Grim, page 34
It felt like living.
Now it just feels like a paycheck.
* * *
There’s a white SUV outside our house. It’s that pearly kind of white, the kind that almost has a pinkish hue. I squint to see the driver, but the windows are tinted so dark that I can make out only a silhouette. I loathe the sorts of hunters who drive cars like this—they’re the kinds of people who hunt on game ranches where all the animals are fenced in. Dad never hunted like that. He said it wasn’t fair to kill a thing that never had a chance.
Ah—wait. It’s not a hunter at all. It’s a tall, severe-looking woman, who has features that were probably mysterious and sexy thirty years ago. Now they have the worn, grubby look of dull pencils. She makes a face when she surveys the broken shutters on our house, then picks her way around the crushed pinecones in our driveway.
I turn up the television as Dad answers the door. I’m watching another rerun of Gilligan’s Island. I used to say I hated this show (Coconuts can’t be transformed into circuit breakers, Professor), but I started watching the reruns right after graduation and never stopped, so maybe I don’t hate it, after all. Maybe I just hate coconuts.
Dad appears in the doorway, eyebrows raised. “Um...she’s here for you.”
I blink as Mary Ann straightens her pigtails.
The severe lady appears over Dad’s shoulder, her coat bright white against the cheap wood paneling in this room. I click the TV off and rise warily.
The woman looks at me, lips pressed into a forced smile. She turns to my dad. “Might we have a moment alone?”
“Sure,” Dad says, shrugging. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
“Thank you,” the lady says, though the warmth in her voice feels as fake as her hair looks. She waits till Dad walks away, till she hears him shut the door and descend into the basement.
“Um, hi. Can I help you?” I ask, extending a hand.
“Do you remember me?” she asks. “You went to school with my stepdaughter. I’m Beverly Windsor-Snow?”
Elise’s stepmother.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, dropping my hands in my jean pockets.
We stare at one another for a long time.
“Well. I...” She inhales, then drops her voice. “It’s come to my attention that you’ll be kissing my stepdaughter next Tuesday.”
I frown—she’s not supposed to have information like that, but I guess when you’re rich, you can afford to buy it. “That’s right,” I say.
Beverly nods at me, pauses, like she’s choosing her words carefully. “I’m not sure if you know this, but Elise and I never got along very well. She was a rather...difficult child.”
I exhale, almost laugh in agreement. She gives me a hard look, then moves on.
“Things got bad when her father got sick. Battling out his will made things nasty between us. She got almost everything. She doesn’t even need it, in that stupid artists’ colony she’s living in, but she refused to give me a penny. So the reason I’m here, Emmett, is I have an offer for you.”
She dips a silky hand into her purse, pulls out a thick white envelope. When she hands it to me, I see the flash of green bills straining at the flap. They’re crisp and new; I pull the mouth of the envelope apart to confirm what I already suspected. Hundred-dollar bills.
“That’s a down payment. Five thousand dollars. Finish the job and I’ll give you another twenty. Every year. For the rest of your life.”
I look up at her, eyes wide.
“What’s the job?”
Beverly steps toward me, licks her lips. “You’re supposed to kiss Elise on Tuesday. I want you to botch it. Say it didn’t work. Say you lost the talent. Say anything you want, but don’t kiss her. Don’t wake her up.”
“Twenty thousand dollars, for life?” I ask wondrously. I look at her, baffled. “To not do my job?”
“If she’s dead, I get the inheritance. And I need that money. It’s worth paying you dearly for. Surely you didn’t want to kiss dead people forever? You can go...do something. Whatever it is you want to do,” she says, tossing her hand at me. “Stuff animals with your father, I don’t know. Watch television all day. Buy new carpet,” she says, glancing dismally at our ratty floors.
“Just for not kissing her. That’s it. No strings,” I say, waiting for a catch.
“No strings,” she says. “The hippies she lives with don’t have access to her inheritance—they pooled together their pennies to hire you. So if you don’t kiss her, her week will have expired before they can get someone new. She stays dead.”
She’s right. Six days is already pushing it for a kiss. No one has ever successfully kissed someone back after seven. Elise Snow stays dead. I hand my father a check for his bills.
I leave.
I become something new. Something great, something better than a kisser who brings back the rich. Something important. Anything important.
I nod at Beverly, smash the envelope in my hand.
* * *
I thought Fourteenth Street was in the rich part of town, both because it’s Elise Snow’s address and because most of the numbered streets are lined in shiny condos. Apparently the lower numbers, however, still boast old brick warehouses with dirty windows that overlook the harbor. I squint at the address on the building, then at my slip of paper, wondering how this can be right. Elise Snow can’t live in a place like this. That’s crazy.
