The Sweet Dead Life by Joy Preble
“I can’t be,” I heard Casey say.
“But you are,” said the voice that sounded like Amber. “Get used to it.”
Wait. Was she actually in there with him? No way. But her voice definitely didn’t sound like it was coming though his crap computer speakers. My head spun, and not from not-Ebola. I was too confused. My brother was not what one would define as a chick magnet. He hadn’t even wanted a girlfriend since Lanie dumped him. (As if he’d had a choice! He was practically my legal guardian, except for the legal part.) Plus let’s face it, Casey found it acceptable to wear a shirt with a Hostess Twinkie on it. He did not have middle-of-the-night visits from older women with gainful employment and an EMT uniform. Unless said women came to sell him weed. Right. That had to be it.
My heart pounded. I figured I’d give them fair warning.
“Casey.” I rapped sharply on the door. “What’s all that racket?”
The noise stopped abruptly, like turning off a faucet. The light went dark. I opened the door to Casey’s room.
He was sprawled on his back in his bed. Asleep. Alone. I tiptoed around the room a few times to make sure.
I shook my brother awake. “Was your computer on?” I asked him.
“You must have been dreaming,” Casey said. “Do you need me to help you back to your room?”
This wasn’t worth answering. I slammed his door behind me, stomped into the bathroom, peed loudly, flushed twice, and stomped back to my room.
The universe had spit out something. And no, it was not my not-Ebola and my runaway father and incapacitated mother. I had no clue what it was. At least not yet.
I am not usually a list girl. But I needed to organize all the weirdness. Maybe if I put it in categories, it really would make sense—like an algebra problem or one of those optical illusions—like the one where if you look at it one way it’s a lady sitting at a mirror and if you squint just right, it’s a skull.
So: categories. They had to help.
1) Amber’s email:
Normally I don’t read my brother’s email. I have enough disturbing stuff in my world. But when I woke up again and heard Casey in the shower, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to poke around his room while he was otherwise occupied—and risk touching a laptop still in dire need of disinfectant. That’s when I found this:
Email from Amber Velasco, Nosy, Annoying, Possibly Weeddealing Paramedic
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Re: Your sister …
Just checking on your sister. I don’t usually do this, but … I snagged your email from the hospital report. I hope you don’t mind. If you need anything or have any questions, feel free to call me. And if you want to talk face-to-face, I tend the bar on Saturday and Sunday nights—sometimes also Wednesdays—at Mario’s Grille. Just come on in. I’ll be looking for you.
∼Amber Velasco, EMT.
I’ll be looking for you.
Really, Amber? Subtle. She wasn’t asking Casey to meet her. She was telling him. So he must have owed her money, or something. At least she had sort of asked about me. Conclusion: Maybe she wasn’t an entirely evil weed dealer. People can be all sorts of things. Just look at the Samuels family.
2) My brother’s outfit and Dave’s Grandma’s car:
After I nosed around Casey’s laptop, I hiked downstairs to check on my mother. She was wearing the same pair of sweats but had now changed into a Green Lantern T-shirt Casey had outgrown. She seemed only vaguely aware that I had had some kind of seizure in her presence yesterday. Even foggier was the memory that she had called BJ’s hysterical and looking for my brother, or that she had even taken a taxi to the hospital.
I got her to eat some toast and take a vitamin. I figured it would be pointless to show her the hospital bill that would now be added to the mountain-sized pile of things we hadn’t paid. Then I trudged back upstairs, just as my brother strutted out of his room.
He was wearing clean jeans and an unwrinkled, collared khaki shirt. Strutted might not be the best description. Hip-swaggered probably covered it more accurately. Where had he gotten this shirt? Who had ironed his jeans? Why was he walking like that? I decided to stick with something he might actually answer.
“How are we getting to school?”
“No worries.” Casey waved his hand, shooing my concern like he’d shoo a fly. “I talked to Dave. Mamaw Nell is loaning us her Mercury for awhile.”
