Undead Girl Gang(33)
I can’t stop the noise of dissent that comes scraping out of my throat. I have spent hours and hours of my life at funerals, helping Riley fold programs and dust the urns and pointing inconsolable mourners toward the bathroom. I’ve vacuumed the parlor, and once I assisted Xander in loading a casket into the hearse when Mr. Greenway threw his back out.
June didn’t stay away from the funeral parlor because Xander was too busy to see her. She stayed away for the same reason everyone in Cross Creek did: She was too skeeved out by the idea to face it. No one else knew that it was worth braving death itself to get to have Riley and Xander in your life.
Without thinking, I reach up and touch the rose quartz necklace. My brain replays the moment Xander hooked it around my neck, the sensation of having him close to me. The cool breeze reminds me of how his breath curled behind my ear.
“Xander was never a nobody,” I mutter. He has always been Xander, who hates onions and loves the sound of acoustic guitar. Who cares so deeply that he cried when he lost the science fair two years ago. He left his experiment in the parking lot afterward, where the rain beat the poster board back to wood pulp.
Suddenly, June claps. The sound echoes off the buildings that surround us. “Oh my God! You have a crush on your best friend’s brother? You’re such a little cliché!”
My stomach sinks, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, it has nothing to do with magic. Just a mocking laugh and a reminder of my place in the world—the absolute bottom with no hope for getting any higher. It makes me want to dump June back in her grave and never look back.
“Having a crush on the most popular guy in school is cliché, no matter whose brother he is,” I grumble. “So let’s drop it.”
“I mean, I get it, obviously,” she says, definitely not dropping it. The opposite of dropping it. Picking it up and spinning it around on her finger. “The eyes alone, right? But also the abs and the hands and the teeth and—”
“Yeah, I’m sure you can list all his better parts, but let’s not and say we did, okay?”
She gasps loudly. Why didn’t she ever do any plays? She’s got the same disingenuous glint in her eye as the theater kids. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Camila Flores. I would never tell you about Xander’s better parts. Unless you really wanted to know . . .” She looks at me sidelong and bursts out into giggles that build on each other like soap bubbles. “Oh my God, you’re blushing so much. How is the scariest girl in school a virgin?”
“I’m not scary,” I snap. I am a virgin. There’s no reason to deny it. Even if I tried, I’d fail the pop quiz that would certainly follow.
“Yeah, okay.” She snorts. “The ever-present Doc Martens and your jacket with the pentagram drawn on the pocket? I’m sure you dress like that because it’s so comfortable. It doesn’t make you feel like a badass? You don’t get dressed trying to look like a punk-rock witch?”
I do get dressed thinking that I look like a badass. Like being Mila Flores is something dangerous and sharp. But right now, I’m all soft meat in a costume that isn’t fooling anyone but me.
“I dress like this because I found the jacket and the boots at Goodwill. Like most of my clothes. Anyway”—I stress the last word, hoping to steer us away from the topic—“don’t tell the others about Xander. My thing for him, not his . . . thing.”
“This is actually the most embarrassed I’ve ever been for another human being,” June says, grinning at me. Even though we’re walking, she puts her hand on my shoulder in mock protection, the way I do with my sisters when I want to be an asshole and make fun of them. “Mila, you are a junior in high school. At the very, very least, please say penis.”
I swat her hand away. “What if I don’t and say that I did?”
The hairs on my arms rise. I have to fight to keep walking as all my organs lurch forward. Saved by the nausea.
I spit a thin stream of hot saliva onto the concrete, and June jumps back, even though there’s no chance of her getting hit. Not that she wouldn’t deserve it.
“They’re close,” I say, panting.
I have to swing in a couple different directions before the queasiness abates, pointing us toward the theater. I don’t know why Dayton and Riley would be here. The entire school is in the courtyard, so we’re just walking into a big empty building with a bunch of seats. But I know we’re on the right path because as June and I make our way through the doors, I feel the shudder of crossing the boundary line. The lobby is decorated with pictures of old plays and choir competitions and talent shows. There isn’t a performing arts school anywhere nearby, so Fairmont enrolls a lot of kids who want to study theater or dance but don’t have any better options.
There’s a piano tinkling on the other side of the lobby doors. Hazy overhead lights wash the blue padded seats in warmth. Dayton is standing center stage, her eyes closed. I wonder if she’s imagining an audience. Her hands flutter near her cheeks as she sings.
“Some fellows look and find the sunshine. I always look and find the rain.”
My sigh is covered by the tinkling of the piano tucked into the back corner of the stage. I can see the black-and-orange Giants hat bobbing over the keys as Riley plunks out a vague accompaniment to “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”