“You have another brother?”
“Yeah, and a sister who lives in California. She and the twins are up for a visit,” he says. “Anyway, I told my brother I’d plan this dance for his class. He’s in eighth grade. They’re having this competition with the seventh graders. There’s judges and everything, and whoever puts on the best dance wins a trip to Disney World for the class. Atticus is a huge Disney freak. He wants to be an animator. Anyway, I need people to help. We only have a couple weeks left to get it going and their class picked an eighties theme, which I know nothing about. Jackson mentioned you like the eighties, so I thought that maybe . . . .” He’s looking at me like I could give him the directions to the fountain of youth. Hopeful, naive. He’s trying to get me to join something, something that will keep me alive. Or maybe he really needs my help.
Of course Jackson told him I love the eighties. When will that boy stop interfering in my life?
When you’re dead.
“What would I have to do?”
His eyes light up and I feel it in my gut.
“Just help with the music, the decorations, the setup, maybe help find a DJ?”
“So, basically everything?”
He laughs. “Well, I’ll be helping, and Jackson and Janie offered to help too. They said something about getting volunteer hours for it. You could, too, if you want.”
I swing my feet under me, thinking about what type of decorations they would have in the eighties. Lots of pink and bright colors. Maybe there could be a booth for pictures and the kids could put on sunglasses and leg warmers.
He gives me that sidelong glance that turns my insides to mushy pea soup. “You’re already thinking about it, aren’t you?”
I am. I can’t tell if I’m happy about that. I seem to be.
He claps his hands and hops off the back of the Escalade, then holds his hand out for me.
I grab it, and smile up at him. I almost forgot what it felt like to really smile. It’s not Happy Ellery smiling either. It’s me.
“I should get you home,” he says, dragging us to the front of the car. He opens the door for me and I slip in.
“When’s the dance?” I ask, buckling my seat belt.
He starts the car. “Oh, huh. Halloween,” he says with a tone that says he’s thinking about the deadline he gave me. It must be a full moon on that day or something. There’s way too many events that fall on that date for there not to be some cosmic meeting or a planet in retrograde or some bullshit.
It doesn’t matter.
Only one thing is happening on Halloween.
21
16 Days
Mom used to take Tate and me to the train tracks when we were mad. We would wait until a train went by and then she would tell us to scream like you wanted God to hear you in heaven. It’s not as cold as yesterday, but there’s a chill in the air that makes me want to sit by a fire, not in the middle of the woods waiting for a train to pass by.
“I thought you were kidding when you said to meet you at the tracks,” Dean says from behind me.
“Then why’d you come?”
He sits down beside me on the tracks. “I was curious.”
The cold air rustles the sleeve of my coat. I pull my arms deeper inside. “Make sure to get close enough to feel the wind from the train. Do you know what you’re going to yell?”
“I can think of a few things, but this isn’t really what I thought you meant,” he says, standing up and moving beside the tracks. I glance down the abyss of train tracks and see faint lights before the tracks begin to rumble under me.
“Just try it,” I say.
It would be so easy to jump in front of it. Or even just stay where I am and let it run over me.
“Come on, Ellery. Get up,” he says as the train moves closer.
I stand up and slide into the middle of the tracks, the gravel kicking up from my shoes. So much should be going through my head, but I search for memories and scenes and find emptiness.
“Ellery, I’m serious. I don’t want to see you die.”
At his voice, a memory finally slips into the vast emptiness of my mind—the day my dad left.
? ? ?
“Fine. Go!” Mom yells, pacing in the living room while my dad lugs his bags to the front near the door.
I’d try to avoid their conversation, but I can’t get up from the couch. My leg is in a cast and my arm’s in a sling. I’m a shell—empty and vast. It doesn’t even feel like I’m here anymore. I try to breathe but the air gets stuck in my throat. Anger doesn’t build in me anymore. It lies dormant, with every other emotion.
My dad slams his suitcases on the floor. “I can’t live in this crypt anymore.”
“Our daughter died, what did you expect around here? A party?” Mom says.
“I can’t be here anymore.”
“You still have another daughter and she needs our help. Dr. Lamboni—”
“That quack will never get us back to normal.”
“Can’t we talk about this?” she asks with sympathetic eyes, wringing her fingers through a towel.