Deadgirl

“Luce. Where the hell are we?”

I laughed. Truth was, “Well—”

I flrrrppped my tongue in an epic raspberry and shrugged.

He smiled, said nothing, and leaned his head against mine.

We sat in blissful silence. Every part where we touched—shoulder, arm, hip, leg, calf, cheek—I tried to memorize. To note every detail, every curve, every twitch of muscle. To absorb his nearness, to keep it forever. I could have painted Zack’s body blindfolded.

A little something flashed in my mind—my phone had gone off, right before Abraham had showed up at Benny’s. I dug my phone out of my purse and brought up the message menu. Sure enough, a text message, from my mystery-texter.

Bad Bad Vibes, Luce.

I Think He Might Be Near.

I growled and turned my phone off. That was extremely helpful. No shit he was near. Still though—who could possibly be sending the messages? It wasn’t Puck, and it wasn’t Abraham. It couldn’t be Zack or Morgan. Who else could know what was going on? And why the sudden interest in my safety?

Morgan mumbled something, and I woke up and looked over my shoulder. She was sitting up, her blonde hair covered with wet grey sand. She stared up at the sky, then at the ocean. Then at me. I took a deep breath.

“What?” she asked. “Luce?”

I disentangled myself, reluctantly, from Zack’s embrace and skidded across the sand to her side. I wish I’d been surprised by the heat of her hand when I squeezed it with mine. She hissed reflexively the instant I touched her skin—just like ice, I’ll bet. The cold of the grave? Ugh. I needed cliches like a hole in the head. Or another hole in the stomach.

“Morgan—you aren’t dead. Okay? Nobody is d…”

I stopped and looked up at Puck, and bless him—he didn’t make that see-saw gesture.

“…dead. We’re just, a little lost, okay?”

Puck stood up, suddenly, jerking to his full height with a stiff sense of danger. He reminded me of a prairie dog, and I felt a bubble of panicked laughter rolling up from my stomach.

Puck’s eyes widened and he turned toward Morgan with an apologetic look on his face. I wondered why, but for only a split second.

“We have to go. Now,” Morgan said in that robotic voice, the Puck-voice. “More phantoms are coming. Hungry ones.”

I frowned, but began to stand. Even in their is-this-a-dream stupors, Morgan and Zack both hopped to their feet with twin looks of concern. Puck checked Morgan once more, slapped her shoulder, and re-wrapped his red scarf around his neck. He pointed toward the road.

“Was Abraham…is that what he was? What he’s called?”

Puck shook his head.

“That’s what we’re called,” Puck said, through Morgan, “and not all of us have retained…humanity. We have to go.”

Phantoms. I stopped, rooted to the ground. Phantom means ghost. And ghost means dead. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt black dots swirl in my eyes and a sense of lightness flood through me. I think I was fainting.

“Get it together, Lucy,” Puck said. “Or Zack and Morgan won’t live another hour. We can get them out.”

I shook my head, took a deep breath, and tried to steady myself. Focus, Lucy. One thing at a time. No time for self-pity, self-reflection or—really anything with the word self in it. Thinking of Zack and Morgan being attacked was all I needed. All right then. Get them out. Easy, right?

“Can we just…shift?”

Puck shook his head, and oddly, Morgan’s head matched his gesture as she spoke for him. Poor Morgan.

“We can. For them it’s a one way trip. They have to return to their bodies. We don’t.”

That was more information than I could decode. I shook my head.

“In English.”

“They didn’t shift anywhere, not really. Their bodies are lying slumped on the lawn. If they don’t return to them the proper way, they don’t return at all.”

I shook my head. I did everything I could to not ask the obvious question—where’s my body?

Zack looked up and mumbled, “Benny must be freaked the hell out.”

“How do we do it? How do we get them back? What’s the right way?’” I asked.

Puck held up one finger.

“What does that mean?”

Puck smiled impishly, turned, and started jogging up the dune leading to the road.

“What does that mean?”

The three of us followed after him in silence.

We crested the hill together—why wasn’t I surprised to see a beat-up, rusted out convertible sitting on the cracked asphalt of the road beneath us? It didn’t look much different from the other wrecks of cars scattering the road, except for two key differences. One, its tires hadn’t worn away to long disconnected flaps of rubber, and two, the engine was running. In the cold air, long puffs of white rolled out of the exhaust. Puck was half-running half- sliding down the dune towards the road, his lanky body scrambling, limbs flying, as he ran.

Without thinking, I reached to the right and grabbed Zack’s hand. My other hand took Morgan’s, and I led them down the long slope.

“Hey,” Zack said, doing a double-take. “Is this a Falcon?”

Puck nodded.

Zack detached himself from my hand and slid around to the front of the car. I glanced at Morgan and rolled my eyes. She gave me a good-natured smile, but it looked like no small amount of normal was going to counter-act the weird. She looked preoccupied, not that I could blame her.

“Sixty-four?” Zack asked. “Right?”

Puck grinned, glanced at me, and flashed his eyebrows. The look was manic, cartoony, but unmistakable—I think Puck approved. Of Zack. I couldn’t believe it, but Puck’s approval mattered.

Puck slid into the driver’s seat, and Morgan, without saying anything, slid into shotgun. Part of me thrilled— me and Zack would be nestled together in the tiny backseat. At the same time, I felt horrible—Morgan had intentionally sat next to the weirdo stranger she didn’t know to avoid me. I shook my head and vaulted into the back seat. Zack climbed over the other side and plopped down next to me.

Well, I’d been right about one thing—the seat was tiny. Zack and I practically shared an ass. We both shifted, trying to get comfortable, and I laughed. Zack reached behind him, grabbed his seat belt, and pulled it across him. The old, frayed belt tore in half. I laughed even harder.

“The car’s pretty old,” Puck/Morgan said. Without seeing her lips, the effect was even creepier. “Just try not to fly out.”

“Try not to ram anything and kill us all, eh?” Zack said.

Puck gave us a thumbs up, re-wrapped the red scarf around his neck. The car lurched forward, and Puck began steering us around the rusted bulks of long dead cars. Going north, I noticed. Toward the dim glowing light.

When I was a kid, I could never stay awake during long car rides. Or short car rides. I could barely stand next to a car and stay conscious. The gentle hum of the engine transformed every surface into the hands of a gentle masseuse. As we drove down that long, lonely highway in the middle of a grey wasteland, I thought of those days.

I snuggled into the little nook formed by Zack’s shoulder and rested my head on his chest. I rolled the hood- tie of his sweatshirt around my finger, watching it twist, then unravel, then twist, then unravel. I inhaled Zack—a mixture of something wonderful and something less-so. The Zack-smell was nice, but it was the light odor of sea and sand and bad teenage piss-beer that stung my nose. I sighed, curled a handful of sweatshirt between my fingers, and closed my eyes.