Undead Girl Gang(26)
Sort of.
“No,” I say aloud. “I was wondering if I should get you guys some cereal or something for Yarrow House.”
“We’re capable of getting our own food,” Riley says, taking another step backward.
“Six,” says June. Then, “We might be capable of getting our own food. That’s what the experiment’s results will show.”
“Among other, grosser things,” Riley murmurs.
“Eight,” says June.
We all lurch back again. June and I pass the movies section and get closer to toys. For years, it was my job to keep Izzy and Nora away from this side of the store. They would dig their heels in, hugging boxes of Legos and Lalaloopsy, their faces covetously pinched. In the event of a tantrum, the three of us would be sent to sit in the garden department to wait for Mom and Dad. Because there is nothing fun about the garden department.
If it is my fault that June and Dayton and Riley went all horror show, will I have to put myself in outdoor timeout? It’s been a pretty long time since I sat on a bag of fertilizer.
“I’m kind of thirsty,” Dayton says. “Crying always makes me thirsty. Is that because I’m losing, like, eye water?”
“Kind of,” June says patiently. “It is dehydrating. Ten.”
“Sorry, Riley,” Dayton says, patting Riley’s shoulder. “Is water a sore subject for you? I could have a Gatorade. That’s good for dehydration.”
“It’s fine,” Riley says tightly, glaring at the hand touching her. “I’m not mad at all water. Just the creeks.”
“Twelve,” says June. “Fourteen.”
“That’s fair,” says Dayton to Riley. “When I find out which tree I was hung from, I’m going to burn it down.”
“Hanged from,” June corrects. “Sixteen.”
“Or not,” I say, having to raise my voice a little now to be heard by everyone. “Because you’d burn down all of Aldridge Park?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Dayton says pityingly. “It’s a dead-girl thing.”
Oh great. Another clique I’m not cool enough to join. Possibly literally. I wonder if their body temperature drops the farther away that I walk. Or can my magic keep them warm but not pretty? Would it be rude to ask?
Conversation peters out around step thirty. June keeps counting beside me, the soles of her new shoes squeaking against the floor with each step. At a hundred paces, we’re backed into the camping section. Shelves of lanterns and portable stoves tower high over our heads. My body involuntarily swings toward a box of cookware as my organs try to turn themselves inside out in that same agonizing wave that kept me from making it to the pillowcases earlier. Queasiness twists everything inside me.
In the distance, I hear my name being called in a screech. June and I pause in unison. Searching the distance, I can see two bobbing figures running in our direction. They have a long way to go to close the gap between us.
“Mila?” Dayton’s voice squeaks from somewhere near the exercise-equipment aisle. “Come back please!”
I rush forward, as eager to be less sick as they are to be less dead-looking. June scrambles to keep up with me. I can hear her counting down under her breath between pants. Riley and Dayton are corpsified again, although it doesn’t seem to hinder their running ability at all. Which is another knock against the zombie theory. Their opaque eyes, on the other hand, are maximum zombie. They bounce back to normal faster this time, but it takes until I’m directly in front of them to stick.
“A hundred steps,” June says definitively. “That’s how far we can go from our witch before we start getting disgusting again.”
“I have a name,” I say.
“A magical choke chain,” Riley mutters, biting the inside of her cheek. “Fuck a duck.”
“At least a hundred steps is easy to remember,” June says.
“Yeah, thank God,” Riley sneers. “How else would we remember except for actually turning back into fucking corpses?”
“We really can’t see our families again,” Dayton says softly. “Unless Mila comes with us.”
June sniffs. “Like a spinster aunt in a Victorian novel.”
“Hey,” I bite off.
“What’s the point of a spell that won’t let you leave your witch?” Dayton asks. “Wouldn’t people want to go back to living their lives?”
“No,” Riley says, lifting her chin. I know that face. There’s determination in the set of her jaw. “You come back to kill the fucker who offed you.”
TEN
COMING BACK TO school feels different this time. Instead of being jittery and jumping at every shadow, my shoulders are squared with purpose. I’m confident that someone in these halls killed Riley, June, and Dayton. And that nagging voice—a cross between my mom and Dr. Miller—that says I’m crazy is gone. I’m not crazy. I brought back the dead, and I have the power to get justice for them.
Caleb Treadwell is absent from chem, saving me the trouble of having to pretend to apologize for knocking him over last week. With the whole counter to myself, I decide to ignore Mr. Cavanagh’s lecture and open my notebook to the last page. I start a Venn diagram of the three not-so-dead girls. All three were juniors, but that’s where the comparisons end. June and Dayton were in a totally different social hemisphere than Riley, only ever occasionally crossing paths through Xander.