Undead Girl Gang(22)
“Rude,” June says with a contemptuous click of her tongue. “So rude. I bet Sky Moony killed me. She was so jealous of me. Oh! Or Dawn. She copied my bangs.”
“I can’t believe I was murdered,” Dayton says, sitting down in the dirt. She lifts her legs to her chest, carefully smoothing her skirt over them before placing her chin on her knees with a pout. It seems way too scrunched to be comfortable. Then again, my boobs would never allow for me to get my legs that close to my stomach. Dayton is exactly as delicate as I am not. “Do you have any idea how hurtful that is?”
“Being murdered?” I ask.
“It depends on how quickly your necks broke after the hanging,” Riley notes. “If you suffocated, it would be long and painful.”
“How could you say something like that?” June gasps, taking an affronted step back. “We just found out we were murdered, Riley Greenway. Have some respect.”
“We were all murdered, June. Your death is not that special,” Riley says.
Now that I think about it, hanging is a pretty brutal way to go. How would they have even done it themselves? Jumped off the tree branches with their nooses attached? I cringe at the thought and can’t help but touch my own neck in sympathy. The girls are right; something about the suicide story definitely seems off. If Riley was murdered, maybe June and Dayton were, too.
Dayton lets out a sob. Have I mentioned how tired I am of watching people cry this week? I’m seriously over it. “I can’t believe someone hated me enough to kill me.” Dayton cries in tiny kitten mewls. “And now I have to live my life as a-a-a—” She starts to hiccup as tears shoot out of her eyes. I’m relieved to see that they’re clear and not, like, blood or moth dust. I’m less relieved when she throws her head back and wails at the sky. “I’m a zombie!”
“Will you shut up?” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper. Not that it’ll help if someone was driving by and heard the word zombie echoing through the night.
“Why?” June asks. “It’s not like we can get in trouble.”
“You might not be able to, but I sure as hell can.” I look down at Dayton. “And you’re not a zombie. You’re temporarily not dead. The spell is only good for seven days.”
She sniffles, her lips wobbly under her nose. “And then what?”
“And then you go back to wherever you were.” I shrug. “But if you even think about eating a brain, I will plant you back in the ground myself.”
This does not stop her crying.
June shows no inclination to console her friend. They are in the same boat, I guess. Everyone grieves differently—see: me screaming into my pillows for a week—and I imagine it’s a lot worse when you realize that you’re the one who’s dead.
That far-off look is back in Riley’s eyes. Under different circumstances, I might have teased her or poked her in the arm to get her attention, but I don’t think it will be so easy for her to bounce back this time. And while she doesn’t seem mad at me, I can’t help but wish she were more excited to be here. I’ve spent a week desperate to have her back. I pictured her crawling out of her grave, ready to make up for lost time with revenge and sleepovers. Instead, she’s cold and sharp, like she’s already outgrown me in just a week of being away.
Sensing my interest, her head gradually turns to face me. Her eyes have a weighted sleepiness to them.
As someone who was woken up and told that her friend was dead—thanks, Mom—I understand that I need to give her some time to adjust. But if we really have only seven days together, what if she spends all of them distancing herself from me? Won’t that hurt as much as if she weren’t here at all?
“What now?” she asks me.
I swallow and attempt not to seem terrified. This isn’t how it works. Riley never asks first. She’s the planner.
But it was my decision to bring her back, and I can’t back down now. I’m head witch in charge.
“I have to go back to school tomorrow, I think,” I say. I scrape my lower lip with my front teeth, tearing off a slice of dead skin. “If all of you were killed by the same person, it has to be someone who goes to Fairmont. I can look for clues there.”
I try to sound like I know what I’m doing, like I wasn’t expecting Riley to come back to life with her killer’s name on her lips.
“Excuse me.” June’s voice slices into my thoughts. “But what are we supposed to do while you’re at school? Hang out in the graveyard? Have a picnic?”
I wonder if she was this nonstop sarcastic when she was with Xander. I could never understand how he was such good friends with her, even when they weren’t dating.
“You could go home,” I suggest, although it seems pretty obvious to me. “Spend time with your families. Say goodbye. They must miss you a lot. And you could tell them that you didn’t kill yourselves—”
“That’s a horrible idea!” Dayton says, getting to her feet and thrusting her hands on her hips. “They’ve already started grieving. It’s been a whole week! What are we going to do, march in, freak them out, and then die again in seven days? That’s not right.”
Riley massages her temple like the sound of Dayton’s voice might be giving her a headache. Can the undead get headaches? “She has a point. Best-case scenario, they have to say goodbye to us all over again. Worst case, they think they’re going insane.”