Mamaw Nell was Dave’s grandmother. She was eighty-two, weighed about one hundred and five pounds soaking wet, chain-smoked Pall Malls, and had a voice that sounded like metal dragging across gravel. Dave had lived in the spare bedroom of her patio home since his parents kicked him out of the house last year. Either Mamaw Nell was a saint or she had a greater tolerance for Dave’s pharmaceutical activities than the generation between them. I had never quite decided.
Casey looked both uncomfortable and smug. Was such a combo even possible? Maybe it was more like embarrassed at his wonderful new self-confidence. I’d be embarrassed if I were him, maybe just on general principle. He rubbed his neck and fiddled with his collar. A horn blasted on our driveway. Dave and the Mercury had arrived.
Mom had already retreated to her room. The muffled sounds of The Price is Right echoed from behind her door.
Outside our house sat a copper-colored car the size of a small boat. The Prius, had it not been at Lonnie’s Body Shop on Rayford Road receiving its last rites, would have beeped its uninspired little horn in awe. Also, the Prius would have called Dave an asshat for bashing its sad little self into the Jack in the Box menu in the first place.
We climbed inside. Dave let me ride shotgun. The car smelled like margaritas and mothballs. Mamaw Nell—Dave told us by way of explanation when I gagged and threatened to upchuck on the front seat—made frequent trips with her bunko group to the gambling boat on Lake Charles to play the nickel slots.
“Doesn’t your grandma need her car?” I asked, trying to speak and hold my breath at the same time. Dave’s ancient Corolla, I knew, was finally out of the shop. Why hadn’t he just given us a ride?
“Yeah, well, it was freaky, if you want to know the truth,” Dave said with a stoned chuckle. He slumped back in the seat cushion, one hand lazily on the wheel. “I was in the bathroom when my cell phone rang. When I came out, there she was, talking to your brother and offering him her car.” He turned to Casey. “What all were you saying to her, anyway? After you hung up she was going on and on about how, like, amazing and polite you are. And I was like, ‘Do you know him, Mamaw?’ Anyway, here it is. She says y’all can keep it as long you need to.”
I figured my brother would question this gift. Casey had his problems, but even he knew that Dave was a pot-smoking loser who frequently manipulated the truth to suit his better interests. He’d even attempted to teach me to roll joints one night, even though I didn’t smoke the stuff, causing my brother to blacken Dave’s left eye.
“You know what?” Casey reached over from the backseat and put his hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Why don’t you let me drive?”
“Better driver than you,” Dave drawled.
But he slammed to a stop when Casey squeezed his shoulder again.
“Damn,” Dave said. “What the hell? You been working out or something?”
“Something,” my brother said.
Dave let Casey drive the rest of the way to Ima Hogg. Yes, I know this should have made me nervous. But it didn’t.
One more thing: Mamaw Nell had sent Casey—not me—a tin of her famous snickerdoodles. And a Starbucks gift card. Yes, my brother had emerged unscathed (improved, even) from a car wreck, but he got the free car and the get-well gifts.
Conclusion: Mamaw Nell, like her grandson, was an asshat.
3) How Maggie reacted:
Mags was standing near the front door of Ima Hogg scribbling on a piece of paper when the three of us pulled up.
“Maggie,” I hollered, staggering out of Mamaw’s car
It had been too late to call her when we’d got home. (Besides, in one of her final coherent moments, Mom had refused to let me own a cell phone before I got to high school. I’d been furious about this until we went broke. After that, I saw it as one less thing I had to give up.)
“You’re supposed to be in Spanish,” I said.
“I am.” She gestured to a group of kids over by the flower beds. “Señora Flanagan is having us list the Spanish words for everything we see.” Maggie’s eyes widened. “What happened to you?” As Maggie stared at me, I stared back. She wore knee-high black Converse, fish nets, a black cotton short skirt, a sparkly navy tank top, and a magenta hoodie that covered not only her out-of-dress-code sleeveless shoulders but also the against-Ima-Hogg-policy henna tattoo she’d recently gotten above her left boob. Maggie was a fashion original.
