Undead Girl Gang(48)

The smile slips off Dayton’s face. She gives a sad dog paddle toward us. “I’m really sorry, Riley. I know you’re still mad at water. I didn’t want you to have to get this close to it ever again.”

Riley growls and splashes her hand into the water. “I don’t care about the water! What are you doing here? You’ve been gone for hours.”

“And where are your clothes?” I ask.

“I hid them in the hose pot,” she says, pointing one of her painfully wrinkled fingers at a stone pot under the kitchen window. “I just wanted to be close to my family again. I know we all agreed that it wouldn’t be right to talk to them, so I’ve been coming here for a little bit every day after my brothers and sisters go to school. At first, I missed the smell of home, so I found a spare key and walked around, saying goodbye to stuff. But then I found my swimsuit, and I couldn’t resist . . . I mean, I don’t have to breathe! My muscles don’t get tired! I was beating all my old competition records!”

“Wait,” I say, looking from her to June to Riley. “You don’t breathe?”

Riley shrugs. “We won’t die if we don’t.”

“It’s a hard habit to break,” June adds. “You just kind of keep doing it without thinking.”

“I could just swim and swim and—” Dayton pirouettes in the water, her eyes closed, the same way they were when she sang in the theater. “But today the gardener came to mow the lawn, and I was too far away from Mila to pass for alive, so I hid. And then I hid for too long because I heard my brothers and sisters get home from school. I would have come back to our house later, I promise. I wasn’t running away or anything—I was just waiting for my family to go to the farmers’ market.” She presses her lips together in a sad smile, her eyes distant. “I could hear my mom promising to get my sister one of the vegan cupcakes she likes. We help run our church’s booth at the farmers’ market on Thursdays, so we eat dinner there and then go listen to the band.” Dayton pauses and looks back at us. “Thank you for coming to look for me.”

“Of course we came to look for you,” June says sharply. “We’re your friends. We were worried.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. Two weeks ago, the thought of being called Dayton’s friend would have made me laugh for five straight minutes. Today, it wears like a scratchy sweater. Uncomfortable, but functional.

Dayton swims over to the ladder and heaves herself out of the water. Her movements seem clunky aboveground. Water splashes onto the pavement as she combs her fingers through her hair.

“Did the spell work on Caleb?” she asks me as her wet feet slap toward us.

“I think so,” I say, relieved to have good news. “One of his arms is turning scaly, and the skin is sort of falling off? I only caught a glimpse of it up his sleeve, but it looked like it was rotting pretty good.”

“Hm,” June says, wrinkling her nose. “I thought the rotten-heart thing would look more like bread mold or like bugs coming out of his mouth.”

“I was hoping he’d drop dead,” Riley says. “Murderous asshole.”

“There’s still time for any of those things to happen, too,” Dayton says cheerfully, clasping her hands to her stomach. “Mila could totally do more magic if the first spell isn’t big enough.”

I can feel Riley’s glare, but I don’t look at it directly.

“Besides,” Dayton adds with a hop of excitement. “Mila only saw Caleb’s arm. He could have fish scales all over him now. His butt could be falling off because there’s so much evil in it.”

“You think all the evil in Caleb Treadwell is located in his ass?” I ask.

Dayton throws her hands over her mouth as she erupts into giggles. Her body bends in half, and tears leak out the corners of her eyes as she sputters, “Think about his flaky, evil butt!”

I really don’t want to find this funny, but June lets out a pig snort and turns away quickly, like we won’t notice. And that makes Riley smile. So I let myself laugh along with Dayton as she mimes scratching her butt and finding clumps of it falling off in her hands.

“I guess I should get dressed,” Dayton says, finally, after we all get winded. “June, would you mind getting me a Gatorade out of the garage? The side door should be unlocked.”

“That’s where you’ve been getting Gatorade?” Riley asks.

“There’s a flat of it from Costco,” Dayton says with a shrug. “I didn’t want it to go to waste. I’m the only one of my brothers and sisters who likes blue.”

“They buy everything in bulk,” June says. “Chips, cookies, cereal.”

“Fuck a duck,” Riley says. “I’m coming with you. We need snacks.”

The two of them go around the other side of the house. I watch them, wondering if I should follow, wondering if they even really need me here at all.

“When people talk about ghosts, they always mention their unfinished business,” Dayton says, pulling her wad of black clothes out of the hose pot. She stands awkwardly, her eyebrows high on her forehead until I realize she’s waiting for privacy. I turn around and stare at the pool. “Like you get stuck here because there’s one thing that you need to do. When you brought us back, I thought that getting revenge on Caleb was our unfinished business. But it’s more complicated than that. Everything is unfinished. Our whole lives. There’s no amount of catching up we could do in seven days to make that better. Today I heard my mom’s voice, and it wasn’t enough to last me forever. Everything we ever did together was the last time.” There’s the wet suction and slap of spandex stretching and snapping. “I’m not going to stop missing them.”