Laughter at the Academy Page 24

  What else am I supposed to do?

  JULY

  Well, I’m supposed to commit murder, for one thing.

  It’s a little surprising that I didn’t think of it sooner, but as the days stretch out and the school year winds to an end, the thought preys on me more and more often. How hard could it be, really, to kill someone who’s bedridden, slipping in and out of consciousness, and incapable of fighting back? Not that hard. Getting to him is going to be the difficult part…and wouldn’t it make Jenny happy to know that I loved her enough to kill for her? I want to see her smile, really smile, just one more time. And not just from her memorial page in the yearbook, where they’ve used a picture of her in her homecoming dress—the only dress she has anymore—and her corsage. None of the pictures in her memorial collage have me in them. Without Jenny and the cheerleading squad to drag me into the school’s social limelight I’m fading from everyone’s memory, another high school weirdo worthy only of dismissal.

  Maybe that’s a good thing, given what I’m planning to do.

  It wasn’t a plan at first; just an idle thought, a continuation of that half-conversation that I hadn’t been able to finish with Jenny. But it’s grown, bit by bit, into something bigger and more powerful than it was when it began. Tyler killed Jenny. Tyler doesn’t deserve to have any kind of a life, not when Jenny doesn’t get to. Tyler needs to die, and if I want to show her that I’m still a good girlfriend, I need to be the one who kills him. It’s as simple as that.

  I don’t say anything when I go to pick her up; I just smile, and hand her a copy of the yearbook so she can see all the nice things people said about her after she was gone and in the ground, and then I drive her home. It’s the least that I can do, all things considered.

  AUGUST

  Jenny, I was foolish, I was selfish, I’m ashamed,

  And I’m praying you’ll forgive me, though I know I should be blamed,

  For I’ll do as much for my true love as any lover known—

  I will never know salvation ’til I’m taking Jenny home.

  Tyler has his own room—naturally he does, his parents have money and they’ve never been shy about spending it on their beloved only son. That makes things simpler. Finding it is easy. Our classmates have sent offerings of flowers and stuffed toys in such great numbers that when I walk up to the admission desk with a bouquet of roses in my hands, the nurse barely looks up from her romance novel before spitting out his room number, three little digits that don’t seem like nearly enough information to lead me to murder. But there they are, and there I go, walking down the hall unquestioned, the roses in my hands somehow serving as an all-access pass.

  I’ve heard they don’t allow flowers in the ICU, but apparently Tyler’s far enough along the road to recovery that they’ve moved him into a lower security grade. That, too, works in my favor.

  His door isn’t locked. Three strikes, Tyler; you’re out.

  The room is dim and quiet, save for the soft, steady rasp of the machines that keep him alive. He’s a wasted skeleton of a man, all that football muscle melted away to reveal the scarecrow that was sleeping for so long inside his skin. I stop at the foot of the bed, looking at him. Maybe this isn’t about unicorns at all; maybe this is some kind of strange Wizard of Oz parable, with Jenny just trying to get home and Tyler trapped in the echoing cavern of his own mind. I can’t decide whether that makes me the Lion or the Tin Man. Am I looking for courage, or am I wishing for a heart?

  Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a syringe; I can’t inject air bubbles into his arm like they do on Dad’s crime shows, and I wouldn’t know how to do it even if I could. I’d put a pillow over his face, but he has machines to do his breathing for him, and I’m pretty sure they’d start beeping like crazy if I pulled them loose.

  The door opens and closes behind me. “More flowers?” asks an unseen woman. “Well, put them with the rest. Poor boy’s lucky he doesn’t have allergies. That would just be one more problem on top of a mountain of them.”

  “Is…is he going to be okay?” I’m not really concerned about Tyler’s welfare—I’m not—but I’d expected him to look more like, well, himself. A great big bear of a teenage boy, briefly bedridden, gathering the strength to jump right back into his life. Not this wasted bundle of bones and sickness.

