Ena Jones - Six Feet Below Zero

Baker and I peeked between the curtains and watched our grandmothers bright red sports car speed to the end of the driveway and turn left onto the road. When it disappeared behind the trees, we raced down the basement stairs and crawled underneath the table wed walled off with jumbo cases of toilet paper: Disaster Headquarters.

Grim Hesper had said shed be back after her celebration, so we needed to get to work. Baker squeezed beside me as I flipped my laptop open, clicked Compose, and filled in the subject line.

I took a deep breath and began to type.

Dear Aunt Tilly,

We know youre working on your new project, and were sorry for the kabillion phone messages and texts and emails, but the most terrible thing happened, and we need you home NOW.

Twelve days ago Great-Grammy keeled overand died!

It started back in March, when she fainted in the yard.

Baker leaned into my shoulder. Rosie, what are you doing, writing a book? Just hit Send already.

I will, I said, nudging him off me.

We have to search Grim Hespers room for the lockbox! Please, dont make me go in there alone.

At this point Id usually call him a baby, but I was trying not to do that anymore.

Dont you get it? I said instead. We have to stay at the top of Aunt Tillys inboxes so when she checks her messages shell see ours first. I bet the email you sent yesterday is buried under a hundred more from people all over the world.

Baker rose onto his hands with a huff. Youre the one who told me to keep it simple. You said put EMERGENCY in the subject line, and then tell her Great-Grammys sick and she needs to come home. Thats it, you said. And what about never ever saying Great-Grammys dead in actual writing? Were going to end up in jail. Again!

We were never in jail, Baker.

I was six feet from a jail cell, Rosie, and there were handcuffed people everywhere. For eleven years old, that qualifies. Baker stabbed his finger at the screen. At least take Great-Grammys Dead! out of the subject line.

I cranked my head and met his eyes. She is DEAD!

I didnt mean to shout. Id been working very hard at not shouting, or calling names, or being difficult. The things that probably made Great-Grammy miserableand disappointedwhen she was alive.

I counted to five and started again in a lower voice. Sick is not the same as dead. Dead gets a persons attention. Thats what were trying to do: get Aunt Tillys attention!

Baker rolled on his side to face me. You know what happens when she goes underground to research her books.

She promised Great-Grammy she would check her messages this time.

Baker shook his head. Aunt Tilly doesnt visit places with phones and Internet. Remember when she went camping in Iceland? In winter? She disappeared for three months. Great-Grammy was worried sick.

How else was she supposed to get those pictures of the northern lights?

Baker might have been the brainy one in our family, but I was older, and I had a good reason for being bossy. Even if Aunt Tilly was living in some sort of laboratory base station at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, this email was our last chance.

We needed our aunts help. Horrible Hesper was her mother, after all.

I hunched over the keyboard and kept writing.

Aunt Tilly, its time to tell the truth. Weve done something worse than bad, but we have a very good reason. See, Great-Grammy told us to do it. And she put it in writing! It was practically her last will and testament, and isnt it pretty much a commandment that you have to do what dead people want you to do? Especially with their bodies?

Baker mashed his face into the blanket underneath us and groaned. Then he got to his knees and heaved a frustrated sigh. Youre really going to tell her all of it? That Grim Hespers living here and shes selling this place, and its about three inches away from being bulldozed? And about the money, and the will, and the reason those things are important: because Great-Grammys?

I propped up on my elbows and glared straight into his eyeballs. Yes. Because shes D-E-A-D, Baker. Dead.

Baker cringed, then slowly backed out of our office. For a second I felt guilty. Maybe I should have been helping Baker. But our aunt had to come home. Even she would be shocked by how despicable dear Grim Hesper had become.

I turned back to the keyboard. Letter by letter, I typed the impossible-to-believe words:

Aunt Tilly, I better get to the point:

We put Great-Grammy in the basement freezer, and were pretending shes alive until you come home.

But like I said, we have a very good reason.

Remember how I said the whole thing started in March?

It was a normal Saturday morningthe first official weekend of springsunny and cool, but warming fast. Wed just devoured an entire plate of Bakers sticky buns and the three of us were stuffed.

According to Great-Grammywho might have been older than dirt, as she often joked, but was stronger than most men half her agethat meant we were ready for a day of yard work.

Great-Grammy and I dragged rakes and tarps from the garage to the middle of the front yard, next to her favorite seahorse birdbath. The winter had been long, with a ton of heavy, wet snow, and we had ten acres of mess to clean up. As usual, I was griping about it.

I spread a tarp on the ground and straightened the corners. Wheres Baker?

Oh, he disappeared thataway, said Great-Grammy, picking up a stick and waving it eastward. She brought the stick to the birdbath and began scraping the layers of slimy leaves, flicking pieces of muck into the air. With the weather getting better, the birds will be looking for a place to shake off winter. She let the stick drop to the ground and squinted back at the house. I need the hose to do this properly.

Next thing I knew she was galloping across the yard, over groundhog humps and holes, and zigzagging around the wackadoo yard art you could probably see from outer space. When she got to the spigot by the front porch, she slung the first ten feet of hose over her shoulder and started the same maniac dance back to the birdbath, only this time she was dragging the longest garden hose in the history of online shopping.

I snuck a glimpse at the McMansions that straddled our property and cringed, imagining the neighbors watching through binoculars. At least the family graveyard was hidden back in the woods where nobody could see. No way I wanted people knowing about