Todd Strasser - Wish You Were Dead

Outside in front of school, Mom was waiting in her car. Her eyes were red and watery. The radio was on: “… Miss Cunningham, a senior at Soundview High, was first reported missing on November second. Two other Soundview High students are still missing. This morning’s chilling development greatly increases the concern for their lives.…”

Using one hand to wipe her eyes, Mom turned off the radio with the other. Tears welled up and spill out of my eyes. It had happened … the worst thing imaginable .

She drove out of the school driveway and parked on the street, then undid her seat belt and leaned over, doing her best to hug me while I cried.

“I’m so sorry, hon. This is just a terrible thing for someone your age to have to deal with. It’s terrible thing for anyone to have to deal with. And when I think about Paul and Dana …” She didn’t finish the sentence. Instead I heard her choke up and start to cry again.

Alternating between wanting to cry and not wanting to, I sobbed, hiccupped, and blew my nose, then cried some more. This morning’s chilling development … Lucy was dead. My friend. Someone my own age. Someone I’d grown up with. Someone I knew … had been murdered.

If you’ve never known someone your own age who’s died, you can’t imagine what it feels like. It’s as if you were walking on a glass floor and it suddenly shatters and now you’re falling and falling and there’s broken glass in the air all around you and no bottom in sight.

I sat with Mom in the car and cried for a long time. Soon I wasn’t just crying for Lucy, but for Adam and Courtney as well. Were they also dead?

“How can this be happening?” I sobbed.

Mom wiped her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know, hon. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

Rap! Rap! The sound of knuckles on the window made us jump. Mom and I swiveled our heads. A woman with straight black hair was gesturing for me to open the window. She was holding a microphone, and behind her was a man with a video camera.

“Cover your face and put up your middle finger,” Mom said.

“What?!” I asked in disbelief.

“Just do it,” she said. “Then they can’t use it on air.”

I did as I was told. The reporter and cameraman left. I turned to Mom. My eyes burned and my cheeks were wet, but I felt a smile on my lips. “God, Mom, I never thought the day would come when you’d tell me to give someone the finger.”

We shared a brief grin that quickly dissolved into more tears. My grandmother had died of cancer, and in third grade a girl in the year ahead of me had died suddenly from an asthma attack. But this was different. This was … murder. Something that only happened in movies and on TV, and in places far away. Something that no one ever imagined happening in a place like Soundview.

I spent the rest of the day at home, texting, talking, IMing, and thinking about Tyler. He wasn’t online, but he was there in my head, gnawing at my thoughts. I didn’t want to believe he was involved in Lucy’s death, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t.

And then there were the tears, which were never far away as the whole reality of Lucy’s death hit me again and again. Each time I finished crying, I’d go downstairs and find Mom on her computer and phone, and we’d go into the kitchen and make tea. Dad was in London, but Mom reached him and he left a dinner with some important people to speak to me for a while. The TV stayed off. Mom said we’d had enough bad news for one day (although I had a feeling she was checking the news while I was upstairs).

I was sitting in the kitchen, gazing at the Sound. The water was steel gray, reflecting the sky. The breeze drove row after row of small waves across the surface, but all I could think about was the cold, still darkness beneath.

“Honey?” Mom asked.

“Yes?” I raised my head.

Mom smiled crookedly as she came toward me with a jar of honey in her hand. “I meant, for your tea.”

“Oh, sure, thanks.” She set the jar down and I transferred a spoonful of the amber syrup into my mug. The phone rang and Mom answered. “Yes? Uh-huh. Yes, I understand. I’ll tell her.” She hung up. “No school tomorrow.”

That didn’t come as a surprise. Everyone was beyond freaked. School the next day would have been a waste, and there was a good chance a lot of parents would keep their kids home anyway. Mom sat down and cupped her hands around her mug. “I guess what I’m wondering is how in the world they’re going to have school the day after tomorrow?”

* * *

When I went back upstairs there was a message from PBleeker:

I guess you must be pretty upset, unless maybe you’re happy about what happened because Lucy stole Adam from you. But people don’t deserve to die just because they steal someone’s boyfriend, do they? Besides, you’ve never struck me as the vengeful type. Can you believe what they did to her eyes?

The first rule of dealing with cyberstalkers is to never, ever respond. But this felt different. Even if I wasn’t sure who PBleeker was, it was obvious that we knew each other. I wrote back: What about her eyes?

I waited, hoping that PBleeker would be thrilled that I’d finally answered, and eager to reply. But no reply came.

That night there was more news about Lucy. The medical examiner announced that she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours when she’d been discovered in that wooded grove near the school that morning. The cause of death appeared to be kidney failure due to severe dehydration. There was no mention of anything relating to eyes.

Thursday 6:43 A.M.

NORMALLY WHEN I got up in the morning, Mom was already downstairs with the newspaper. She read the paper daily, not only because she was active in town politics but because she was a news junkie. But the following morning there was no paper spread out on the kitchen table. There was only Mom, wearing her white terry-cloth robe, the ends of her hair still damp from a morning swim. She was gazing out the window. When she heard me come in, she turned and gave me a weak smile. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than I thought I would,” I said. “I guess massive anxiety can really wear you out.” I sat down and poured myself a mug of tea. “What’s up?”

“Just having my coffee.” That was so un-Mom-like.

“Why aren’t you reading the paper?”

She gave me a completely unconvincing shrug.

“Mom, I already heard.”

She reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. “About how she died?”

I nodded, although trying to make sense of what they’d said was like trudging through heavy snow. Kidney failure … dehydration …

Mom must have seen that I was struggling. “They think … it means that wherever she was she couldn’t get anything to drink.”

“Why not?”

Mom blinked and her eyes got watery. “I don’t think anyone really knows. But if I had to guess, the answer would be that someone didn’t want her to drink.” Tears began to run down her cheeks.

I was usually such a homebody, but for once it was hard to stay inside. Maybe it was the craziness of what was going on. Maybe it was my yearning to sort out things with Tyler. Whatever it was, it was impossible to stay still. There was nothing good on TV and I didn’t want to sit at the computer all day exchanging IMs based on gossip and rumors. I tried to read, but that didn’t work, either. Nothing did.

I was paging through a Seventeen magazine when Mom knocked on my door and came in wearing business clothes. “There’s a board of directors meeting at the hospital. I hate to leave you, but I know you’ll be safe here. Is that okay?”