Laughter of the Undead Page 19

  Since we’d gotten home, Tommy had glued himself to Izzy, just like he had been with Mom. I’d almost had to restrain him to keep him from trying to go up to the shower with her. Just like with Mom, who hadn’t been able to pee on her own for four years. I didn’t know if it was simply because she was a girl or because of how much in common she had with Mom. I hadn’t thought about it or even made the connection until I saw him try to follow her to the bathroom, and he told her he had to pee and not me. Izzy cared. A lot. And maybe Tommy had sensed that. Maybe I was too distant since Mom and Dad were gone. Maybe he didn’t want me to parent him, he wanted me to brother him. I don’t know. But I was glad he’d latched onto her. I didn’t know how well I could handle one hundred percent Tommy all the time, and she seemed good at it. Together, we walked up the stairs, Levi following.

  When we got to my room, I saw the family portrait tacked to the wall over my bed. My eyes fixed on my mother and father, their smiles wide and permanently plastered to their faces. They were only a memory now. I didn’t turn, but I could hear Tommy babbling at Izzy about something incomprehensible and hearing his tiny voice and their tiny, frozen faces made it hit me again, so strong I felt like my legs were about to collapse from under me, but I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, swallowing a lump of tears.

  “Connor? Are you all right?” Izzy frowned, holding the boxes out of Tommy’s reach while he tried to take them. I blinked at her.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Zoning.” I opened my closet and reached up to set the board games on the top shelf. “Hand me yours.”

  She handed me all but the one on the bottom. Of course, it was Pretty Pretty Princess.

  “Do you think we could get Levi to play this with us?” she asked, laughing.

  “Well, he does wear earrings already.”

  “Are you talking about me?” Levi asked, walking through my open bedroom door.

  Izzy jumped. “Cheese and crackers, where did you come from?”

  “The doorway,” he said flatly.

  “Sure,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Party in my room. Why don’t we just invite the rest of the world too, then we can all stand around awkwardly until someone remembers to bring the salsa.”

  Izzy stared at me blankly for a long moment. “What?”

  “Nevermind.”

  “Anyway . . . ” Levi slung a bag I hadn’t realized had been thrown over his shoulders along with the gun onto my bed and shuffled through the contents. After a few seconds of shuffling and pushing Tommy back a little so he couldn’t grab the bag, and ignoring Tommy’s whining, Levi yanked out an old book and a scratched and graying leather jacket.

  “Here,” he said, not meeting either of our eyes.

  Izzy took the book uncertainly and my brother rushed over to her, wanting to look, wrapping his arms around her waist. She ignored him. It was an old paperback, one of those which is smaller to hold, but thicker to read. The pages were yellowing and the cover faded, but I could still read what it said.

  I read the title over Izzy’s shoulder. “What’s that for?”

  “It’s for Izzy,” he muttered. “It was my mom’s favorite. And I didn’t want to leave it with my dad. And you like reading so . . . ” he trailed off and shrugged. Something was clearly bothering him, but it was hard to tell how upset he was. And something else was bothering me. There was something missing.

  “Thank you,” Izzy said uncertainly, smiling faintly, but I could tell she saw something was bothering him as well.

  “And what’s that for?” I asked, pointing to the jacket.

  “You. Something I got from my grandfather before he died and it’s never fit me. Same as the book. I couldn’t leave it with my dad.”

  “Dude, it was your grandfather’s. I couldn’t— ”

  “Just take the damn jacket.”

  I froze, staring from him to the jacket. His tone had gone darker than my words warranted. I paused for a moment, considering his features, normally guarded, now raw, before I accepted.

  Levi took a shaky breath as if he’d been holding it and ran his hands through his black hair, turning away from us, but Izzy took a step toward him.

  “Did you find Alec?” Izzy’s voice was gentle. Levi’s shoulders tensed and he turned to us, vulnerability for once visible. His features wavered for a long moment until finally he buried his face in his hands and sank to the ground with his back to my bed frame, pulling his long legs against his chest.

