Not Quite Dead Yet, page 7
Billy doubled back, five, then six steps, then he charged at the door, shoulder first.
The wood splintered and the door crashed in, Billy rolling in after it, leaving it wide and gaping.
“Jet! No, no, no! Can you hear me?! Jet!”
The video ended, cutting out his screams.
The next was fifteen minutes later, the paramedics arriving, spiraling red lights on the ambulance. Jet dragged the cursor, speeding through it. She’d watched this one most. One cop car, then two, black and white and red and blue. Jack Finney, removing his hat and holding it over his heart, the chief of police tripping on the front step as he hurried inside.
Fast-forward.
The paramedics coming out again, squeaky wheels as they rolled a stretcher onto the drive.
Jet on top of it, some kind of orange brace around her broken head.
A lifeless arm falling as they turned, finger trailing in the dirt.
“I’m going with her!” Billy screamed, and Jet mouthed his lines with him, memorized after the sixth time. He reemerged, coming out different too. His white-and-brown-check shirt stained red instead, his own glistening handprint over his chest, a smear under one eye. “She can’t be alone!” they said together: Billy yelling, Jet whispering. “I’m coming too! So is the dog! No, no, Dad. I’m not leaving him. Jet wouldn’t want that!”
Jet smiled sadly, pressing pause, freezing them all in that moment of chaos.
She turned to her notebook, wrote: DNA probably fucked from the rescue, so many people in and out.
Jet shifted, and so did Reggie, the empty chocolate packet crinkling under her elbow.
“Enough,” Jet told herself. If she knew it off by heart, then she knew it too well, had watched it too many times. Watching wouldn’t undo it, wouldn’t bring her back to life, and she had a job to do.
There were other motion alerts, earlier that day. Probably nothing important, but Jet thought she should check them at least; it all happened on the day she was murdered.
One at 8:33 p.m.—when they were out at the fair. Jet settled back and pressed play.
Five dark figures. Misshapen and inhuman. Teenagers. Three witches, a werewolf, and a skeleton, ambling up the drive, elbowing each other and giggling.
“Look at the size of this fucking house!” the skeleton said, exposed jaw dropping open.
“It’s the Masons’ house,” a witch said, switching her broom to the other hand. “My mom doesn’t like them. Says they flaunt it.”
Jet snorted. The witch wasn’t wrong.
“How do you afford a house like this?” said Skeleton. “Is he a cartel leader or something?”
“Stop watching Ozark, James, it’s becoming your entire personality. And no. He tears down houses and builds giant new ones, like this. Mom thinks it’s ugly.”
Jet liked this one.
It was as though the girl had heard the thought, through time and through the lens. She turned, staring strangely right at Jet.
“Dave, what are y—”
It appeared faster than Jet could blink, filling the entire screen.
Empty black eyes. A warped white plastic face.
Jet jumped, recoiled from the screen, head slamming into the backboard of her bed.
A searing jolt of pain in her skull.
“Fuck you,” Jet hissed at the screen, at the image of Ghostface from Scream, smirking into the camera.
“Trick-or-treat, bitches,” the boy said, rattly and deep, enjoying himself too much. He must have hidden behind his friends, snuck around to jump-scare the camera. Little prick.
“They’re not in,” Sassy Witch replied, as Ghostface moved back, clearing the view. “Look, it says take one.”
The werewolf picked up the bucket and upturned it, emptying the entire thing into his open tote bag. “What?” he sniffed. “I think they can probably afford it.”
“They have a doorbell camera looking right at us, you idiot!”
They all turned to look at the camera, at Jet, sheepish and ghoulish.
“Run!” Skeleton yelled, laughing as they all bolted back down the drive and into the night, Werewolf howling at the invisible moon.
“Fuckers,” Jet said as the video ended. “I wanted some of that.”
A video twenty-two minutes before that, Jet leaving the house for the fair, one hour and eleven minutes after she’d promised Mom she would, calling “Bye!” to Reggie.
