The Wrong Grave Read Free

someone else pushed. The lid shot up and fell back against the opposite embankment of dirt. The dead girl who had hold of Miles’s boot let go.
    This was the first of the many unexpected and unpleasant shocks that Miles was to endure for the sake of poetry. The second was the sickening—no, shocking—shock that he had dug up the wrong grave, the wrong dead girl.
    The wrong dead girl was lying there, smiling up at him, and her eyes were open. She was several years older than Bethany. She was taller and had a significantly more developed rack. She even had a tattoo.
    The smile of the wrong dead girl was white and orthodontically perfected. Bethany had had braces that turned kissing into a heroic feat. You had to kiss around braces, slide your tongue up or sideways or under, like navigating through barbed wire: a delicious, tricky trip through No Man’s Land. Bethany pursed her mouth forward when she kissed. If Miles forgot and mashed his lips down too hard on hers, she whacked him on the back of his head. This was one of the things about his relationship with Bethany that Miles remembered vividly, looking down at the wrong dead girl.
    The wrong dead girl spoke first. “Knock knock,” she said.
    â€œWhat?” Miles said.
    â€œKnock knock,” the wrong dead girl said again.
    â€œWho’s there?” Miles said.
    â€œGloria,” the wrong dead girl said. “Gloria Palnick. Who are you and what are you doing in my grave?”
    â€œThis isn’t your grave,” Miles said, aware that he was arguing with a dead girl, and the wrong dead girl at that. “This is Bethany’s grave. What are you doing in Bethany’s grave?”
    â€œOh no,” Gloria Palnick said. “This is my grave and I get to ask the questions.”
    A notion crept, like little dead cat feet, over Miles. Possibly he had made a dangerous and deeply embarrassing mistake. “Poetry,” he managed to say. “There was some poetry that I, ah, that I accidentally left in my girlfriend’s casket. And there’s a deadline for a poetry contest coming up, and so I really, really needed to get it back.”
    The dead girl stared at him. There was something about her hair that Miles didn’t like.
    â€œExcuse me, but are you for real?” she said. “This sounds like one of those lame excuses. The dog ate my homework. I accidentally buried my poetry with my dead girlfriend.”
    â€œLook,” Miles said, “I checked the tombstone and everything. This is supposed to be Bethany’s grave. Bethany Baldwin. I’m really sorry I bothered you and everything, but this isn’t really my fault.” The dead girl just stared at him thoughtfully. He wished that she would blink. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her hair, lank and black, where Bethany’s had been brownish and frizzy in summer, was writhing a little, like snakes. Miles thought of centipedes. Inky midnight tentacles.
    â€œMaybe I should just go away,” Miles said. “Leave you to, ah, rest in peace or whatever.”
    â€œI don’t think sorry cuts the mustard here,” Gloria Palnick said. She barely moved her mouth when she spoke, Miles noticed. And yet her enunciation was fine. “Besides, I’m sick of this place. It’s boring. Maybe I’ll just come along with.”
    â€œWhat?” Miles said. He felt behind himself, surreptitiously, for the knotted rope.
    â€œI said, maybe I’ll come with you,” Gloria Palnick said. She sat up. Her hair was really coiling around, really seething now. Miles thought he could hear hissing noises.
    â€œYou can’t do that!” he said. “I’m sorry, but no. Just no.”
    â€œWell then, you stay here and keep me company,” Gloria Palnick said. Her hair was really something.
    â€œI can’t do that either,” Miles said, trying to explain quickly, before the dead girl’s hair decided to strangle