I nodded.
“Very tragic about your friend,” she said. “You were there…when it happened?”
I nodded again. She was watching me, her eyes burning.
Then I realized that her question was about more than whether I’d been there. There was something else she wanted to know.
I looked at her and saw that she was just a broken woman, alone and afraid.
She’d lost everything. I couldn’t let her lose Suzette too. Maybe I should have—but I couldn’t.
“It was…painless,” I said. “Very peaceful.”
She managed a quivering smile and then looked away, and I knew my lie hadn’t totally convinced her. “Go on, then. I have a whole life to put into boxes.”
THE DAY OF THE funeral, it was ninety degrees in the shade. Mourners showed up in black tank tops and miniskirts.
Kasey and I stood alone under a tree, at the back of the crowd.
Mr. and Mrs. Small clutched each other at the edge of the grave site. Mrs. Small kept leaning like she was going to fall on top of the coffin. She’d probably been drinking, not that you could blame her.
Megan wasn’t there. She hadn’t even come back to school. She was grounded from talking on the phone, e-mail, texting, or any other form of human contact. She’d been enrolled at Sacred Heart Academy by Tuesday morning. Her grandmother had been threatening it for years.
There was no cheerleading squad at Sacred Heart, which was just as well, because I’d destroyed what was left of Megan’s knee. Mrs. Wiley told me so just before she hung up on me.
I watched Carter approach from the road, wearing a short-sleeved gray shirt and black pants.
We hadn’t seen each other at all since the night Lydia died. I was amazed that so much time had passed. There had just been other things to take care of.
He nodded to Kasey, who nodded back.
“Um…I’m going to go say hi to Adrienne,” Kasey said, limping away. Adrienne, cane in hand, stood by her mother’s wheelchair on the paved road at the edge of the lawn.
When she was gone, I turned to Carter. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. You?”
“Fine.”
We looked over the throngs of students. In death, Lydia was popular. Apparently a lot of people found her funny. Who knew? I’d never thought about it that way.
“It’s so weird,” I said. “Like half the people here, she was trying to kill.”
He shook his head. “She didn’t mean it,” he said. “The real Lydia.”
“Ha,” I said.
“Underneath all her attitude, she was just sad, Lex.” He gazed at the yellow-rose-covered casket.
I detected the dig and turned to him. “How can you defend her?”
Carter turned to me. “It wasn’t all her fault.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “She set up the whole thing. She planned all of it. She pretended that she didn’t mean to kill Tashi, but she knew all along that was what she was going to do. How is that not her fault?”
“Never mind.” He shrugged. “This is tough for you. I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Tell me,” I said. “I can take it.”
Carter stuck his hands in his pockets. “You knew better than to let something like this happen again.”
“Let?” I asked. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yes, let,” he said. “Why didn’t you ask for help as soon as you found out what was really happening?”
“And tell me,” I said, “who would I have asked?”
He stared. “Uh, me, maybe?”
“Oh, right.”
“See? You wouldn’t even consider it.”
“Because it’s a ridiculous idea!” I stared up at him. “If something happened to you—if you got hurt—”
“Or not me, I don’t care. Your parents? Anyone, Lex.”
“That’s not even fair.”
“It would never occur to you not to shut everyone out. You never for one second trusted me. Do you even know how to trust?”
I couldn’t tell if his words made me angry or sad, but tears tried to spring to my eyes. I forced them back and stared into the distance, willing myself to stay in control.
“I could have done something,” he said. “But you had to do it all alone.”
I lowered my voice. “I’m sorry, Carter.…I was trying to protect you.”
Carter’s hand came haltingly toward my face. His fingers ran up my cheek and touched the edge of my lips.
“Don’t you get it?” he asked. “Every time you try to protect me, you end up breaking my heart.”
I looked up at him, and before I knew what was happening, we were kissing again, urgently, terribly, like a pair of war-torn lovers about to leave for opposing armies.
“Carter…” I whispered.
“I need some time, Lex,” he said, taking a half step away. “I haven’t been feeling like myself lately, and…I have to figure some stuff out.”
I broke away and shaded my eyes. When I looked up again, he was gone.
A few leaves fluttered to the ground where he’d been standing.
Kasey came back to me, her face dewy with sweat. She linked her arm through mine. “Are you okay?”
My boyfriend needed “time.” My best friend was locked away from me. My parents would never trust me again. For all I knew, Aralt was still inside me somehow, still infecting me.
And Lydia was dead.
I didn’t even know what “okay” meant anymore.
At least I had my sister.
I rested my head on her shoulder, and we watched the service for a few minutes. The casket was painstakingly lowered into the ground, and a slow procession formed as people walked past the grave and dropped roses down on top of the coffin. Kasey and I ended up in line, and then suddenly we were looking down into the hole, at the earthen walls covered by a thin green cloth. A smell like a rainy summer day wafted up toward us.
Kasey tossed her rose, and then I went to let go of mine.
Something hit the back of my knee, making it buckle underneath me. If Kasey hadn’t been holding on to my arm, I would have fallen into the grave.
The people around me gasped, and Mrs. Small let out a fresh burst of choking sobs.
I practically hurled my rose into the hole, managing to pierce my thumb on the nub of a single thorn that the florist hadn’t lopped off.
“Come on,” Kasey whispered, tugging at my arm.
But before I moved, I glanced past Mrs. Small, off into the distance, where the older gravestones, gray with moss and mildew, dotted the hill.
And I stopped.
And stared.
At Lydia.
She stood under a tree, her body almost solid but somehow hazy, like a distant road on a hot day. She was probably a hundred feet away, but I could feel her eyes burning into mine across the distance, feel her anger like a thunderstorm gathering on the horizon.
“She needs to move on,” someone behind me in line said, and I looked at them bewilderedly until I realized that they meant me, that I needed to move on so the rest of the line could pay their tributes and then get into their air-conditioned cars and go home.
I ignored the murmurs and stared up the hill for a long minute.
Suddenly Lydia’s figure shook, and then she was rushing down the hill, toward the crowd of mourners, toward all of us. She disappeared among the people around me, and I cried out like a car was hurtling at me.
But she never emerged.
Then Kasey’s grip on my arm got firmer, and I looked down into her eyes, to see if there was a flash of recognition.
Nothing.
I was the only one who’d seen anything.
“Let’s go, Lexi,” Kasey said.
My body limp, I let her lead me back toward the car.
Mom was there waiting for us, wiping her eyes with her fingers and staring into the cloudless sky. Kasey climbed into the backseat, and I went around to open my door.
On th
e pavement in my path was a single yellow rose. I bent down and picked it up, once again stabbing my thumb on the nub of a single thorn.
“Those poor parents. This is so awful,” Mom said, sniffling back tears. “Thank God it’s over.”
As we drove out of the cemetery, I searched the hillside where Lydia had been standing.
She was gone.
But it wasn’t over.
Katie Alender, From Bad to Cursed
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