As Dead As It Gets

There I found a third rose, and a fourth one a few feet farther, and a fifth, sixth, and seventh, leading to the foyer.

The urge to see where they led was irresistible.

I held my breath and followed the trail. When I came to the front door, I silently turned the dead bolt and pulled the door open.

There were more roses outside.

It was the middle of the night, and the temperature was in the low thirties. All I wore was the gauzy purple dress, not shoes or even socks. But I followed the line of roses laid out in front of me.

It was almost like I had to.

When I reached the intersection of our front walk and the sidewalk, I hesitated.

I could follow these roses forever, by the looks of things. And at the end, I would find…

What would I find?

As I started to step on the sidewalk, a freezing rush consumed my body.

The roses blinked out of existence just as someone grabbed my arm.

“Lexi?” Kasey stood beside me, bundled in her bathrobe and a pair of woolly slippers. “What are you doing out here? Why didn’t you stop when I called your name?”

I started to open my mouth to ask what she was doing—the best defense is a good offense, after all—but she rolled her eyes and cut me off.

“Following you,” she said. “Now, answer me.”

“I was…” I glanced down at the bare sidewalk.

Then I looked down at my body. All I saw were my plaid Christmas pajama pants and a long-sleeved tee. No purple dress.

Could it really just have been a dream?

If Kasey had seen the dress, she would have said something.

“I was just…sleepwalking, I guess. Weird. Thanks for waking me up.”

“Well, not like I’m going to let you run off in the middle of the night—” She stopped, suddenly realizing that girls ru

She didn’t want to say Ashleen’s name. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t want to hear it.

“No,” I said. “Of course not.”

As my daze wore off, the cold took hold of me. It seeped through the skin of my feet and up through my legs.

Kasey watched me go all the way to my room before retreating toward her own bedroom. She looked like she’d rather plant herself down in the hall and guard my door than go back to bed.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Get some sleep.”

After I closed the door, I looked around my room.

No roses, no purple dress. The covers of my bed were rumpled, and as I climbed back underneath them, I tried to convince myself that it had just been a nightmare. How could I not have nightmares, after what I’d been through over the past week? Of course it wasn’t real.

That was what I told myself. And I repeated it in my head, an endless mantra, until I fell asleep.

But I didn’t believe it. Not that night, and not in the morning, when I woke up to find a tiny spot of blood on the pillow and a scab on my left thumb, as though I’d been pricked by a thorn.

No, I wasn’t fooling myself. I knew it hadn’t been a nightmare—

Something had come for me.

I WAS SITTING IN ENGLISH CLASS the next day, trying to write an essay about The Grapes of Wrath without actually having read it. The room around me was silent.

“Sleepwalking? Ha. Not quite. I had to try three times to wake you up.”

It took a couple of seconds for me to realize it was Lydia.

She sat on the teacher’s desk. The teacher was leaning back, reading. Which is a good thing, because if he’d leaned forward he would have been staring directly through her butt.

“So what exactly was that little midnight stroll about?” she asked. “Or were you pla

I pursed my lips to keep myself from accidentally answering. Kids at my school already thought I’d killed Lydia. I didn’t need them to know that I had regular conversations with her.

“I must admit, it was a pretty impressive little show.”

I gave her a questioning look and beckoned her over. The kid next to me saw me moving my hand, so I pretended to be stretching my fingers.

Lydia came over to my desk. I flipped to a page farther back in my notebook and wrote: What did you see?

“You woke up, flipped out, spun around in a circle, and then walked straight out of your house, staring at the ground.”

I raised my hand. “Hall pass?”

The teacher nodded.

“Don’t bother,” Lydia said. “I’m leaving.”

And she vanished.

I spent the rest of the day doing something I never in a million years thought I’d do:

Wishing Lydia would show up to bug me again.

After school that day, Marley and I met in the yearbook office to scroll through the Student Council portraits. We narrowed it down to one or two of each person but couldn’t agree on which pictures were the best, so we decided to leave it up to Elliot.

I carried the printouts over to her desk. She studied each photo for a second and made her choices without hesitation.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “Do what?”

“Decide things so fast.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Ninety percent of the time, I go with my gut.”

“And your gut is usually right?”

She gave me an amused smile. “My gut is flawless. It’s the other ten percent of the time I get myself in trouble.”

I tried to remember the last time I’d trusted myself to make an important decision without agonizing over it. “I don’t know about my gut.”

“I think your gut is smart.” Elliot set down her highlighter and poked a finger into her stomach under the yale logo on her sweatshirt. “My gut tells me that.”

I sighed.

She leaned forward, studying me intently. I nearly took a step back, but managed to stand my ground.

“You know what your problem is?” she asked. “You need to learn to trust—”

Here we go again.

“—yourself,” she finished.

“Hmm,” I said.

“What?”

“I just sort of thought my problem was trusting other people.”

She waved her hand like the statement was a pesky fly. “Other people need to earn your trust. That’s beside the point.”

To earn my trust.

Huh.

“Tell me something, Alexis,” Elliot said. “Why do you eat lunch alone?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s easier.”

Elliot didn’t ask, Easier than what? She just stared at me for a long moment, the same way she would stare at a layout that wasn’t quite gelling. “We have room at our table, you know. You should eat with us.”

“Wow,” I said. Somewhere inside me was a happy little shudder—here was someone who knew me exclusively as a crazy, messed-up person, and she still liked me. But…even if Elliot felt that way, did the others? Or did they silently judge me? Would they judge Elliot for inviting me? “I don’t think so. But thanks.”

Elliot didn’t even fidget like a normal person. She had to take a pen entirely apart and rebuild it. “You were there when she died, right? Lydia Small?”

I stopped short, my bones fusing together, locking me in place. I couldn’t look at her. I stared at the surface of the desk until its faux wood grain swam in my head.

She slipped the spring back into the plastic barrel and screwed the pen back together. “What I’m getting at is, it’s not like it was your fault. Even if you were there. You should stop punishing yourself. Or—should I say—punish yourself in a new and different way by eating at our table and watching Chad talk with his mouth full of food.”

She gave me a look of such utterly honest understanding that a lump immediately formed in the back of my throat.

“A lot of stuff sucks. But that’s life. Just eat with us.” Elliot mistook my silence for resistance. “I’m asking you, Alexis. Consider it a personal favor.”