  “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely. I lowered myself so I sat in front of him, legs crossed and trying to catch his eyes with mine.

  “You’re avoiding it, Levi,” I whispered. “What happened?”

  Izzy followed my example, sitting cross-legged beside me.

  “You can tell us,” she murmured. Levi glanced up at us through a curtain of hair.

  “Alec is . . . dead. I got there too late. He was still alive, but . . . he died while I— ” His voice broke and he glowered down at his hands. “Bled out. There was nothing I could do for him. Had I just left here sooner, he would still be alive.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Izzy muttered, putting one of her hands over Levi’s. He yanked it away.

  “Wasn’t it, Izzy?” he snapped and got to his feet, grabbed his bag off the bed and storming out of the room and down the stairs.

  I sat back on my heels and let out a long breath.

  I wished I could apologize, say something to show I sympathized, show I understood exactly what he was feeling. He had lost Alec just as I had lost Darren. Darren may have been an ass and maybe not even a real friend, but it still hurt that he was gone. He’d been my friend for seven years, and even if it was seven years of being an asshole, it was still seven years where I’d called him my best friend. Douchebag or not, it still hurt.

  I wiped my hands over my face.

  “I’m so tired.”

  “You didn’t sleep, huh?” Izzy asked, her voice tiny.

  “Every time I closed my eyes, I either saw one of those crazy laughing flesh-eating monsters or . . . or my parents. I don’t know which was worse.”

  We were silent for a long moment. Whatever had happened back at the police station hadn’t come up again, though she had said we should talk about it. I couldn’t figure out what we had to talk about.

  “Come on,” I said finally and got to my feet, intentionally not looking at the family photo.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find Levi.”

  “I think he needs some time to himself.”

  “That is exactly what he doesn’t need. We’re in this together.”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  I offered a hand to help her up. She took it and I pulled her to her feet.

  We checked his room first. The door was closed and no light shone from under the door.

  “Levi?” I asked quietly. “Are you— ”

  “No. No, I’m not. Just go away.”

  “Levi,” Izzy said softly as she stepped up beside me in front of the door to the guest room, which had become Levi’s room.

  “I understand, Levi,” I muttered, leaning my forehead against the wooden door. “I completely understand.” Tears blurred my vision, so I closed them and took a shaky breath. “I lost my best friend, too, yesterday. It’s beyond horrible, I get it. But we can’t let it consume us. If we fall into this, we won’t get back out. It doesn’t seem like things are getting better, and they might not, but being down here in this utter loss, we won’t live through it. Acknowledge that there is still light and try to stay in it, Levi. I know it’s hard. God, I know it’s hard, but I’m not going to waste all the years my parents spent raising me. I don’t know what the deal is with your dad, but there is somebody in your life you loved. There has to be. You can live for Alec. Just imagine him telling you that he’s okay. Don’t waste the years you spent together. There has to be more than the loss. There is more. I’m not saying we can never cry or be sad about it, but we have to find a way to keep it up, to stay
alive. And you aren’t going to find that by being alone, Levi.”

  There was a long pause. Izzy put one small hand in mine and squeezed it comfortingly. I took a shaky breath and stepped back from the door. There was no movement on the other side for a whole minute. But then I heard a long shaky sigh, followed by the sound of him getting to his feet. Izzy released my hand as the doorknob turned. Levi swung the door open.

  For the first time, Levi was disheveled. His eyeliner had smudged and his eyes were red and puffy as if he had been crying. His hair seemed to have lost its spikiness and now fell around his face in thin strands.

  Tilting his head at me, Levi ran a hand through his hair. “That was one hell of a speech.”

  “Thanks,” I shrugged.

  “Even if it was mushy.”

  “I try.”

  “What now? And no, I’m not playing Pretty Pretty Princess with you.” He gave a pointed look at Izzy, who shrugged, a half-smile flitting across her face.

  “Do you want to watch a movie?” I managed.

