14
I didn’t bring it up the first day.
Or the second.
Or the third.
It was tricky, holding my metaphorical tongue, but I wanted to establish myself a little better in Nicola’s house first. For her to become comfortable with my presence—or as comfortable as anyone with a haunted doll for a housemate could be—before I started asking for any favors.
The fourth and fifth days were easy. They blurred by in a blink before I managed to grapple the time stream back under control.
The sixth day was spent in recovery, lying in a heap on the floor, mumbling out apologies every time Nicola had to step over me.
Finally, seven days after I’d been moved from the shed to the home, while we were sitting on the sofa, watching The Walking Dead again, I brought it up, as casually as I could.
So . . . do you know where Kyle is?
Nicola’s eyes flicked toward me, steady and unblinking. It was the careful, calculating sort of look people give flimsy bridges and large, unrestrained animals. Risk assessment in progress. Analysis complete. Danger level: critical.
Is he still in town? I pressed.
She put her microwave meal aside.
Still running the family business?
“I think we need to talk.”
Figures. His genius tech start-up wasn’t worth the mouth it came out of. Where is he?
“It doesn’t matter.”
Unless he’s in the cemetery, it matters.
“You can’t murder him.”
You’re right, I agreed, the thought crisp and clear in my mind. It’s not murder if he did it first.
“Lu.”
He killed me.
“That doesn’t matter.”
To shit it doesn’t. Putting down a rabid dog isn’t murder. It’s just what needs to be done. Killing Kyle isn’t murder, it’s just taking out the trash.
Nicola raked a hand through her hair. It stuck up at odd angles, a halo of spiky brown.
Where does he live? I pressed. Is it still in his parents’ house? The basement, I bet.
“No. He doesn’t live with them anymore.”
Where?
“He’s got a house,” she said. “But, Lu, I need you to know I believe you. I know he’s a monster. I want answers as well as you do. But—”
I don’t give a shit about answers. I want him dead.
“Yeah. OK. Valid. I just . . . You still haven’t told me how you’re going to make that happen. How are you going to kill him?”
I’ll figure out a way.
“Sure. OK. You’re tiny and very breakable. You know that, right?”
I’m a vengeful spirit who can control time.
“I’ve been watching you control time. You suck at it, no offense.”
Don’t underestimate me. I’m more powerful than—
“You sound like a baddie. I don’t mean that in the complimentary way. You sound like the villain in a ’90s kids’ TV show.”
I leaned into it. With our combined strength we will destr—
“And that’s where the issue is,” she said. “You want my help.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“I understand your feelings about Kyle—”
Piece-of-shit murdering fuck.
“—are justifiably extreme. But I can’t help you kill someone, even someone like him. You know that, right? You’re a doll. The laws might not apply to you, but I’ll go to prison.”
People get away with murder all the time. He did. We’ll find a way. It’ll be easy.
“Look,” she said, and picked up the remote, stopping The Walking Dead mid-monologue. There had been a lot of monologues these last few episodes. I was starting to wonder where the zombies were. “I want to help you. I do. But I think you’re thinking about this wrong. Do you know where your body is?”
You want to go to the police, I said, jumping ahead in the conversation.
“I’m just saying. DNA lasts a long time, right? Was his DNA on you?”
I thought about my nails, scratching bloody red lines into his forearms. I don’t know what he did with my body.
“What about the murder weapon? There must be some evidence we can—”
His hands. He used his hands.
That silenced her for a moment, her cheeks losing color and her shoulders twitching.
It won’t work, I said. The police will never believe you. What are you going to tell them? You can speak to ghosts through your hearing aid? They’ll lock you up in the mental health ward.
“Not if we find something the police missed. A witness. A piece of evidence. A clue.”
A clue! A clue! I sang out, high and mocking, my doll body twitching with rage. Oh boy! Why, oh why, didn’t I think of it before? We’ll put on our thinking caps, solve the case, and then everything will be OK again. I’ll come back to life and Kyle will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“I’m serious,” she said.
So am I. I don’t care about the police. I don’t care about clues. He needs to die. That’s the only way to make any of this better. The only way.
“Lu,” she said softly. “Please. I know this isn’t what you wanted, but think about it for a second, OK?”
I didn’t need to think about it. I knew what I wanted.
I wanted Kyle to feel what I felt when my world went dark.
I wanted him to scream and beg and for it to mean nothing in the end.
I wanted him to die. I wanted that with a desperation that I’d never felt before, a wildness that felt as dangerous as it was powerful.
