Then a gaspy squeak eeks out of me because all of a sudden a life-sized human skull pops up on the computer screen and it seems to be laughing at me through the ether. It’s brown and spotty with dark sockets, but what’s making it creepy is that it’s decorated. It’s wearing a little red and blue knit cap that has side flaps.
Side flaps!
For what?
Keeping the ear holes warm?
It’s also on a bed of small, unlit white candles and flowers, and on top of the knit cap is a big headdress of flowers.
But what really pushes it into Crazy Town is that there’s a burning cigarette clamped between the teeth.
I blink at the smoking skull. “Who does that?”
Hudson points to the caption below the picture and reads, “ ‘Aymara Indians revere the skulls of their relatives and believe they protect them from evil and help them attain their goals.’ ”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. They worship skulls?”
Hudson shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s worshipping so much as it is treasuring.” He clicks to another picture, this one of a big group of people carrying decorated skulls on platters and in box lids and on pillows.
And that’s when a little chill comes over me.
Not because of the skulls.
Because of what some of the men are wearing.
I point to the screen and whisper, “Zarapes!”
Hudson nods, then reads the caption. “ ‘People attend a ceremony on the Day of Skulls at a church in the General Cemetery of La Paz. Bolivians who keep close relatives’ skulls at home flock to the cemetery chapel once a year to have the craniums blessed and to bring themselves good luck in the future. These indigenous peoples believe the skulls will protect them from evil, help them achieve goals, and even work miracles.’ ” He looks up at me. “Their ancestors’ skulls are their good luck charms.”
I sort of stagger into a chair that’s to the side of his computer desk. “So you think those skulls Billy had were El Zarape’s relatives?”
Hudson nods. “I think if you exhumed Ofelia Ortega’s grave you’d find bones, but no skull.”
“But …” I shiver. “I just can’t imagine!”
He gives me a little smile. “Different cultures, Sammy, remember? If it’s what you’ve grown up with, there’s nothing strange about it.”
I think about that a minute, then ask, “But why did he have two skulls?”
“Maybe he’s reuniting his parents?”
So I think about that for a minute and shake my head. “But El Zarape isn’t old enough to be her son. Ofelia was buried fifty years ago!”
Hudson gives a little shrug. “Well, I’m sure there’s an explanation.” Then he eyes the wall clock and says, “Isn’t there someplace you’re supposed to be?”
I look at the clock.
“Holy smokes!” I say, jumping up.
I had five minutes to get to the mall.
When Casey and I meet at the mall, it’s always in the center court, somewhere near the base of the tower clock that goes up between the escalators. So it wasn’t like I didn’t know where to find him. But if I was worried before, it was nothing compared to the way I felt when I walked through the big glass mall doors.
Casey was there by the tower clock all right, but he wasn’t alone.
Heather was with him.
I almost just turned around and left. I mean, what was there to say? Maybe I’d saved our relationship from self-destruction by telling Casey the truth about calling the police on Danny, but I’d turned around and blown it to pieces by starting a rumor about his sister. Because as much as he says he can’t stand her, as much as he always sticks up for me, Heather’s his sister.
How could I have forgotten that?
So I’m about to turn around, but then I see someone marching toward Casey from the east corridor.
Someone who’s got three other angry-looking guys with him.
Danny Urbanski.
Now, I don’t like the way this is looking. And since I’ve learned that a skateboard can substitute as a weapon in a pinch, I hurry over to Casey and Heather just as Danny and his crew arrive.
Danny doesn’t look like he’s planning to share any Dippin’ Dots, if you know what I mean. His face is hard, and his eyes are angry, and there’s no doubt about it—he’s there for revenge.
Casey glances from me to Danny to Heather, and I can tell from the look on his face that this is not something he was expecting.
I have half a second to wonder if Heather set Casey up—if she found out from Billy that I was meeting Casey and decided to ambush us. But it’s Heather Danny’s eyes are locked on as he spits out, “You backstabber. You promised you wouldn’t tell.”
