My Second Death Read Online Free Page A

there is the one other little problem as well: I was set up. That note was intended to make me curious, to make me explore the condemned house, leaving fingerprints all over the place. It’s not like I would necessarily get convicted, but at the very least I would be a suspect.
    If I don’t report the body, I could be in worse trouble once the Akron police department steps in and finds those prints. Then again, there’s nothing to connect me to the site except for my fingerprints, and my fingerprints would only bring up a sealed juvenile record. Besides, the corpse has been there for at least a day, probably more, by the smell. The note left in my message box was dated yesterday. So far there hasn’t been any hue and cry. If I wait — just don’t say anything, or do anything unusual for a few days — well, I don’t know what will happen next.
    I pick at dry skin on my lower lip until I taste salt. I drop my hand to my knee and stare at the limb. Because all of this is pointless, really. I don’t want to do the therapy circuit again, and I won’t risk going near any more corpses. Which leaves me with exactly the same option I faced ten years ago when I decided to move into my parents’ garage and live like a saint in a monk’s cell. I know what I will do and it is what I have done since I was ten, what I will always do, world without end, amen. I will do nothing.
    The worst part is, I don’t know what this decision means, if it shows the strength of my resolve to be civilized, or if it makes me monstrous. I get up and hold my hands under the hot water tap in the industrial sink until my fingers have stopped shaking. Above the sink a flyspecked mirror reflects a pale-skinned ovoid face with two eyes, one nose, one forehead, two lips and approximately thirty-two teeth. The human face, unblinking, looks away while the human hands turn off the tap, dry themselves on a towel, and two human feet walk steadily to the door. I go back out to the car, sitting patiently under a white-scabbed sky.

THREE
    I drive back to campus because the only rules for normalcy I have involve going to the university. I need to find out who left the message in the box. I climb the stairs to the English department floor. My palm squeaks against the over-polished metal railing. Outside the glass door with the stenciled words “Department of English” in some faux-Old Germanic script, I stop and wipe my palms on my thighs. Then I stick my iPod earbuds in my ears and push through the door. I don’t know how to ask. The office is open from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. every day and the department secretary won’t necessarily have seen everyone coming and going. She takes long breaks, heading across town to Panera to chat with her friends, while a student worker sits behind the desk and reads
Us Weekly
.
    Maybe the graduate students will know. Maybe it was one of them. I have almost reached the graduate student office when a finger touches my scapula. My whole body flinches. My heartbeat thuds in my neck and pain grips my scalp like fingernails dug hard into my skull. I take a breath and let it out.
    I pull out an earbud and turn around. It’s the department secretary, wearing blue polyester and smelling like overripe peaches and greasy sausage. Her little shiny marble eyes stare up at me and her mouth is moving. “ — Brandis?”
    I realize she has been saying my name. In my left ear, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in E major swells to a crescendo.
    “The dean called again. He wants to see you at your
ear
liest convenience.”
    I can almost hear the dean’s inflection in her voice.
    I swallow. “Okay.” It comes out faint, cracked in the middle.
    Her little face crumples when I answer. She starts to smile. “He’s been calling
all
morning, you know. I’m so glad I finally caught you! I’ll just tell him you’re on your way.”
    She trots off. Her small bottom twitches under the shiny synthetic fabric of her suit skirt. I watch her go. I