Undead Girl Gang(66)

“This isn’t a fight about a scarf,” I say. “Riley wasn’t murdered. The spell was only supposed to bring back the wrongly dead. That’s why it brought back you guys. You were killed. She wasn’t.”

“And even if Xander was the one who hurt us,” June says, the if as heavy as a stone, “you’ve already called the cops. There’s nothing else you can do now, Mila. I know you want to do this superhero-witch thing and save Cross Creek from evil, but you also need to chill.” She bats her eyelashes at Caleb. The effect is odd with her mismatched eyes. “Do you think we could order a pizza? Let’s be normal for the day.”

I want to feel normal. It’s one of the last things I said to Xander. One of the last things I’ll ever say to him.

Dayton lets me curl up in her lap and cry.





TWENTY



A COUPLE OF hours later, I wake up alone on the uncomfortable couch in Caleb’s living room. The shining black screen of the TV mounted to the wall reflects my body, twisted into the back of the couch. The sun is starting to set, leaving the living room dim and dreamlike. Tomato and garlic and chocolate fill the air, and my stomach rumbles, remembering the pizza and lava cake the girls insisted I eat before I passed out.

I drag myself off the couch. I can hear June’s voice in the backyard and the splash of water in the kitchen. I ache like I’ve been repeatedly punched. Which I have been—by the ground in the woods, by the worst couch on earth, by the truth of how close I was to a murderer last night. How safe I felt with him until the laptop illuminated his back.

Mushrooms. God, that spell is so fucked up.

Dayton is standing in front of the sink. Opalescent suds cling to her bruised skin up to the elbow. Her hands are scrubbing a dish in a wide circle, but her focus is on the window facing the backyard. Through the glass door, I can see June and Caleb playing with a small mound of fluff on legs. The dog wags its tail, overjoyed as June tosses a tiny ball for it to fetch.

“You don’t want to join them?” I ask Dayton.

She looks over her shoulder at me and scrunches her nose. “They deserve some private time, and playing with the dog is about as close as they can get. I think they were sleeping together when June was alive, but it wouldn’t be right if they did it now. We’re technically corpses, so, you know, necrophilia and all that.”

“Right.” I cringe.

“I thought maybe she convinced me to do it,” she says suddenly, her hands swirling under the water. “We’ve been friends for so long, and I love her, but she has this way of seeing the worst parts of you. She’s right. She does push people. She doesn’t mean to, not really, but she still does it. I was so scared that she’d shown me something about myself that I didn’t even know was there, something that could make me . . . I’m sorry that someone felt like they had to kill us, but selfishly I’m so relieved that it wasn’t me. And it’s nice that June got to have Caleb back for a little bit.”

Outside, Caleb scoops June up by the waist and carries her across the lawn. Her bare feet kick the air, but her mouth is wide and laughing. I almost don’t notice the strange pallor of her skin or the parts of her that randomly start bleeding.

“Does it bother you that you didn’t find a long-lost boyfriend?” I ask Dayton, prying my attention away from June’s happiness. It feels too much like being kicked while I’m down.

Dayton dunks her hands back into the water and pulls up a chocolate-stained plate. “Oh, no. That’s too much to live for. She’ll be so much sadder tomorrow night when we have to go back.”

I edge around to lean on the counter next to her. Water sinks into the waistband of my jeans. “And you won’t be?”

She sets aside the sponge and scrapes the chocolate off with her thumbnail. “Sure, I’ll be sort of sad. I’ll miss Gatorade and swimming and having friends.” She flicks a smile at me. “I’ll miss you and your grumpy face.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I say quietly. I don’t know when it happened, but it’s true. I will miss her. And June, for all her judging and shit-talking.

And Riley. Of course. Her dying almost broke me the first time. What’s going to happen tomorrow night when I know that she’s gone for good?

“But I already miss things from my real life,” Dayton says, cheerfully continuing to scrub and talk at the same time. “Like choir and my family and being able to walk around without scaring people. That first night back, you said we weren’t really back to life. Just sort of visiting. I had a good visit. I’m ready to go back to heaven.”

“You don’t think God is going to be mad at you for being a zombie for a week?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “God doesn’t get mad at you, Mila. No matter what your mean old witches say. Will you put some music on for me while I finish the dishes? Something I can sing along with.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and squint at the screen, struggling to see anything but the crack in the glass. I have a missed call from the landline at the Greenway Funeral Home. I put the voicemail on speaker.

“Mila, this is Monica Greenway. I’m looking for Xander. Is he with you? He said that the two of you have been spending time together, and I have a pair of, well, fuller-figure jeans in my washing machine. Your mother says you’re out studying this afternoon. If you hear from Xander, tell him he needs to return home immediately. We received a very strange phone call . . . Anyway, pass this along if you see him.”