As Dead As It Gets

I wanted to get out of the car and hug her until she turned blue. I wanted to turn on the radio and have a dance party.

“Besides.” She shook her head, looking disgusted. “The stuff he said to you—calling you a liar—and a thief? That really crossed a line. I mean, you can be rude, but you’re no thief.”

I froze, remembering the book of charms. “Um, actually…” I said, cringing, “there was one little thing.”

Megan looked stricken. Then, to my shock, she burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Lex! Are you serious? You stole something from him?”

“It was well-justified,” I said. “I swear.”

She was still laughing, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, that doesn’t matter. He was still really wrong about a lot of things. You know, I just got tired of him talking about…my mom and…stuff.”

I didn’t want to say anything that might sound like “I told you so.”

Megan looked down at me. “So why’d you come here?”

“To talk to Father Lopez about something.” I didn’t elaborate. If she wanted a normal ghost-free life, I had to respect that.

She nodded and dragged a finger across the car door. “You keep your car as clean as your house, don’t you?”

“Naturally,” I said.

Her gaze bored into me. “Are you really having ghost problems?”

It took me a second to overcome my staunch deny all mind-set.

But I nodded and held up my phone to show her the zoomed-in picture of the girl wearing the dress. “Do you know who this is?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Marissa Hearst. She’s a senior. What about her?”

I pulled the phone back into the car. “Do you really want to know?”

Megan began to fidget with her little necktie. “Maybe not the whole story. But is there something simple I could ask her for you?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “That’s not getting involved. It’s just…talking to someone.”

“If you could ask her where the dress came from,” I said, “that would be amazing.”

Megan reached for my phone and angled it to see through the cracks. “What dress? Okay, I see it. Jeez, what happened to your phone?”

I tucked it into the cup holder and gave her a small smile. “Do you really want to know?”

“Maybe I don’t,” she said, limping back a step from the car. “But I’ll find Marissa and let you know what she says, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, giving me a wave and heading for the school entrance.

But it wasn’t “nothing” to me. It was practically everything.

I drove past Surrey High on my way home. The student parking lot was mostly empty, but I did see Elliot’s giant wood-paneled station wagon. Which meant she would be in the Wingspan office. Which meant I could stop by and offload the pictures of the sweatshirt for Chad, and not have to worry about getting up early the next morning to do it before school.

Elliot had her laptop open and was busily typing.

“Prop the door open, would you?” she said. “It’s the first warmish day in forever.”

So I propped the door and went to the computer with the card reader.

“So sorry about that rando Carter thing the other day,” Elliot said. “He could have just dropped the shirt off here. I think dating Zoe turned him insane.”

I spun around and looked at her. “Did you just say rando?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It just doesn’t sound like an Elliot word.”

“I claim all words,” she said. “I empower them by speaking them.”

I believed it. Someday, Elliot would be president of the United States and saying, “These rando stock market downturns are not going to shake our national spirit.”

“No worries about the shirt thing,” I said. “It’s pretty cool-looking. I got good pictures.”

“Hope it didn’t take you away from anything important.”

“Ha. No. Not really.…”

“Hm?”

“Just…a boy.”

She sniffed. “Sounds like you’re crazy about him.”

My laugh came out like a grunt. “Crazy is one word.”

“Remember what I said, Warren. Follow your gut.”

“Sometimes my gut’s pretty rando,” I said.

“Follow it anyway.”

What was it about Elliot that made me believe everything she said?

“But what if following my gut will hurt someone?”

She moved her laptop out of the way. “You mean the boy?”

I nodded.

“At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for you. You can’t live for someone else. You can’t let your guilt define your life.”

“So…”

Her eyes sparkled. “So kick him to the curb.”

I laughed.

“Um…hey.” Elliot’s eyes suddenly went wide. She was looking over my shoulder.

I turned around.

Jared stood in the open doorway.

“Hello,” he said, his voice sounding oddly tight.

“Jared,” I said, getting up. “This is Elliot. Elliot, Jared.”

I watched them study each other and felt the full impact of Elliot’s lack of self-consciousness. She didn’t simper or fawn over Jared. She just nodded at him.

“Nice to meet you.” Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than necessary, and then she turned back to her work.

He didn’t reply. I walked to the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk,” he said.

“I can’t really talk right now,” I said. “I’m working.”

“Yes.” His expression was blank, unreadable. “Right. I see.”

“Um, Alexis? If you guys are done, we should really get started on pla

Elliot was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

I could feel Jared’s gaze burning into me.

Follow your gut.

“We are,” I said, standing as tall as I could. “We’re done. Jared, I’ll call you later.”

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me.

“Good-bye,” I said again.

He walked away without another word.

Elliot stared at the empty space in the doorway. “Sorry about that,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. “You just seemed like you needed an out.”

“I guess I did,” I said. “Thanks.”

She glanced at me, slightly preoccupied, then back at the door for a few drawn-out seconds. “I know him from somewhere.”

Then she went back to her work.

That night, I sat in my room, able to concentrate on my schoolwork for the first time in forever. At the back of my mind, no matter how bad things got, there was a safety net now—Megan.

Not that I expected her to get very involved. But at least she hadn’t shut me out. She’d listened. And she was willing to help. Even if it was just a little help, I felt a relief I hadn’t known I needed, like someone had been winding a rope around me so slowly that I hadn’t noticed its constriction until it was suddenly taken away.

I could breathe again.

My cell phone buzzed with a text message, and I glanced down. It was Megan.

Working on Marissa, she wrote. Hopefully know something 2morrow.

With a happy little tingle in my spine, I texted back: Thanks.

After a while, I put my books away, took a shower, and changed into my pajamas.

I’ll be able to sleep tonight, I thought.

As I climbed into bed, I noticed that another text had come through on my phone. I picked it up, thinking the message would be from Megan—but it wasn’t.

It was from Elliot.

Remembered where I met him. Used to be in Tree Society with his girlfriend. Hiked Maxwell with her once.

Tree Society was a volunteer group that planted trees and maintained the hiking trails around Surrey. Maxwell meant Maxwell Canyon. Elliot talked about it all the time, but she could never convince any of the other Wingspan staffers to hike it with her. That type of trail is best left to people who owned special hiking sandals and backpacks that are really just giant water bottles. In other words, people like Elliot.

But what was this about a girlfriend?

I texted her back: He never talks about her.