Please Ignore Vera Dietz(21)
Author: A.S. King

A childish stick figure of a dead dog, legs up. A dead fish, floating. A dead rodent with a pointed nose and a long tail.

The letters T-E-L-L.

The dead rodent reminds me that it’s a school night and I should be home by now, sleeping in my vanilla rotten-corpse room.

“Do you see that?” I ask, pointing at the pictures in the car window.

James can’t see them. He’s looking at me, concerned. Great. Now I look like some immature drama queen. A few drinks and I’m seeing shit. He’s probably writing a mental restraining order right now.

“You want to call it a night?” he asks.

“Sure. I have a Vocab test in the morning and I didn’t learn any of the words over break,” I say. He helps me back into the car, now void of tissue-paper Charlies, and drives us back toward the store. When we pass by my house, I see the downstairs lights are still on and I realize I might be in trouble. Then, just after we pass by, the cop behind us puts on his lights and things get about twenty million times worse.

A BRIEF WORD FROM THE DEAD KID

I was an idiot. I was an idiot about Vera and about Jenny Flick. I don’t know what I was doing. I don’t know who I was trying to impress. I’ve asked myself for months now, and I can only tell you what I wasn’t doing.

I wasn’t trying to hurt Vera.

I wasn’t trying to impress the Detentionheads. I didn’t really even like them.

And let me set the record straight—I did not kill those animals. That was Jenny.

But I did send the cops.

You’re surprised? You had a different idea of the afterlife? This goes against your religion? Well, what did you really know anyway? No one living understands dying, and no matter what they dream up—from harps and heaven to pickles in Big Macs—they can’t prove a thing until they’re on this side. Which, if you can, you want to avoid until it’s really your time to go. You might want to leave some time to fall in love and have a family. Stay healthy so you can meet your grandchildren one day. I can guarantee you this: you do not want to die by asphyxiating on your own puke and get kicked out of a car onto your front lawn.

I spend most of my time watching my parents. You’d think I’d get as far away from them as I could now that I’m free, but seems I’m here to learn something. Not sure what. I never liked either of them. He’s just a bully, and she’s a doormat.

I spend the rest of my time trying to communicate with Vera. I want her to know I’m sorry. I want her to find the box and clear my name. I want her to fall in love and have a nice life. In a way, I feel like I was the one standing in her way, so I’m glad I’m dead. I would have never made a good enough man for her. But she deserves better than a college dropout pizza delivery guy, too.

So I sent the cops.

No, I’m not omnipotent. Of course not. But I can make things appear to those who want to see them, and small-town cops are always looking for trouble, aren’t they?

NEW YEAR’S DAY (NIGHT)

“Step out of the car, please.”

Oh shit. I can see the porch light go on at my house and the living room curtain move at the Kahns’ house. Can’t they turn off the flashing lights now that they’ve stopped us?

James and I get out of the car. James hands them his paperwork when he gets out. I just stand there and try to disappear while chewing spearmint gum violently to get rid of my vodka breath.

“I’ll need to see your license, too,” the fat cop says to me. I reach into the car for my purse and see the bottle caps on the floor of James’s car. Oh man. We are in big trouble.

I hand him the license and my school ID in case he might take pity on the fact that I’m still in school.

He looks at it, mumbles “4511 Overlook Road,” and looks down the street at my house. “That your house?”

“Yep.”

“Well, let’s walk you home, then.”

“Uh—I—uh—have to pick up my car.”

He laughs. “You’re not picking up anything tonight, Miss Dietz. Except maybe your coat from the backseat there.”

I look to James and he smiles, with confidence. I’m unsure why he’s so confident. He could lose his license. He could lose his job. He could go to jail for buying an underage high school senior vodka coolers, right?

Before I know it, I’m walking to my house with the cop. A thousand Charlies are in the air, walking with us, reminding me that I could tell the cop everything I know. That I should. When we get to within view of the porch, I see Dad, arms crossed, his reading glasses shoved onto his forehead and his concerned face on.

“Please don’t tell him I was drinking.”

“I don’t think I need to tell him.”

“Please don’t take my license. I need to keep my job.”

He stops me at the end of the drive and turns me to look at him. “Look. Don’t screw your life up. There’s plenty of time to get drunk and hang out with boys. That guy’s too old for you.”

“I need my job. It’s full-time. I can’t lose it.”

He inspects me. “Tonight you get your one and only warning from the Mount Pitts police department. After this, you don’t get a break.”

Then he waves to my dad from the end of the drive and turns back toward the car. Dad looks confused, but concentrates on me. I pray for his crappy sense of smell. I pray I’m walking straight.

“What was that about? Where’s the car?”

“It’s at the store. We can pick it up tomorrow.” I walk past him through the front door as if it’s not two in the morning on a school night.

He catches my arm. “Vera? What’s going on?”

“Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“No,” he says, grabbing his coat from the hook and looking as if he’s going to ask the cops.

He’s only bluffing and I know it. But I do have to tell him something. Something.

“I went out with a guy from work tonight. That’s all. He was driving a little fast on the way home.”

“So where’s the car?”

“I told you—it’s at the store. I’m working four-to-close tomorrow anyway.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“James.”

“James what?”

Of course, I have no idea what the answer to this question is.

“Vera?”

“Yeah. James—uh—I can’t pronounce it. Starts with a K.”

“James Starts-with-a-K?”