Dead Boy Read online

  Melody. She’d come after all.

  “Sorry I’m late. I think one of my neighbors has been spying on me, so I had to wait until she went to bed.”

  “That’s okay,” Crow said.

  They sat down on the ground. The backyard had no chairs or benches. Just lots and lots of pebbles. Crow wished he could offer something more comfortable, something that would make Melody want to stay, but short of dragging the sofa outside, there was nothing.

  “I start school next week,” Melody said. “I went there today, just to meet the principal and get my schedule.”

  “Oh. I…I bet you’ll like it.”

  “I hope so. Have you ever been to Blaze Middle School?”

  Crow shook his head. He’d attended Blaze Elementary, back when he was younger and still alive, but he’d never set foot in the town’s middle school. He imagined it often, though. He pictured bright classrooms with smiling teachers. The students worked on group projects. They ate lunch together and played games after school. No one was ever alone. “You’ll probably make lots of friends.”

  “Maybe.” She got really quiet for a moment. Crow was about to ask what was wrong, but then she jumped up. “Let’s play a game.”

  “Okay. What do you want to play?” Crow hoped it wouldn’t be a word game. He played them all the time with his mother, and although he liked them well enough, they got boring after a while.

  She hesitated. “Well, it’s not exactly a game, but we could try to tell ghost stories. A dark night like this is the perfect time. I hear if you tell them while staring into a mirror, you might see a ghost.”

  “I don’t know.” Staring into a mirror was the last thing he wanted to do. Besides, the only scary story Crow could think of at the moment was his own, and sharing that didn’t strike him as a good idea.

  Melody nodded glumly. “Yeah, the kids in my old town thought it was lame, too.”

  “It’s not lame. I just don’t have a mirror.”

  “Okay, what about truth or dare?”

  Crow shook his head. He had too many secrets for that.

  “Do you have any video games or anything? Something you could bring out here?”

  “No.” He played games on his computer, but he couldn’t bring that outside. He had a few board games, but most of them were word games, and anyway, he didn’t want to risk going back inside. When it came to entertaining friends, he was totally unprepared. “Sorry.”

  Melody hesitated. “Well, it’s a little silly with only two people, but sometimes I play charades with my cousins when they visit.”

  “That sounds fun. I’ll go first. The category is books.” He held up a finger to show that the title was one word. Then he lay down on the ground, got up, and started walking around with his arms extended in front of him.

  “I have no idea, but, um, one word, so The Borrowers? The Hobbit? Wait, are you counting the as a word? Um, Jumanji?”

  Crow motioned like he was screwing bolts into his neck.

  “Frankenstein!”

  “Yeah.” Crow laughed. “I don’t think the bolts were in the book, though. I don’t remember them.”

  “You’ve actually read it? That’s so cool. Okay, it’s my turn.” She held up seven fingers. Then she crouched on the ground and opened her mouth in a silent roar.

  “Seven words. A bear. A tiger. A lion.”

  Melody gave the last guess a thumbs-up. Next, she drew a triangle in the air and pretended to put the triangle on her head.

  “A hat. A witch’s hat. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!”

  They played a few more rounds before Melody said she had to go home.

  “Will you come back tomorrow night?” Crow asked.

  “As long as I can sneak out again.”

  —

  The next night, Melody arrived shortly after midnight. Crow opened the gate for her, but she had already climbed halfway up the fence.

  “My dad thinks I’m sick because I took a nap today, and I normally only do that when I have the flu. Maybe I can convince him that I can’t start school for a while.” She jumped down, nearly tumbling over but regaining her balance at the last second. “What about you? You’re actually sick. Aren’t you tired?”

  Crow shook his head. “I don’t sleep.”

  “Everyone sleeps. Even fairies and vampires.”

  But not whatever dead thing Crow was. He decided to change the subject. “Does your mom live with you? You haven’t mentioned her, and I didn’t see her when you were moving in.”

