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Then he falls, his skin turning ashen. I remember how we tried to fake Zacharov’s death. Seeing Janssen fall, I realize how wrong we had it. You can see the moment it happens, like a light burning out in a lamp.
“No,” I yell, crawling over to him.
And the blowback hits me. My body cramps all over, limbs elongating like a spider, reaching toward the ceiling. Then it’s like I’m made of glass and each twist of my body creates cracks that turn to fissures until I am lying in pieces. I try to scream, but my mouth has turned to crumbling earth. My body is turning itself inside out. As agony grips me, I turn my head and stare into the glassy eyes of a dead man.
* * *
I wake up, drenched in sweat, next to Henry Janssen.
Every muscle in my body is sore, and when I look at the corpse, I feel nothing except a growing sense that I have to get rid of it. I no longer understand the urgency that sent me here. I no longer understand why I thought there could be any other outcome but this. What did I think was going to happen? I know nothing about transformation or its limits. I don’t even know if it’s possible to turn an inanimate object back into something alive.
I don’t care, either. I’m tired of caring.
It’s like the part of me that feels all that guilt has finally overloaded. I feel nothing.
Even though the most practical solution is to curse him back into being a chair, I can’t face another round of blowback. I think of burying him, but I’m pretty sure the hole has to be deeper than I have time to dig.
I could dump him in deep water, but since I’m not even sure my car is going to start, that seems problematic too. Finally I remember the freezer in the basement.
It’s harder to carry a dead person than someone who’s alive. It’s not that they’re heavier; it’s that they don’t help you. They don’t bend their body into your arms or hold on to your neck. They just lie there. On the plus side, you no longer have to worry about hurting them.
I drag Janssen down the stairs by his shoulders. His body makes a sickening thud with each step.
There’s nothing in the freezer except half a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, rimed with frost. I take it out and set it on my father’s old workbench. Then I put one hand under the dead man’s clammy neck and hook the other around his knee. I lift and half-roll, half-toss him into the freezer. He sort of fits, but I have to bend his limbs so that I will be able to close the lid. It’s pretty bad.
I’ll come back, I tell myself. In a day or two I’ll come back and change him.
Looking down at a freezer full of Henry Janssen, I think about Philip’s corpse laid out in the funeral home. Someone—a woman—was caught on video walking into Philip’s condo. And since I know I killed the rest of the people in the files, the FBI are on the entirely wrong track. They’re looking to connect the killers. But whoever murdered Philip had nothing to do with all this, probably didn’t know anything about it.
Maybe I should get back to thinking about suspects other than myself.
My car starts without a problem; the first good thing that’s happened to me in a while. I drive back to Wallingford eating the Cherry Garcia ice cream and thinking about red gloves, gunshots, and guilt.
7
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID the cafeteria forever.
When I walk in to dinner, I see Daneca and Sam sitting with Jill Pearson-White and a bunch of Sam’s chess club friends. I start over to them, until I see Lila, her head bent toward Daneca’s. I can only imagine the speech Lila is being given about worker rights and HEX meetings.
I veer abruptly toward another table and spot the flame of Audrey’s red hair.
“Hi,” I say as I sit down.
Greg Harmsford is there, along with Rahul Pathak and Jeremy Fletcher-Fiske. They all look surprised to see me. Greg’s hand clenches around his fork in a way that suggests I better say something clever, fast. He might be dating Audrey now, but I dated her once, and clearly Greg worries there might still be something there. Probably because once, at a party, she arrived with him but made out with me.
Here’s the thing about influencing a group to do what you want. It’s a lot easier if what you want and what they want line up. Getting marks interested in easy money only works on the greedy. I hope I can interest Greg in the promise of easy revenge while I distract the rest of the table. I’m counting on his being threatened enough that he’ll want to make me look like a fool. I just hope that he’s not so threatened that he decides to punch me in the face.
“Get out of here,” Greg says.
“I wanted to talk with you all about the senior prank,” I improvise wildly.
Rahul frowns. “The school year just started.”
I nod. “Look, last year the class left it until the end and they got the kind of lame prank that you’d expect. I want ours to make our graduating class infamous.”
“You’re totally taking bets on it,” says Jeremy. “You just want an inside line.”
“I want to get a horse into Northcutt’s bedroom,” I say. “Wearing an enormous thong. Now, please tell me how admitting that to you is going to make me any money.”
