CHAPTER 1 WELCOME TO REDWOOD FUNERAL HOME
WELCOME TO REDWOOD FUNERAL HOME
There’s a dead body waiting for me at home and I’m excited to see her.
It’s not what most people look forward to when they get home after a long day at school, but for me, I know it’ll be a nice quiet afternoon of prepping our newest guest.
Guest.
Dead body. Decedent. Corpse. Cadaver.
There are lots of names for the dearly departed, but guest just sounds more professional.
I run up the front steps of my house and stick my key in the door.
“I’m home!” I call as I go in. It’s mostly silent aside from the ticking of the large grandfather clock in the front hall. “Mom! Dad!”
Silence.
I kick off my shoes and put my coat and backpack on the hook in the entryway. I hit the light switch and it clicks but the light doesn’t flicker on. I glance around. None of the lights are on—the usual hum of the fridge, the computer in my dad’s first-floor office, they’re all silent.
I peek into the first room off the main hall. The mahogany catafalque is sitting there empty. No casket perched atop it . . . ? yet.
“Mom,” I call again. “You here?” The boards creak under my feet as I step back toward the hall. “Dad?”
I catch something in the air.
“Meka,” a voice calls.
It’s less like a call and more like a whisper. It filters through the silence like a puff of smoke, there and gone in the space of a breath. I hit the light switch in the viewing room and . . . nothing.
“Meka,” a voice says again.
I step back into the main hall and stand still, listening.
“Meka.”
I have a choice to make. Run or investigate. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what I’m not gonna do. I sprint to the front door when a rush of running footsteps comes bounding down the hall behind me. I glance back.
“Caleb?” I ask, confused.
Caleb, one of my best friends, is stumbling out of my kitchen and down the hall straight toward me, a terrified expression plastered on his face.
“Girl, move!” he says as he pushes me out of the way and runs into the street.
My mom, Dad, my boyfriend Noah, and my other friend Cipriana come tumbling out of the kitchen.
“Caleb!” Noah yells. “You’re ruining the surprise!”
Noah jogs up to me and kisses me gently on the cheek. He’s wearing a black suit and his face is painted ghostly white. The hollows under his eyes are darkened with black face paint.
“Ummmm,” I say, bewildered at why he looks like a walking corpse. “Somebody wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Cipriana gives me a big hug. “Caleb is a crybaby.” She leans out the front door. “Caleb! Get your scary ass back inside!”
“Language,” my mom says as she breezes up to me.
“Sorry, Mrs. Redwood,” Cipriana says, heat rising in her face. “He’s ridiculous.”
“He’s scared,” my dad says. He hangs back near the kitchen, clearly uncomfortable with so many people being in the house. I’m still a little confused as to why everybody is here.
“We were planning a surprise for you,” Noah says.
“What kind of surprise?” I ask. “Why do you look like a zombie?”
“I’m not a zombie,” he says, laughing. “I’m dead.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “Because that makes sense.”
I stare up into his big brown eyes, and a little flutter invades my stomach. My mom goes out and guides Caleb back inside. I put my arm around him.
“Sorry,” Caleb says. “Your mom was whispering your name and we were tryna get you to come to the kitchen and she cut off the power so it would be dark but then I saw the hearse outside and I got scared and I know you got dead bodies in the freezer and—”
“Caleb,” I say, interrupting his spiral. “It’s okay. I promise. Try to breathe.”
“And why did we have to cut all the lights out anyway?” Caleb asks.
“Ambience,” Cipriana says. “And it worked. Look at yourself. A mess.”
Caleb takes a few deep breaths as he tries to calm himself down. Caleb almost never comes to my house because he’s scared to death of dead bodies—a very unfortunate thing to be when, as one of his best friends, I live in a funeral home.
“Everybody into the kitchen,” my mom says. “I got cupcakes!”
I grab Caleb by one arm and Noah takes him by the other. We steer him into the kitchen and prop him on a stool in the corner. A handmade sign hangs across the kitchen window and it reads Congrats, Meka! A paper chain of little tombstones dangles from the edge of the counter.
The kitchen counter is cleared and Noah hops up and lies back, crossing his hands over his chest like a corpse lying in state. My mom places a cupcake with a single black candle stuck in the middle on his chest.
“We’re so proud of you,” my mom says, beaming. “Make a wish and blow out the candle.”
