Undead Girl Gang(23)
I wonder if she knows that people have been calling me crazy since she died. Was she actively watching me from the afterlife or just sending along hints and hoping they stuck?
“Then what do you suggest?” I ask.
Everyone’s attention swings to Riley. Even June and Dayton aren’t immune to the Greenway magnetism. There’s something about Riley that feels like a leader.
She presses her lips together and closes her eyes before she says, “We’ll go to Yarrow House. We can come up with a plan from there.”
“Yes. Okay,” I say. Pinpricks of guilt taint the relief I feel at having a real Riley-certified plan. “I can be there tomorrow after school. There’s a mandatory memorial service during sixth period, but I can skip it. It’s not like I’m mourning you guys anymore. And I can’t handle listening to the show choir for a third time this week.”
“Wait,” Dayton says, taking two hopping steps to stand right in front of me. Up close, it’s easier to see the thick postmortem makeup she’s wearing. The foundation is like spackling paste spread over her cheeks. “It’s our service? Like, the whole school is going to be honoring us?”
I take a step away from her. There’s a hungry glint in her eye. “That’s the plan. Everyone got an email about it, parents included. But don’t get it twisted. It’s probably going to be a show-choir concert posing as—”
“We’re going,” June says.
“Uh, no. You’re not,” I say firmly. “If you think seeing you would freak out your families, why wouldn’t it emotionally scar the entire school?”
June over-enunciates, her mouth stretching and contracting around each letter. “We are going.”
In the distance, I can hear a motorcycle engine revving. I have to get the girls settled at Yarrow House and then get back across town with no car, and it’s almost one A.M. already. I’ll have to move quickly or else be prepared to dole out whatever I own to my sisters if they catch me sneaking back in.
Tomorrow, I have to look at my classmates and figure out who had the motive and means to kill three people in a week. At some point, I’ll have to really wrap my mind around the fact that holy fucking shit, magic is actually real and I brought back the dead.
Dayton bobs her head in agreement and jabs a finger toward me. “Don’t fuck with us, Mila. We’re zombies.”
“No. You aren’t,” I say. “You’re visiting life.”
She grants me one of her sunny smiles. “And tomorrow we’re visiting school. Let’s go to Walmart and get some black clothes!”
“You and what money?” I ask.
I look to Riley for help, but she shrugs one shoulder and tugs at the hem of her dress. “I would like a change of clothes. Any chance my parents did my roots before they buried me?” I shake my head at her, and she frowns. “Fuck. I need a hat.”
I reach under the sleeve of my jacket and free the black elastic band. I snap it as I follow the undead girls down the hill of the cemetery, leaving their empty graves behind us.
NINE
THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR Walmart is only a couple of blocks away from the back entrance to the graveyard. Even so, as we pass through the automatic doors and into the stark lights of the warehouse store, I can feel sweat beading in my baby hairs and sliding down the backs of my ears.
The store is eerily empty, the wide aisles seemingly waiting for a tumbleweed to blow through. I’ve never seen the checkout lanes without lines of people backed up all the way to the jewelry display case. But I guess Cross Creek isn’t really an up-all-night kind of town. Even our restaurants close by nine.
June, Dayton, and Riley make a beeline for the clothes department, looking laughably out of place in their fancy dresses.
I can’t help but feel responsible for them—it is my fault that they’re back from the dead—but they don’t need me to help them steal clothes. I can’t stay with them every second of the next seven days. No one likes a helicopter witch.
I make my way over to Riley, who is poking at her roots while looking in a mirror next to a display of knit hats. She scowls at her reflection, wrapping a piece of her long hair around her index finger. “Do you think bleach would take? I mean, my hair was always dead, right?”
“It couldn’t hurt to try,” I say. I have no idea if it’ll work, but then again, the little I do know about hair dye is from Riley anyway. She taught me how to do her hair because her arms get tired when she has to reach the back of her head and she gets punchy when the bleach starts to sizzle her scalp.
She tugs at the skin under her eyes, exposing the pink curve of blood vessels in her lower lid. As she moves on to checking her gums, I can see a corner of myself in the mirror, too. My hair is frizzy and windblown. My makeup is smeared from sweat and tears. There’s dirt on my neck. I look more like a zombie than she does.
“What is the last thing you remember, Ry?” I ask.
She frowns at me in the mirror and reaches for a gray beanie. She tugs it down over her ears. There’s a bouncing bauble on the top of it that makes her head look pointy.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s not how my brain is used to working. I never think, ‘What’s the last thing I can remember?’ I just remember or I don’t. Like, I remember eating roasted potatoes for dinner, but I don’t know when. I’ve been dead for almost an entire week. What if I’m remembering a dinner from months ago?”