  Melody’s face fell. “She had to, uh, she was—she’s not here.”

  “Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s okay. I mean, it happened a long time ago. My mom disappeared when I was seven.”

  Crow sat down on the ground, and Melody sat next to him. “My dad doesn’t live with me, either. He visits sometimes, but it’s not the same. It stinks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it stinks. I miss her a lot.”

  “I miss my dad, too,” Crow said, wishing he’d picked a cheerier subject. “Hey, let’s play charades again.”

  “You really like that game? The kids in my old town thought stuff like that was childish. They made fun of me a lot.”

  Crow shrugged. Before he’d died, he’d had lots of friends, and hardly anybody ever teased him. These days, though, he never played with kids his own age. He had no idea what was cool anymore. “It’s fun. We can do something else if you want.”

  “I brought these.” Melody pulled four small balls out of her pocket. They were rubber and glowed faintly green in the dark. “I’m learning how to juggle.”

  She juggled the balls, all four of them. After a while, she dropped one—on purpose, Crow thought—and juggled the other three in one hand.

  Crow smiled. It reminded him of a show he’d seen with his parents years ago, before everything—his own body included—fell apart. “That’s cool.”

  “Want to try?” Without waiting for an answer, Melody threw him three of the balls, one at a time.

  Crow barely managed to catch them, and they fell out of his stiff fingers as soon as he made an attempt to juggle.

  “I couldn’t do it at first, either.” Melody took another ball out of her pocket. This one was squishy and didn’t glow in the dark. “I’m learning magic, too. None of it is actual magic. They’re just tricks. But I figure I’ll come across something real if I keep looking, right?”

  “I guess.”

  Through a series of quick movements, Melody made the squishy ball disappear and reappear in her hands. There wasn’t much light, just what spilled over from the street lamps, but Crow saw enough to be impressed.

  “What’s that behind your ear?” She laughed. “Cheesy, I know, but it’s a classic.”

  Before he could stop her, she reached behind his ear. When she retrieved the squishy ball, she took a clump of his hair with it. “Oh! I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay.” Crow glanced back at his house. Melody had made a lot of noise, and his mother might have heard. “It happens.”

  “Oh. Really? What did you say you were sick with?”

  “Generalized necrosis.” It was just a term he’d come up with, but it seemed pretty accurate.

  Melody dropped the clump of hair on the ground and wiped her hands on her pants. “You should rest, I guess, even if you can’t sleep.”

  “Yeah. Um, are you going to come back tomorrow?” He thought he might have scared her off.

  “Of course. This is fun. I mean, not the hair part. Sorry about that. But you want me to come back, don’t you? Am I bothering you? A lot of people say I bother them.” She looked at the hair on the ground.

  “Yes. I mean, no. No, you’re not bothering me. Yes, I want you to come back.” Other than the impossible wish of being alive again, he’d never wanted anything more.

  —

  Melody came back the next night, and the night after that. She showed him more magic tricks, a
nd even taught him to juggle a little, and Crow found a deck of cards for them to play with. Mostly, though, they just talked.

  “Your mom really makes you write ten-page reports?” Melody asked, right after he’d told her about the report he was doing on whether dinosaurs were endothermic or ectothermic, which he had to explain meant warm-blooded or cold-blooded. “And I thought regular school was bad.”

  “Regular school is much better. The reports aren’t too bad, though, not when I get to pick the topics.” His mother usually let him, as long as he challenged himself enough.

  “Yeah, I’d write a report about Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. There’s a lot of evidence about them, but people keep trying to cover it up.”

  “You’re really into magic and monsters and stuff, aren’t you?” He wondered what she’d think if she learned the truth about him. Probably nothing good. Make-believe monsters were a lot easier to handle than real ones.