“I didn’t tell!” she says. “I swear, I didn’t!”
The air around us seems to vanish. It’s like a big silent whooshing ghost flying away. There’s nothing to breathe. Nothing to carry sound. Nothing to separate all of us from each other.
Movement seems to slow way down, too, while we stare at each other and hold our breath and try to process. And in this slow-motion vacuum, there’s only one thing, one thought making noise, and it’s a pounding noise, echoing through my brain.
Heather knew.
All of a sudden my head feels really light. Like it’s floating off my shoulders while the rest of me is cemented to the floor. I do hear sounds—people talking, the escalator clacking along, mall music—but it’s like they’re on the opposite side of a thick glass panel.
In a different world.
A different dimension.
I know what I have to do. There is zero doubt in my mind about what I have to do. But before I can, Casey looks from Heather to me in this slow-motion way, and before I can say, It wasn’t Heather, it was me, Casey steps between Danny and Heather and says, “It wasn’t Heather,” then he turns to look at me.
My heart suddenly feels like it’s filled with lead.
Like it can’t pump.
And doesn’t even want to try.
Through my mind flash all the reasons I’d kept my guard up for so long about Casey. Heather was his sister. Candi was his mother. They were linked.
Genetically.
Emotionally.
Eternally.
And as much as he may have wanted to, in the end he could never really choose me over his family because blood is strange, powerful stuff. And while my heart just sits like lead in my chest, Casey turns away from me to face Danny.
Here goes, I tell myself.
Then Casey says, “It was me.”
My ears go, What? and I feel completely thrown, but Heather pounces on it. “See!?” she screeches, looking at Danny and pointing at Casey. “I told you it had to be him!”
Casey looks at his sister like he can’t believe his ears, and there’s no doubt about it—he’s just been sucker punched.
In that instant the invisible barrier shatters, air comes whooshing in, and my heart gets back to work. “He did not do it!” I cry, stepping forward. “And neither did Heather.” Casey looks at me like, No! Don’t! but before he can stop me I lock eyes with Danny and say, “I did!”
After a second that seems like an eternity a voice behind me calls, “No, she didn’t, I did!” and when I turn around, there’s Holly.
“You don’t have to do that!” I whisper.
“What do I care?” she says through her teeth. “He already doesn’t like me.”
And that’s when I see Billy. And Marissa. And other kids from school. And older kids, too. Lots of them.
“What is everyone doing here?”
Holly’s looking very intense. “Word got out,” she whispers back to me.
“You?” Danny says, sneering as he moves toward Holly. “Actually, that makes sense. You probably spent a lot of time under bridges with lunatics like that.”
“Shut up!” another voice cries, and when we turn around, there’s Marissa. “And it wasn’t Holly,” she says, stepping forward. ??
?It was me!”
Danny laughs his forced, stupid laugh. “Oh, right.”
But Marissa’s eyes are on fire and for the first time in all the years I’ve known her she is not backing down. She gets right in his face and says, “You beat a guy up, you steal his stuff, you break his ribs, and then you treat us like we’ve done something wrong? You’re the jerk. You’re the criminal. You’re the lowlife! What happened to you?”
Danny just stands there like he’s been tazed. Maybe because Marissa was the one person he’s always had power over. Maybe because he can see that the spell is finally, finally broken. Or maybe it’s because what she said hit some Dippin’ Dot hidden somewhere deep inside him.
Whatever the reason, he just stands there staring at her, his mouth going up and down a little, but no words coming out.
Marissa stares him down and in a very calm, measured way she says, “I did it, Danny. Me. So whatcha gonna do about it? Break my ribs?”
Nick and Danny’s other friends have closed in, and now Nick says, “Dude, you broke his ribs?” and one of his other friends kind of snorts and says, “I wouldn’t break her ribs, man. She’s hot.”
“Shut up,” Danny says over his shoulder.