3:42 p.m.—Jet driving home, parking her truck, returning after a walk with Reggie. It had been a long one, around Billings Park, and again, because she’d been thinking about that app idea.
3:29 p.m. Sophia leaving the house, baby Cameron balanced on her hip, walking back to her blue Range Rover parked where Jet’s truck normally lived. Must have been on her way out after dropping those Halloween cookies off, leaving them on the kitchen counter with a little note: Love, Sophia xx.
3:24 p.m.—Five minutes before that, a blue Range Rover pulled up into the drive. Sophia emerged, getting baby Cameron from the backseat, holding him against her chest as she approached the door, pulling out a set of keys.
Wait a minute.
Jet paused the video, rewound it. Blinked and watched again.
Where was the plate of cookies? Sophia wasn’t carrying anything other than the baby. So, where the fuck had those cookies come from? She went in and four minutes later she came out, no cookies in either video.
Jet reached for her pen, scribbled: Cookies???
2:21 p.m.—What?! It was Sophia again, leaving the house for the second time—no, the first time actually, because Jet was watching this all in reverse. What was she doing? She’d come to the house two separate times on Friday, just over an hour apart. Why? And where were those damn cookies?
2:14 p.m. The hulking blue Range Rover pulled up again. Sophia stepped out, went to the backseat. Picked Cameron up, resting him on her hip. Reached in for something else, holding it in one hand. Ah. The plate of cookies, bats and pumpkins sliding around as she tried to balance everything and get the door open.
“Cameron, don’t fidget,” she said, flustered.
Cookie mystery solved, then. Because if Jet had been murdered over some fucking magic Halloween cookies, she would have been furious. Still, why did Sophia come back an hour after dropping them off? Did she forget the note, thought it was important enough to come back? Jet didn’t know—she didn’t understand how Sophia’s mind worked anymore.
1:59 p.m.—Jet leaving for her walk, hoisting Reggie up into the cab of her truck, shutting the door as he yipped in excitement.
12:00 p.m.—Mom and Dad leaving on the dot, literally, to go help with the setup for the fair.
“You got the sign?” Mom said, walking out, hands full of plastic bags.
Dad grunted, struggling with it.
“Scott, honestly,” she tutted. “We need to take you to the doctor. You’re getting worse.”
“I’m fine.”
And that was it. No other motion detected on Halloween, the day she’d died. And no sign of the killer hanging around before.
Jet looked over at her notebook. Crossed out the Cookies??? Nothing. A camera out front recording everyone who came and went, and it had given her nothing.
Jet sighed, blew out her lips. Reggie didn’t like the sound, grumbling to tell her so.
She’d have to sleep too, wouldn’t she? But sleeping felt like a waste of time, and she didn’t have time to waste.
On the Ring dashboard, Jet clicked out of History into the live image the camera was recording now, right now. The nighttime driveway. Jet’s powder-blue truck out of place against all that darkness, lit only by a sickly orange tinge from the porch lights. Nothing moved except the wind in the leaves.
Time ticked by, but the world didn’t show it, not from this view.
Past midnight and into a new day. The next day. One day closer to dying.
Dying.
She shouldn’t think about that.
She couldn’t help it.
Would they come for her again, the killer? To finish her off?
Jet studied the live footage, searched every corner for a sign.
Why bother?
Time and that little bone fragment would finish her off for them.
Her curse, their gift.
Her eyes felt strange, a ghostly sheen, like there was another layer she had to see through now. It was probably from staring at the screen too hard. Probably just tired.
Jet hesitated.
Brought up a new tab.
Google.
Symptoms of a brain aneurysm, she typed.
Pressed enter.
The page of results loaded.
“No, don’t.”
Jet slammed the lid, shoved her laptop away.
She didn’t want to see that.
Her eyes were just tired, that was all.