Maybe that’s why we’re best friends: we don’t look or dress at all alike. Maggie is short but mighty—exactly 5’ 2 ½” tall, with chin-length blonde hair, currently dyed brick red with a black streak down one side. I am taller—about 5’ 7” with the option of a final growth spurt still open. My features are more forgettable: no tats, no dye, shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes. I’m on the thin side, but I’ve got really strong legs. Or at least I used to before I started dying of whatever it is I’m dying of.
I began to update Maggie on the insanity of the accident and its aftermath, until I noticed that she was only sort of listening. Mostly what she was doing was gaping at my brother as he hopped out of the car.
“Hey, Mags.” Casey mustered a grin. He cocked his head. “Nice tattoo.”
His hair was particularly wavy, which I chalked up to Houston December humidity. But his eyes were still bright and sparkly, like yesterday. Again, I came to the logical conclusion: Amber must have hooked him up with better quality pot. One that was lighter on the side effects. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light, which somehow seemed brighter around my brother. Dave’s eyes, on the other hand, were soggy and puffy and red. Maybe Dave hadn’t even smoked yet. Or he’d smoked too much already. “Oh, you like the ink, Casey?” Maggie giggled. Let me note here that Maggie is not the giggling type. Maggie is all about the belly laugh or the sarcastic snort.
My eyes followed Mags’s eyes to the chest area under my brother’s unwrinkled polo. When had he acquired what looked like sort of six-packy abs instead of his normally blobby, too-many-Jack-in-the-Box-tacos middle? Right, I already knew: I just hadn’t noticed, given that I was dying and he always wore loose-fitting clothes. Carrying those trays of barbeque at BJ’s must be more of a workout than I thought. I squinted at him in the sunlight. This I wasn’t imagining: he’d groomed his eyebrows. No. That had to be from the hospital. Maybe Nurse Ed had plucked a few strands while he was scrubbing the blood off Casey’s face. You just never knew with those Crocs folks.
I yanked on his sleeve. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Casey ignored me. “What?” he said genially, still smiling at Mags.
I decided to look up brain injuries at lunch. Most likely the hospital had missed something. There was no other way to explain Casey’s freakish change in behavior, or his sudden improvement in the posture and hygiene department.
“Maggie is off limits,” I hissed, loud enough for her to hear too. “Leave the felonies to Dave, okay?”
“Hey,” Dave said. He’d moved up to the driver’s seat. “Highly uncalled for. Besides, you could take a few lessons from her in the outfit department.” He eyeballed my boobs, then opened the little tin and popped one of Casey’s snickerdoodles into his mouth.
That was Dave. For all I knew, he’d smashed our car into that Jack in the Box menu because that’s what Dave did when someone was nice to him. Dave was screwed up like that. Which made the whole Mercury loan thing even weirder.
That strange look crossed Casey’s face again. “Go to class, Jenna. You’re already way late. I’ll pick you up at five, okay. Just like we planned. If you feel bad, just go to the nurse and tell her to call my cell. I’ll come for you. Don’t worry.”
He reached up and pressed his hand to my cheek.
His palm was warm. I brushed his hand away. My brother was not the touchy-feely type. Neither was I. But even as I thought about calling him on the fact that he was trying something shifty—while, I might add, trying to make me ignore that, yes, he’d been hitting on my best friend—I felt the wiggly knot in my stomach ease.
Dumbfounded, I stared until he and Dave and the Merc disappeared in a cloud of exhaust.
“What’s with your brother?” Maggie asked.
I shrugged, unable to answer. The wiggly knot started forming again. It wasn’t just that Casey was not himself in more ways than I could name. It was what I felt when he rested his hand on my face. The closest I could come to remembering what it felt like was eating birthday cake, back before Dad ran off. It wasn’t just warm on my insides. It was warm inside the insides. This weird peaceful feeling that started in my toes and migrated straight to the top of my head.
I was not a peaceful person. Maybe I had been once in the days of Dad. But that was so long ago, I didn’t really remember. What I did know is this: Casey’s hand on my face also felt like Christmas morning, acing a math test, and having my mother brush my hair until it was shiny (also, needless to say, something I barely recalled) all rolled up in one.
