Undead Girl Gang(76)
Surprised, I yank too hard on her hair. She looks up at me, and the apology dies on my tongue when I remember that she doesn’t feel pain. “What do you mean you know? I never told you.”
She wrinkles her nose. “God, Mila. I’m your best friend. You think I didn’t notice that you were basically obsessed with my brother the whole time we’ve known each other? You know the license plate number on his car.”
Embarrassment crawls up my spine, making me want to curl up into a ball and hide. “You never said anything,” I say.
“Neither did you. Besides, I didn’t want you to ditch me for Xander and the honor society.” She turns her attention to the floor. “He was always interested in you, too.”
Xander was the gravitational force in my life for so long. My best friend’s brother. My secret crush. But he was a story I told myself. Bashful and successful and kind. Perfection watching the world with blue eyes. I didn’t know his soul was full of fungus. Does it matter that he loved almond milk and no-show socks and books about aliens if his love was pollution? As grimy and shiitake-brown as the smoke that rose out of Yarrow as it burned down to embers.
He told himself a story, too, as he memorized me in bits and pieces, the same way I tried to keep him. I wasn’t the solution to his problems or the decisive force that would absolve him of what he’d done. I wasn’t the girl who would be willing to burn if it meant staying with him.
We were both wrong, and we paid for it in different ways.
“Just my luck,” I say, my voice shaking and eyes burning. A tear splashes onto my cheek. “I killed the first dude who was ever interested in me.”
She wipes her eyes and gives me an icy glare. “You didn’t kill him. He lit the fire.”
I avoid her gaze and focus on pushing the mass of her hair to one side. “Your brother is dead. Your parents must be a wreck. And it’s my fault. Even if I had to do it, I’m still the one who did it.”
“And the creek technically killed me,” she says with a scoff. “I’m not mad at it. It was my stupid mistake.”
“Try telling that to Dayton, who’s only had Gatorade for seven days so you won’t have to look at a bottle of water.”
“You think I haven’t tried? She has way too many electrolytes in her system. I’m afraid she’s going to get ’roid rage.”
“Do you not know what electrolytes are?”
“Magic is real, and you are bleaching a dead girl’s hair. Everything we know about science and religion could be a lie.”
“Yeah, but it’s probably not. I’m pretty sure electrolytes are, like, calcium and other minerals your body needs.”
“Then why do we pay so much money for special electrolyte water? Did I spend my entire life getting ripped off?”
“Seems like it.” I laugh.
“Hey, Blister?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. I’m sorry my brother tried to kill you.”
“I love you, too. I’m sorry I had to let him die.”
It’s such a stupid understatement that we both laugh, even though our eyes are still wet and our hearts still hurt.
After thirty minutes, Riley’s hair is as unnaturally yellow as ever. She makes me keep my index finger poked into her side so that she can use Ms. Chu’s blow-dryer and admire herself in the mirror. When we finally leave the bathroom, she is once again a very gnarly looking corpse with very shiny hair. But she skips across the living room and flings herself into a pile of pillows, obviously very pleased with herself.
Seeing her so happy, even for a second, is worth every single moment of this week.
Riley, June, Dayton, Caleb, and I watch a slew of movies and TV shows, eventually devolving into watching single scenes that make us laugh. I eat leftover pizza and lava cake for dinner. June has three grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch while going through the notes I rescued from her locker. She writes replies on the back of each of them, mostly apologies. Dayton uses Caleb’s laptop to fall deep into a Tumblr rabbit hole. We have a dance party in Ms. Chu’s bedroom while listening to “Uptown Funk” ten times. We watch the sunset while laying in the grass of Caleb’s backyard.
It feels a lot like what I would do if I knew the apocalypse was coming.
Caleb’s parents are minutes away from pulling up in the driveway when we get the last dish into the dishwasher and the pizza boxes smashed down into the trash can. Dayton, Riley, and I hover next to the front door, giving June and Caleb a sliver of privacy around the corner. Still, their voices float back to us. None of us try that hard not to listen.
“You have to be here when they get back,” June says.
“I don’t care. What are they going to do? Ground me?” Caleb’s voice is rough with the macho bullshit that I’m used to him pulling in chemistry. I sort of forgot that’s how he normally talks to me.
“I don’t want you to watch me die. It’s bad enough you have to remember me like this.” I imagine she’s referring to her corpse-form, maybe even going so far as to do that thing where her head wobbles too much on her bendy neck.
“Look,” she says, suddenly serious. “The last guy I made popular ended up killing me. Maybe it’s not as fun as I think it is. Just . . . be happy. And don’t kill anyone, okay?”