Free Call Me Grim by Elizabeth Holloway Page B

her voice to a whisper. “I don’t care what the stories say; I know he didn’t do it. Aaron couldn’t have done something so awful.”
    Preparing to ask what Aaron didn’t do, I suck heavily perfumed air into my lungs. I can’t get the question out. My throat’s too dry and itchy.
    I have to leave. Right now. If I don’t get away from Mrs. Lutz’s obnoxious perfume, the itching and dryness will turn into a full-blown asthma attack.
    My legs wobble like they’re made of noodles, but I manage to turn around and rush out of the computer lab. I drop down on the wooden bench outside the door and hungrily inhale several clean breaths of air. The tightness in my chest eases a little, and I’m able to focus on what Mrs. Lutz said.
    She knewAaron. She knew him before he disappeared and became a Grim Reaper. But what did he do? Even if Mrs. Lutz is convinced he didn’t do it, it must have been pretty awful for his name to sound familiar to both Kyle and me, forty years later. Was that the reason he took his job? Was the Grim Reaper path a good way for Aaron to hide?
    I shake my head to clear my thoughts. I have to go back in there and talk to Mrs. Lutz. She knows something and I need to find out what it is. Screw her fractured face and toxic perfume.
    Determined not to let my asthma control me, I stand up and march into the computer lab. I take one breath of the floral-scented death air, turn around, and march right back out. I can’t do it. There has to be another way to get the information I need.
    The library.
    It’s directly across the hall. I blame my stupidity on the perfume clouding my brain and cross the hall to the door. I hope the school keeps records from that long ago. If they don’t, I’ll have to wait and go to the community library tomorrow morning. Between babysitting Max and Kyle’s show, I won’t have time to go tonight.
    Ms. Weese looks up from her computer when I walk into the room, but my eyes automatically glance up to the striking still-life oil painting over her head.
    Ever since Ms. Weese hung it a few months ago, I’ve envied the artist. On first glance, it’s a simple still-life of a group of apples. Two of the apples are red and sliced into quarters. Offset from those two, another apple sits by itself. It’s whole and green and has a paring knife jammed into it up to its hilt. The last apple, a yellow one, is mostly hidden under a black cloth in the background.
    When I get up close and really look at the painting, however, it becomes more than a still-life. It tells a story. The paint strokes on the red apples are sharp and angry, and the color used is as deep as blood. In contrast, the paint strokes on the green apple are soft and careful. A single drop of juice trickles down the side of this apple, like a teardrop, from where the knife has penetrated the flesh. The apple covered by the black drape is too hidden to see much more than its shape, but there’s an almost unfinished quality to the small, yellow sliver peeking out from under the cloth.
    I shiver like I always do when I see this painting. I just can’t understand how the artist managed to convey such raw, dark emotions using only fruit.
    “Can I help you?” Ms. Weese’s smile is as bright as her non-cracked soul.
    “Yeah. Do you keep newspapers from, like, forty years ago?”
    “Well, I know we have current newspapers.” She tucks her bangs behind her ear. “But I don’t know about forty years ago. Are you looking for something in particular?”
    “Yes. I’m trying to find the story of a boy from this school who disappeared forty years ago. Aaron Shepherd?”
    “Oh, yeah,” she says and slowly nods. “I think I know what you’re talking about.”
    “You do?” My stomach lurches. “Did you know him too?”
    She looks too young to have known him forty years ago. But who am I to talk? I’m too young to have met him yesterday.
    “No. My mom did. She tried to scare me with the story one Halloween, when I was