~
“He’s a bastard!” her mama said.
In Cali’s dream, her mom paced around the hotel room where Cali had come for the night. Her mom lectured about Stan while pulling deep drags of cigarette smoke into her lungs as if seeking nicotine solace. “Oh, baby. I picked a lousy time to die, didn’t I? With the holidays and now this.”
“You know this is a nonsmoking room,” Cali said. When her mother didn’t answer, Cali remembered this was just a dream. When she’d heard her mom’s voice back at her apartment, she’d just been panicked. Grief could do crazy things to a person.
“You’re too nice. Too forgiving.” Her mom dropped down on the bed and touched Cali’s cheek. “I should have raised you to be more of a bitch.”
“I’m too forgiving?” Cali thought of Stan, whom she hadn’t forgiven, and the jerk, Detective Lowell. She hadn’t forgiven him either.
“Stan doesn’t deserve forgiving,” her mom said. “The cop was testy, but he has reasons.”
“You can read my mind, too?”
“I’ve always been able to read your mind. But yes, there are advantages to being dead.” Her mom’s eyes teared. “You’ve got to listen to me. Bad things could happen. I’d die if something happened to you.”
“You did die,” Cali said, and they both knew Cali hadn’t yet forgiven her for that.
“Bad things could happen.” Her mom repeated, and her voice seemed to float around the room with the cigarette smoke.
They were already happening Cali thought. Stan was shooting at her apartment door. Her mama was dead. And Cali was crazy because she kept dreaming about her.
Chapter Five
The next morning at school, Cali straightened her desk. Since the funeral, she spent a lot of time straightening, cleaning—her closet, under her bed, her baseboards. Even her catch-all kitchen drawer had been de-cluttered. She’d gotten rid of a lot of junk, a lot of scum, including a louse of a boyfriend. Not that getting rid of him excused her for getting involved. She’d really messed up.
Her classroom door squeaked open. Tanya, wearing a bright red dress and toting an armful of books, walked in. “Hi.”
Cali blinked. Suffering from lack of sleep, it almost hurt to look at her friend. The fact that Cali had made it to school should be considered a near miracle. But she had requested the afternoon off. She told the office she needed to do some work on her mom’s estate. And while she did have the appointment with her mom’s lawyer, she wasn’t sure she could muster enough energy to do anything more than drive back to the hotel where she’d stayed last night. Even her toes cried out for sleep. Yet sleeping brought on dreams and those dreams—
The stack of books landed on Cali’s desk with a thud.
“Hi.” Cali forged a smile.
Tanya, obviously, could spot a forgery. “Dragon slaying went bad, huh?”
“What?”
“You said you had to slay a dragon,”
“Oh. Yeah, it went badly.”
Tanya propped her hip on the desk. “You want to talk about it? Or not. I can deal with either.”
Cali took a deep breath. The chance to unburden herself seemed too good to pass up. “I’ll talk, but . . . it’s Jerry Springer, Judge Judy quality.”
“Good. I love drama.” Tanya wiggled closer. Her earrings, colorful Christmas balls the size of marbles, bounced around her ears. “Spill it.”
Cali recounted the night’s events. The argument. Stan returning. The shot through the door. The cops arriving. “There was blood all over the door. I don’t have a clue from where. I don’t know if Stan was hurt or…” She’d skipped over the part about the dreams. About hearing her mom’s voice. Being crazy was one thing, admitting it another. “That one detective was so rude, and then he thought I was going to use a knife on him. Do I look like a knife-crazed killer?”
“Maybe just a bit around the eyes.” Tanya giggled.
Cali laughed. She tapped a pencil on her desk. The drumming sound felt hypnotic. “The first cop wasn’t rude. And I could swear I knew him from somewhere.”
“Was he cute?” Tanya made a face when Cali rolled her eyes at the question.
“He could have been Brad Pitt. I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to consider it.” Without warning, a visual of Detective Lowell flashed in her mind, all shoulders and…
She grabbed her mental eraser and wiped that image out. Swallowing, she looked back at Tanya. “And then he...” Cali ended her tale of woe by telling how the detective insisted she not stay at her apartment for three or four days. “Thanks to Stan, I can’t go home.”