But Danny’s now got bigger problems than Marissa. There’s a guy working his way through the crowd going, “Hey, where’s the lowlife who beat up Reverend Pritchard?”
Everyone sort of moves aside, because this guy’s big. Not fat. Not even that tall. Just big.
Like he’s carrying a lot of power on his bones.
Now, while Big Boy is muscling through the crowd I notice that two security guards are running down the escalator. They’re big, too, but in a different way. And even though there’s a lot of jiggling going on around their bones, these mall cops are obviously on a mission to break up this party before the cork pops.
“Disperse! Now!” one of them shouts while the other one’s talking into his walkie-talkie. “Anyone hits anyone, I’ll see you get arrested!”
Big Boy’s in Danny’s face now, and you can see a little lightbulb go on over his head. “Hey, I know you,” he says to Danny. “You’ve got Hatter second period.”
Danny gulps, because in that one little sentence is a world of future hurt.
Big Boy nods and smiles, and as the mall cops close in he starts to put distance between him and Danny. “See you between classes, punk.”
Suddenly everyone’s putting distance between themselves and Danny. Nick & Co. are backing up like they just found out Danny’s contagious, the crowd that had gathered is breaking up, Heather’s jetting out the main doors, and our group sort of drifts toward the west corridor, leaving Danny standing alone under the clock.
When we’re far enough away, I ask Casey, “Are you mad at me?”
He shakes his head, then looks over his shoulder at the doors where Heather had escaped. “I can’t believe she threw me under the bus like that.”
I slip my hand inside his. “I think she was desperate, which was my fault.” I look up at him. “I’m really, really sorry for what I did. I was trying to protect myself but … it was just wrong.”
He takes a deep breath and says, “Look, you tried to make it right,” but what he can’t seem to shake is Heather. “She threw me under the bus!” he says, and his voice is hoarse. Like the words are heavy and hard to get out. “I was sticking up for her and she threw me under the bus!” He looks at me and it kills me to see the hurt in his eyes. “My own sister.”
And since I really don’t know what to say, I do the only thing I can think to do.
I wrap an arm around him and hold on tight.
If Heather hadn’t been Casey’s sister, and if Danny hadn’t been Casey’s and Billy’s friend and Marissa’s big crush, things might have felt different. But as the five of us walked through the mall and out a side entrance the mood was pretty dark.
Like someone had died.
We hung out for a little while on a grassy area near the winding walkway, but none of us really knew what to say, so we were just kind of glum.
And then Billy pops off with, “Man, we’re more like zombies now than we were on Halloween,” which makes us all chuckle.
“Hey,” I tell them, “that reminds me—I’ve actually got news about El Zarape.”
Everyone perks up. “You do?”
“You’re not even gonna believe it.” I look at Marissa. “And you’re going to freak out.”
Marissa crosses her arms. “You’re calling me a sissy? After what I did in there?”
I eye her. “This’ll take a different kind of guts.”
Holly squirms a little. “So … ? Tell us!”
So I start with the Day of the Dead picnic and have Casey help me explain about the families with their sugar skulls and sunflowers and Kahlúa and stuff, and then we move on to Dusty Mike and the grave of Ofelia Ortega. And then I fill them in on what I’d learned at Hudson’s about the Day of Skulls.
Now, Marissa was trying to act nonchalant when we were telling about the Day of the Dead picnic. Like, yeah, so? You ate some sugar skulls. Big deal.
But when I got to the part about digging up a grave to take out the skull, well, she couldn’t pretend anymore—she squealed, and she latched on to Billy, and cried, “Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew!” as she squirmed from bottom to top.
Even Holly was having a little trouble with it. “He dug up the grave, took out the skull, and left the rest behind?”
Billy snaps his fingers. “The Headless Horseman! You know that story, right? He’s a decapitated ghost who rides around with a flaming pumpkin head?” Billy’s so excited he starts bouncing up and down. “It was Icabob Crane. He wanted his head back!”
