Chapter 6
Collect Calls from the Dead
THE TRUCK STOP is like every other truck stop I’ve ever seen, neon and chrome and broken tile and rack upon rack of slightly stale potato chips, local candy brands no one ever sees anywhere else, and beef jerky. The walls are lined with coolers filled with soda and beer, and it hurts how much I want this to be my home, how much I want to drop below the surface of the world and into its twilight reflection.
The trucker’s coat is too big for me; it hangs off my narrow shoulders like a superhero’s cape, billowing every time I take a step. I have a crumpled twenty-dollar bill shoved into the front pocket of my jeans, not enough to buy much, but enough to put something in my stomach and rinse the dust out of my mouth.
Truck stops are one of the few places you can still find a pay phone in this day and age. This one has them tucked next to the bathrooms, two scarred-up silver rectangles holding the only real shot I have left at salvation. I reach into my pocket and finger the twenty. I know things cost more than they used to, but I realize I have no idea how much it costs to make a phone call.
Shit.
I could turn all my money into quarters and feed them to this hungry oracle and still not be able to make a call. Or I could take the easy way out. Lifting the receiver out of the cradle, I punch the “0.”
There’s a buzz, and a ringing sound, and then a man’s voice is saying in my ear, “Operator.”
“I’d . . . I’d like to place a collect call, please.”
He sounds unspeakably bored as he asks, “Where to?”
“Professor Laura Moorhead at the University of Colorado.”
“Which campus?”
“What?”
“The University of Colorado has four campuses. Which one would you like me to connect you to?”
Shit, shit, shit. “Uh . . . the closest one?”
“That would be the University of Colorado Boulder.”
“Sounds good.”
“Your name?”
And here’s where I roll the dice. “Rose Marshall,” I say.
“One moment please.” He’s gone, replaced by static-y silence. I hold the receiver in place, trying not to hyperventilate or throw up.
I feel so exposed. Bobby could walk in at any moment, shout that I’m his little sister and drag me away, and what recourse would I have? Especially if he’s paid someone to fake up the paperwork necessary to verify his claim. That seems likely: he’s smart enough not to leave that sort of thing to chance, and there’s no one else left in this world to claim me.
The buzz of the fluorescent lights is too loud and the scent of the floor cleaner is too strong. I guess I never realized how much death had come to insulate me from everything. I thought in terms of tasteless cheeseburgers and fries that tasted like so much mashed paper unless I performed the proper steps. I never thought about how much the living world stinks, or how loud it is.
Life was a good thing to have, the first time I had it. Back when I thought it was the only option on the table, back when I thought there was a table. Dying was traumatic as hell. Right after it happened I would have done anything, anything, to get back to where I’d been.
But alive or dead, the human mind doesn’t do well with novelty. In order to survive and retain something that can be mistaken, even at a distance, for sanity, we have to get used to things. Day by day, year by year, decade by decade, I had gotten used to things. Better—or worse, depending on your point of reference—I had started to see them as right and proper. Life among the living was no longer, is no longer, for me.
The phone in my hand beeps, jerking me out of my unwanted reverie. A voice, familiar, if older than it was the last time we had occasion to talk, demands, “Who is this really, and what are you playing at?”
“Laura.” I say her name the way Tommy always does, half breath, half reluctant prayer. He says it that way because he loves her, thinks she hung the moon and the stars. I’m saying it that way because right now, she’s my best hope of getting through this in one piece. One hopefully deceased piece. “Oh, thank Persephone, I guessed right.”
“That’s my name, not yours.”
“It’s Rose.”
Silence. The sort of thick, tarry silence that traps men and holds them until they starve. Finally, in a voice like ice, she says, “This conversation is over.”
“You used a summoning spell to trick me into a Seal of Solomon in Jackson, Maine four years ago. I guess it might be five years ago now. I don’t always do so well with linear time. It slips away from me.”
The silence returns. It’s lighter somehow, less tar and more water. Still flowing past us too quickly, but survivable, if I’m quick. If I’m clever.
“You blamed me for your boyfriend’s death. Tommy. I tried to tell you I didn’t do it, and he tried to tell you I didn’t do it, but I guess you could still blame me, if you wanted to. Fuck, I’ll even encourage you to blame me, if it means you’ll listen to me now. I need your help, Laura. Everything’s gotten all screwed up, and I need your help.”
“Why are you calling me?” She pauses, then adds, “Why are you calling me collect? You’re a ghost. You could just appear in my office, and there’s nothing I could do to stop you.”
