What the Dead Want Read Free

again. “You sure you want to spend the whole summer upstate in Mayville?”
    â€œYeah,” Gretchen said. “It sounds like it’ll be a good vacation.”
    Janine looked a little skeptical. “It’ll be interesting, anyway,” she said.
    â€œCan I inherit a house if I’m only sixteen?” Gretchen asked.
    â€œSure you can,” Janine said, laying down some Scrabble tiles that spelled the word “pickle.” “You just can’t do anything with it yet.”
    The next day Gretchen barely had a proper good-bye with Simon before the car arrived. He came downstairs and lay on her bed with his big feet propped against the wall, telling her how he had a crazy conversation about poetry withthe guy who owns that vintage clothing store with the neon pink sign down on St. Marks Place.
    â€œThe guy has a big tattoo across his chest that says I Need More ,” Simon said. “I’m like, more what ? Did he just get bored and not go back to the tattoo shop for the final word?”
    â€œMore shirts ?” Gretchen said. “How’d you see his chest ?”
    â€œâ€™Cause he was showing me the tattoo.”
    â€œMore modesty ?” Gretchen suggested, making Simon laugh.
    â€œMaybe just more wrinkle cream,” Simon said. “I think he’s like a million years old. He talked about going to see Iggy Pop play in the 1960s!”
    â€œThat’s cool, though,” Gretchen said.
    Simon sighed. “I know. I wish we could have seen him back then.” He watched her pack up her makeup. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me here by myself all summer.”
    She lay down next to him on the bed, looked into his dark eyes, rested her forehead against his. “I will text you every day.”
    â€œYou better,” he said.
    Then he got up and helped pick out her “going to the mansion” outfit: gray vintage cotton slip, her Doc Martens, an old rhinestone necklace that had belonged to hermother. She wore bright-red lipstick and put her long hair up into a topknot on her head. He stood back and sighed again. “So, so beautiful,” he said.
    Janine went down in the elevator with her to see her off, handed Gretchen a wad of cash as she was getting into the car, and kissed her on the cheek.
    â€œUpstate is pretty weird,” she said. “Take some good pictures.”
    â€œWait, what do you mean, weird?”
    Janine shrugged. “Depressing. Provincial. Creepy. Insular. Ignorant. . . .”
    â€œOkay,” Gretchen said, looking nervous. “I think I got it.”
    â€œThere’s a reason eight million people live in New York City and not in the surrounding countryside,” Janine said. Then, “If you feel like coming home—do it.” Then she patted the top of the car and the driver headed out through a jam of rush-hour traffic. Gretchen gazed into the orange light of morning that reflected off the tall buildings surrounding Central Park. How very strange, Gretchen thought. She hadn’t thought about Axton mansion for years, and now she was heading there—about to inherit the place her mother’s family had once called home.
    She’d had eight hours sitting in the back of the car to dream of what the mansion might be like, and now here it was: a ghostly relic at the end of a dark forest road. No houses nearby, not a soul in sight. On the porch the scrawny cat stared, an empty chair rocked back and forth from the breeze, and a stiff piece of smudged and ancient newsprint scuttled across the porch and lodged itself in the thorns at the base of the rosebush.

    Dear James,
    Thank you for sending the N ORTH S TAR along with your letter. It means everything to me! I have hidden it beneath my mattress for fear Father discovers it. There is such anxiety over these topics. My parents have always found it best to keep their heads down—I’m sure you know why. But as for myself I hope