The Wrong Grave Read Online Free Page A

was shivering like crazy.
    â€œWhy not?” the dead girl said.
    â€œBecause I’ll go home and you’ll be there, waiting for me.”
    â€œI won’t,” the dead girl said. “I promise.”
    â€œReally?” Miles said.
    â€œI really promise,” said the dead girl. “I’m sorry I teased you, Miles.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” Miles said. He got up and then he just stood there, looking down at her. He seemed to be about to ask her something, and then he changed his mind. She could see this happen, and she could see why, too. He knew he ought to leave now, while she was willing to let him go. He didn’t want to fuck up by asking something impossible and obvious and stupid. That was okay by her. She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t say something that would rile up her hair. Not to mention the tattoo. She didn’t think he’d noticed when her tattoo had started getting annoyed.
    â€œGood-bye,” Miles said at last. It almost looked as if he wanted her to shake his hand, but when she sent out a length of her hair, he turned and ran. It was a little disappointing. And the dead girl couldn’t help but notice that he’d left his shoes and his bike behind.
    The dead girl walked around the cabin, picking things up and putting them down again. She kicked the Monopoly box, which was a game that she’d always hated. That was one of the okay things about being dead, that nobody ever wanted to play Monopoly.
    At last she came to the statue of St. Francis, whose head had been knocked right off during an indoor game of croquet a long time ago. Bethany Baldwin had made St. Francis a lumpy substitute Ganesh head out of modeling clay. You could lift that clay elephant head off, and there was a hollow space where Miles and Bethany had left secret things for each other. The dead girl reached down her shirt and into the cavity where her more interesting and useful organs had once been (she had been an organ donor). She’d put Miles’s poetry in there for safekeeping.
    She folded up the poetry, wedged it inside St. Francis, and fixed the Ganesh head back on. Maybe Miles would find it someday. She would have liked to see the look on his face.
    We don’t often get a chance to see our dead. Still less often do we know them when we see them. Mrs. Baldwin’s eyes opened. She looked up and saw the dead girl and smiled. She said, “Bethany.”
    Bethany sat down on her mother’s bed. She took her mother’s hand. If Mrs. Baldwin thought Bethany’s hand was cold, she didn’t say so. She held on tightly. “I was dreaming about you,” she told Bethany. “You were in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.”
    â€œIt was just a dream,” Bethany said.
    Mrs. Baldwin reached up and touched a piece of Bethany’s hair with her other hand. “You’ve changed your hair,” she said.
    â€œI like it.”
    They were both silent. Bethany’s hair stayed very still. Perhaps it felt flattered.
    â€œThank you for coming back,” Mrs. Baldwin said at last.
    â€œI can’t stay,” Bethany said.
    Mrs. Baldwin held her daughter’s hand tighter. “I’ll go with you. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? Because I’m dead too?”
    Bethany shook her head. “No. Sorry. You’re not dead. It’s Miles’s fault. He dug me up.”
    â€œHe did what?” Mrs. Baldwin said. She forgot the small, lowering unhappiness of discovering that she was not dead after all.
    â€œHe wanted his poetry back,” Bethany said. “The poems he gave me.”
    â€œThat idiot,” Mrs. Baldwin said. It was exactly the sort of thing she expected of Miles, but only with the advantage of hindsight, because how could you really expect such a thing. “What did you do to him?”
    â€œI played a good joke on him,” Bethany said. She’d never really tried to