  “That depends on how you measure ‘okay,’ I suppose.” The owner of the voice is a middle aged woman in pale pink scrubs. She takes the flowers from my hands, apparently able to sense that I can’t bring myself to move. “Is he going to live? At this point, the prognosis is good. His folks have paid for the best care, and he’s got a strong will. He’s stubborn. Stubbornness counts for a lot in cases like these. But is he ever going to walk again? Throw a pass or kick a ball or anything like that? No, I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “Oh.” I pause then, frowning. “Should you be telling me this?”

  “A pretty little thing like you only sneaks into a hospital with a bunch of flowers for two reasons: love or hate. I read the papers. I know which it is.” The nurse looks over her shoulder at me as she sets my roses amongst the rest. “She won’t rest any easier if you kill him, and neither will you. Are you sticking to the rules? Do you drive her home when she asks you to?”

  My throat is a thin straw through which only air can pass. I squeak a few times, trying to speak, and finally settle for a nod.

  “That’s good. Have you tried to kiss her?”

  I’ve dreamt about it. That isn’t the same thing. I shake my head.

  The nurse nods approvingly. “That’s good. That’s real good. It’s not safe for a girl like you to be kissing a girl like her. There are consequences, when the living love the dead. Now I’m going to ask one more question, and I’ll thank you to find your voice, since your answer is going to determine whether or not I call for security. I’m assuming you came here to kill this boy. You can go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not my question. Are you still planning to try?”

  “N-no, ma’am,” I manage. “He shouldn’t be alive when Jenny’s not, but it’s not my place to change that. I guess the worst thing I can do to him is leave him alive.”

  “Good girl.” She smiles at me, and then glances meaningfully to the clock above the door. “You’d better hurry if you want to pick her up on time.”

  I want to stay and ask her what she knows about ghosts, how she understands my arrangement with Jenny…who she’s been driving home. But she’s right: the sun will be down soon, and if I want to make it to the cemetery, I need to go, and I don’t really want to be here, in this room where time is rotting on the vine. So I turn and run, leaving the hospital, leaving Tyler to his own living hell, and it’s not until Jenny is sliding into her place beside me that I really wonder what that nurse knew, or why she asked if I’d been trying to kiss my girl.

  I go back to the hospital the next day. The nurse I met in Tyler’s room isn’t there.

  Somehow, that’s not really a surprise.

  SEPTEMBER

  School starts up again in an explosion of cheerleaders and football players wearing orange and green uniforms and smiles like they just won the universal lottery. It’s freshmen slinking in the halls and sophomores seeming suddenly easy in their skins; it’s juniors with their chests puffed up with upperclassman pride and seniors smiling beatifically, rulers of their small, time-delineated kingdom. It’s all so stupid, and there was a time when I would have loved it. I would have been walking in formation with the rest of the cheerleaders, Jenny by my side, and we would have been queens of the world. Homecoming last year was supposed to be our grand declaration of love, and by now everyone would have been used to the idea that we were together. We could have had one perfect year of high school, me and Jenny, Jenny and me.

  Instead, I’m just another nobody at the edge of the crowd, wondering why this ever seemed to matter. All the memorials to Jenny are gone, and there’s a whole new class of freshmen who ne
ver knew her, and will never know that they’re supposed to miss her. Summer has restored the campus, sweeping its ghosts away, and now I’m the only one who’s haunted.

  I don’t know how long I can live like this.

  I’m still dwelling on that when it comes time to pick Jenny up again; she slides into the car, all vanilla and moonlight, and asks, “Well? How’s senior year?”

  She still loves the idea of the future we crafted for ourselves, back when we were lying on our backs behind the tumbling mats, hands entangled, and both of us were breathing. I shake my head and start the car. “Same shit, different semester,” I say. And then, because the question is burning me, I ask, “Why am I not allowed to kiss you?”

  Jenny is silent.

  “I mean, I get to drive you home. I know you’re solid, I’ve touched your hands and seen you hold things. So why can’t I kiss you? What makes it so wrong to want to kiss my girlfriend?”

