Revived (2 page)

Shrugging, I consider my options for passing the time.

“I wish we could fly,” I murmur to myself, but Mason hears me.

“That would be nice,” he agrees. Unfortunately, our fourth passenger, Revive—the top secret drug that brings people back from the dead—makes that impossible. The
drug is too precious to check and too secret to carry on. So every time we move, we have to drive; every time we drive, I’m at a loss about what to do. I wish I could read, but it makes me carsick, and since we left so suddenly, my iPod isn’t charged. Eventually I settle on counting mile markers until I think I might pee my pants. I ask Mason to pull over at a diner, then, considering it’s almost noon and all, we decide to eat, too.

After visiting the surprisingly inoffensive bathroom, I join Mason and Cassie at a booth in the back. They’re sitting across from each other but aren’t speaking; they look like a typical married couple. I make a split-second decision and scoot in next to Cassie, opting to pretend to be a mama’s girl. Cassie looks up at me and smiles warmly.

We’re in public now, so she’s human.

“You’re the spitting image of your mom,” the waitress says to me when she comes to take our order. We’ve heard it before, but it’s a false comparison. Cassie’s brand of blond is straight with reddish tones, while mine is wavy and so dirty it’s essentially light brown. Cassie’s eyes are round and dark blue like the ocean, whereas mine are lighter than the sky at noon, wide set and almond shaped. She’s nearly six feet tall, and I’m five foot six; she’s curvy, and I can wear jeans from the boys’ department.

But what makes the “look-alike” comment even more absurd is the fact that Cassie’s only thirteen years older than me.

And yet, we play the part.

“Thank you!” Cassie says, hand to chest like she’s beyond flattered.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” I mutter, hoping that I’m coming off as a typical teen who doesn’t care to look like her mother. In truth, despite the fact that she barely has a personality, Cassie’s pretty. I’m fine with people saying I look like her.

“You’re most welcome,”
HELLO, MY NAME IS BESS
replies. “Now, what can I bring you?”

I order a veggie burger and a chocolate shake; Mason orders coffee and a Spanish omelet; and Cassie orders a hard-boiled egg, dry wheat toast, and sliced melon on the side.

Bess writes in her notepad and leaves. Then, almost too soon for it to be made to order, the food rides in on Bess’s wide arms. Quickly, she sets down plates, fills coffee cups, and pulls ketchup out of her apron pocket.

“Need anything else?” she asks. Three head shakes and she’s gone.

We eat in silence, me downing my lunch as if I’ve never tasted food before, then wondering if the scientists at the big lab added a metabolism booster to Revive in addition to the calming agent. Knowing it’s silly, I don’t ask Mason about it. But I can’t help but notice that Mason’s and Cassie’s plates are still half full when mine is all but licked clean.

“So, why Omaha?” I ask as Mason takes a bite of his
omelet. I watch his jaw muscles flex as he chews slowly, deliberately. After he swallows, he speaks.

“It’s one of his favorite cities,” he says.

Mason means the Revive project mastermind. Basically invisible and in control of a program that brings people back from the dead, he’s earned the nickname God.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it’s moderate, I suppose. Not too small or too big. Rarely in the news. Friendly. Reasonably gentrified. You know what that means, right?”

I roll my eyes at him.

“So, all in all, it should be a good cover. Assuming…”

“Assuming what?” I ask.

Mason checks the tables around us, then answers in a low tone. “Assuming nothing
else
happens.”

“I didn’t mean to do it, you know,” I say quietly.

“You never do,” Mason says, holding my gaze. “But you didn’t have your EpiPen, either.”

“I forgot it,” I say quickly.

It’s a lie.

In truth, I spent way too long deciding what to wear, leaving only five minutes to arrange my hair into something resembling a style. I left for school in a rush, remembering the EpiPen, which probably would have saved my life, halfway down the block. I wasn’t so late that I couldn’t have gone back, but for some reason I didn’t.

Having been trained to know when people are lying, Mason narrows his eyes at me. I assume Cassie’s doing the
same, but I don’t look at her to find out. For a moment, I think Mason’s going to call me on it, but thankfully, he moves on.

“Daisy, I think you should know that we nearly couldn’t bring you back this time,” he says so quietly it’s almost like he’s breathing the words. His bluntness, I’m used to—Mason treats me like a partner, not a daughter—but I’m surprised by the idea of permanent death.

“Was it a bad vial?” I ask.

“No, it was fine,” Mason says. “It was… you.”

“He almost called time of death,” Cassie interjects. Stunned, I look at her, then back at Mason.

“Seriously?” I ask.

“It was very stressful,” Mason says. There’s a flicker of something like worry in his green eyes, and then it’s gone.

I think for a moment before coming to what I consider to be a pretty rational conclusion: “But it did work, so everything’s fine.”

“But it might not be next time,” he says. “I’m merely advising you to take precautions. Don’t you remember Chase?”

My stomach sinks as an old memory sets in: Seven years after the bus crash that started it all, Chase Rogers died again, for seemingly no reason. He was Revived repeatedly, but—Mason told me—he seemed to have developed an immunity to the drug. Then he died for good.

“I’m not like him,” I say quietly. Bess comes and sets down the check, which silences us for a few minutes.

“I’m not like him,” I say again when the coast is clear.

Mason looks deep into my eyes. “I hope not. Just be more careful, all right?”

“All right,” I agree.

Another family is seated at the booth directly behind us, so the conversation is over for now, at least.

“Are my gorgeous ladies finished eating?” Mason asks loudly enough for others to hear. The mom at the table behind us sighs. Mason can be charming when he wants to.

I look down at my plate, which has discarded raw onions, wilted lettuce, and a quarter of a pickle left on it.

