Undead Girl Gang(32)

I clear my throat. Using the gremlin voice I used to use to terrorize my sisters through our shared wall, I screech, “Run away, debate nerds! Run away and never return!”

Apparently, they don’t need coercing. I can hear the patter of stumbling steps and panting breath. I walk around the dumpsters and find June, her face returned to pretty disdain. Her lips puff petulantly.

“Did you really just quote The Lion King?” she asks.

“Did you really just threaten to haunt your friends?”

She watches the empty corner the Nouns disappeared around—toward the cafeteria or their cars, I’m not sure which. “They are not my friends. Friends wouldn’t talk smack about you at your own funeral.”

“Celebration of Life,” I correct.

“Same difference.” She sniffs. “I thought they’d have nice things to say. We were friends for two years. Two years of study groups and bake sales and parties. They couldn’t muster one nice thing to say about me? ‘June had good hair.’ ‘June really was a good listener.’ ‘Great taste in jewelry.’”

“Angel must have thought so if she was wearing your earrings,” I say, interrupting her reverie. It’s weird hearing her compliment herself in the third person. Weirder that she thinks of herself as a good listener with multiple nice qualities.

“And telling everyone that I slept with Caleb Treadwell.” She shakes her head until her top knot loosens. Her hair spills back to her shoulder in a ripple of brown silk. “How disgusting is that? Me and that loser?”

I haven’t figured out how the girls’ memories work yet. I haven’t heard any rumors about June and Caleb, but without Riley to pass gossip from Xander’s strata to ours, I’m pretty far on the outskirts of Fairmont society. What if June already knew about the rumors and forgot? What if she stopped being friends with the Nouns weeks ago and woke up from her dirt nap thinking everything was cool between them? How many other important memories could the girls have forgotten?

My face must be betraying my confusion, because June takes a threatening step toward me.

“What?” she growls.

I lift a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I mean, you don’t really remember, though. You don’t remember anything from the last two weeks, right? So it might not be a lie.”

She crosses her arms and sighs. “Can we just go? I stole a box of cookies from Walmart, and I want to eat them in my nasty new room in that disgusting abandoned house before the raccoons wake up. Where are the others?”

“Um.” I close my eyes and search myself for the signs I’m coming to think of as my magic boundary lines. “Somewhere at least a hundred steps in any direction?”

She groans. “God. Do you think my parents canceled my cell phone already? It sucks not being able to get in contact with you guys when I need to find you.”

“Cell phones can be tracked,” I say. “But I think my sisters have walkie-talkies I could borrow?”

“Even that sounds better than nothing.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”



* * *





The show choir is continuing its performance in the courtyard, but I can feel that Dayton and Riley are too far away to watch. June and I make a circuit of the school, and I have to agree with her about the walkie-talkies. Having to intuit everyone’s locations rather than being able to send a text sucks, especially while traveling with the pouting corpse of the former most popular girl in school, who keeps pointing out landmarks like I’ve never been on campus before.

“There’s the bench where Xander asked me out for the first time,” she says, flicking her hand toward a metal bench identical to every other metal bench on campus.

My hackles rise. I shove my fists into the pockets of my jacket. This is one of my worst nightmares, being regaled with stories of Xander and June with nowhere to run.

Well, there’s everywhere to run. Campus is large, and the outdoor hallways are deserted. But it would be rude to abandon one’s zombie. Even if it is just one of one’s zombies.

“It was a Tuesday,” she says wistfully, pressing her hands delicately on her stomach as though keeping butterflies at bay. “He asked if I wanted to get a Frappuccino after school, and I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, we always get Fraps on Tuesday,’ because that’s when we have honor society meetings at Starbucks, and he was like, ‘No, do you want to go with me.’ It was really sweet.”

“Yes, Frappuccinos have a lot of sugar,” I say tersely, taking a sharp turn toward the gym. Dayton was on the swim team, so I figure she might be visiting the pool.

“And this was before he was really popular. He was cute, but he didn’t play a sport or perform with anyone. He was a hot nobody.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“You were talking about how I don’t remember anything. But look at me go! Remembering stuff.”

“No,” I clarify. “I was saying that you don’t remember the last two weeks. You started dating Xander a year ago. Plus you broke up, so it’s not like it’s a super-fond memory for you.”

Her eyes bug in annoyance. It looks eerily like her corpse form. “Assume much? Xander and I agreed to break up because we both needed to spend more time studying. And I got so bored. He was always working, and it’s not like I could visit him at funerals—”