“Oh no,” Gloria Palnick said. “This is my grave and I get to ask the questions.”
A notion crept, like little dead cat feet, over Miles. Possibly he had made a dangerous and deeply embarrassing mistake. “Poetry,” he managed to say. “There was some poetry that I, ah, that I accidentally left in my girlfriend’s casket. And there’s a deadline for a poetry contest coming up, and so I really, really needed to get it back.”
The dead girl stared at him. There was something about her hair that Miles didn’t like.
“Excuse me, but are you for real?” she said. “This sounds like one of those lame excuses. The dog ate my homework. I accidentally buried my poetry with my dead girlfriend.”
“Look,” Miles said, “I checked the tombstone and everything. This is supposed to be Bethany’s grave. Bethany Baldwin. I’m really sorry I bothered you and everything, but this isn’t really my fault.” The dead girl just stared at him thoughtfully. He wished that she would blink. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her hair, lank and black, where Bethany’s had been brownish and frizzy in summer, was writhing a little, like snakes. Miles thought of centipedes. Inky midnight tentacles.
“Maybe I should just go away,” Miles said. “Leave you to, ah, rest in peace or whatever.”
“I don’t think sorry cuts the mustard here,” Gloria Palnick said. She barely moved her mouth when she spoke, Miles noticed. And yet her enunciation was fine. “Besides, I’m sick of this place. It’s boring. Maybe I’ll just come along with.”
“What?” Miles said. He felt behind himself, surreptitiously, for the knotted rope.
“I said, maybe I’ll come with you,” Gloria Palnick said. She sat up. Her hair was really coiling around, really seething now. Miles thought he could hear hissing noises.
“You can’t do that!” he said. “I’m sorry, but no. Just no.”
“Well then, you stay here and keep me company,” Gloria Palnick said. Her hair was really something.
“I can’t do that either,” Miles said, trying to explain quickly, before the dead girl’s hair decided to strangle him. “I’m going to be a poet. It would be a great loss to the world if I never got a chance to publish my poetry.”
“I see,” Gloria Palnick said, as if she did, in fact, see a great deal. Her hair settled back down on her shoulders and began to act a lot more like hair. “You don’t want me to come home with you. You don’t want to stay here with me. Then how about this? If you’re such a great poet, then write me a poem. Write something about me so that everyone will be sad that I died.”
“I could do that,” Miles said. Relief bubbled up through his middle like tiny doughnuts in an industrial deep-fat fryer. “Let’s do that. You lie down and make yourself comfortable and I’ll rebury you. Today I’ve got a quiz in American History, and I was going to study for it during my free period after lunch, but I could write a poem for you instead.”
“Today is Saturday,” the dead girl said.
“Oh, hey,” Miles said. “Then no problem. I’ll go straight home and work on your poem. Should be done by Monday.”
“Not so fast,” Gloria Palnick said. “You need to know all about my life and about me, if you’re going to write a poem about me, right? And how do I know you’ll write a poem if I let you bury me again? How will I know if the poem’s any good? No dice. I’m coming home with you and I’m sticking around until I get my poem. ’Kay?”
She stood up. She was several inches taller than Miles. “Do you have any ChapStick?” she said. “My lips are really dry.”
“Here,” Miles said. Then, “You can keep it.”
“Oh, afraid of dead girl cooties,” Gloria Palnick said. She smacked her lips at him in an upsetting way.
“I’ll climb up first,” Miles said. He had the idea that if he could just get up the rope, if he could yank the rope up after himself fast enough, he might be able to run away, get to the fence where he’d chained up his bike, before Gloria managed to get out. It wasn’t like she knew where he lived. She didn’t even know his name.
“Fine,” Gloria said. She looked like she knew what Miles was thinking and didn’t really care. By the time Miles had bolted up the rope, yanking it up out of the grave, abandoning the telescoping shovel, the wire cutters, the wronged dead girl, and had unlocked his road bike and was racing down the empty 5 a.m. road, the little red dot of light from his headlamp falling into potholes, he’d almost managed to persuade himself that it had all been a grisly hallucination. Except for the fact that the dead girl’s cold dead arms were around his waist, suddenly, and her cold dead face was pressed against his back, her damp hair coiling around his head and tapping at his mouth, burrowing down his filthy shirt.
“Don’t leave me like that again,” she said.
“No,” Miles said. “I won’t. Sorry.”