  After a day of nearly getting us killed in a grocery store, beating a used-to-be-police officer to death with a chair, getting covered in dead smelly black blood, witnessing Izzy cry for the first time, and getting caught as a princess by the Dark Lord, I needed a break.

  A break from the overwhelming amount of emotions I’d been moderately suppressing all day. Keeping this up, keeping myself together . . . I couldn’t keep it together much longer, not without help. During the board games with Tommy and Izzy, it had been easier. Easy to focus on strategy instead of my parents. Easier to focus on making Tommy and Izzy laugh by being ridiculous than thinking about Darren laughing after he’d been shot. It was just easier, and I wanted to watch something, I didn’t care what, as much for myself as for Levi. Who knew if it would work in his favor, but if the rest of us were affected for the better, then it would be worth it.

  Levi gave me a look that told me just how crazy that statement made me sound, but Izzy nodded. “I don’t want to think about anything,” she muttered.

  Levi looked at her, and like before, his eyes softened just a little bit, and for a moment I wondered what that meant.

  He sighed a long, tired sigh. “All right.”

  Sixteen

  Levi

  March 5th - 5:03 p.m.

  “This morning you told me I needed to watch Connor to keep him from hurting himself and now he’s the one trying to cheer you up,” Izzy muttered, pulling the long sleeves of her purple shirt down so the cuffs covered her hands, and gripping the hems in her fists. I hadn’t paid attention earlier, but Izzy was wearing something completely different than before, including pants that were several times too big for her. They must have been Connor’s and I wondered for a moment why she was wearing his clothes.

  I shrugged and pulled my eyes away from the doorway where Connor had disappeared a moment before.

  “He did the same for you,” I said. “That is why you played Pretty Princess, isn’t it?”

  “No, Levi, Pretty Pretty Princess,” she smirked.

  “Whatever.” I rolled my eyes but found myself smiling anyway.

  She stared at me for a long moment. “Am I going to have to watch you now, too?”

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eyes and sighed. “No. I don’t think I’ll be okay for a while.” I swallowed as my mind’s eye forced Alec’s dead face into my head and I had to clench my hand to try and eliminate the phantom feeling of Alec’s bloody fingers clutching mine. “But I won’t hurt myself.”

  I owe Alec that much. Alec worked so hard to help me to the place I was, that I wouldn’t break his heart by going back to where I had been. If I had no other reason to stay alive, I would because it’s what Alec would have wanted. He wouldn’t want his death sending me back three years to where I’d been then. He’d want me to keep going. So I would. For Alec.

  She nodded and I glared down at the ground, reminding myself to breathe through the pain that clenched and unclenched in my chest like a human hand. I could hear popcorn coming from the kitchen. Popcorn wouldn’t fix anything and a movie wouldn’t relieve the pain, but the logical part of me was grateful that he was making the effort. Whether or not this attempt at cheering me up worked, at least Connor tried, despite the fact that he must have gone through the exact same thing yesterday.

  Maybe Izzy was right. Maybe right now it was best not to think about anything.

  “Where’s Conny?” came a small voice from behind us. I turned to see Connor’s little brother standing behind me, his large blue dinosaur clutched by the neck in one fist. It looked as if it had been held that way so often that all the stuffing had either gone into the head or into the body, leaving the neck empty and floppy.

  He was staring at me, eyes set to Bambi mode. They were the same light blue-gray as Connor’s right eye. He and Connor had a lot in common, now that I really looked at the kid. Their eyes and noses were shaped the same way and they had the same upward curve on the corners of their mouths, but there were a lot of differences, too. Tommy looked entirely white, with blonde hair and huge blue eyes and skin that was tan at most. Connor, on the other hand, had skin a shade too dark to be a tan and hair so dark you might as well call it black. It was strange that their faces were so similar yet Connor was so much darker complected. Connor and Tommy both had their father’s face, but it looked like Tommy had been colored with the same crayons as his mother.

  Apparently, Izzy had taken over the job of big sister. She knelt down by Tommy’s side.