  “I’m dead, Leigh.” Her voice is the whispering of wind among the gravestones, barely audible, impossible to ignore.

  “So what? You’re still my girl. I’m not giving up on you.”

  “I’m dead, and you’re not.”

  I’ve thought about changing that so many times. “And?”

  “And if I kissed you, it would…” Jenny sighs. “Everything dies, Leigh. Everything. But some things make you die faster.”

  “Like kissing dead girls?”

  “Like kissing dead girls.” Jenny reaches over and touches my hand, gentle as a promise, cruel as a prayer. “Homecoming is next month. I’ve been buried for almost a year. Don’t you think it’s time you let me go?”

  I don’t answer her, because that question is every answer I’ve been seeking for the last eleven months. “I think it’s time that something changed, yeah,” I say, and we drive on.

  OCTOBER

  My tuxedo still fits. Grief either bulks you up or slims you down, and I guess I’ve gone for the latter; too many days when I couldn’t bring myself to eat, too many nights spent crying until I threw up. It was a little snug when I wore it the first time and now it’s a little loose, but I look okay. I think Jenny will appreciate it.

  “Are you going to homecoming?” asks Mom, when she sees me coming down the stairs. She sounds surprised and maybe hopeful, like this is a sign things are changing for the better.

  “Yeah.” Homecoming isn’t tonight—it’s always on a Saturday, and it’s only Monday now—but this is the anniversary of Jenny’s death, and I don’t feel like correcting my mother. I finish descending the stairs and press a kiss against her cheek, sweeter than a note left on my dresser, crueler than an explanation. I don’t think there’s any way to explain what I’ve decided to do. “Don’t wait up, okay?”

  “I won’t,” she says, relief plain on her face. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “It’s a surprise.” My new boutonniere is already pinned to the front of my tuxedo. I figure Jenny doesn’t need a corsage—she still has hers from last year—but I bought her daisies, just to make the symbolism clear.

  “Have fun tonight.”

  “I will.” I should feel bad, I know I should, but I can’t. There’s nothing for me here, and I still have to keep my promise. I have to finish driving Jenny home.

  I pull up to the cemetery just as the sun is starting to go down, and Jenny’s there, my Jenny, in her dress like moonlight. She gasps a little when I get out of the car and she sees me in my tuxedo. That’s what I was hoping for, that moment of shock, when she’s too busy staring to react as I stride toward her, the daisies held out in my hand.

  “These are for you,” I say, pressing them into her hands. She takes them—she’s solid, she’s solid, because she’s holding the flowers—and is still looking at them when I lean forward and press my lips to hers.

  Her lips taste like they always have, like vanilla lip gloss, but there’s something else there, something dark and sad and dry as dust. She pulls back, eyes wide and filled with dismay. “Do you know what you’ve done?” she demands, and I do know, I do know what I’ve done.

  So I smile and say, “Too late now,” and this time when I kiss her, she doesn’t pull away. We’ll get into the car soon; I’ll drive her home, and this time, when whatever happens happens, I won’t survive. That’s all right. That’s what I wanted.

  I made her a promise, after all. I promised that I’d get her all the way home.

  Jenny, darling Jenny, there is no need to explain,

  I have seen your lonely graveside, I have waited in the rain,

  And I’ll do as much for my true love as any lover known—

  Though my family will grieve me, I’ll be driving Jenny home.

  There Is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold

  Again, dolls.

  Dolls have been with us throughout human history. They are playmates and protectors of children—who doesn’t feel safer with a companion to clutch when the shadows grow too deep? Yet somehow, they’ve become a part of the horror landscape. This story was originally written for Ellen Datlow’s The Doll Collection, a book of stories centered around dolls with only one requirement: The dolls couldn’t be inherently evil. That’s fine. People are more than evil enough for me.

  The doll shop described at the beginning of this story doesn’t exist, but oh, I wish it did. I would spend all my money there, and be the happiest Seanan in the world.

