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“Fuck. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Why does the world have to suck so bad for the best people?
“Yeah, me too.” George looks away. “Anyway, after Walter’s reality TV show, all the showbiz guys bought pre-paid funeral plans from Memories of the Hart. It was kind of a joke but also, it was like a cool thing to say in the industry, being able to ‘go out in style.’ Dad decided to get a plan for all of us. He got this horror package with a fake coffin that was rigged to spring open during the funeral ceremony and a skeleton pops out and starts dancing. It was so him. So, anyway, we have his body delivered to the funeral home for cremation, and as we’re making funeral plans Walter tells us there’s a backlog in the crematorium, and we might not have his ashes ready in time for the funeral.
“‘It’s no problem,’ he says, with all his Southern charm. ‘This happens all the time. What we do is give you a decorative urn to use in the ceremony, and we’ll get those ashes to you as soon as possible.’ It’s shit, but you know, that’s the price you pay for booking the most popular funeral director in the city. Dad wanted Walter Hart and we didn’t have the money to go somewhere else.
“So we have the funeral and it’s sad and for a while, I’m busy helping Mom and trying to get through school and being sad, and then one day I realize it’s been months and we haven’t heard anything about Dad’s ashes. I call Memories of the Hart and got passed around call center operators in Kazakstan. So then I go down to the funeral home to talk to someone in person, and they tell me his ashes aren’t ready. At this point I’m annoyed,” she grins. I grin back; I can’t even imagine George annoyed. “I might have suggested that I’d come back there with a police officer and fire up the oven myself, since it was clearly such a hassle. I think I frightened the secretary. She had a whispered conversation with someone over the phone, then came back and said if I returned on Friday, they’ll move them up the priority list and I’d be able to take him home.
“So I go back on Friday, and they have no idea who I am. A different secretary goes into the back room. She’s gone a long time. When she comes back, she hands me a shopping bag with a small round container inside.” George makes a circle with her fingers. “It’s about the size of a pot of hand cream.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. It’s so small I could fit a whole murdered boy band into one decorative urn. But I figure, they’re the funeral directors, they must know. I mean, heaps of stuff is different in real life than it is on TV. Maybe that’s only how many ashes you get out of a person? So I bring it home to Mom and we pop his ashes in our urn and forget about it.
“Then, one day, I’m at my aunt’s house and she’s got my grandfather’s urn on the mantel, and I decide to take a peek because…” she shrugs. The grinning skulls on her hoodie bounce. “Because I’m me. I wait until my aunt is out of the room and I tug the lid off and peer inside. She’s got mountains of ashes. At least ten times as much as us. And my grandfather was a small guy, so you couldn’t say it was a size difference in the bodies or anything. I think back on all the weirdness at the funeral home, and I just…”
“Pull a Sherlock Holmes orgasm face?” I venture.
“What?”
“It’s something Gabriel says about Eli. He gets this look on his face when he’s trying to figure something out. Like he’s excited to swoop in and solve the mystery.”
George laughs. “Yes. That’s exactly it. I have this feeling something isn’t right – and the mystery of it made me not so sad about my dad anymore. I decide to test the ashes. I do a couple of experiments in the school lab. Mr. Ross even gave me extra credit when I explained what I was doing. The results I get were… not great. But I’m not an expert, so I send a sample off to an independent lab, and they come back and tell me that while there are definitely fragments of bone in my container, it’s not human remains. Possibly a rabbit, they said. Or a gerbil.”
I think about how that must feel to know you’ve been grieving over the ashes of a gerbil, and I want to gouge out Walter Hart’s eyes with a rusty spork. “Then what?”
“I had to tell Mom. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. She took it better than I thought.” George shrugs. “She looks at the urn and says, ‘I never felt like he was really in there.’ I tried to make her go to the police with the information, but she just wanted to forget about it. I couldn’t forget. So I… I made a podcast about it.”
I’m laughing. I can’t help it. This entire story is completely crazy, but so incredibly George. “You made a podcast.”
“Right. A true-crime podcast. It’s called, 'My Dad is a Gerbil.’ It’s quite well-known now, one of the top-20 true crime podcasts on Spotify.” A red blush creeps across George’s cheeks. “Yet another reason kids at Stonehurst don’t like me. A true-crime podcaster doesn’t exactly fit in with their preppy, Hollywood-slick image, yet I’ve got more followers than most of them combined.”
Wow. I stare at my tiny friend, her face animated as she talks about her podcast, and I see a whole other side of her. George is so like Eli in some ways – obsessed with the truth, unable to let go of an unsolved puzzle, and desperate to make the world a better place. She’s more driven and dedicated than all the wannabe actresses and influencers at Stonehurst, and she does it without endless funding from a trust fund or wealthy parents.
“George Fisher, I am in awe.” I hold out my hand. She takes it, and I shake vigorously as I clink our glasses with the other. “You’re awesome. I’m honored you chose to hand me a fork that day.”
George’s face glows. I wish she didn’t relish my compliments. No one as cool as George should be so desperate for a friend that she goes back to her ex-bully. Especially not now she knows I’m not really Mackenzie and I’m a whole package of trouble.
“What happened next?” I prod.
“Things get next-level crazy. I’m putting out podcast episodes and researching what might have happened to my dad’s body. I start getting emails from other families in Emerald Beach, saying the same things – long waits to get their remains, tiny packages, one lady said her brother’s ashes smell suspiciously like cement. Then, an FBI agent gets in touch with me. It turns out they were investigating Memories from the Hart. I share my notes with him, and the contact information for all the people who sent in their stories. They were able to get enough evidence from eleven of them to bring down Walter Hart on criminal charges.
“When the story broke at school, it was horrible. I’m so used to being invisible, but now everyone was listening to my podcast, learning all this personal stuff about my dad. Alec hung a dead gerbil in my locker. It wasn’t even the stuff they did at school – I’m used to being the class freak. They came after me online. They found old class pictures of mine and Photoshopped them onto pornography and sent them to the lawyers to discredit me. They made up insane stories about me.”
“Even Eli?”
She shakes her head. “No. Eli was amazing. He tried to get them to stop. He stood up for me when Alec…”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“George, I know that bastard did something to you. It’s safe it you want to tell me.”
George won’t look at me. “I’ve never told anyone before. But I know what you did to his forehead, and I think you had something to do with gym class, too, and I…”
“Just say the words and I’ll make you your own brand.” I point to one of her tattoos. “We could put a cat on it. That’d look great – Alec walking around with a grinning cat-face burned into his forehead.”
“You’re terrifying, Mackenzie Malloy.” George slaps my knee. “I have an idea. Can I make it the topic of my next podcast to figure out what happened to your parents?”