  “Well, I told you that my mom disappeared.” She hesitated. “Don’t make fun of me, but I think it was because of magic. She always used to tell me stories about fairy queens and vampires and stuff, but I didn’t believe any of it until one day—poof—she was gone. Just like that. I think she must have been involved in some sort of dangerous magical business, and the stories were supposed to be warnings. I mean, she wouldn’t have just left, no matter what my dad says, so something strange had to have happened. And maybe if I learn enough about magic, I can figure out what happened, and I can bring her back. Hey—what’s that in your ear?”

  Before Crow could stop her, she reached out a hand and touched the maggot squirming around his lobe. A short shriek escaped her lips. She jerked her hand away, hitting his ear in the process and knocking it loose from his head.

  Crow grabbed his ear from the ground. “I…uh…I…”

  “Wh-why aren’t you bleeding?”

  He didn’t answer. His ear had just fallen off. No way would Melody want to be friends now. Nothing he could say or do would change that.

  “I think I know what your secret is,” she said. “You’re dead.”

  Crow stayed silent. He’d had a friend for a few days. Really, that was more than he could have hoped for.

  “You don’t breathe. At first, I thought I was just imagining it—my dad says I imagine lots of things—but now I don’t think so. You don’t sleep, either. You said so yourself. Your hair falls out, your ear falls off, you smell, and I’m pretty sure that thing I just touched was a maggot. I looked up that disease you said you had. Generalized necrosis. The dictionary said necrosis means death. That’s what’s wrong with you, isn’t it? You’re dead.”

  Crow nodded, and another maggot crawled out of the hole where his ear had been. This time, he didn’t bother trying to hide it. What would have been the point?

  “But—how?”

  “Does it matter?” Crow asked. He just wanted to go back inside and forget about this.

  “Of course it matters. It’s magic, isn’t it?” She waited for Crow to say something, but he kept quiet. “I knew it! I knew magic was real! It has to be. Otherwise…otherwise…otherwise there are some things in this world that just couldn’t be explained.” She moved closer to get a better look at Crow, her head tilting from side to side as she attempted to view every angle of his dead form. “Does it hurt?”

  He shrugged. At first, it had, but his nerves had rotted with the rest of him, and now he hardly felt anything. “Not really.”

  “Are you going to eat my brains?” She was looking at the maggot, now crawling down Crow’s neck.

  “No! I don’t eat anything. Definitely not brains.”

  “Are you going to bite me? To make me one of you?”

  “No. I told you. It’s not contagious.” He looked down at his hands, at the yellowed fingernails his mother had glued back on. “Listen, I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore. It’s okay.”

  “Of course I want to be friends. I’m having more fun with you than I’ve had with anyone since…well, since my mom disappeared.” Her smile faltered, but just for a second. “Besides, the only thing better than having a secret friend you have to sneak out to see is having a secret friend with a secret. It is a secret, isn’t it?”

  Crow nodded, too surprised to say anything. She really still wanted to be friends?

  Melody stood. “I have to go, but I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  Mrs. Darlingson held her son’s ear in her hand. “How did it fall off?”

  “What?” Crow asked, even though he’d heard the question just fine; his ear continued to work even when it wasn’t attached to the rest of his body. This was information best kept to himself, he decided.

  “The ear!” Mrs. Darlingson yelled. “How did it fall off?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know. It just did.”

  She nodded slowly, worry creasing her brow. Then, steeling herself, she took the ear and pressed it against her son’s head. Up and down, left and right, she made small adjustments until it was in just the right spot. “You’ll have to hold it while I sew.”

  Crow clutched the ear, careful not to move it. Lopsided ears just wouldn’t do, not now that he had a friend. Which reminded him—he’d have to order a few more boxes of spray-on deodorant. Maybe he could get some new clothes, too. His were getting too small for him. He hadn’t minded before, but now that Melody would be seeing him every night, a pair of pants that actually fit seemed in order.

  He didn’t understand why he kept growing every year. Frankenstein’s monster hadn’t done that. He would have asked his mother, but she didn’t like to talk about these sorts of things.

