Read Online Night Owls by Jenn Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

label, along with some other stickers from the bike service. I put my ear to the box and
listened. No ticking. I shook it. Nothing rattled. So I sat down on the couch and unwrapped it.
    Inside the paper was a plain corrugated box, and inside that, bubble wrap. I unrolled it, and a wooden object fell into my hand.
    It was an articulated artist’s mannequin—you know, the poseable kind, standing on a base. Except this one didn’t have a smooth, blank spool for a head and flat disks for hands
and feet. It was intricately carved with all the major muscles and tendons. Parts of the body were stained darker than others, and the eyes were painted glass.
    It was extraordinary.
    A small tag hung from a string tied to the leg. It read: CUSTOM MADE FOR YOU. HAND-CARVED AND DESIGNED IN-HOUSE. TELEGRAPH WOOD STUDIO. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
    “Whatcha got?” Heath hung over the back of the sofa. “Whoa. Who sent this?”
    “I have no idea. But get this—” I told him all about Mom’s weird phone call that night as he inspected the mannequin. “It was sent by a local messenger, but look at
the tag. It was made in Berkeley.”
    “Oh, Bex.”
    “What?” When Heath didn’t answer right away, I panicked. “What? Tell me!”
    “Dad just moved to Berkeley a couple of months ago.”
    That couldn’t be right. “He’s somewhere in LA—Santa Monica.”
    “What did the address label say?”
    My heart thumped as I showed him the crumpled paper. “No return address. Just Beatrix Van Asch. This is what the bike messenger note on the door was all about.”
    Heath sighed, sat on the sofa arm, and slid down into the cushion next to me. “I saw an envelope in the kitchen trash when I was I tying it up. It had Dad’s name and Berkeley on the
return address, so I dug through the garbage—”
    “Gross.”
    “—until I found a card. One of those ‘We’ve Moved!’ deals. Dad was informing Mom that he and Suzi had moved to Berkeley.”
    “Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “If Mom didn’t tell us, I figured she didn’t want us to know. And big deal. So he’s closer now, who cares?”
    “And sending me extravagant gifts? Is this to make up for not paying child support? What the hell?”
    “I don’t know, Bex. But the bike messenger note on the door was left on your birthday, so I guess he remembered. Damn sure didn’t remember mine.”
    We both sat there staring at the mannequin for a long moment before I shoved it back into the box. “If that was the person Mom was talking to on the phone, she said she’d throw away
anything he sent.”
    “All I know is, if you’re planning to keep it, you better hide it.”
    “Don’t tell her,” I warned. “I mean it.
Do not tell Mom.”
    He mimed zipping his lips.
    I unzipped them and gave him a quick thank-you peck. Part of me wanted to tell him about Jack, but if I really was the only one who knew Jack’s secret, it felt like a betrayal to share
it—even with Heath. So instead, I said, “Guess who just won a golden ticket to Wonka’s Cadaver Dissection Lab?”

    IF YOU MAKE THE DECISION TO WILL YOUR BODY TO the university, you get two funerals: one when you die, and then a second after you’ve been
dissected and used for research, when you’re cremated and given a small ceremony by the students. This is what Simon Gan told me after he handed me a clip-on visitor’s pass and provided
a brief tour of the need-to-know areas of the anatomy lab and classrooms, which were clustered on the top floors of the same campus building where I’d originally met with Dr. Sheridan.
    Lean and handsome, Simon had a quiet, smart-guy vibe. He was a local grad student from the Inner Richmond district, which is basically the real Chinatown—not the Grant Avenue Chinatown for
tourists. He was kinder to me than he had to be, which took off some of the nervous edge. I wanted to ask him if he knew why Dr. Sheridan had changed her mind, but he was in a rush to get me
settled