe I’d dreamed about dying.
When I’d gotten home, when everything was so jacked up and felt surreal, I’d realized I hadn’t dreamt crap. Sushi had been the first victim. With his smashed-up nose and one eye, the cat happened to be the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but I loved him. I picked him up, and he died about sixty seconds later. Several dead houseplants later, I realized something was wrong with me—very wrong.
I stopped touching things. Just like that.
Oddly enough, Olivia’s ability to bring back the dead had vastly different outcomes depending on what she used it on. Animals ended up with eyes like mine, but they didn’t carry the death-touch like I did.
I wasn’t sure if that would be the same with anybody else she’d bring back, and I really didn’t want to find out.
The shrill sound of the first bell drew me out of my thoughts. I gathered my stuff and followed Adam into the crowded hallway.
“So why were you late this morning?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I overslept. It happens.”
He sent me a doubtful look, and I felt terrible lying to him. My gaze dropped from his face to his shirt.
It read: I BELIEVE IN TROPHY WIVES. Nice.
I changed the subject. “Do you think we’ll have a quiz in history?”
He nodded, eyes a bright blue behind the wire frame glasses. “Yeah, did you study?”
I shuffled out of the throng of students, smiling up at Adam. “What were you saying?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Did you study?”