Jet shuffled down, pulling the comforter up to her chin. She wanted to stare at the ceiling, to search for answers there, but there was too much pain to put any pressure on the back of her head, on her Frankenstein skull. She pressed the right side of her head into the pillow. She never slept this way, ever, facing her bathroom door instead of her window. But it was the only way that didn’t hurt.
Jet forced her eyes shut, because if they were tired, she must have been too.
Wouldn’t open them. Lay there and waited for sleep.
Not counting sheep. Counting the hours she had left before she died, moving on to the minutes.
Monday
November 3
Seven
“What’s all this?”
Jet rubbed her eyes, following the noise of dinging plates and low voices, into the dining room.
Luke and Sophia were here, sitting at the table, Cameron’s high chair tucked in at the end. Something green and swampish wiped around the baby’s mouth.
Mom was serving from a platter of scrambled eggs, bacon on every plate except Dad’s. Too much sodium.
“Finally,” Luke said, glancing up at her. “You’re awake.” Like he was annoyed about it somehow.
Not as annoyed as Jet. Couldn’t sleep for hours, worried about running out of time, then slept in till eleven, forgot to set an alarm. Didn’t forget, actually. Didn’t have her phone.
Her parents could have woken her. Actually, it was very out of character that Mom hadn’t.
“What are you doing here?” Jet asked her brother.
“Come sit down, Jet,” Mom said, handing out pieces of toast. “I asked them over, thought we could have a nice family breakfast.” Emphasis on the nice.
“Jet, hi,” Sophia said, a tremble in her bottom lip. “I’m just…just so sorry…”
“Why?” Jet pulled out a chair. “The eggs aren’t that bad, are they?”
The last thing she wanted right now was a family breakfast, for people to ask stupid questions, like whether she was OK or whether she’d slept well.
“Did you sleep well?” Sophia asked.
“Like the dead.” Jet took a bite of buttered toast.
Dad picked up his coffee, inhaled it, hiding his face in the oversized mug.
Luke shoveled eggs into his face, picking up a piece of crispy bacon with his fingers, taking a bite. The crunch of the bacon, not a world away from the crunch of a human skull.
“Luke, slow down,” Mom told him, like he was a teenager again.
“Gotta get to work,” he spoke through his mouthful.
Mom banged her elbows on the table, put her fingers by her temples. “You can be here for your sister, Luke,” she said, suddenly tearful.
Luke slowed down.
Paused to pick up his knife too. That’s when Jet noticed it, the graze on his knuckles, both of them actually. Freshly scabbed, the surface cracking when he tightened his grip on the cutlery.
“What happened to your hands?” Jet asked him.
Luke coughed. Banged his chest until the eggs went down.
“Sorry, wrong way.” He held his hands in front of him, fingers outstretched, flexing. “Oh, this? I was visiting one of our sites on Friday morning. Tripped over one of the foundation trenches, banged them up a little, catching myself. Just a scrape, it’s nothing.”
“I hope you were wearing a hard hat, if you were on site?” Dad said, the mug echoing his voice back.
“ ’Course,” Luke answered. “I know what I’m doing, Dad.”
Dad tried to smile. “So, you won’t be falling in any trenches again?”
Luke chewed his cheek.
Sophia piped up now, resting a hand on Luke’s back. “I think it’s going to be Mason Homes’ best project yet.”
“Mason Construction,” Dad corrected her.
Sophia’s cheeks reddened and Luke shrugged off her hand.
“No, I know,” she said, speaking across the table to her father-in-law. “But Luke’s been thinking, he might change the name, wh-when he takes over. Thinks it sounds more, well, homey.”
Dad had another sip of coffee, finished it with a shrug. “It’s been called ‘Construction’ for forty years, since I set it up. Don’t think there’s anything wrong with the name.”
There wasn’t any meanness in his voice—Dad didn’t know how to do mean—but the color drained from Sophia’s face.
“No, of course there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I gotta pee,” Luke said, chair scraping as he pushed back from the table, disappearing into the hall. Jet was the one dying, and yet somehow Luke had managed to make it all about him. He was good at that.