But it says this is 706 Fourteenth, so... I sigh, trudge to the dented metal door on the side. Knocking hurts in the cold, double so when combined with the sharp, cold breeze coming off the water. I hear shuffling inside, movement; the door swings open.
The guy is covered in tattoos, colorful ones with colors that fade in and out like watercolors instead of ink. He sighs when he sees me, grins.
“I’m here for—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says, sounding relieved. He steps aside, waves me in. “It’s him!” he calls out.
His voice bounces through the warehouse, across half walls and partitions and winding metal staircases. This place is full of mismatched furniture and wall murals of pinup girls. The guy grins at me as we hear a scurrying of feet. Other people hurry toward us from what seems like every direction. They’re covered in piercings, tattoos, splattered paint. They have feathers or beads in their hair; they have smiles on their lips.
They hug me.
I’m not really sure how to handle that. I’m really not sure how to handle liking it.
“So...” the guy who answered the door says after I’ve been hugged about eight thousand times. Everyone is staring at me eagerly. I’m used to that. I’m just not used to wanting to stare back.
“Where is she?” I ask. Remember. You’ve got a job to do. Botch it.
“Oh, sorry, of course. Through here,” a petite girl says, waving me forward.
The warehouse is a maze of rooms, studios, workshops. “What is this place?” I ask as we slide through a sculpture studio.
“It’s our house. And our workshop. And everything else.”
“A colony,” I say, remembering Beverly using the term. “Like an artists’ colony.”
“Yep,” the guy at the door says. “Something like that.”
“So...you guys make a living off your art, then? Like, you do this professionally?”
“Ah,” he says. “You don’t make a living from art. You make art from living.”
I want to punch him for that damn hippie phrase, but I find myself nodding instead.
“Here,” a girl says, stopping suddenly in front of me. She meets my eyes a long time, like she sees something there, then steps aside so I can see through the doorway of a bedroom.
And there is Elise Snow.
Dead people are never pretty—they’re made to look that way by undertakers, but really, once the life is gone, the pretty is gone, too. Elise Snow is no exception. She looks rocklike, her skin tone similar to the blank wall behind her. The wall seems odd, empty, compared to the rest of this place. I walk toward her; the others crowd into the doorway. I glance back at them—
I gasp. The back wall isn’t empty. The back wall is full.
A painting of a young Elise, dissolving into the clouds, being thrown around books and music and what looks like a schoolhouse. A picture of the crab-apple tree, of a pointy white woman I assume is Beverly. Paintings of her naked with boys, with girls, with people without faces. Color, color everywhere, images, details, so much that I can’t absorb it all—her entire life.
I didn’t know she had talent like this. I wonder when she discovered it.
I wonder when she became this Elise Snow, instead of the princess I knew. Was it sudden, like my change from normal boy to raiser of the dead? Or was it gradual?
Mom was right. Elise was misunderstood—by me at least. And she did change. So did I. She became beautiful, and I became...this.
“Will it take long?” a voice asks—I can’t tell whose.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, trying not to stare at the painting. “No, it won’t.”
It won’t take long because I’m not going to wake her. I can’t. I can’t turn down Beverly’s offer. And besides, I already used some of the down payment to keep our electric bill on.
“How did she die?” I ask. I never ask this. I usually don’t want to know. I look down at her body; her hair is dark, but it’s been colored. She has tattoos of roses covering her clavicles, disappearing into the neck of her shirt.
“Does it matter?” someone asks.
No. It doesn’t. But the shadiness in the person’s voice makes me think I was right about the drug overdose. I don’t feel as smug as I expect to. I wish someone could have helped her. I mean, someone other than me, someone who could have done more than just wake her after—
No. Not wake her. I grimace.
I reach forward, take her hand. It’s difficult—rigor has set in; she’s stiff, icy. I can feel the calluses in her palm, I guess from gripping a paintbrush.
This is just a job. How is a rich person paying me not to kiss any worse than rich people paying me to kiss? It’s all about what can be bought. About using my talent to make money. I feel a swirling in my stomach, think about what the guy said about living, about making a living. He’s just a stupid hippie druggie. You have to make money. You have to survive.
I lean forward. I position my thumb so that my lips can brush it, can stay away from Elise’s skin. They’ll never catch it from where they’re standing. They’ll think I kissed her.
It’s just a job.
I plant my lips on my own thumb, Elise’s skin thick, cold, unkissed beneath it.
It feels like I’m the dead one. All I can think of is the deer in the game ranches, the ones that are fenced in. Of my dad. It isn’t fair, killing something that doesn’t have a chance.
Elise didn’t even have a chance. Her chance was bought for twenty thousand dollars.
I rise. Turn to face them.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think she’s expired.”
A cry from the background. Their mouths drop. They quiver. Shake. They are a single creature in pain, hurt, fearful. Their eyes light upon me, fill with water.
