Being Dead Read Online Free PDF

yeah," I agreed, "except that Danny became unbearable around ten." Casually I asked, "Was that one of your brothers ringing the bicycle bell before?"
    "When?" Michelle asked, but before I could answer, she was already shaking her head. "Well, whenever, no. Alec is the youngest, and I don't think any of them ever had a bell. Patrick has one of those ah-wooo-ga horns on his car, but that's not the same at all."
    "No," I agreed.
    I was going to let the subject drop, but Michelle added, "And the Wilcoxes on the other side of you are too old for bicycle bells, too."
    "Oh, well," I said. It wasn't trying to change the subject that made me say, "These brownies are good." They
were,
I was surprised to find—moist and chocolatey.
    Michelle smiled and nodded, by which I guessed she had made them, not her mother. I can make brownies, too, but only from a box mix. Michelle went back to telling me what her brother had discovered about us: "So there's you and Danny, and both your parents?" Just the slightest emphasis on
both,
as though that was what she was checking.
    "Yeah. They teach."
    "At the high school?"
    "Community college."
    "They start in a couple weeks," she said. "We get a week and a half more. I'm starting junior year; how about you?"
    I nodded.
    "Great," she said. And it would be nice to have at least one familiar face to look for. Whether or not we were in a one-room schoolhouse.
    "Tell me about you," I said.
    "Well, I'm the second to the youngest of five, unfortunately all of them boys except for me and Rachel, who really doesn't count because she's so damn old she's forgotten what it's like to be a kid. My mother is a visiting nurse, my father skipped out on the family years ago, and I've lived in the same house all my life."
    She was discreetly looking around the kitchen.
    "I love what you've done with this place already," she said. "It was getting to be a real wreck before, but you've fixed it up nice." She stood and followed the hose from the sink to the doorway. "A lot of plants upstairs that need watering?"
    I laughed. "Water bed," I explained.
    "Yeah? Me, too," she said, which surprised me—I would have figured a straw-stuffed mattress with a goose-down comforter, handmade by her grandmother from the down of her family's own geese. She asked, "So where did you move from?"
    "Buffalo."
    "Must be neat living in a big city like Buffalo," Michelle said wistfully, as though we were talking about New York or Paris. "Sometimes it's so annoying living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody knows everybody's family. Like it's not bad enough having my teachers say, When your sister, Rachel, was in this class...' some of them remember when they taught my
mother.
And everybody has you pegged by your family, so they'll say, 'Oh, those Shumways, they never amount to anything,' or 'Those Lyons girls never can pick a man that'll stay around for longer than it takes to father a litter of kids.' My mother's a Lyons. At least we're not Doolittles, who have to hear people say, 'The Doolittles do little,' a million times a year, with everybody thinking they're being so original. You're lucky—your family will be newcomers for at least a couple generations before people admit you're going to stay in Westport and come up with some way to describe you besides 'the new uns.'"
    I didn't tell her that I only planned on being in Westport for two years. Actually, I thought she was kind of funny and fun. I liked the way she seemed willing to say anything.
    I helped myself to a second brownie.
    Michelle had been waiting for me before she accepted a second helping herself.
    "So you knew the people who lived here before?" I asked.
    "Yup," Michelle said.
    "Any little kids?" I didn't ask, Any
little kids who died?
but I was sure she was going to tell me all about it.
    "Nope," Michelle said. "Old Mrs. Reinhardt was renting it out to a bunch of students from the college for the last twenty years or so." She flashed her quick grin.