“Sophia,” Jet said now, trapping her with her eyes. “I wanted to ask you something, about Halloween.”
“Sure.” She still looked pale.
“You came over to the house when we were out. Twice.” Leaving the question between the lines.
Sophia nodded, too many nods, cartoon-quick. “Yeah, to drop off those cookies I baked. Don’t know if you saw them, pumpkins and bats.”
“Saw them,” she said. “Ate two of them, before…”
“Oh,” Sophia said.
“They were fine. A little dry.” Jet straightened in her chair. “But you came over twice. First to drop the cookies, and then again an hour later.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. The doorbell camera recorded you. I can show you the video if you don’t—”
“—Oh, sorry,” Sophia laughed, too much breath behind it. “I remember now. I left my phone here. Thought it was in my pocket, but I must have put it down somewhere. Came back to get it when I realized.”
Jet’s turn to nod. That made sense, the phone thing. But she was enjoying watching Sophia squirm; she was normally so rigid. She didn’t use to be like this, when they were teenagers. Sometimes Sophia had even been the funny one. “Which room did you leave it in?”
“The kitchen.” Sophia was ready with the answer. “Got baby brain at the moment, don’t I, hun?” She looked up at Luke, who was back in the room.
“Huh?” He wasn’t listening.
“Jet was just telling us about the doorbell camera footage, from that night.”
Luke glanced across the table, locked onto Jet’s eyes. “Does it show what time it happened? When exactly it…”
“Not exactly,” she replied. “But my Apple Watch told us. 10:46 p.m. That’s when someone whacked me over the head.” Jet spread jelly over a second piece of toast. “Say, Luke, where were you at 10:46 p.m. on October thirty-first?”
“You joking?” he laughed.
“Kinda.” Jet shrugged. “But, actually, I do want to know. I need to know where everyone was. And if you don’t answer, then everyone’s going to think you murdered your own sister.” She showed him the inside of her mouth: the sticky, munched-up toast.
“Jet.” Mom pressed her temples harder.
Luke threw a corner of bacon at Jet, and the baby squealed in delight.
“I was at home, like I told the cops,” he said, half sullen, half smiling. “Me and Sophia got home around 10:15 and put Cameron to bed. Then we watched some TV.”
“Which show?” Jet asked, eating the small bacon projectile that had landed in her lap.
“Friends,” Luke said. “Sophia loves Friends.”
“Then we went to bed,” Sophia added, wiping the green goo from Cameron’s face.
“So you two were together all night?” Jet pointed her fork at them. “And, Mom and Dad, you were together, driving stuff from the fair back to storage at the MC offices?” She clapped her hands. “Well, it looks like you all have alibis, then.” Jet turned to the baby, accused him with her knife. “Cameron, what about you?”
He blew a bubble.
“Don’t we know who it is already, Jet?” Dad said, dragging his fork through his untouched eggs. “They’ve just got to find him.”
“Who?” Luke demanded.
“JJ.”
Luke turned to Jet. “It was JJ?” The rage undisguised in his voice, or in his fists, gripping the table too hard.
“No, we don’t know,” Jet said. “He’s just skipped town, won’t answer his phone.”
“And the text,” Dad said. “The Sorry text.”
“I’ll kill him.” Luke slammed one hand on the table, making the cutlery jump and the baby flinch.
“Luke, please,” Sophia said. “Not in front of Cam.”
“No one is killing anybody,” Mom said, voice rising, taking charge. “I don’t know why we’re talking about any of this, wasting time. You all know why you’re here.”
Did they? Jet looked around at her family. Why were they here?
“Jet.” Mom twisted in her chair, knees pointed this way, her voice soft and hard at the same time. “It’s our last chance. Dr. Lee said it would be too late once the aneurysm forms. If we want to save you, we need to take you back to the hospital now, right now. This morning. Right now. Please. The whole family agrees.”