That’s a lie, and we both know it. She knows enough about demonology to draw a near-perfect Seal of Solomon, good enough to trap a dead girl in flesh for the span of a night. Her office is warded from here to the gates of Heaven, if they exist, and I could never pass the threshold without her consent. That’s just common sense.
“See, that’s sort of the problem,” I say. “I’m kind of . . . corporeal, right now.”
“Corporeal,” she echoes flatly.
“It’s a long story. I’m in Big Springs, Nebraska.” The town name is painted above the bathroom archway. Supposedly, this is a nice place. I’m really hoping that’s true. “Can you come get me?”
“You’re asking me for a ride.” For some reason, she seems to find that funny.
The amusement in her voice makes me sort of want to punch her. I need her too badly right now. “Yeah, I am. Look, Laura, I didn’t ask for this, and I don’t have anyone else to call. All my friends are dead. Literally.”
“So walk in front of a truck and go back to them, if they’re that important to you.”
I grind my teeth. It hurts. Being alive sucks. “I can’t just kill myself. You know that. Please, Laura, I am begging you. I need you.”
There’s a long pause. The business of the truck stop continues around me. I hear the bell over the door ring and glance that way, only for the bottom to drop out of the world.
Bobby Cross is standing in the truck stop door. He hasn’t seen me yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s only a matter of something that has suddenly become limited and precious.
“There’s a man here,” I hiss into the phone, voice low. “He wants to hurt me. He wants to make it so I’ve never existed, and if he does that, Tommy will go looking for him to get revenge, because we’re friends, and that’s what friends do. I’m at the Flying J truck stop on Circle Road, just off highway 80. Come get me. Please. I don’t care if you want to gloat or if you’re only doing it to protect Tommy, but please.”
I hang up before she can speak, and bolt for the women’s bathroom.
The smell of urine is stronger inside, underscored with a lemony disinfectant that makes my stomach lurch. I haven’t thrown up in sixty years. I’m not in the mood to do it now. I was planning to go and hide in one of the stalls, but the thought of touching anything I might find in there—the thought of the things that might touch me—is enough to make me freeze next to the sinks, shivering, unable to move.
This isn’t like me. I’m Rose Marshall, I’m the goddamn phantom prom date, I’m the sort of thing that goes bump in the night, and I’m scared of a truck stop toilet. Having a heartbeat, and all these awful human chemicals running around in my not-so-borrowed body, those things aren’t like me either. I’m coming apart. I’m coming apart at the seams, and I—
The bathroom door eases open. I flatten myself against the wall beside the sinks, suddenly not giving a fuck about what may or may not be on the tile there, struggling not to hyperventilate. A woman in the truck stop’s simple polyester uniform steps inside, looking around. Her eyes snag on me. She stops.
“Hello?” she says, voice exaggeratedly loud. “Is there a Rose in here?” Silently, she mouths, “You okay?” to me.
I shake my head, mouth “No,” and mime punching myself in the eye.
Her face hardens. She nods her understanding of my lie—that Bobby is brother or boyfriend and bastard either way, hitting a slip of a girl like me. “Wait here,” she mouths, and opens the door.
Before it swings closed behind her, I hear her say, “Bathroom’s empty, mister. Your girl’s not here—no, you can not check for yourself. We run a respectable establishment here.”
I sag, but don’t move away from the wall. I can’t. It’s like my feet have become rooted to the floor. If I were still a ghost, I’d suspect a Seal of Solomon. As it stands, I can only blame it on this body, this horrible, rotting body, which knows, all the way down to its animal heart, that it is finite: it can die. I may not be particularly interested in lingering within this mortal coil, but my body wants to stay for as long as it possibly can. It wants to stay forever. I am a house divided, a ghost who haunts herself, and I hate it, I hate it in every way I know how to hate.
Minutes pass. Have minutes always been this long? Maybe I should be grateful that they are. Every minute leaves me older than I’ve ever been before, subject to another terrible rigor of mortality, some surprise I’ll find when I least expect it. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to do anything but live.
The door eases open again, and the woman from before appears. Her nametag tells me that she’s Molly; the look on her face, worried and sour and angry and afraid, tells me she knows what it means to run away from someone who scares you.
“Hey,” she says, voice gentle, like she’s afraid anything else would make me run. “He’s gone. I saw that trucker who dropped you off, so I figured maybe you wouldn’t mind if I said I’d seen you, but that you’d caught a ride with another trucker who was heading for Chicago.”
