Undead Girl Gang(25)

June’s yellow cardigan is on the floor. With a choking sound that might have started as a scream, her hands scrabble against the skin around her neck, which is mottled with a livid purple-and-black bruise in a V shape that angles up to her ear.

Dayton’s neck has similar markings, although hers are fainter. Her veins are bright against her pale skin, a thousand spiderwebs the same color and texture as a crumbling block of blue cheese.

Riley turns to face me, a nightmare revealing itself in slow motion. A deep gash bisects her forehead. Inside her bloated, bruised face, her eyes are sightless white. Grayish lips crack as they open, weeping blood in the corners of her mouth and letting loose the sulfuric smell of a chemistry lesson gone wrong.

I reach for her. She gasps as my fingertips graze hers. In an instant, color floods back to her face, and a blink literally brings the hazel back to her eyes. She wets her mended lips and looks at the others as they transform back into their neat and pretty state, makeup and all. Riley tears June’s hand away from the hanging bruise that is no longer visible.

“We’re okay,” Riley says hoarsely. “It’s okay. We’re back to normal.”

Dayton keeps her attention on the broken mirror at her feet, which are still bare. Her lips quiver as she whimpers, peering into the shards. She presses her fingertips to her bare neck.

“That’s what they did to us?” she whispers. “That’s how much they hated us?”

June hugs herself, arms wrapped tightly around her own waist. “When we find them, I’m going to rip their eyes out of their head.”

Riley narrows her eyes at me. She hasn’t picked a hat yet, but there’s a pile of them on the counter next to where the mirror was before it fell to the ground. Or was thrown.

“Where were you?” she asks.

“Getting Pepto,” I say defensively. I hold back the urge to remind her that she basically sent me away.

“No,” she stresses, taking a step toward me. Glass crunches under her flip-flop. “Exactly how far were you? We were fine one second, and the next—poof! We were full-on Walking Dead. Is this what it’s going to be like, Mila? What did you do to us?”

“I don’t know!” I say. I hate that us means her and June and Dayton. She’s supposed to be on my team. I whip my backpack around and drag out the grimoire. The heavy book rattles the jewelry display case as I toss it down and rip past pages to get to the Lazarus spell. I plant a finger on the ingredients list. “Here. Your spell book. Your resurrection spell. All I did was follow the instructions.”

The girls crowd around me, reading over the spell. I’ve memorized every word of it, and there’s nothing about the living dead randomly rotting. Riley doesn’t seem to believe that, though. She slaps the pages aside, reading through spells for poisoning and lust and a curse that makes sheep molt all their wool.

“There’s nothing else in there about being undead,” I say with a huff. “We’re all in this together, equally lost.”

“I don’t accept that,” June chimes in. “Just because it happened once doesn’t mean that we’re going to go all gross every time you walk away. We can’t have a perma-babysitter.”

“No,” I say. “You can’t. I need to sneak back home, like, an hour ago.”

“You should have thought about that before casting midnight spells,” Dayton says primly.

I start to remind her that bringing her into the world was an accident, but June cuts me off with a sweep of her hand.

“We’re in a Super Walmart. We have room to experiment. Plus,” she says, looking down at her dirty toes and wiggling them, “I want shoes.”



* * *





With June, Dayton, and Riley in matching black knockoff Keds, we stand in front of the entertainment department like we’re squaring off for a duel. I hook my thumbs into the straps of my backpack. June is at my side. She volunteered to be the control in the experiment. I think she doesn’t want to feel the big bruise on her neck again, which I can’t say I blame her for. I really don’t want to see it again myself.

“We’ll start toe to toe, like this,” June says. She moves to stand directly in front of Dayton, motioning for Riley and me to follow suit. She seems to settle into her skin with each mandate. I forgot that she was on the Leadership Committee—bossing people around is her element. “And then we’ll all move backward, counting our steps. Ready?”

We step back once in unison. I already feel ridiculous.

“Two,” June says, examining Dayton’s and Riley’s faces.

“Two?” Dayton asks. “We only took one step.”

“But we all took one step,” June says with a sigh. She points to her own chest then Dayton’s. “One, two. We count in twos.”

“Oh,” Dayton says. “But what if the problem happens on an odd number?”

“Shut up and walk,” Riley says.

We step back again.

“Four. No change,” says June. I really feel like she should have a clipboard with her to make hash marks on, but if I say this to her as a joke, she might actually track one down. We’re only, like, twenty paces away from office supplies.

“Are you guys hungry?” I ask.

“Why?” Dayton asks. She wiggles her fingers next to her face in a way that makes me think of Nora teasing me at the dinner table. “Afraid we’re going to want some brains?”