  The air in the shop smelled of talcum, resin, and tissue, with a faint, almost indefinable undertone of pine and acid-free paper. I walked down the rows of collectable Barbies and pre-assembled ball-jointed dolls to the back wall, where the supplies for the serious hobbyists were kept. Pale, naked bodies hung on hooks, while unpainted face plates stared with empty sockets from behind their plastic prisons. Clothing, wigs, and eyes were kept in another part of the shop, presumably so it would be harder to keep track of how much you were spending. As if anyone took up ball-jointed dolls thinking it would be a cheap way to pass the time. We all knew we were making a commitment that would eat our bank accounts from the inside out.

  I looked from empty face to empty face, searching for the one that called to me, that whispered “I could be the vessel of your sorrows.” It would have been easier if I’d been in a position to cast my own; resin isn’t easy to work with compared to vinyl or wax, but it’s possible, if you have the tools, and the talent, and the time. I had the tools and the talent. Only time was in short supply.

  Father would have hated that. He’d always said time was the one resource we could never acquire more of—unlike inspiration, or hope, or even misery, it couldn’t be bottled or preserved, and so we had to spend it carefully, measuring it out where it would do the most good. I could have been making beautiful dolls, both for my own needs and to enrich the world. Instead, I spent my days in a sterile office, doing only as much as I needed to survive and stay connected to the Kingdom of the Cold.

  My head ached as I looked at the empty, waiting faces. I had waited too long again. Father did an excellent job when he made me, but my heart was never intended to hold as much emotion as a human could. “Perfection is for God,” he used to say. “We will settle for the subtly flawed, and the knowledge that when we break, we return home.” Because we were flawed—all of us—we had to bleed off the things we couldn’t contain, sorrow and anger and joy and loneliness, packing them carefully in shells of porcelain, resin, and bone. I needed the bleed. It would keep me from cracking, and each vessel I filled would be another piece of my eventual passage home.

  Times have changed. People live longer, but that hasn’t translated into longer childhoods. Once I could have paid my passage to the Kingdom just by walking through town and seeing people embracing my creations, offering up their own small, unknowing tithes of delight and desolation. Those days are over. Father was the last of us to walk in Pandora’s grace, and I do what I must to survive.

  A round-cheeked face with eyes that dipped down at the corner and lips that formed a classic cupid
’s bow pout peeked from behind the other boxes. I plucked it from the shelf, hoisting it in my hand, feeling the weight and the heart of it. Yes: this was my girl, or would be, once I had gathered the rest of her. The hard part was ahead of me, but the essential foundation was in my hand.

  It didn’t take long to find the other pieces I needed: the body, female, pale and thin but distinctly adult, from the curve of the hips to the slight swell of the breasts. The wig, white as strawberry flowers, and the eyes, red as strawberries. I had clothing that would fit her. There was already a picture forming in my mind of a white and red girl, lips painted just so, cheeks blushed in the faintest shades of cream.

  Willow appeared as I approached the counter, her eyes assessing the contents of my basket before she asked, “New project, dear?”

  “There’s always a new project.” I put the basket down next to the register. “It’s been a long couple of weeks at work. I figured I deserved a treat.”

  Willow nodded in understanding. The women who co-owned my favorite doll shop were in it as much for the wholesale prices on their own doll supplies as to make a profit: I, and customers like me, were the only reason the place could keep its doors open. I prayed that would last as long as Father did. I couldn’t shop via mail order—there was no way of knowing whether I was getting the right thing, and I couldn’t work with materials that wouldn’t work with me. I’d tried a few times while I was at college, repainting Barbie dolls with shaking hands and a head that felt like it was full of bees. I could force them, but the results were never pretty, and they were never good enough. They couldn’t hold as much as I needed them to.

  My total came to under two hundred dollars, which wasn’t bad for everything I was buying. I grabbed a few small jars of paint from the impulse rack to the left of the register. Willow, who had argued Joanna into putting the rack there, grinned.