I could kiss this woman. I could drop to my knees and offer her anything she wants, everything she wants, forever. Only I don’t, because this bathroom floor is disgusting. “Thank you,” I say instead.
“Don’t worry about it.” She dismisses my thanks with a wave of her hand. “Dude’s a creep. The way he looked at me? I’d have run too. He your brother?”
That would be an easy lie. I’m not sure I could live with it. The very thought of having the same blood as Bobby running through my veins . . . “Ex,” I say, making my voice cold and tired. “He doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
“I know I’m a stranger and maybe it’s not my place, but running away isn’t usually the answer.”
“I don’t have any family, and the cops don’t listen when a girl like me says she’s getting hit.” Both those things are true. They just aren’t necessarily true in that order, in this moment. Still, truth has a ring that I can use. “I have a place to go. Boulder. I called a family friend there before . . . he . . . showed up. She’s coming to get me.”
Please, she’s coming to get me. Please, I’m not stuck here while Bobby circles the roads like a shark scenting blood. Please, I don’t have to gamble on sticking my thumb out again and finding myself a driver who won’t look at me and see something destructible and disposable.
Please.
“Okay,” says Molly, relaxing a little. She’s so young, early twenties at best, and my first thought is that it makes her easier to lie to, while my second thought is that she must think of herself as the older person in this encounter, the voice of reason saving teenage me from the consequences of my actions. Everything about being alive is awful. “I can let you hang around here, but if my manager comes back, you’ll have to at least pretend to buy something.”
“I have money,” I say, relieved. “I was going to go to the diner and get something as soon as I was sure . . . he . . . wasn’t here.” I don’t want to say Bobby’s name, not while I’m this defenseless. I don’t know whether he’d come if I called him, and this isn’t how I want to find out.
Molly relaxes further. “Okay, great. The coffee’s good. So’s the pie.”
“I like pie,” I say, and smile.
The woman smiles back.
She escorts me to the diner, whispers something to the waitress as I find my seat. I try to position myself so the glare from the sunlight off the windows will keep me from being seen from outside, while also allowing me to see Bobby if he decides to circle back. I can keep hiding in the bathroom for as long as it takes.
I’m barely settled before the waitress drops a menu, a slice of strawberry pie, and a cup of coffee off in front of me. I blink at her. She smiles, the kind, maternal smile of a woman who’s tired of seeing kids get hurt, both on and off the road.
“This part’s on the house,” she says. “Just be sure to order something you pay for, okay, hon? That way I have a ticket to justify checking in on you.”
“Can you make me a grilled cheese?” I ask hopefully. “With tomato, and fries?” What I want is a cheeseburger, hot and greasy and dripping everywhere. But I’m not sure my newly mortal stomach could handle that much right now. Better to start off small, with the sort of thing I could have eaten pretty regularly when I was alive. Cheese sandwiches and scrambled eggs, those were the most common delicacies in our family kitchen. They were cheap and they were plentiful and part of me misses them right now, misses the simplicity of a life where being alive wasn’t the worst thing I could think of, where being dead was an impossibility.
The waitress glances from me to the untouched menu and back before saying, with careful kindness, “That’ll be six dollars, plus the tax.”
“I can pay,” I say, swallowing the urge to pull out my single twenty and hold it up for her inspection. “I promise I can pay.”
“In that case, honey, coming right up.” She whisks the menu away, and I’m alone with coffee and pie.
The woman who didn’t give me up to Bobby was right: the coffee is excellent. The pie, on the other hand, is a revelation. The berries are huge and sweet and should be impossible this far out of season. The glaze is not too thick, carrying the flavor without overwhelming it. I take my time, savoring every bite, and I’m thinking about licking the plate when the waitress returns with a coffee pot in one hand and a plate in the other.
She smiles at me. So bright. “How was the pie?” she asks.
“Whoever bakes for you deserves a raise and maybe a medal.”
Her laughter is beautiful, a bright bird soaring through the grease-scented air. “Well, it’s my mama’s recipe, and I’ll be sure to let her know in my prayers how much it’s appreciated.”
I make a mental note to visit this spot again when I’m back to normal, see whether there’s a twilight diner on the ghostroads, one staffed by a woman who looks a lot like this one and knows how to bake her pies with Stygian strawberries. “Sounds good,” I say.
