Authors: Caroline Crane
Tags: #high school, #sleuth, #editor, #stalking, #nancy drew, #coma, #right to die, #teenage girl, #shot, #the truth, #gunshot, #exboyfriend, #life or death, #school newspaper, #caroline crane, #the long sleep, #the revengers, #the right to die, #too late, #twenty minutes late, #unseen menace
The Long Sleep
The Revengers #2
by Caroline
Crane
Published by
Fire and Ice
A Young Adult Imprint of Melange
Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
The Long Sleep, Copyright 2014 by
Caroline Crane
ISBN: 978-1-61235-781-2
Names, characters, and incidents
depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of
America.
Cover Design by Lynsee
Lauritsen
THE LONG SLEEP
by Caroline Crane
Hoping to make friends at her new school,
Maddie joins the newspaper staff. Its charismatic editor, Hank
Dalbeck, plans a controversial series on the right to die. This
causes so much discussion at their weekly meeting that Hank misses
his bus home and accepts a ride with Maddie. Before they can leave
the parking lot, someone fires a shot through the windshield.
Now Hank himself is in a coma, like the
people he wanted to write about. Who put him there? Was it someone
violently opposed to his ideas?
Maddie suspects Evan Steffers, her jealous
and possessive ex-boyfriend, who is supposed to be out of state.
Nevertheless, he’s been stalking her, sending flowers, messages,
and threats. He’s everywhere and nowhere, and her life is in
danger. Even attractive police officer Rick Falco can’t protect her
from an unseen menace.
Maddie decides to carry on with the work that
got Hank shot. Digging though old news clippings, she begins to
understand the truth.
But it comes too late.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
It’s funny how you
know by the smell that you’re in a school. I mean, I knew I was
there, but what struck me was how much Southbridge High smelled
like Lakeside, where I used to go. Was it chalk dust, or what? I
wondered if college would smell the same.
I’d only been at Southbridge for about a
month and still had trouble finding my way around. It wasn’t huge,
by any means, but bigger than Lakeside. And after three o’clock,
there was hardly anybody I could ask. Lugging my backpack and coat,
I looked for room 215. That would be on the second floor. I
followed the noise.
I could hear it from way down the hall,
voices shouting in disagreement. For a moment I watched from the
open door. They were so worked up they didn’t even notice me.
Before going in, I slipped away from the door, out of sight, to
powder my nose, which was shiny, and comb my hair, which wasn’t
shiny enough even though I washed it every day. It was ordinary
brown but I tried to make it interesting. When I was twelve I got
some stuff called Blonde-In that was supposed to lighten it
gradually. I thought it would be gradual enough that my parents
wouldn’t notice. I was wrong.
The door to 215 stayed open. In the back were
long lab tables and the room smelled of sulfur. Seven or eight
people sat near the front. At the teacher’s desk was a tall young
man with shaggy black hair and thick glasses. He seemed to be
enduring the racket, not trying to stop it. Most of it was directed
at him.
I stood, trying to orient myself. He turned
to me and asked, “May I help you?”
I moved in closer to get past the noise. Now
they were shouting at each other. I asked, “Is this
The Tiger’s
Roar?
”
He smiled. The rest of him wasn’t much, but
he had a beautiful smile. “Yes, it is. Can’t you hear it?”
He meant the chorus of voices. I smiled back
and explained. “I’m Madelyn Canfield. I transferred from Lakeside
and I’m interested in joining the newspaper. If you can use another
person.”
“Always. What’s your name again?” He had a
notepad on his desk and prepared to write.
“Madelyn...” I spelled it for him. There were
several variations and most people picked the wrong one. “Canfield.
I usually go by Maddie, with an ie.”
“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked.
I gave him the number. “What’s all the
shouting about?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Just an idea
I had. I knew it was controversial but I didn’t think the
controversy would start right here.”
“You’re the editor? Hank Dalbeck?”
“That’s me. Have a seat, Maddie, and enjoy
the show.”
I liked his smile and wished he would do it
more often. I also wished he wouldn’t cut his own hair. It was
chopped off and uneven around his ears. His chin had a faint
dusting of stubble. He wore a red flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the
cuffs, showing bony wrists.
The room was quieter now. I couldn’t help
asking, “What was your idea that caused all the racket?”
“You know that case that’s in the news?” he
said. “The woman in Georgia and the right to die? There are two
points of view on that, the right to die and the right to
life.”
“Wow,” I said. “That is controversial.”
“There’s so much to it, I thought we could
make it a series.”
A man bustled into the room. I didn’t have
him for any classes but I recognized him as Mr. Geyer, who taught
chemistry and physics. He had a round, doughy face and thinning
hair. I guessed he was about forty. He nodded to Hank and took a
seat at the back of the room.
Probably he was their faculty advisor. I
would have thought an English teacher would be more appropriate
than science, but maybe nobody else wanted the job.
Hank told him, “We have a new staff member.
Madelyn...” he glanced down at his notepad, “Canfield.”