  “What happened to the coloring book?” she asked gently, brushing a blonde strand of hair away from the small boy’s forehead.

  Tommy shook his head. “I was getting my superheroes.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “All by yourself?”

  “Mr. Scary was sad. I wanted to make him better.”

  Izzy smiled, laughing a little and glancing at me, because who else was “Mr. Scary.”

  Even as he talked, Tommy kept his eyes fixed on me as if I were about to pounce on him and attack. I blinked at him slowly. “Thank you.”

  He made a face at me. “Are you still sad?”

  I turned away from the four-year-old to glance back at the kitchen doorway, the sound of popping suddenly replaced by the smell of freshly made buttered popcorn.

  “Why is Conny making popcorn?” Tommy asked Izzy.

  “We are going to watch a movie . . . I think, do you want to watch it with us?”

  He nodded slowly. “Where are Mommy and Daddy?”

  Izzy glanced over her shoulder at me, a little helplessly, but I scowled and glanced away, so she continued, “They had to go on a trip.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “To visit . . . ” She searched for words. “Your grandparents.”

  “Why?”

  She puffed out her cheeks, more in thought than exasperation. “Gramma is sick.”

  “Why?”

  “Tommy, leave her alone,” Connor said, coming into the room with the bags of popcorn that he set down on the coffee table, walking to pick the four-year-old up, trying to be cheerful for the kid, but he didn’t want to talk about his parents. I didn’t want to say anything but he would have to tell Tommy the truth at some point.

  “What are we watching?” Izzy sat on the couch in the corner and pulled her legs under her.

  Shrugging, Connor handed her one of the bags of popcorn, which she took and opened, the smell wafting through the room. He offered one to me, but I put up a hand, denying it.

  “This was your idea. Mission Cheer Me Up seems to be poorly planned, Storming.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, pursing his lips. “Why do people keep calling me Storming?”

  “It’s your last name, dipshit. ”

  “Yeah, but my first name is Connor. C-O-N-N-O-R. Just call me that.” He opened his own bag of popcorn and threw a handful into his mouth.

  For some reason, a sudden wave of anger washed over me, as if all o
f the emotions I had been feeling and trying desperately not to feel for the past two days suddenly converted themselves to rage, to pointless anger.

  “Because you always had it blaring from the back of your jersey. Not your first, your last. Sorry if years of rubbing your name in everyone’s face took effect,” I snapped, voice nearly a shout. They all stared. Connor stopped mid-chew and swallowed, frowning.

  “What’s your deal?”

  “What’s my deal? What’s my fucking deal? I’ll tell you what my deal is. My best friend just died, right in front of me, and my dad didn’t give a shit that I could be dead. And right now, I’m in the goddamn house of Connor Storming, who flounced around in football jerseys all the time, showing off how completely amazing he was because nothing was ever wrong with his life and now you give me fucking popcorn and expect that just because you offered to watch some movie that makes us friends. Well, news flash, not everyone in the world is head-over-heels for you. Unlike her,” I gestured angrily at Izzy, “because she’s wearing your clothes so I assume you slept together and played board games while I was stepping over my best friend’s dead mother’s body. It’s people like you that caused all of my friends to turn into murderers. Turn into people that kill. And you’re going to sit there and ask me what my deal is?”

  I wanted to say more. Scream and rage at him until I ran out of words to say. But I had already said too much. My tirade left me drained and all the rage that had come on me so suddenly, left just as it had come. For a moment I hated myself. Being bitter and turning it on him wouldn’t bring Alec back. I wasn’t mad at him and I didn’t care how he dressed or who knew and who didn’t know who he was. I just wanted to be mad. I wanted to feel something other than this mawing pit of horror and sorrow and nothingness. I wanted to be pissed.

  After the echo of my voice died, the room fell into total ear-ringing silence.

  Connor stared at me for a long moment. His expression was blank, but there were tears in his eyes. He set the bag of popcorn down and swallowed hard.