“I wish I knew,” I finally told Maggie. And I realized right then and there that I had to get to the bottom of Casey’s bizarre change, and I had to do it soon. Something was coming or something was behind it. But like any optical illusion, I just hadn’t looked at it the right way.
4) What happened in Algebra:
“You’re tardy.”
This is what Mr. Collins told me as I tried to sneak in at 9:25, exactly five minutes before the end of class. He did not ask me why. He did not ask me about my swollen eye or my general pale and hanging-on-by-a-thread appearance. He did not even comment that at least my boots looked good, which he should have since I had shined them up and removed the blood spots.
“I should mark you absent,” he finished.
I resisted the temptation to point out that Corey Chambers was asleep and drooling on his desk. Corey roused himself as I walked toward my seat and gave me a halfhearted wave. Like my brother, Corey scored his weed from Dave. (Or like my brother used to, before he met Amber Velasco.) This seemed to make him feel that we had stoner solidarity. I wished it hadn’t.
Mr. Collins wrinkled his forehead, considering what he should do with a juvenile offender like me. Or maybe that constipated expression owed to something not on my radar: he’d had a fight with the wife, or the principal had informed him that Sansabelt slacks were on sale at Penney’s and he was trying to figure out how to work in a trip to the mall during his off period.
With teachers you just never know.
Or people in general.
“I do believe,” said Mr. Collins, tapping his stubby fingers on his desk as the clock ticked audibly toward the half hour, “that you, Miss Samuels, are going to owe me another afternoon of detention.”
I bit my lip, forcing myself not to call him an asshat. Better to pretend that he didn’t exist. The next four minutes crawled with excruciating slowness until the bell rang. Everyone scattered like buckshot.
“Asshat,” I said under my breath.
“What?” asked Mr. Collins over the commotion.
“I was in a car accident,” I said. “We were at the hospital until like two this morning. Our Prius was totaled.”
Mr. Collins popped a couple Tic Tacs into his mouth. Straightened a pile of papers on his desk. “Was your brother driving?”
I didn’t answer. I sank deeper into my desk chair. Suddenly, we were alone in the classroom.
“Jenna.” Mr. Collins sighed. “What’s going on at home? Are y’all okay?”
I was absolutely not going to cry in front of the
“We’re fine,” I lied to him. “Totally fine. Casey’s working at BJ’s now, you know.”
Mr. Collins considered this. His second period class began filing in. I needed to get to English. I needed to talk to Maggie some more. I needed a lot of things, really. I stood and hurried up the aisle past him.
“I like the boots,” Mr. Collins remarked. “They’re looking really sharp.”
“Thanks.”
“You still need to do those two days of detention, by the way.”
I paused at the door.
“School policy, Jenna. You cannot call your teacher an asshat. We frown on that here at Ima Hogg.”
For a second I thought he was going to hug me. Fortunately, he did not.
“Casey okay?” he asked instead.
I nodded. Casey was remarkably okay. My gut was telling me that this was not really possible. But I wasn’t sure how to form that into a response. Or if I even should.
“Take care of that swollen eye,” Mr. Collins said as I turned to head upstream against the horde of algebra-knowledge seekers. “I’m here if you want to talk,” he added.
“Better block out a lot of time,” I told him.
He frowned, but did not otherwise pursue.
What Happened Yesterday and Why I Never Made it to My Detention:
After my five quality minutes with Mr. Collins, I proceeded to English and Maggie—who seemed kind of embarrassed that she’d acted so addle-brained and flirty. We discussed my brother in a series of scribbled notes. This, while we were supposed to be doing grammar worksheets. (Worksheets are big at Ima Hogg. So are Projects. Especially Group Projects. Ima Hogg believed in collaborative learning—which never failed to piss me off every time I got stuck doing work for the Collaborative Slackers.) In the spirit of Ima Hogg educational policy, I labeled our notes like this:
Jenna and Maggie’s Collaborative Attempt to
Analyze Casey’s Weirdness