Anna Dressed in Blood

“You’re … alive.” The way she chokes on the phrase speaks of how strange she feels to be saying it. Her eyes move up and down my body, like she expects me to be oozing blood or have a bone exposed. “How?”

I nod to Thomas, who is skulking to my right. “Thomas pulled me out.”

Carmel spares him a glance and a smile. She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t hug me, like I sort of thought she might. The fact that she doesn’t makes me like her more for some reason.

“Where’s Will? And Chase?” I ask. I don’t ask whether anyone else knows. It’s obvious by the demeanor of the halls, the way that everyone is walking around chattering like normal, that nobody else does. But we still need to settle things. Get our stories straight.

“I don’t know. I don’t see them until lunch. I’m not sure how many classes they’ll be going to anyway.” She looks down. She’s getting the urge to talk about Mike. To say something that she feels like she should say, like she’s sorry, or how he wasn’t really all that bad and didn’t deserve what happened to him. She’s biting her lip.

“We need to talk to them. All together. Find them at lunch and tell them I’m alive. Where can we meet?”

She doesn’t answer right away, fidgeting around. Come on, Carmel, don’t disappoint me.

“I’ll bring them to the football field. Nobody will be using it.”

I nod quickly and she walks off, glancing back once like she’s making sure that I’m still there, that I’m real and she hasn’t gone crazy. I notice that Thomas is staring after her like a very sad, loyal hound dog.

“Dude,” I say, and head off toward the gym, to go through it out to the football field. “Now’s not the time.” Behind me I hear him mutter that it’s always the time. I let myself smirk for a minute before wondering what I’m going to do to keep Will and Chase on a leash.

CHAPTER NINE

When Will and Chase get to the football field, they find Thomas and me sacked out on the bleachers, staring at the sky. The day is sunny, mellow, and warm. Mother Nature does not mourn for Mike Andover. The light feels fantastic on my throbbing head.

“Jesus,” one of them says, and then there are a whole lot of expletives that don’t bear repeating. The tirade finally ends with, “He really is alive.”

“No thanks to you dicks.” I sit up. Thomas sits up too, but stays slightly hunched. These jerks have kicked him around one too many times.

“Hey,” Will snaps. “We didn’t do anything to you, understand?”

“Keep your f**king mouth shut,” Chase adds, pointing a finger at me. For a minute I don’t know what to say. I hadn’t thought that they would be coming to try to keep me quiet.

I brush off the knee of my jeans. There’s a bit of dust on them from where I leaned against the underside of the bleacher. “You guys didn’t try to do anything to me,” I say honestly. “You brought me to a house because you wanted to freak me out. You didn’t know that your friend would wind up getting torn in half and disemboweled.” That was cruel. I admit it. Chase goes immediately pale. Mike’s last moments are playing behind his eyes. For a second, I soften, but then my throbbing head reminds me that they tried to kill me.

Standing beside them but down a bleacher, Carmel hugs herself and looks away. Maybe I shouldn’t be so angry. But what, is she kidding me? Of course I should be. I’m not happy about what happened to Mike. I never would have let it happen if they hadn’t rendered me useless with a board to the head.

“What should we tell people about Mike?” Carmel asks. “There are going to be questions. Everyone saw him leave the party with us.”

“We can’t tell them the truth,” Will says ruefully.

“What is the truth?” Carmel asks. “What happened in that house? Am I really supposed to believe that Mike was murdered by a ghost? Cas—”

I meet her eyes levelly. “I saw it.”

“I saw it too,” Chase adds, looking like he might throw up.

Carmel shakes her head. “It’s not real. Cas is alive. Mike is too. This is all just some messed-up prank that you all cooked up to get back at me for breaking up with him.”

“Don’t be so self-obsessed,” Will says. “I saw her arms reach through the window. I saw her pull him in. I heard someone scream. And then I saw Mike’s silhouette split in two.” He looks at me. “So what was it? What was living in that house?”