“Uh… yeah,” I say in my best disinterested-teenager voice.

“I sure am,” Cassie says, patting her flat stomach. “I’m stuffed to the gills.”

“Great,” Mason says. “Then let’s clear out.”

We walk up to the front counter. As we wait for Mason to pay, Cassie fixes a stray piece of my long hair in that absentmindedly automatic mom-ish way. She looks at me with love; I roll my eyes and brush her hand away.

After Mason leaves a five on the table for Bess, he opens the OUT door, causing the bells on top to jingle, and holds it for his wife and daughter. In the parking lot, when we’re still visible to the other diners, I stare at the ground and walk three steps behind my parents while they hold hands and Cassie laughs at nothing.

Then we get in the SUV and drive away.

Maybe it’s growing up as part of an elaborate science experiment, but I can’t leave a place without conducting a postmortem. So I spend the next few hours of the drive rehashing the past three years in Frozen Hills: a mental autopsy on Daisy Appleby by newly anointed Daisy West.

We moved to Frozen Hills the summer before seventh grade, after I died from asphyxia in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Well, outside of Ridgeland, if we’re getting technical: I was swimming near some houseboats at the reservoir and got carbon-monoxide poisoning from an idling boat.

If I was going to die again, I consider myself lucky that it happened in the summer before school started. Even luckier: Junior high in Frozen Hills was grades seven
through nine, so I started with all the other brace-faced, zit-covered seventh graders. Days after I finished decorating my
Juno-
inspired bedroom, the school year began.

“Thinking about the past few years?” Mason interrupts my thoughts, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. He’s familiar with my system.

“Yes,” I admit. “I’m thinking about a birthday party.”

“Ah,” he says, nodding. “For Nora…”

“Fitzgerald,” Cassie and I say in unison.

“Yep,” I say before retreating into my brain.

Nora Fitzgerald.

She lived down the street from us, in a sunny yellow house with dark green shutters and a
WELCOME
sign on the front door. Her mom was one of those overly cheerful types who showed up with freshly baked cookies the second your moving truck appeared. Mrs. Fitzgerald’s desire to worm into our world always unnerved Cassie. Paranoid, Cassie wondered aloud on several occasions if Mrs. Fitzgerald was actually a spy for a foreign government trying to steal the formula for Revive. She said that “suburban housewife” would be the perfect cover.

Two weeks after we arrived, Nora showed up on our front porch, undoubtedly shoved out the door by her mother, birthday party invitation in hand.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Nora.”

“I remember from when you guys brought the cookies,” I said. “I’m Daisy.”

“Yeah.”

We stared at each other in silence, me thinking that she looked like a Skipper doll and wondering if she owned any outfits that didn’t match from her hair clips to her sandals, and her looking at me in my cutoff jean shorts and red-and-white-striped T-shirt like I was from an alien planet.

“Here,” she said finally, offering me the tiny purple envelope. “It’s an invitation to my birthday party next weekend.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Nora said. “See ya.”

The next weekend, I faked being sick and watched the partygoers arrive at Nora’s from the comfort of the window seat in my poster-filled bedroom. Looking back, that was probably the moment that defined Daisy Appleby. Those first weeks of school, Nora’s birthday was all anyone talked about: It was a boy/girl party, and if you weren’t there, you weren’t anybody. For the rest of the year, Nora was polite to me at block parties and in the halls at school. But by eighth grade, she was braces-less, in a B-cup, and on track to be queen of the school, and I was nothing but the weird neighbor who kept to herself. Unknowingly, I had dissed the most popular girl in school.

It made me invisible.

Not that I minded.

The Revive program is built on secrecy, and being invisible at school is never a bad thing. Even if I make
friends, it’s not like I can get close to them. My family life is a facade, and we could move at any time.

Anyway, it’s not like I was lonely in Frozen Hills. I had an after-school study group and I hung out solo with one of the other members every once in a while. And I’m not one of those people who get all self-conscious about going to the movies or to see bands alone. I’m not sure when normal kids learn to be embarrassed about things like that, but thankfully, it never happened to me.

I carefully catalog three years of memories and by nine o’clock, when we pull into our new hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, I have concluded that my time in Frozen Hills was a success. I navigated junior high without any major issues. I maintained cover and managed not to raise suspicions or get too close to anyone or anything that I had to leave.

Ready to focus on the future, I tune in to the city outside the car windows.

“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” I say.

“It’s the most populated city in Nebraska,” Mason answers.

“How many people live here?” I ask, because I know he’ll know. Mason’s a walking Wiki.

“Almost half a million,” he says. “There are actually several large corporations here….” he begins. That’s the danger of pressing Mason’s Search button: If he’s in the right mood, he’ll barf information.

I can’t help but tune out, but I’m surprised when I find my thoughts floating back to Frozen Hills. Usually, I assess and move on. This time, something is bugging me.

Was there a missed opportunity there?

“Everything okay?” Mason asks, sensing my distraction.

“Everything’s fine,” I say. “I just think that maybe—if I get any party invitations in Omaha—I might actually accept.”

I take a break from decorating my new room when a text alert chimes on my phone. It’s Megan, one of the kids who died with me in Iowa eleven years ago; another of fourteen living “bus kids” that make up the Revive program test group. Megan lives in Seattle, but we keep in touch. Initially, we bonded over the program. Then we grew closer, like sisters who realize they’re actually friends, too.

I tap my finger on the screen to read her message.

Under the pseudonyms Flower Girl and Fabulous, Megan and I coauthor a blog called
Anything Autopsy,
where
we dissect music, books, fashion, food, and whatever else we feel like. The format is she said/she said style—or she said/he-she said, since Megan is transgender—and if one of us doesn’t post, it’s not as cool.