  Mrs. Darlingson picked up a needle, already threaded with surgical suture. She made small, tight stitches all around the ear. When she had finished, she tugged on the ear to make sure it didn’t come loose.

  “How does that feel?” she asked.

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Can you hear anything with it?”

  He nodded. “I can hear fine. Good as new.”

  She tousled the few clumps of hair left on his head. “Do you want to start with Chinese history or American literature today?”

  —

  That afternoon, Mrs. Darlingson had to leave the house to run her weekly errands. Crow went up to his room to work on an essay about Chinese mythology. At least, that was what he told his mother. Really, he just wanted to be near his window so he could watch Melody coming home from her first day of school.

  The bus pulled up to the sidewalk. Five children got off: Melody, two other girls, and two boys. Even from this distance, Crow could see that the girls were cute and the boys were tall. He could also see that, unlike himself, they were very much alive.

  He recognized them, too. Most of them, anyway. Although it seemed like ages ago, it really hadn’t been all that long since he’d been among them, a normal kid getting off the bus after a normal day at school.

  The two girls were Grace and Hannah. Crow had to think for a moment before he could remember who was who. When he’d been in school, it had always been Grace and Hannah, never just Grace, never just Hannah. The two of them might as well have been conjoined twins—cute, flawless ones.

  Grace was the one with brown hair. She had been in a few local commercials for dental care, and she was always bragging about it. Hannah had blond hair, and she claimed some sort of connection to European royalty. Crow wasn’t sure whether she was lying or not.

  One of the boys was Luke. Crow had been in the school play and the spelling bee with him, though they had never been friends. Luke hadn’t seemed to like Crow much, although Crow never could figure out why. Everyone else had liked Crow just fine. Whatever the reason, it made little difference now.

  Crow didn’t know the name of the other boy. He’d first appeared on the neighborhood sidewalks about a year ago, when his family must have moved into a house just a block or two away. When it wasn’t too hot, he could be seen riding his bike, skateboarding, or annoying pigeons wi
th Luke. Crow thought it looked fun—except for the bird-harassment part.

  Melody waved good-bye to Grace, Hannah, Luke, and the other boy before skipping to her house.

  She did not wave at Crow.

  It didn’t matter, Crow told himself. He couldn’t expect her to wave at him every time she went outside. Except a wave wasn’t all that difficult, was it? And she had waved to her new schoolmates. Her new friends.

  Being Melody’s best friend felt like a competition. Crow had gotten a head start, but he was already starting to lag behind. How was he supposed to compete with the living?

  —

  That night, the stars seemed especially bright. Crow quizzed himself on the constellations while waiting for Melody to arrive.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The fence creaked. Melody’s head peeked over the wood panels. Every dead cell in Crow’s body urged him to jump up, to run to greet her, but he forced himself to stay where he was, lying down on the ground. He didn’t want to look too eager.

  “Hey, Crow.” She lay down next to him.

  “Hey, Melody.” He knew he should ask her about her first day of school. It was the obvious question. The polite question. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask it. What if she’d had a wonderful time—so wonderful she didn’t want to waste her nights with a dead boy anymore? What if all the fun had exhausted her and now she just wanted to go home and sleep?

  “Are you ever allowed outside?” she asked. “Or do you always have to sneak out like this?”

  “I always have to sneak. Except on Halloween. My mom lets me go trick-or-treating.”

  “That’s great! We can go together!”

  Crow smiled. “I’d like that.”

  “It’s not right, though,” she added. “You should be able to go outside. Meet other people. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a life.”

  Crow didn’t say anything. He knew his mother was only trying to protect him, but he did get awfully bored. It wasn’t like meeting people was much of an option, though. Melody might not care about the maggots, but most people would. Few people would put up with the stench.

  Even his parents had to dab scented oil under their noses. They thought he didn’t notice, but he did.