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Hands went up around the room, but Ben ignored them all and looked right at me. “Why did you get involved with the occult?”
I glared at him. “Because I had to.”
“Are you truly unaware of the danger you’re dealing with?”
I let the question hang in the air before I turned to him. “Not by any stretch of the imagination.”
“So why do you continue to do it?” he asked, a challenge.
“Who said I do?”
His nostrils flared. “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious, judging by your attitude alone, that—”
“My attitude is fine,” I said. “And I don’t need to sit here and be attacked—”
“We’re not trying to attack you.” Megan clawed her way in, trying to defuse the tension before the situation exploded in her face. “We’re trying to help you.”
This was help? My insides felt like they were being twisted, and I felt a sudden shock of love for my sister—who, when she said she wanted to help me, meant it from the bottom of her heart.
Megan was giving me a chance to calm down, to take the easy way out. But I didn’t want the easy way out. I was too angry. I’d been ambushed, and I was looking for a fight. Brother Ben had wanted this to happen, even if Megan was too blinded by her willful ignorance to see that. On purpose or not, she’d led me right into his trap.
And as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t forgive that.
“The questions you were asking me before…” She let her voice trail off.
“What questions?” Ben asked. “What have you two been discussing?”
“Nothing!” Megan cried. “Nothing. It wasn’t important!”
“Maybe not to you,” I said, staring her down.
She looked at the floor.
“Now, hold on,” Ben said. “Megs, if you’ve been backsliding, maybe it’s you who needs to be on the hot seat.”
Anything I wanted to say now would be like slapping my best friend in the face, so I stared at him, seething.
The mood in the room had become decidedly dark for a Brighter Path meeting, and Ben took notice and lowered his voice. “I don’t know why you feel you need to be rude and hostile,” he said, dragging his lips into what was supposed to be a smile. “We’re all here to support one another.”
“Support? That’s what you call it?” I said, picking up my bag. “Telling us we’re weak and helpless?”
“Alexis, I’m sorry!” Megan said. “I didn’t know—”
“Maybe it’s better that you go,” Ben said. “Since you’ve proven yourself to be not only a liar, but a thief as well.”
Megan was practically frantic. “No, wait. This is all wrong. Alexis—”
“Let her go, Megs,” Ben said. “She’s chosen her path. She knows what she wants.”
What I wanted was to heave Megan over my shoulder and carry her out of there, straight to a cult deprogrammer.
No, that wasn’t true. What I really wanted was for her to walk out on her own two feet.
I turned and looked at her. Her expression was sad, pleading—but she hadn’t moved, not an inch, in my direction.
She was staying.
A sea of astounded eyes watched me from the rows of seats.
“Everyone has moments of weakness,” I said. “But that doesn’t make you weak.”
I pushed the door open and felt a rush of winter air in my face.
I was walking away from more than just Brighter Path.
I was walking away from my best friend.
I STORMED ACROSS the parking lot and slammed the car door behind me, hurling my bag onto the passenger seat. “Lydia!” I called. “Where are you?”
She didn’t appear. I turned the key in the ignition so forcefully I had a moment of fear that it might break in two.
“What? What is it?” Lydia faded into view in the backseat.
“I need your help.”
“About time!” She smirked. “I’ve been waiting for you to give up on the albino Swede look.”
“Not with my hair,” I said, pulling out of the parking lot. “With something else.”
“Like what?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she batted a hand through my arm. “Like what, Alexis?”
“You’ll see when we get there,” I said.
Lydia squirmed in her seat. “Can’t you just call an exorcist? Or a tiny creepy little old lady, like in Poltergeist?”
“Lydia,” I said, “if I got an exorcist, what do you think would happen to you?”
“Right,” she said. “Never mind.”
We were parked in front of the funeral home that had handled Lydia’s services, and she was pretty jumpy. When I finally I told her that I wanted to get more information about the yellow roses, she freaked out and disappeared completely for a few minutes. Then she faded back in, looking embarrassed. I wonder if popping out of sight is the ghostly equivalent of peeing your pants.
“If there are any funerals going on, we’re not going in, right?” Lydia said. “I can’t. I won’t. I hate funerals.”
I wasn’t wild about them myself. “I promise,” I said, because the parking lot was empty. I pushed my shoulders back, held my head high, and went inside, with Lydia right at my heels like a nervous dog.
The lobby was carpeted in plush beige and wallpapered in soft olive-green paper with blue flowers. There was a small sofa, a side table with a lamp and a stack of magazines, and a desk with a small bell on it. I rang the bell.
“Hello?”
Lydia yelped in surprised, and I spun around to see a man standing between me and the door, silhouetted in the late afternoon sun.
“Can I help you?”
He moved into the light so I could see him. He had a long, wrinkled face and wore a jacket and tie.
“Hi,” I said. “Um…I wanted to ask some questions.”
He frowned.
I’d invented a few different explanations, figuring I’d use the one that seemed most appropriate in the moment. I discarded “my best friend is dying and wants me to find her a cool funeral home” and “I think I might want to be a mortician when I grow up” and went for the one that was closest to the truth.
“I’m a student at Surrey High, and I’m doing research on issues related to death and dying,” I said. “I was hoping someone here would have a couple of minutes to talk to me.”
He seemed to consider it, but was on the verge of saying no, I could tell. So I started talking again.
“What I’ve found is that our society seems to think of death as, like, this mysterious, horrible thing. When really, it happens to everyone. So I’m sort of researching the idea that death is more like a passage. And how funerals help people cope.”
He checked his watch. “Well, I guess we could chat for a few minutes. Do you mind coming back to the office? We have an appointment coming in shortly, and I’d rather they not overhear us.”
I followed him through a wood-paneled door. We passed a woman sitting at a desk, talking on the phone, and went into a glass-walled office.
“It’s good that she’s here,” Lydia said, looking out at the woman. “So you don’t have to worry about him murdering you and dissolving your body in a vat of acid.”
I couldn’t reply, so I gave her a withering glare.
“I’m Richard Henry Gordon,” the man said. “And you are?”
Uh. “Alexis A
“What?” Lydia said. “Henry-Gordon is his last name. It’s on the sign, doofus.”
He gestured to a guest chair, then sat down at his desk. “Well, Alexis A
“Would you like some dead-people candy?” Lydia asked. “Alexis A
“Um, no, thank you,” I said.
“All right, then. Ask away.”
“I was wondering about the ritual of having a funeral. What goes into that? Who makes all the decisions?”
He touched his fingertips together and leaned back, staring at an invisible spot on the ceiling. “Obviously, there are considerations such as religion, the wishes of the family, budget—that’s a big one. Sometimes the deceased will have expressed certain preferences, and in that case, we make those a priority.”