Nothing less than that would matter. Not to me.
“You’re the one witness the police never spoke to,” Nicola said, oh so gently, oh so calmly. “You know more about this than anyone. Let’s at least retrace your steps.”
You’ve watched too much shitty TV. You think there’s something I’ve missed.
“RACHE” written in red. But there isn’t.
There isn’t. There’s nothing. Just . . .
I looked down at my arms, one porcelain, the other wood.
I’d never thought much about my arms when I was alive.
They were arms, not so very different from anyone else’s.
Long and fleshy with hair, veins, muscles, and scars.
. . . me. There’s just me. I’m all there is.
“I know. But that’s just it, Lu. You’re here. You defied death to be here. I know you don’t think you know anything, but maybe you do. Maybe, by talking through it all, we’ll figure something out, something that’ll bring him down.”
I didn’t want to do it. I hated that she wanted me to do it. I hated her for wanting me to do it. But I also knew that I couldn’t kill Kyle without her help. I needed her. And if talking through my last, boring day alive was what it took . . .
Fine, I snapped. You want to play Nancy Drew? Fine. You won’t find anything.
“Thank you,” she said, already standing. “I’ll be right back.” She rushed out the door. She reemerged a moment later with a small handheld whiteboard with a magnetic marker.
Where’d you get that?
“I picked this up at Trash N’ Treasure yesterday.”
That made me even angrier. She’d been planning this, probably from the moment she’d decided I wasn’t a hallucination.
She thought she was going to save the day, the right way, the heroic way.
The way it’d be saved in a movie, or storybook.
Bad guy behind bars, dead girl in the ground, everything tied up in a nice, neat bow.
“Can you tell me where you went the day you died?”
I woke up, I said, my thoughts flat and toothy. And went to the library.
“That’s it?”
That’s it.
She wrote LIBERARY on the whiteboard, marker squeaking. I didn’t mention the extra E, which made me feel petty, but whatever. “Did anyone see you? What were you doing there?”
Studying.
“You studied at the library?”
We didn’t have home internet, just mobile data. The library has free Wi-Fi, free air-conditioning.
“How long were you there?”
Not long. I only had some paperwork stuff left to do. I finished it, printed my certificate, then left.
“You printed your certificate?”
Yeah. So?
“Nothing. I just thought—”
It wasn’t a degree, I told her, unable to hide my bitterness. It wasn’t anything fancy. Just this online vocational-training thing. The certificate auto-generated when I finished the last bit of coursework.
“You didn’t say anything at Gin—”
I didn’t want to. It doesn’t matter. After the library, I went home and got changed for Ginger’s party. My grandma was there, but I didn’t talk to her. She was on the phone to Auntie Dawn.
Nicola hesitated a moment before writing HOME on the whiteboard.
Did the police do this? I asked eventually. Did they make a timeline? Did they talk to you?
“They didn’t talk to me,” Nicola said. “But I remember Ginger said she was interviewed twice, so yeah, I figure they must’ve retraced your steps.”
So what’s the point of this?
“You were the last to arrive at the party,” she muttered. “I remember that.” She wrote G’S TEA PARTY. “The last to arrive, the first to leave.”
I went home, I said.
She wrote HOME on the whiteboard again. “Why’d you leave so quickly? Did something happen?”
No. Nothing happened. I just . . . It doesn’t matter.
“It might matter.”
No. It doesn’t. You were all just so beautiful and impressive and . . . and I’d already had a bad day. I went home, and my grandma wasn’t there, but I was upset, I wanted to talk, so I phoned Krissy.
“You phoned Krissy,” Nicola repeated slowly.
Yeah. But Kyle answered and I talked to him for a bit. I know that was stupid but—
“That wasn’t stupid, Lu.”
I told him Grandma was away, I continued, ignoring her. I told him that I was alone. Jesus fucking Christ. Why did I do that? I told him. I told him. I . . .
Nicola watched me, waited. “Where’d he kill you?” she asked quietly.
He came over. I didn’t invite him, but he came over anyway.
Slowly, she circled the last HOME on the whiteboard.
I hugged my bent, jumbled legs to my chest and stared at the frozen frame of The Walking Dead.
I didn’t know the name of the character on the screen, but I was pretty sure he was going to be eaten by a zombie soon.
He had that doomed vibe, his unresolved issues resolving, his dialogue hopeful and happy, his close-up shots drawing in extra tight.
“Maybe someone remembers something,” Nicola said after a while. “Did you scream? Perhaps the neighbors heard something. Maybe one of them can help us.”