CHAPTER NINE
“Wake up, sleepy head,” Ada’s chipper voice cut into my dreams. My dreams where I was fal ing and fal ing through a red inferno, giant wood bugs crawling up the side of my mind.
I groaned and tried not to move as the events from last night snapped into place. I knew I was hungover as shit and if I opened my eyes and moved a muscle, I was going to pay for it dearly.
“Go away,” I slurred, unable to say anything more.
“It’s a beautiful day outside,” she responded, ignoring me. I could hear her walking over to the window and opening it. “Ahhh, smel that air. Spring is on its way.”
Why was she so chipper? Usual y Ada was a goddess of grump in the mornings.
I felt her sit down on the bed and I bobbed up and down on the mattress. I moaned again and threw my arm over my face. The air coming in did smel cool and inviting but it wasn’t enough to clear the cobwebs.
“What did you do last night? You stink.”
I ignored her and attempted to go back to sleep, feeling my brain getting sucked into the dark weightlessness.
Before I could, she grabbed my arm and lifted it up, forcing the light into my face. I winced.
“I said go away,” I repeated, dragging out the words into a whine.
“Do you have to work today?”
Pause.
“Fuck.” I total y forgot about that.
I opened my eyes careful y as the stabs of light entered.
It real y was a beautiful day out, but al I could see at that moment was blankness, like I was standing in the middle of the sun.
Then I saw Ada on my bed, holding my phone out, like she knew exactly what was going on. She was wearing a kel y green dress and her hair was tied into a knot at the very top of her head. She looked like a clear-eyed forest nymph. I felt a pang of envy.
I took the phone, muttering “thanks,” and dialed the shop’s number. I didn’t have enough time to get scared or nervous because Shay snapped it up on the first ring.
“Don’t worry about it, Perry,” she explained to me after I apologized profusely for not being there. “We’ve just taken you off the schedule until you get better. You just rest up and sort yourself out.”
I hung up the phone feeling worse rather than better. I hadn’t been let go or fired but this was al too familiar. This was how I almost lost my last job (before, you know, I screwed myself over on purpose). My employers had been worrying about me because I was seeing Old Roddy in my bedroom. Now it was different ghost, same problem. Was this doomed to repeat itself throughout my whole life? Was I never, ever going to escape the dead? I wished I knew what they real y wanted with me.
“It’s because you’re one of them,” Ada said.
I jumped at her voice, forgetting not only that she was in the same room as me but sitting next to me, a foot away.
“Pardon me?” I asked her as my heart quickened.
She rol ed her eyes. “I said you’re one of them. I asked why your slacker coffee shop was so understanding and I answered it’s because you’re one of them. You’re a slacker. They need your kind there. I’m just talking to myself real y, since you don’t ever seem to hear a word I’m saying.
Ever.”
That wasn’t true. Not entirely.
“How was last night?” I asked, gingerly sitting up in my bed. I rubbed at my temples as the room spun. I think someone had replaced my mattress with a water bed.
“Do you actual y care to know?” she asked snidely.
I peered at her with one eye. It hurt less than with two.
“Yes, don’t be so emo.”
I could tel she was going to come up with a retort about me being emo, but she swal owed it. It was always a matter of who cal ed the other one that first.
“OK, if you care to know, we broke up.”
I managed to open the other eye so I could study her face better. Her chin was lifted defiantly. She looked confident. “Are you OK?”
She nodded. “Never felt better.”
“So you know you did the right thing, then. How did he take it?”
She giggled, then broke into a huge grin. “He had the nerve to throw it in my face of how long he had waited and now he wasn’t ever going to get any.”
“What a fucking douchecanoe,” I said, wanting to punch Layton’s lights out.
“Total fucking douchecanoe,” she reinstated. “That’s how I total y knew I made the right choice. He was so angry, his face went al , like, red and he was babbling crap and tel ing me I’l never be anything...”
I let out an angry laugh. “That’s rich, coming from some dil hole whose biggest accomplishment wil be to get his head crushed in by some lame col ege footbal team.”
“If he’s lucky,” she said, tracing her finger along the pattern on my quilt. “But then I told him it must burn to be dumped by someone like me then. And then I left. Wel , I gave him the finger. And then I left.”
Even though it hurt my head to do so, I leaned forward and gave Ada a quick hug.
“I’m proud of you,” I blurted out, feeling strangely emotional.
She snorted. “That’s cuz you’re lame.” But I could tel it made her happy, as lame as I was.
“Hey, listen - ”
I was interrupted by a piercing, terrible scream from downstairs.
Our mother’s scream.