Undead Girl Gang(50)

My laugh catches me off guard, and I almost let out a June-snort. “I mean, who wants their time wasted?”

“I think most people spend their entire lives wasting time and waiting for something better,” he says softly. “You always seem like you know what you want. I’ve missed that about you.”

Sweat is pooling in my palms. I rub them as discreetly as I can against the sides of my legs. “You saw me a couple of days ago.”

“For a second,” he says, rolling his eyes. “It’s not the same.”

“Nothing’s the same,” I choke out. “Riley’s dead.”

Nodding, he rubs his hand over the back of his neck, keeping his focus trained on the ground. “Since everything happened,” he says slowly, and I know that he’s talking about June and Dayton and Riley, although I don’t know what order he’s putting them in, “I feel like I’ve been betraying them every time I’m not miserable. And I know that’s not how grief works. One second of being happy doesn’t erase all the other moments of mourning. I know that I can’t stay sad all day, every day. But I can’t help but feel like people are looking at me and judging me for not being sad enough. Or for being too sad. I can’t figure out what the normal amount is.”

I remember not being able to cry at Riley’s funeral and how I ached to look normal and squeeze out tears even though I wouldn’t have been able to feel them.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Right,” he stresses. He reaches out and touches my elbow, light as a feather settling in the crook of my arm and gone just as fast. “I don’t feel that way with you. I don’t feel trapped. I know you understand. You don’t need me to pretend to be something else.”

“Why would I want you to be anything except you?” I ask.

He smiles, his face shining with that spark that draws me in like a sucker moth. “Do you know how many people have told me to cheer up this week? Or changed the subject when Riley or June or Dayton comes up? It’s like living in a glass box. Everyone’s afraid that if I breathe wrong, the whole thing will break. Or they want me to break down so they can watch.”

“You feel like you’re removed from everyone,” I say, thinking of my family eating meals without me, my parents sending messages to me through text or my sisters. “Like they think your sadness is contagious.”

“Yes,” he says on a sigh. “But if you smile through it, they think you’re not processing it enough.”

“Like Dr. Miller.”

“Exactly like Dr. Miller. She’s still stalking me. She came and observed me at lunch yesterday.”

“Are you sure she isn’t just into you?” I ask.

“God, I hope not. I don’t want to be anyone’s sad-guy fetish.”

I have bad news for you, Alexander . . .

We cross the street and round the corner where the Cross Creek Cinema is. The noise rises to a chaotic level. Laughing. Haggling. Shouting. A game of tag. I’m shocked at how crowded it is. It feels like everyone in town—minus the Flores family—is here, clamoring for some hella fresh produce.

I’m hit with the smell of a hundred different foods—overripe persimmons and roasting meats and cupcakes and herbs. I actually didn’t think it was possible to be more overwhelmed tonight. Three different people brush me as they walk by with overflowing official Cross Creek Farmers’ Market tote bags. The kids playing tag squeeze between Xander and me to run, full speed, toward the stage erected in the park.

Fuck. Downtown dead-ends at Aldridge Park. Where June and Dayton died. Why didn’t I think of that before? What if Xander freaks out when he realizes where we are?

“This is way busier than I imagined,” I say.

“You’ve never been here?” he asks. Lies spin through my head, but he interrupts my thoughts. “I guess you wouldn’t have. I can’t really picture my sister volunteering to hang out in a giant crowd like this.”

Up ahead, I see Aniyah Dorsey at a booth. She has that too-interested look on her face that makes it seem like she’s memorizing everything to write down later. A little kid with white-blond hair is handing her a pamphlet and pointing up at the sign on their canopy, which reads Creekside Community Church. There are a couple of other kids passing out pamphlets near the booth, none as blond as the one talking to Aniyah. They all have round elfin faces with easy smiles.

Why is Aniyah talking to the Nesseths? Does she have a sudden interest in evangelism, or is she sniffing out information on their dead sister?

Xander stops and turns, snagging something from the stall closest to us. He flourishes it to me, and I see that it’s a chunk of apple on a toothpick.

“Are you still doing magic?” he asks.

“Are you asking because of the apple?” I ask, popping the piece into my mouth. “Because I’m really not a poison-apple, heart-in-a-box kind of witch.”

“Trust me, I know,” he says as we walk away from the apple seller. “I’ve sat through a lot of Wiccan rants. No poison apples, no flying monkeys, no pointy hats, no crystal balls.”

“But you know that crystal balls exist? I just don’t own one. Riley was more of the crystals-and-essential-oils one. Big stuff for big results.”

Riley never had the patience for minute details. She wanted to string every bead at once, slap on a coat of paint, and call it done. I had the patience to gather and dry herbs for brushes. She could pull flowers, I could press them in wax paper. She preferred to buy spell ingredients, but I was always poorer and happier to hunt for them in the woods or neighbors’ gardens.