Rachel Hawkins - Grim

We stare at one another for a long time.

“Well. I...” She inhales, then drops her voice. “It’s come to my attention that you’ll be kissing my stepdaughter next Tuesday.”

I frown—she’s not supposed to have information like that, but I guess when you’re rich, you can afford to buy it. “That’s right,” I say.

Beverly nods at me, pauses, like she’s choosing her words carefully. “I’m not sure if you know this, but Elise and I never got along very well. She was a rather...difficult child.”

I exhale, almost laugh in agreement. She gives me a hard look, then moves on.

“Things got bad when her father got sick. Battling out his will made things nasty between us. She got almost everything. She doesn’t even need it, in that stupid artists’ colony she’s living in, but she refused to give me a penny. So the reason I’m here, Emmett, is I have an offer for you.”

She dips a silky hand into her purse, pulls out a thick white envelope. When she hands it to me, I see the flash of green bills straining at the flap. They’re crisp and new; I pull the mouth of the envelope apart to confirm what I already suspected. Hundred-dollar bills.

“That’s a down payment. Five thousand dollars. Finish the job and I’ll give you another twenty. Every year. For the rest of your life.”

I look up at her, eyes wide.

“What’s the job?”

Beverly steps toward me, licks her lips. “You’re supposed to kiss Elise on Tuesday. I want you to botch it. Say it didn’t work. Say you lost the talent. Say anything you want, but don’t kiss her. Don’t wake her up.”

“Twenty thousand dollars, for life?” I ask wondrously. I look at her, baffled. “To not do my job?”

“If she’s dead, I get the inheritance. And I need that money. It’s worth paying you dearly for. Surely you didn’t want to kiss dead people forever? You can go...do something. Whatever it is you want to do,” she says, tossing her hand at me. “Stuff animals with your father, I don’t know. Watch television all day. Buy new carpet,” she says, glancing dismally at our ratty floors.

“Just for not kissing her. That’s it. No strings,” I say, waiting for a catch.

“No strings,” she says. “The hippies she lives with don’t have access to her inheritance—they pooled together their pennies to hire you. So if you don’t kiss her, her week will have expired before they can get someone new. She stays dead.”

She’s right. Six days is already pushing it for a kiss. No one has ever successfully kissed someone back after seven. Elise Snow stays dead. I hand my father a check for his bills.

I leave.

I become something new. Something great, something better than a kisser who brings back the rich. Something important. Anything important.

I nod at Beverly, smash the envelope in my hand.

I thought Fourteenth Street was in the rich part of town, both because it’s Elise Snow’s address and because most of the numbered streets are lined in shiny condos. Apparently the lower numbers, however, still boast old brick warehouses with dirty windows that overlook the harbor. I squint at the address on the building, then at my slip of paper, wondering how this can be right. Elise Snow can’t live in a place like this. That’s crazy.

But it says this is 706 Fourteenth, so... I sigh, trudge to the dented metal door on the side. Knocking hurts in the cold, double so when combined with the sharp, cold breeze coming off the water. I hear shuffling inside, movement; the door swings open.

The guy is covered in tattoos, colorful ones with colors that fade in and out like watercolors instead of ink. He sighs when he sees me, grins.

“I’m here for—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says, sounding relieved. He steps aside, waves me in. “It’s him!” he calls out.

His voice bounces through the warehouse, across half walls and partitions and winding metal staircases. This place is full of mismatched furniture and wall murals of pinup girls. The guy grins at me as we hear a scurrying of feet. Other people hurry toward us from what seems like every direction. They’re covered in piercings, tattoos, splattered paint. They have feathers or beads in their hair; they have smiles on their lips.

They hug me.

I’m not really sure how to handle that. I’m really not sure how to handle liking it.

“So...” the guy who answered the door says after I’ve been hugged about eight thousand times. Everyone is staring at me eagerly. I’m used to that. I’m just not used to wanting to stare back.

“Where is she?” I ask. Remember. You’ve got a job to do. Botch it.

“Oh, sorry, of course. Through here,” a petite girl says, waving me forward.

The warehouse is a maze of rooms, studios, workshops. “What is this place?” I ask as we slide through a sculpture studio.

“It’s our house. And our workshop. And everything else.”

“A colony,” I say, remembering Beverly using the term. “Like an artists’ colony.”

“Yep,” the guy at the door says. “Something like that.”

“So...you guys make a living off your art, then? Like, you do this professionally?”

“Ah,” he says. “You don’t make a living from art. You make art from living.”

I want to punch him for that damn hippie phrase, but I find myself nodding instead.

“Here,” a girl says, stopping suddenly in front of me. She meets my eyes a long time, like she sees something there, then steps aside so I can see through the doorway of a bedroom.

And there is Elise Snow.

Dead people are never pretty—they’re made to look that way by undertakers, but really, once the life is gone, the pretty is gone, too. Elise Snow is no exception. She looks rocklike, her skin tone similar to the blank wall behind her. The wall seems odd, empty, compared to the rest of this place. I walk toward her; the others crowd into the doorway. I glance back at them—

I gasp. The back wall isn’t empty. The back wall is full.

A painting of a young Elise, dissolving into the clouds, being thrown around books and music and what looks like a schoolhouse. A picture of the crab-apple tree, of a pointy white woman I assume is Beverly. Paintings of her naked with boys, with girls, with people without faces. Color, color everywhere, images, details, so much that I can’t absorb it all—her entire life.

I didn’t know she had talent like this. I wonder when she discovered it.

I wonder when she became this Elise Snow, instead of the princess I knew. Was it sudden, like my change from normal boy to raiser of the dead? Or was it gradual?

Mom was right. Elise was misunderstood—by me at least. And she did change. So did I. She became beautiful, and I became...this.

“Will it take long?” a voice asks—I can’t tell whose.

“No,” I say, shaking my head, trying not to stare at the painting. “No, it won’t.”

It won’t take long because I’m not going to wake her. I can’t. I can’t turn down Beverly’s offer. And besides, I already used some of the down payment to keep our electric bill on.

“How did she die?” I ask. I never ask this. I usually don’t want to know. I look down at her body; her hair is dark, but it’s been colored. She has tattoos of roses covering her clavicles, disappearing into the neck of her shirt.

“Does it matter?” someone asks.

No. It doesn’t. But the shadiness in the person’s voice makes me think I was right about the drug overdose. I don’t feel as smug as I expect to. I wish someone could have helped her. I mean, someone other than me, someone who could have done more than just wake her after—

No. Not wake her. I grimace.

I reach forward, take her hand. It’s difficult—rigor has set in; she’s stiff, icy. I can feel the calluses in her palm, I guess from gripping a paintbrush.