Geyer nodded to me. He looked bored, his eyes
half closed. Hank didn’t bother introducing him. I was just
supposed to know.
Hank went on, “We’ve been giving a lot of
thought to what you said, Mr. Geyer. Some of us agree with it,
others don’t. But it seems worth a discussion, so I thought we’d go
ahead.”
One of those who didn’t agree with Hank was a
blond girl I knew as Cindy Belcher. She sat with her legs crossed,
her foot swinging, and spoke in a shrill voice. “You can’t publish
a thing like that. What are you trying to do, get us
firebombed?”
Hank barely blinked. “I doubt anybody’s going
to get that worked up. We’re only a school paper with near zero
circulation.”
“What about the woman in Georgia?” Cindy
demanded. “You don’t call that worked up?”
“She’s not worked up, she’s unconscious,”
Hank said with a twinkle.
Cindy pounded her chair’s flat arm. “I don’t
mean her! I mean her family and everybody. They’re split down the
middle.”
I could see how this story had caught Hank’s
interest. I knew from the news that the woman, Maisie Halloran, was
in a coma, possibly brain dead. The media were having a ball, with
her own family divided about whether or not to pull the plug.
“That’s why it would make a good topic,” Hank
said. “Right now, while it’s hot.” He looked at me. “You used to go
to Lakeside School?”
I nodded yes, surprised that he’d picked up
on that.
“Seems to me,” he said, “there was a student
there...”
“Oh. Yes. Paula. That was ages ago. I wasn’t
even born.”
Neither was Hank, for that matter. Or anybody
else in the room, except Mr. Geyer.
“So you know about it?” Hank said.
“We all did. Every year we had this campaign.
‘Never mix drugs and alcohol’. Better yet, don’t take either of
them. She was our poster girl.”
Cindy started up again. “That’s so degrading,
using a real person as an example. She can’t even fight back.”
“She didn’t know anything about it,” I
said.
Cindy turned to me, fuming. “How would you
like it if you were in a coma and the whole world was talking and
writing about you?”
“One way to get famous,” somebody
muttered.
“Cindy,” I said, “by the time it all came
out, she was gone. She never regained consciousness.”
Cindy wouldn’t back down. “It’s gruesome.
What gives anybody the right to decide somebody else should
die?”
“They do it all the time,” said Hank. “Not
always legally. The point is, most of the people we’re talking
about are already pretty much dead, medically speaking. They’re
only kept breathing by a machine. Would you want to stay like that
forever?”
Cindy glared.
“If you would,” Hank went on, “then you’d
better make that known. An advance directive, signed, sealed, and
notarized. And don’t forget a copy for your doctor.”
There was a moment while they all considered
it. Or some of them did. I felt like an outsider, being the new
kid, but I couldn’t help speaking up. “Hank is right. How else are
people going to know? That’s why they’re having all that trouble in
Georgia. Nobody knows what she would have wanted. All they can do
is speak for themselves.”
Hank looked around at them. I counted eight,
including him. Not Mr. Geyer or myself. Hank said, “Regardless of
which side you’re on, does anybody besides Cindy think it’s too
gruesome for
The Tiger?
”
He didn’t ask for hands. I raised mine
partway and said, “I think it’s a worthwhile idea and I think most
high school kids are mature enough to handle something that’s
not—well, something different.” I had wanted to use the word
“fluff,” but that might seem insulting. Most of what ran in
The
Tiger’s Roar
was fluff.
Several people applauded. Cindy glowered and
sulked.
I said, “Is this going to be straight
reporting, or are you looking for input from the public? Like a
poll or something.”
“I see it as straight reporting,” Hank said.
“It will cover both sides. People can write in and give their
opinion.”
I wasn’t sure how they could fit in too many
letters.
The Tiger’s Roar
was only eight pages, printed on
both sides and stapled together. Hardly a professional-looking job,
but it was the best they could do on a limited budget.
Maybe it was time for me to shut up. They
would all start hating me, the newbie upstart. They’d think I was a
smarty-pants rich kid because I came from Lakeside.
I was hardly rich, though I suppose that was
relative. I could settle for ‘comfortable’.
Hank had been on the Internet and found
several cases besides Paula Welbourne, the Lakeside girl. Being
local made Paula especially interesting.
Eight years she was in a coma, kept alive for
the first three on a breathing machine. Five more years without the
machine. The doctors called it a “chronic, persistent vegetative
state.” In other words, a vegetable. Is that the same as being
alive? Where’s the boundary? Maybe that was what Hank wanted to
explore, as well as the morality of keeping someone in a twilight
zone between life and death, on the chance they might wake up
someday. It happened, as he pointed out. He could see both sides of
the argument.
Cindy was still on a rampage. She thought it
was immoral to make people die when it meant pulling a plug.
“Not
make
them die,” Hank explained.
“It’s a matter of
letting
them die.”
Cindy ignored that. “It’s out-and-out murder.
If they
can
be kept alive, then they
are
alive. It’s
not like natural death, if it happened from some sort of accident,
like—” She looked at me. “Like drugs and alcohol.”