Chapter 3

I imagined the whole thing.

That's what I told myself the next morning after a night without sleep. I didn't see dead Sarah at the funeral. It was just the wind outside my window last night. I repeated this to myself like a ticker tape running across the bottom of my TV screen.

The rest of yesterday was real. The heaviness pinching my lungs proved it.

Just to make some kind of noise in the eerie stillness, I bounced out of bed to hear the box springs protest in short, loud squeaks. Then I made my bed, which was something I never did. Darby and I would have to help Dad pick his jaw up off the floor when he saw my completed masterpiece.

On my way to the refrigerator, I found Darby sitting at the kitchen table. She just sat there with her elbows on a placemat, hands tucked under her chin, staring into space.

Trying to ignore her, I reached over all the casserole dishes and chocolate desserts we might never eat, grabbed a can of breakfast, and popped the top. Carbonated greatness fizzed down my throat and helped revive me.

I burped and turned to Darby. "What are you doing?"

"Were you jumping on your bed?"

"No." I took another drink. "What are you doing?"

"Today's Saturday."

"So?"

Darby looked down at the table. "Mom makes pancakes on Saturdays."

"Well, Mom's..." I took another sip to swallow my sharp tone. "Pancakes can't be that hard, right?"

"I don't think so. I sometimes watched her make them," Darby said, a tiny smile turning up the corners of her mouth. Her smile was contagious. I'd missed it these last few days.

Our second bunch of pancakes turned a pretty golden brown, though they didn't look as perfect as Mom's. They didn't smell perfect either since our burnt first batch still clouded the kitchen.

"Breakfast is ready!" Darby called.

Dad came into the kitchen, his eyes blood-shot and weary, and we sat at the table. I drenched my pancakes with syrup, but my first forkful left me disappointed. They tasted heavy like they had a depressed weight hanging inside them.

Dad nodded while he chewed. "Professional pancake preparers."

"You like them?" Darby asked through a mouthful.

Dad grinned and tugged Darby's ponytail. It was an actual grin with teeth, and I wanted him to keep it there forever.

"I did something that no other fifteen-year-old has ever done in this house. We should mark today on the calendar and celebrate every year with a parade and cake," I said.

His grin faded into nothingness as his gaze slid to Mom's empty chair and back again. "What did you do?" He chased a piece of pancake around with his fork through the pools of syrup on his plate, but didn't take another bite.

I made my voice all low for dramatic effect. "I made my bed."

"It sounded like she was jumping on it," Darby said.

I looked down my nose at her. She was ruining my moment. "What are you? A gravity enforcer?"

Darby frowned and continued to chew.

"Well, good," Dad said, pushing his plate away. "Maybe you can clean up the rest of your room, too."

That was it? No commemorative joke?

"Maybe," I said and stabbed at a pancake.

"You're still dressed in yesterday's clothes, Leigh," Dad said.

I looked down at my rumpled black funeral dress and shoved my plate away. It knocked over the syrup bottle.

"I'll go change," I mumbled and stomped to my room. I'm not sure who I was mad at, but anger bubbled up through the pancakes and rested at the back of my throat.

My dress was halfway off before I made it to my room. I wadded it up and flung it at Mom's guitar. After I changed into skinny jeans and a black, long sleeved shirt flecked with poison-green biohazard symbols, the doorbell rang.

"Leigh, can you get that?" Dad called from the kitchen.

I sighed and trudged to the door. It better not be another Krapper resident who wanted to force a casserole or quivering gelatin salad on us to make us feel better. How could people think food would help? Who came up with that tradition? Here's some food for you, now everything will be all better. Bullshit.

I was tackled with a bear hug as soon as I opened the door.

Jo released me and asked, "How are you?" Her brown eyes were too full of concern, too full of every emotion she ever felt, and I had to look away.

"Okay."

"I wanted to call you yesterday after the funeral, but I didn't know..."

"Did you tap on my window last night?" My voice came out squeaky.

"No." Jo frowned. "Why? Someone did?"

I shook my head, forcing myself to chill. "I must've been between awake and asleep and imagined it."

"Oh," Jo said and took a breath. "Do you want to do something? Or no. Whatever you want to do is fine. I just came by to see if you're okay."

The clank of pans and running water sounded from the kitchen.

"I can do something. Hang on," I said and shut the door in Jo's face.

She hardly ever came inside. The no shoes rule freaked her out. She always said she would have to decontaminate herself and shroud herself in bubble wrap to come in.

"I'm leaving, Dad," I hollered once I'd found my boots in my room.

He didn't answer, but I figured it wasn't a great mystery where he could find me.

As soon as I shut the front door, I darted a glance along the side of my single-story house where my bedroom was, the last window on the end. The rain had soaked the grass to a deep green, and leaves rustled on the large tree in the yard. My grief really had made me hallucinate the day before. Sarah hadn't woken up and dripped black death everywhere. I squeezed the heels of my boots against my palm with relief and let the sweet, clean air wash the smell of burnt pancakes from my nose.

Jo kneeled on the porch and cradled one of Mom's lilacs that grew on either side. The wind fanned her long, gauzy skirt behind her, covering her hairy legs. She said she wouldn't shave them until Miguel from Spanish class asked her out.

I jammed my feet into my boots, aware that she was staring at me again. "I wish you'd stop looking at me like that."

"Sorry," she said and shifted her attention to a stray thread on her skirt. "Do you want me to poke my eyes out for you?"

I helped her up. "Yes."

She laughed, and it reminded me of Mom's, light and bubbly. My heart clenched while we walked from my house. I could turn back, but I had to leave the house sometime. Besides, the walls there didn't vibrate with life anymore.

"So what do you want to do?" Jo asked as she leaped over a puddle on the sidewalk.

"I don't know." How many times had we asked that question of each other? Our options were so severely limited in Krapper that it might have been funny if it weren't so depressing.

"I won't drag you around with my petition today," Jo said. "Unless you want me to."

She was rallying the town for a recycling center since some of Krapper's clever dwellers used their own lawns as landfills. She wished they would push their garbage just a bit further to the curb and maybe even separate the plastics from the magazines.

"I'm not really in the mood for pissy people who can only sign their name with an X. And it looks like it's going to rain. Again." Just as the words were out of my mouth, the sky boomed a warning.

"That's okay. The petition's almost filled anyway. Hey, I know what we can do," she said, clapping her hands together as we neared her house. "My parents are at their restaurant, so we can steal Cal's car and go to Whaty-Whats."

I scraped the bottoms of my boots along the sidewalk to get the mud off. "Cool."

My still-muddy boots and I entered Jo's house and stepped on the carpet. The Monroes didn't care as much about a spotless house as us Baxtons. Maybe that's why it was dark in here. Thick curtains covered every window so no one could see the dirty home, but the lack of light couldn't mask the smell of sweaty feet and the nearby sink full of crusty dishes.

"Cal's probably still asleep, but even if he isn't, he's such a zombie, he won't even know his car keys are missing," Jo said and skipped down the stairs into a black void. The nothingness at the bottom of the stairs swallowed her up into a mouth that couldn't close.

At the thought of zombies and open mouths, my heart picked up its rhythm.

Should I tell Jo what I thought I saw after Mom's funeral and what I imagined I heard outside my window? We never kept secrets from each other, so even asking myself this made me feel like I was betraying her somehow. She was the last person who would try to wrestle me into a straitjacket, but since I only imagined it, why should I say anything?