My pie plate disappears, replaced by a grilled cheese sandwich so golden and perfect that it deserves to be in the history books, surrounded by a soft mountain of paler fries that glisten with grease and sparkle with salt. My stomach, only somewhat placated by that slice of pie, roars. I’m still staring at it as she refills my coffee and, hesitantly, pats my shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, honey,” she says, taking her hand away. “You can stay here for as long as you need to. Nobody’s going to chase you off.”
“Thank you,” I say, looking up. We trade another set of smiles, hers worried and maternal, mine exhausted, and with that necessary exchange done, she’s away again, checking on the rest of her tables.
I make it three bites into the grilled cheese sandwich—which tastes even better than it looks, gooey and melty and perfectly like I need it to be—before my stomach gives a warning lurch. I freeze with my mouth open to receive bite number four before I carefully, cautiously put the sandwich down and reach for my coffee.
Living sucks.
The waitress gives my plate a worried glance when she swings by with my next refill. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just . . . it’s been a while since I’ve had a real meal, that’s all. I need to take it slow.”
“All right,” she says, and for the first time, she sounds like she might not entirely believe me. Still, our ritual exchange of smiles is performed, and she’s off again.
At least I know my face isn’t on a bulletin board of runaways somewhere, waiting for her to spot it. She’s probably checked by now. I would have, in her position. No one is looking for me, except for Bobby Cross, and sweet lady of the Underworld please, he’s far away and running the wrong road by now, pursuing a rumor that’s never once going to be true. Please, give me this moment of safety, in the place that has always been the closest thing I have to a church, please.
Time passes. The waitress refills my coffee. My stomach settles enough to let me risk a few more bites of my sandwich, the cheese now congealed and soaked into the bread, but no less delicious. The fries and the ketchup and the sound of the jukebox, all those things are miracles. All those things are perfect.
The pressure growing in my bladder is less so. I don’t dare leave the table without paying, not even if I leave my borrowed coat behind to show that I’ll be back: I’ve been sitting here too long and I’m too clearly a runaway. Even if the waitress still believes I’m a little lost lamb in need of saving, she won’t like it if I walk out without settling my tab. But if I pay I’ll lose my table, my coffee, my refuge, and so I sit, and sip to give myself something to do, and feel the pressure grow into an ache that is no longer familiar.
At least this body, my body, seems to remember what it means to be toilet trained. I want to go to the bathroom almost as much as I never want to set foot in the bathroom again, but I haven’t wet myself. That’s something, anyway.
I’m on the verge of giving up, getting up, and leaving the twenty on the table as I rush to the bathroom when the door opens and a woman steps inside, looking around with a sharp, predatory gaze. She’s in her early forties, with the fit, trim build of someone who has never allowed themselves to be distracted from their goals by the pleasures of the flesh. The fact that one of those goals is my destruction is beside the point. Her dark blonde hair is skimmed into a simple ponytail, and when she spots me, the expression that washes over her face is somewhere between triumph and disbelief. That’s unstable ground. She’s going to have to fall one way or the other soon.
She falls toward disbelief. “Holy shit,” she says, once she’s close enough for me to hear her, for her not to be shouting across the diner. She drops down into the seat across from me, eyes wide and filled with malicious wonder behind the shining circles of her glasses. She looks enough like me to seem like a beloved aunt, someone I can trust and be trusted with in turn. “It’s really you. You’re really here.”
“I am,” I agree, and slide to my feet. They tingle with the act of moving after spending so long still. “I need to go to the . . . ” My cheeks redden at the thought of where I’m going. Steady on, Rose. You can do this. “To the ladies’ room. Can you let the waitress know I’ll be right back, I’m not skipping out on the check?”
“You’re not skipping out on me, are you?” Her amazement turns into suspicion in an instant. It would be impressive, if I weren’t so damn tired.
“I’m not. I promise. This isn’t a trick and it isn’t a game, and I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t genuinely need your help. But right now, I genuinely need to pee.” My bladder feels like it’s going to burst. Can bladders do that? Sweet Persephone, I don’t want to find out.
Laura starts to laugh as I spin on my heel and walk away from her. There’s a hysterical edge to it, like she can’t believe any of this is really happening, and I don’t care. I hit the bathroom door already unbuttoning my jeans and rush myself into the nearest stall.
The seat is cold when it hits my butt. I yelp, surprise and offense, and realize that while I still remember how to hold it in, I no longer remember how to relax and let it go. I try unclenching. All I succeed in doing is making myself hurt more.
“Rose?” The voice is Laura’s. “You still in here?”
“I asked you to wait!”
“I paid for your sandwich. I’m not letting you get away.”
