Cemetery Boys(29)

Julian easily caught it out of the air. “Hey!” He flashed his teeth in a triumphant smile, giving the pillow a shake. “I caught it!”

Yadriel threw himself onto his bed. “Good job. Now go to sleep. I have to get up for school in”—he checked his phone and groaned—“three hours.”





SIX


Yadriel went into the bathroom to change out of his clothes and binder and into an oversize sleep shirt and pajama pants. When he got back to his room, he awkwardly dove under the covers of his bed. He didn’t like being seen without his binder on, and that was especially true with Julian.

Luckily, Julian seemed unfazed, or, at the very least, uninterested.

“Do ghosts even sleep?” he asked, lounging comfortably on the floor with his hands tucked behind his head.

“I have no idea,” Yadriel said, pulling his blankets up to his chin.

Julian refused to settle down. As Yadriel stared up at his ceiling in the pitch-black room, Julian’s sighs and huffs floated from the floor. They were quickly followed up by the most asinine questions Yadriel ever had to endure at three in the morning.

“If you turned into a ghost, where would you wanna haunt?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure the Jack in the Box on Whittier is haunted.”

“Mm.”

“One time, we were chillin’ in the parking lot, and there was definitely some haunted-ghosts stuff happening in the dumpster.”

“Mhmm.”

“But it turned out to just be a raccoon.”

“Cool.”

“It almost bit me.”

“Wow.”

“Damn, when’s the last time you cleaned under your bed?”

And on and on it went. When Yadriel refused to respond, Julian just went on talking to himself. Yadriel didn’t know it was possible for someone to have so little filter between their brain and their mouth. When Julian spoke, it was a constant stream of consciousness.

Even in the wee hours of the morning, Yadriel knew sleep wouldn’t come easy. His relationship with it was always tenuous at best. The events of the night buzzed through him restlessly.

In the span of a few hours, he’d gotten his own portaje and been blessed by Lady Death with the powers of the brujo. And he was still worried about Miguel. The grief of losing his cousin didn’t feel real yet. On top of all that, he’d summoned a spirit and was now harboring a dead boy in his room.

Yadriel didn’t manage to fall asleep until he put a pillow over his head with Julian’s muffled voice wondering whether ghosts got wet when it rained. A couple of times, rummaging sounds nearly pulled Yadriel back to consciousness, but then he always slipped back under.

When his alarm went off in the morning, Yadriel groaned into his arm. He felt even more exhausted than before he’d fallen asleep. He rolled over, hand blindly reaching to hit snooze on his phone. With effort, he forced his bleary eyes open.

To find a black pair staring back at him.

Yadriel thrashed and scrambled back, hitting the back of his head on the edge of the window. In his panic, he’d accidentally kicked Purrcaso off the foot of the bed. As his alarm continued to blare, Purrcaso cried from the floor.

“FINALLY!” Julian burst out, annoyed but smiling as he leaped to his feet. “I’ve been—dude, stop screaming—I’ve been waiting for FOREVER!”

Yadriel’s heartbeat hammered painfully in his chest, unable to comprehend anything Julian was saying. He snatched his phone and killed the alarm. Purrcaso stopped her indignant meowing and sat on the dresser, cleaning her paw. Yadriel squeezed his eyes shut, willing the throbbing in his head to stop.

He strained to listen for any signs from his family, wondering if someone had heard his shout, but there was only the distant bumping of his abuelita’s Tejano music from the kitchen.

“Are you even listening to me?” Julian demanded.

“No.” Yadriel squinted an eye open to look up at him. In his sleepy daze, it took a moment for Yadriel to remember he was a spirit. Standing there in the middle of his room, arms crossed and frowning, Julian looked very real and alive. But then Yadriel blinked, refocusing his vision enough to spot the telltale signs: blurry edges and the cool draft in the air around him.

“I said, I’ve been practicing!” Julian huffed. The amount of energy he had this early in the morning was obscene.

Yadriel sat upright, pushing back the mass of dark hair that had flopped into his eyes. “Practicing?” he croaked.

Julian’s scowl was quickly replaced with a sharp smile.

He swung back and forth between his emotions so quickly, Yadriel was bound to get whiplash.

“Look!” Falling into the chair, Julian hunched over the desk and pinched his fingers around a crumpled-up ball of paper. It was one of Yadriel’s failed attempts at math homework from the day before.

“Look, look, look!” Face screwed up in concentration, slowly, he lifted the ball of paper. Julian turned to Yadriel, a triumphant grin splitting his face. “See?”

Julian’s eyes burned with wild energy. Yadriel was starting to think it was less up-all-night delirium and more just, well, Julian.

“Good job,” Yadriel grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at his temples, warding off a headache.

The ball of paper dropped back to the desk. Julian scowled. “I worked on that all night, man!”