I wish for the same thing I wish for at every birthday or when the clock says 11:11 or any other time a wish is required—that my mom stays safe and that the dream that haunts me will never come true. I blow out the candle.
I am officially Ithaca, New York’s youngest certified mortician’s assistant. At seventeen, I just received my certification and clearly, my friends and family want to celebrate. Everything is weird but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We divvy up the other cupcakes and Cipriana tries to sing a song to the tune of “Happy Birthday” but makes up some lyrics about doing makeup on the dead and Caleb almost passes out, so we stop.
My mom scrapes the icing off her cupcake, then decides to abandon the whole thing so she doesn’t get an upset stomach.
Caleb doesn’t eat at all and spends the whole time holding my hand like his life depends on it.
He is scared to death of what goes on in my house but the fact that he tries to set his feelings aside to be here to celebrate my accomplishment means a lot to me.
If I’m honest, my other friends feel the same way Caleb does, but they’re better at hiding it.
I can’t say I blame them. Death is my life and for most people, that is simply too much to handle.
Mrs. Lang lies stiff and cold on the mortuary prep table.
My mom had applied the woman’s foundation perfectly.
I’m following up by painting on a rosy-pink lip lacquer with a brush intended for an artist’s canvas.
I guess technically, I am an artist, only I’m painting dead people’s skin instead of a stretched canvas.
The lips are very delicate. They tend to flake and sometimes they’re so dry they peel back, exposing the teeth.
A thick layer of moisturizer must be applied first, and the lip stain glides on like butter.
I attach a few individual lashes. Mrs. Lang’s are sparse, and her daughter told me she loved to wear falsies because she loved that old Hollywood movie-star look.
I gently glue the hairs on and paint them with a layer of mascara before clamping them between an eyelash curler.
I dust a fine layer of blush over her cheekbones and temples.
I think she’s done. She looks good, rejuvenated even.
She’s ready for her big—and last—entrance.
“All done, Mrs. Lang,” I say. “Hope your homegoing is peaceful.”
At the foot of the prep table I slip on her shoes.
Grasping her discolored ankles, it takes a firm shove to get her feet in—this is why shoes are almost always a no-go but her family had insisted.
There is a small rustle from the head of the table.
I glance up. Mrs. Lang’s head has shifted slightly to the right.
I huff, move back to her side, and readjust her head but her lids are now slightly parted, revealing the little white eye caps covering her actual eyes.
“No peeking,” I say as I close her open lids with the tips of my fingers.
I don’t know if it’s healthy to think about death as much as I do. I can’t get away from the dead no matter how hard I try. And the thing is . . . I don’t really want to.
I’ve watched corpses get wheeled into the prep room in the basement of my house for as long as I can remember.
When I was little, I used to try and guess who was in the body bag based on how lumpy it was.
Was it a tall person? Somebody’s grandma or uncle?
A short person? A kid? The images I conjured up were always worse than the reality—dead people don’t look dead.
They don’t look like zombies, all rotting skin and tattered clothing.
Most of the time they just look empty. Those little things that make them human leave when the heart stops and the brain shuts down.
Some people call it a spark, a flame, a soul.
Whatever it is, whatever it’s called, it leaves when a person dies and it’s impossible to put back once it has departed.
It’s not all gloom and sadness, though. There are perks to this job, this life, too.
A decommissioned autopsy table makes a really great sled in the winter.
Scalpels and bone saws make excellent pumpkin carving tools and I’m never short on makeup during Halloween.
It’s all in how you look at it. That is the tale I tell myself because deep inside, I know that riding autopsy tables down snow-covered hills and carving pumpkins with bone saws is weird. And maybe that means I’m weird too.
My circle of friends is less of a circle and more like a square.
Everyone who was at the little surprise party make up the four corners—Noah, Caleb, Cip, and me.
I like it that way and besides, nobody else is fighting to be friends with a girl who spends most of her days in the company of corpses.
I’ve lost count of the number of times somebody from school spotted me pushing a body into the basement of my house while they were out for a walk or driving by.
I try to see myself through their eyes and when I’m out moving bodies with my hair wrapped up, in sweats, pimple patches on my face, I probably look scary as hell.
I’m fine with that. Hauling bodies isn’t even the strangest part of my job.