So she thinks this is all some kind of game for me. Great. Cheeks burning again, I say, “Now that you’re here . . . how do you pee?”
The pause is long enough to become worrisome. Finally, flatly, Laura says, “What?”
“I can’t remember how to pee.”
She laughs again, unsteadily. She’s starting to believe me. That’s good. I don’t know how well this would work if she refused. “You just do.”
“It hurts and I can’t figure out how to start.”
“Oh my God . . . okay. Okay. Take a deep breath, and when you exhale, you just let go. Of everything. Stop holding any tension in your body.”
“You try coming back from the dead and see how relaxed you are,” I grumble. Then I close my eyes and inhale, filling my lungs with all the terrible scents this bathroom has to offer. When I can’t take any more, I breathe out, and just as I finish expelling air, I start peeing.
The sensation of relief is indescribable. I can’t remember whether peeing was this awesome the first time I was alive or not, but if it was, I’d expect the bathrooms at the Last Dance to see a lot more use. I pee and pee for what seems like forever, until it finally tapers off.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but you remember how toilet paper works, right?” asks Laura.
“Of course I do,” I say, stung. The paper here is cheap and scratchy, and I have less than no desire to rub it on myself. I also don’t want to spend the ride back to Laura’s place smelling like urine. I wonder if she realizes she’s going to be taking me home with her. Oh, isn’t this going to be fun.
I emerge from the stall feeling better than I would have believed. Is this new, some side effect of my resurrection? Or was I just so accustomed to the feeling of elimination before that I never noticed how it hollowed me out and left me breathing easier? It’s a disgusting reason for an improved physical condition.
Laura clears her throat when I reach for the door. “You’re forgetting something.”
“What?” I look back at her in confusion. I don’t have a purse. Laura paid for my food. Everything I currently own is on my person, and I’m not forgetting any of it.
She makes a face, holds up her hands, and wiggles her fingers. “You need to wash your hands,” she says. “That’s what people do. They go to the bathroom and then they wash their hands.”
My cheeks burn with mortification. I should have remembered that. Washing your hands after you touch your genitals is kindergarten-level stuff.
Being alive is going to be a barrel of laughs. I can already tell.
Naturally, there are no paper towels in the bathroom. After looking vainly around for one of those weird air-dryer things, I give up and wipe my hands on my jeans. Laura makes a frustrated sound.
“All right,” she says. “I believe you. You are, against all logic, all reason, and all common sense, back among the living. I honestly can’t imagine you committing this hard to a stupid prank.”
“Oh, thank Persephone,” I say. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to convince you.”
“You could have let me stab you,” suggests Laura easily. “Dead people generally don’t bleed.”
I eye her. “I don’t remember you being this violent.”
“It’s a four-hour drive from Boulder to here, which I only made because I was hoping to have a chance to scream at you before you disappeared back into the spirit world,” says Laura. “I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I have no clue why you called me instead of someone who actually likes you.”
“I called you because you’re the world’s leading expert on the story of the phantom prom date.” When all else fails, flattery. “You probably know things about how I work that even I don’t know. And I need your help. I think you may be the only person who can help me.”
“Help you what?”
I look at her earnestly, hoping she can see the sincerity in my eyes, hoping I won’t have to grovel. I will, if that’s what it takes, but I still don’t want to touch this bathroom floor if I can help it.
“I need to find a way back to the afterlife.”
Laura blinks. “Jump in front of a truck. Problem solved.”
“No, problem not solved. For one thing, I would never do that to a trucker. They have enough problems without people using them in place of razor blades.” Laura has the grace to look faintly abashed at that. Good. I would hate to think I was allying myself with someone who didn’t know right from wrong. “For another thing . . . I need to get back to what I’m supposed to be. Suicides never become hitchers.”
“Wait . . . what?”
I sigh. “Can I explain in the car?”
Laura blinks again, harder this time, before she frowns. “Why would we be getting in the car?”
I offer her my most winsome smile, the one I’ve honed for decades. “Because I’m going home with you.”
Laura puts her hand over her face. I’m still smiling when she lowers it.
“You’re serious,” she says.
“As a six-car pileup,” I reply.
She shakes her head and keeps shaking it as we walk toward the door. I wave to the waitress, who nods in reply, relief in her expression. From where she’s standing, I’m one more potential victim of the road being saved from a fate worse than death. If only she knew.
Everything is a matter of perspective. I’m still thinking about that as Laura and I walk on, and the door closes behind us, and the time for peace and pie is done.