“No, wait!”
“There has to be something else you can do!”
“Try again, just one more time!”
“Are you sure?”
“The company said six days was plenty of time!”
Their voices harmonize as I take a step toward the door, another, another, another. They need her. They miss her. These people must understand her. I wonder if they could understand me....
No. This is just a job. Just a job. Just a job.
My talent is just a job. I am just a job.
I look up. Elise Snow’s eyes rain down on me from the dozens and dozens of paintings. Blue eyes, blue like water, boring into me, asking me why.
“Please,” someone says, the guy who answered the door. He’s trembling. He’s crying. He looks broken. “Please try again. Just one more.”
I turn around, look at Elise’s body. Someone tucked her into the bed, folded the blankets neatly around her torso. Her hands were in her lap, I realize—I must have pulled one slightly astray when I took it. I wish I’d put it back.
“Please.”
I inhale. Twenty thousand dollars a year. For me, that might as well be a million. I think of the house in the woods, of not having to do this job, of getting rid of all those “Final Notice” envelopes. I think of everything money can do.
I think of all the things it can’t.
I turn, dash back to Elise’s side, slide to my knees. I brush her hair away from her face easily—it feels like feathers.
Lower my lips to hers and kiss her on the mouth, kiss her hard. Because she is not the Elise Snow that I hate. She’s the Elise Snow that I’ve never met. She’s the Elise Snow I’d like to know. That I’d like to join here in this weird warehouse. That I’d like to understand, to change with.
That I can save.
Who can save me.
I pull away, exhale. The room is silent, still, crackling.
Elise’s blue eyes flutter open.
She’s living.
We both are.
* * * * *
About the Authors
Rachel Hawkins was born in Virginia and raised in Alabama. This means she uses words like y’all and fixin’ a lot, and considers anything under 60 degrees to be borderline Arctic. Before deciding to write books about kissing and fire (and sometimes kissing while on fire), Rachel taught high school English for three years, and is still capable of teaching you The Canterbury Tales if you’re into that kind of thing. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Hex Hall series.
Jeri Smith-Ready has been writing fiction since the night she rescued a trapped fox in the wooded hills of central Maryland. The fox turned out to be a magic muse—the sparkly hat and vest should’ve tipped Jeri off—inspiring eleven published novels so far, including RT Reviewers’ Choice–winning fantasy Eyes of Crow, as well as the PRISM Award–winning Wicked Game and Shade. Her next novel, This Side of Salvation, a contemporary YA story about a boy whose parents disappear the night they believe the Rapture will happen, will be out in April 2014. Jeri lives with her husband and two cats in a house made of tea and chocolate—or so it seems sometimes. When not writing, she can be found, well, thinking about writing, or on Twitter. Find her on the web at www.jerismithready.com, or on Twitter, @jsmithready.
Malinda Lo is the author of several young-adult novels, including most recently the sci-fi duology Adaptation and Inheritance. Her first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Her novel Huntress was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog. Her website is www.malindalo.com.
Jon Skovron has been an actor, musician, lifeguard, Broadway theater ticket seller, warehouse grunt, technical writer and web developer. He has nine fingers, dislikes sweets and possesses a number of charming flaws. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and after traveling around awhile, he has settled, somewhat haphazardly, in the Washington, D.C., area, where he and his two sons can regularly be seen not fitting into the general government scene. Visit him at www.jonskovron.com.
Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture-deliverer and a layout waxer. She’s dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer, The Vespertine trilogy and Mistwalker, and the editor of Defy the Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at www.saundramitchell.com.
Ellen Hopkins is a poet and an award-winning author of ten New York Times bestselling young-adult novels in verse, plus two adult verse novels. She lives in Carson City, Nevada, where she has founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit housing and resource initiative for youth in need.
Tessa Gratton has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. She was too impatient to hunt dinosaurs, but is still searching for someone to teach her magic. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, and then settled down in Kansas with her partner, her cats and her mutant dog. She is the author of the Blood Journals series and the United States of Asgard series, both from Random House Children’s Books. Visit her at www.tessagratton.com.
Julie Kagawa, the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Fey and Blood of Eden series, was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine, she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos and frequent hurricanes. Julie now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the frequency of shark attacks are at an all-time low. She lives with her husband, two obnoxious cats, one Australian shepherd who is too smart for his own good, and the latest addition, a hyperactive papillon.
Sonia Gensler is the author of The Revenant and The Dark Between. She grew up in a small Tennessee town and spent her early adulthood collecting impractical degrees from various Midwestern universities. A former high school English teacher, Sonia now writes full-time in Oklahoma and spends her summers in England.
Shaun David Hutchinson is the author of The Deathday Letter, fml and the forthcoming The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley. He lives in South Florida with his partner and dog, and watches way too much Doctor Who.
