Undead Girl Gang(42)
“You don’t know if he likes you. If you really knew that he didn’t, if he looked you in the face and was like, ‘Ew, no thanks,’ you’d be too ashamed to keep lusting after him.”
“What the hell, June? Are you trying to make me cry?”
“No! I’m trying to help! Because he hasn’t said that. And I don’t remember him ever saying anything like that in front of me. Not that he would have told me if he was into someone else. He’s way too polite. You should ask him if he’s into you. You never know!”
I sigh. It’s not like June and I are two different species. It is possible that Xander could like us both.
“Maybe I don’t want to know the answer,” I say tightly.
“No. You don’t want to know if the answer is no. Of course you’d want to know if it was yes.”
I would. But I won’t give June the satisfaction of saying so. She’s already too high on her own assumptions.
We find Dayton and Riley in the party-supplies aisle. The top shelf is lined with pi?atas of famous cartoon characters—SpongeBob, Dora, Elsa from Frozen—along with the more traditional star and donkey shapes.
Dayton’s arms are laden with a container of assorted pan dulce and more bottles of Gatorade. Riley hugs a small bag of charcoal briquettes, a box of matches, and a new container of salt, which she shakes at me.
“Can never have too much salt on hand,” she says.
“Can’t you?” June asks.
“It’s a witch thing,” Riley says. I’m almost ashamed at how happy it makes me to hear her say it. “Please tell Dayton we don’t need a pi?ata or confetti.”
“I know we don’t need them,” Dayton says, juggling the items in her arms. The pan dulce rattle against their plastic container. “But I think it would liven up the house. It’s so gloomy in there.”
“I’m not paying for a pi?ata,” I say. “You guys are bleeding me dry as it is. And you can’t fit a pi?ata in your pockets, so I’m gonna guess you can’t steal one either.”
“Fine,” Dayton says, her lips stuck out in a pout. She pushes the pan dulce into my arms. “Here.”
“While I check out, you can go to the taquería and pick out whatever you want for dinner.”
“We had burritos yesterday,” June says.
“Chipotle is burrito-like,” I say. “This is the real deal. Trust me.”
Riley hands me the bag of charcoal. “Do you want me to order you some pupusas? That’s your order here, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I nod, incredulity making my heart—the one in my chest, not in my hands—weightless.
She grins at me, showing all her teeth. “Coming right up.”
* * *
We return to Yarrow House with our stomachs filled to bursting. Even June couldn’t find anything shitty to say about our dinner at Mercado del Valle. The drive home was full of satisfied sighs and June playing DJ with the music downloaded to my phone. Apparently everyone likes pupusas and Bruno Mars.
It turns out that the basement under Yarrow House is actually the most well-preserved room. The stairs creak under my weight, but no more so than the front porch does, and the handrail is in place and doesn’t even wobble, although the wood is rough and splintery. The walls are made of unpainted cinder blocks, and the floor is cracked cement. Only one corner has any mold, so the smell is negligible. Mostly, the room smells like the sagebrush Riley burned to cleanse the space for spellwork.
Last night, one of the girls pulled the board off the single small window that faces the woods. Now that there’s real live daylight slanting in through the unbroken glass, we don’t need as many candles as we expected.
The sheets and blankets I brought from home earlier in the week are spread out like sleeping bags at a slumber party. Dayton said that the girls moved down here because it was less likely that the floor would cave in under them, unlike the top floor, where the boards are all rotted and water damaged.
The room is colder since we’re underground, but I seem to be the only one in need of a jacket. The others busy themselves with gathering supplies, scurrying up and down the stairs to grab everything. I can tell that they worked all night after I left them yesterday: Riley has already patched together a few truth spells in the notebook I gave her, the ingredients we had on hand are stacked on one side of the room, and the red grimoire is propped on a rickety wooden chair, open to the page with the Draw the Rot instructions.
With a ringing clang of cast iron on cement, June drops a Dutch oven full of wood scraps in front of the chair. The spell requires a lot of setting different things on fire, and she’s in charge of making sure we don’t burn the house down around us.
“I mean, only one of us can actually die,” she said in a mocking singsong as I delegated fire duty to her on the drive back to Cross Creek. “So, you really want me to protect you?”
“Yes, June. Please don’t kill me. Also, if you burn down the house, you’ll have to camp in the woods until Sunday night.”
“Ew,” she said. “Camping is gross.”
Pretty strong words coming from someone currently sharing her house with two other dead girls, a dozen raccoons, one surly cat named after an obscure Disney character, and an increasing number of dead mice and spiders, but whatever. At least she agreed not to actively participate in my death.