“But El Zarape had a head,” Holly says. “And wasn’t Ichabod the guy the Headless Horseman chased?”
Billy stops bouncing. “Whatever! Someone stole his head and he wanted it back!”
Holly gives him a puzzled look. “I thought his head got shot off with a cannonball.”
Billy heaves a sigh and gives her a pout. “Look, he wants his head back, okay?”
Holly laughs. “Okay! Agreed! Sorry.”
Now, while Billy and Holly have been talking about the Headless Horseman, Casey’s been quiet. And I figure he’s still brooding about his sister, but then he says, “It’s kinda creepy to think we were passing around the heads of El Zarape’s parents. No wonder he wanted them back.”
The jangle of Billy’s phone interrupts us. He digs it out of his jeans pocket, gives a puzzled look at the caller I.D., flips it open, and says, “Ya-lo?”
We all wait and watch as his eyes get bigger and he says, “Yes … uh-huh … all right.… Now? … Yes, sir.… Okay …” And then right before it seems like he’s going to hang up, he says, “Uh … sir? If you don’t mind my asking? How did you get my number?” Then he gives a nervous little laugh and says, “Oh, right. I forgot about that,” and gets off the phone.
We all look at him like, Well … ?
He gets up and says, “On your feet, zombies. We’ve been summoned to the parking garage.”
We all stand up and Holly asks, “By … ?”
Billy starts walking. “The police.”
To make a very long story short, Billy and I were in some major hot water at school earlier this year that revolved around Billy’s cell phone. And since the investigating cop was Officer Borsch, my brain didn’t have much trouble connecting those dots.
“That was Officer Borsch?” I asked as we followed Billy across the grass.
“He said sergeant, but yeah.”
“What’s he want?”
“He said for us to meet in the northwest corner of the south parking structure, second level.” He hesitates. “Or maybe it was the southwest corner of the north?” He shakes his head. “No. It was the northwest of the south.”
“You’re sure?” I ask him.
“Yeah.”
“But … all of us? He knows we’re with you?”
Billy nods. “He saw
us from the street. He said he didn’t think we’d appreciate him coming up to us.”
“Wait,” Holly says. “The south parking structure? Aren’t we going the wrong way?”
We all stop, think, then do a one-eighty. And as we’re marching along I remember my last conversation with Officer Borsch and an “Uh-oh” slips out of me.
Marissa looks at me. “You think we’re in trouble?”
I shake my head. “It’s not like we did anything wrong.” I rethink that a second. “Well, not really, anyway.”
“So why the uh-oh?” Marissa asks.
“Well … it probably wasn’t a good idea to call him Crisco Kid to his face.”
“Crisco Kid!” the four of them cry.
“Yeah.” I heave a sigh. “I hope this isn’t payback.”
It took us a little while to figure out which northwest corner Officer Borsch was talking about, seeing how the parking ramps wind around and around and the place does have a few nooks and crannies. Plus we got in a little argument about whether what we thought was north really was north or more east. But eventually we did spot him parked sideways across four spaces in a remote alcove near a stairwell.
He gets out of his squad car and says, “Is out here okay?”
I look around. “Like there’s any choice?”
“Well,” he says, “you could pile in.”
We all look at each other, and Billy cries, “I call shotgun!”
“Billy, no, wait!” I call after him. “There are five of us! We have backpacks and Casey and I have skateboards!”
“Just leave ’em outside!”
“Then why get inside?”
“ ’Cause it’s a paddy wagon!” He’s already by the passenger door. “Marissa!” he calls. “Share shotgun!”
“Not a good idea!” I tell him, but somehow he gets his way and we wind up making a ridiculous pile of stuff on the ground before getting into the car.
“So,” Officer Borsch says when the doors are closed, “I had a talk with that vampire of yours.”
My eyebrows go flying. “You did?”
“Yes.” He makes a tsssssk sound sucking on a tooth, then says, “I met with him at the Bosley-Moore Funeral Home and got some very interesting information.”