Page 37 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Jet grabbed her keys and her wallet from the wooden bowl on the side table.

‘Where are you going?’ Luke asked, because he felt like he had to. Jet knew her brother.

‘Literally anywhere that isn’t this fucking house! I’m not going to die in here again. Tell Mom she can choose the casket. I really won’t care, I’ll be dead.’

Jet opened the front door and struggled through, flipping off the doorbell camera as she passed. Unlocked her truck and climbed inside, starting the engine, hitting the steering wheel just once, with the heel of her hand. Fuck, that hurt; she wouldn’t do that again.

She checked her mirrors and backed out, waving to Dad and Luke and Sophia in the open doorway.

A curtain twitched in the upstairs window just as she reached the street.

Mom’s blotchy face pressed to the glass, watching her leave.

Jet knocked. Three times. Waited two seconds. Knocked again. Waited. But she’d waited long enough, sitting in her truck, wondering what the fuck she should do, where the fuck she should go. She really only had one answer, only one person in this whole fucking town, so she knocked again and again and again. He’d forgive her for the hostility; he always did.

A click and the door swung inward, Billy’s confused face in the crack.

‘Jet.’ He pulled the door the whole way. His eyes looked swollen, hiding underneath those dark curls.

‘I asked at the bar downstairs, they told me you lived in 1B,’ Jet explained.

‘You OK? Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that. Stupid question.’

His gaze settled on her bags, another question forming on his lips, skirting his teeth.

‘Yeah, so,’ Jet said, sucking in a breath. ‘I was wondering … can I stay with you? Here? In your apartment?’

Billy’s mouth didn’t move but his eyes did, tracking across her face, a flash of his old light behind them.

‘Probably won’t be much of a roommate,’ she laughed. ‘I definitely won’t be paying any rent, might keep some strange hours, eat your food. And I know I come with baggage.’ She gestured to the backpacks on the floor, but they both knew that’s not what she meant. ‘But it’s not like it’ll put you outthatmuch, ’cause, you know, um, like, I’ll be dead by the end of the week.’

Billy swallowed.

‘Is that a yes?’

8

‘Billy, really, it’s fine. Don’t worry.’

Jet raised her legs from the coffee table, so he could get past with the vacuum cleaner.

‘I’ve put the sheets in the wash,’ Billy said, over the whir, the crackle, as the machine found a stash of crumbs. ‘You take the bed, I’ll have the sofa.’

‘I’m not kicking you out of your bed, Billy.’ Jet’s eyes returned to her screen, to the Google Street View of River Street, clicking up and down, hunting, a digital stalker. As though she might somehow find her phone there, hiding in the past, in the grass or the dirt.

‘I like the sofa. Sometimes I sleep there anyway.’

Billy Finney was the worst liar. And this sofa was a piece of crap, lumps of springs digging into Jet’s thighs already.

He disappeared with the vacuum into the bedroom, kept it running as he reached for a can of deodorant, spraying it around the room, into every newly tidied corner. Coughing as he inhaled the fumes.

Jet smiled, kept her teeth to herself, started back at the top of River Street again.

More cursing from the bedroom, more rustling.

‘Billy, stop worrying.’ Again. It was hard to concentrate with all the worrying.

He reemerged, a small box in his hands. ‘Got this for Christmas last year. Never opened it.’

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