Lessons from a Dead Girl(9)

Later, when Leah and I are alone outside, I tell her I’m finished with practicing.

Leah shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t care,” she says casually.

I feel my mouth drop open. Then why do you make me do it?! I want to scream. She makes her own mouth drop open to imitate me. Then she turns and walks away. I swear I see her smile, as if she’s had a new idea.

“I was just talking to Zack Wallace,” she tells me the next week at school. “I was telling him about this neat closet you have in your house. How you call it the doll closet, and how we used to play in it together.” She smiles, showing me her white teeth. One of her top front teeth crosses over the other just slightly. It’s one of Leah’s only flaws, and I always catch myself looking at it when she talks to me.

“Leah, please,” I say. “You can’t tell anyone.”

She grins at me. “Why not?”

“Because —” But I don’t know how to answer. And, anyway, she knows.

“You said it was a secret,” I tell her.

“A secret is like a promise,” she says. “And you broke a promise to me. Maybe if I tell the secret, we’ll be even.”

“But I didn’t —” I want to tell her I didn’t mean to break the promise about Sam. But the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure.

We look at each other, both waiting for the other to say something. The words I want to ask are in the back of my throat. What happened with Sam? What did he do? But when I open my mouth to force them out, Leah rolls her eyes at me and walks away.





“Let’s see if your dad has any dirty magazines,” Leah says. She’s found my old Barbie suitcase in my closet and is making Ken and Malibu Barbie do obscene things to each other.

“Why do you keep these things, anyway? My mom gave away all my old toys.” She digs through the suitcase and finds Skipper. “Looks like you, Lainey!” She laughs, pointing at my chest.

I roll my eyes.

“You still play with them, don’t you?”

I’m used to this. Ever since I broke my promise, Leah has gotten increasingly nasty.

“I don’t play with them,” I say. “My dad says they’ll be worth a lot some day.”

I grab the dolls and shove them back in their case. “And my dad does not have dirty magazines,” I add. “He’s not like that.”

“Like what? There’s nothing wrong with looking. That’s what my dad tells my mom.”

“Well, my dad doesn’t,” I tell her.

“Whatever.” Leah smiles. “But I bet he does.”

“How would you know?” There is no way my father looks at that stuff. “The only time my dad ever had a Playboy is the one he got at the surprise party my mom had for him when he turned forty.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Leah says. I want to hit her. She reaches over and puts her hand on my thigh. “Prove it.”

My cheeks get hot with her touch, and a familiar, horrible warm feeling fills my stomach — and lower down. I feel my body wake up with excitement and the fear that always comes with it.

“I told you my dad doesn’t have any. He’s not like that.”

“We’ll see.” Leah stands and walks out of my room.

As the stairs creak under her weight, I know I’m going to follow. I don’t want her looking through my parents’ stuff without me. I look out the window to make sure my mom is still outside in the garden, then I follow.

I hear Leah in my parents’ bedroom. When I go in, I find her searching through my father’s closet.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Looking,” she says, all serious. She pushes her way farther into the back of the closet. Sure enough, behind a small pile of shoes he never wears, Leah hits the jackpot. A cardboard wine box, ripped on one side, is hidden behind a white plastic bag that has summer clothes written on it in Magic Marker.

Leah pulls open the flaps and snickers.

“I told you,” she said, holding up a Playboy magazine. There’s a blond woman with huge breasts and a toothy smile on the cover. “My mom says all men keep their Playboys in the closet. So predictable.” She says the last bit in her know-it-all voice. I still can’t believe it, but there it is. In her hands.

Leah shoves the magazine under her shirt. “Come on!” She pushes past me and makes her way back up to my bedroom.

I stay behind and push the plastic bag back against the cardboard box deep in the closet. The closet smells like my father, only it’s a stale him, mixed with must and old wool. I quickly step back out into the room.

It feels different in here — the sweet blue flowers on the wallpaper, the silver frame with my parents’ wedding picture, Christi’s and my tiny plaster handprints hanging from pink ribbons — it all feels fake. I shut my father’s closet door. How could something so nasty exist in this room?

“E-laine!” Leah calls in a singsong voice from upstairs.

It’s wrong. I know it. But I go to her anyway. She’s lying on her stomach on my bed. She looks up and smiles when she sees me, then pats the space beside her.

I join her. She has the magazine opened to a picture of a woman with red hair sitting in a chair with her legs spread open. She’s smiling.