Being Dead Read Free Page B

cat,
I thought muzzily. Then, right as I was about to drop off totally, I thought,
I'm not at Traci's house.
    I came awake enough to open my eyes and see that there wasn't anything sitting at the foot of the bed. I closed my eyes.
    Something moved.
    I sat up and turned on the light.
    The light revealed ... nothing.
    The mattress sloshed around from my movement.
Just
an air pocket
, I reasoned. And by causing the mattress to slosh, I would have broken it up.
    I turned the light off and settled down again. The water bed stopped moving.
    Then started again.
    A snake or a mouse had gotten in between the covers—I
knew
it.
    I jumped up and yanked the top sheet down. Nothing. I pulled off the under sheet. Then the mattress pad. Nothing. Gingerly I poked with my toe at the comforter, which had fallen to the floor from where I keep it folded across the foot of the bed. I saw nothing. Which didn't guarantee that there was nothing there.
    It wasn't bad enough my parents had to tear me away from my school and my friends to plunk me down in the middle of Green Acres? They had to buy a house that was crawling with vermin?
    Reluctantly I picked up a corner of the comforter, sure that something was just waiting to run up my arm.
    Nothing did.
    "And don't come back," I muttered.
    I shook out the sheets, just to be sure, then remade the bed. I switched off the light and climbed back into bed. Well,
that
was nice and restful. Home sweet home. I closed my eyes.
    Something moved.
    All right, I'm sixteen years old and I wasn't currently on speaking terms with my mother—but I ran to get my parents, anyway.
    They were still up, reading in bed.
    "There's something in my bed!" I yelled.
    "Is it Goldilocks?" my father asked.
    Mom, even though we were mad at each other, gave him a dirty look and followed me into my room.
    Silently, still not talking to me, Mom pulled the sheet back a bit more than it already was.
    I told her, "I took all the covers off and I couldn't see anything, then when I got back in, I felt whatever-it-was moving again."
    My father came in carrying the flyswatter.
    "I'm not talking about a bug," I told him, aware that my voice was veering into shrillness. "Something big enough to make the mattress move."
    My parents didn't say anything, but they stripped the bed, shaking out the sheets.
    "I
did
that already," I said.
    "Could something have gotten between the mattress and the frame?" Mom asked Dad.
    "Something big enough to make the mattress move?" Dad sounded skeptical. And understandably so. Even to get the comers of the mattress pad around the mattress, you've got to wedge and jam. It was hard to believe anything living could fit in there.
    Still, Dad looked. He worked his way all around the bed, peeling the edge of the heavy mattress back from the frame.
    "I don't see anything, honey," he assured me.
    "This place has rats," I complained.
    "No, it doesn't," Mom said, which I guess meant we were talking again, even if she was disagreeing with me. 'I'll get fresh sheets."
    I'm sure they were convinced it was a spider.
    Mom and I made up the bed with the clean sheets.
    "How's that?" Dad asked as I climbed back in.
    I was about to grudgingly admit it was fine, when I felt something move beneath me.
    I shot out of bed. "It's in the mattress!" I yelped.
    "There can't be anything in the mattress," Dad protested as I once more pulled the bedding off.
    We stared at the bare mattress. Ifs a dark blue plastic, so of course you can't see in, but I was sure we'd see it bulging here and there as whatever was inside poked around.
    But we didn't.
    "There's something in there," I insisted.
    "A rat could not live in a water-bed mattress," Dad said. "First of all, how would it get in? Second, how would it breathe?"
    I was angry, even though he was right. "I don't know," I said. "It doesn't have to be a rat. I couldn't see
what
it was. I only felt it."
    Dad rested his hands on the bed. He moved them around, pressing, to entice whatever was in