Free Being Dead by Vivian Vande Velde

a walk around the block, even though he was a stupid, disgusting dog instead of a beautiful, elegant cat like the one Mary Beth Hinkle had. I think Dad had bought Spartacus for when Kevin came back home, because Kevin had always wanted a dog.
Welcome home, Kevin. We know you did a good job and we're proud of you.
    Anyway, it was hard work walking Spartacus, because his brain was too small to grasp the concepts of
heel
or
no
or
keep away from that lady's flower garden while she's sitting right there on her porch watching, you dimwit dog, you.
    When we finally got back home, Mom was in the living room, wearing only her nightie. It wasn't like her to be downstairs without a robe while the drapes were open so that anybody looking in the window would be able to see her. Not that I think the neighbors were necessarily lining up to try to catch a glimpse of my mother in her nightclothes, but that was one of her idiosyncrasies. Whatever had happened, she had come downstairs fast.
    I was concentrating on trying to unfasten Spartacus's leash from his collar. He was twisting and whining and being generally uncooperative. Same as always. Once I got him loose, he tore off into the kitchen as though someone had booted him. Inbred, brain-damaged animal. It was only when I noticed the total silence and looked up to see both my parents watching me that I realized that—up until the moment I'd walked in—their voices had been raised. "What?" I asked.
    "Nothing," Dad said.
    Mom snorted.
    "I fell asleep on the couch," Dad explained. "I had a stupid little nightmare, that's all."
    "You were in a drunken stupor," Mom spat out.
    "Maggie," Dad protested, with a sidelong glance at me.
    "Oh," Mom said, "not in front of Sarah, huh? It would have been nice if you'd shown me the same consideration."
    "What?" I repeated.
    "I...," Dad began, drawing the word out. Perhaps he sensed that if he didn't say it, Mom would, so he finished, "...thought I saw Kevin."
    I remembered Mom asking in the funeral parlor: How would we know if someone had made a mistake and it wasn't really Kevin that was dead? I almost glanced around the room. But they wouldn't have been standing around squabbling if somebody had discovered the error and sent Kevin back here to reassure us.
    "How do you think it felt," Mom asked, "to be wakened from a sound sleep with you yelling, 'Kevin! Kevin!'?"
    "I wasn't
planning
on waking you and
bothering
you," Dad said. "It was a nightmare. Nightmares don't make sense."
    "Seeing Kevin was a nightmare?" I asked.
    Dad hesitated before explaining, "He was dead. He was dead and he came back."
    "Don't drink so much," Mom yelled at him, and she stomped out of the room. A moment later she came back to the doorway to add, "And don't bother coming to our room until you've sobered up!"
    "Yeah, yeah," Dad muttered.
    And Mary Beth Hinkle wasn't due back for another week.
    When it got to be later, I snacked on some of the food people had brought over for us, more for something to do than because I was hungry. Dad ate, too, standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, eating directly from the Tupperware containers, something he wouldn't have dared if Mom had been there to see. Mom didn't come down at all.
    Dad didn't drink any more that afternoon, at least not while I was watching. But he didn't show any sign of going up to join my mother in their bedroom. He seemed to be camped out on the davenport on the porch, as though fascinated by what was going on on our street-even though what was going on was nothing.
    I fell asleep on the couch in the living room, in front of the TV, which under normal circumstances my parents wouldn't have allowed. I half woke up when the "Star Spangled Banner" played at the end of the broadcast day—about 2 A.M. —but I didn't have the energy to get up and turn it off, much less climb the stairs to my room. I was just drifting off to the white static from the TV screen when I became aware of a sound that at first I