Undead Girl Gang(78)
“True,” I say. “But I will have the rest of my life to miss you.”
“Fine,” June says. “You are way too practical for a Libra.”
“All right,” Riley says, hugging the grimoire to her chest. “I’ll start. Um. Keep in touch?”
“Don’t ever change,” Dayton adds with a grin.
“Have a great summer,” June says. “But I’d really mean: Have a great life, loser.”
“See you later.” My sinuses burn. I force myself to smile. “Oh shit! Hold on.”
I scramble to unclasp the necklace from around my neck. I forgot what it was like to walk around without its gentle weight pressed into my skin. I swing the chain around Riley’s neck.
“Here,” I say, fumbling with the clasp. How did Xander make this look so easy? My thumbnail can barely open the damn thing. “Take it with you. Your mom would be so pissed if she knew.”
She laughs, and it’s wet and husky and so very much hers, even though it’s coming out of cracked, gray lips. “Fuck a duck. She would hate it. That’s awesome.”
The four of us take one last moment together. The urge to rip the grimoire out of Riley’s arms and find the recipe for putting off this goodbye is almost too much to bear. But our paths are diverging, and all I can do is be grateful that we had this week that I extorted from the universe.
I’m a witch. I’m always grateful.
The girls wander to their graves. They kick off their stolen shoes and set their toes in the dirt. The coven edges nearer again, sensing midnight. It is the witching hour, after all.
Since there isn’t a choir here, I pull up a karaoke track on my phone. The computerized instruments sound like they’re being played inside a tin can, all metallic dissonance and echoes. There are way more flutes than I think are really necessary, and the piano sounds more like a wheezy organ. But Dayton doesn’t seem to mind. She smiles dreamily and opens her hands, conjuring the song out of herself.
“I’m always chasing rainbows, waiting to find a little blue-bird . . .”
After the last verse, her notes are still floating on the air, trapped in fog, when the earth trembles and the graveyard goes silent.
TWENTY-FIVE
ALEXANDER GREENWAY WAS buried next to his sister. The singular news article on the Cross Creek Examiner website didn’t mention the books that burned with him or the remnants of three fancy dresses with traces of formaldehyde. There was no report of Xander’s body having any wounds or anomalies. Looking too deep into one of those things would mean having to answer for the others. I think that no one involved in the investigation wants to know how Xander got his sister’s burial dress out of the grave or why he was covered in fungus or why he showed no signs of struggle.
Or our police department just sucks?
Either way, his death was ruled an accident, but everyone at Fairmont Academy is treating it like the fourth suicide.
To be fair, they’ve had too much practice to do anything else.
Ms. Chu isn’t eulogizing today. Neither is Mr. Greenway. He hired another funeral director to come in and perform the service. Having both of his kids die in the span of one week has obviously been too much for him to take. His face is as gray and shadowed as Riley’s was the last time I saw her. Mrs. Greenway is in a haze like she’s sleepwalking. Suspicion and silent accusations seem to stand like a force field between them and everyone else. Their pew has no family members, just members of the church Xander and Riley never attended. I think I recognize Dayton’s parents.
I’m sitting with my family, sandwiched between my sisters. Mom seemed pretty sure that I’d try to walk out of the service, so she trapped me. I don’t blame her. I probably would walk out of this if I could. I already know that this will be the last time I ever walk through the doors of the Greenway Funeral Home. Everything—from the yellow wallpaper to the too-thick carpet—makes me think of the sharpest edges of knowing Riley and Xander. The scab they left on my life might never fully heal, but I can at least avoid infecting it.
After another awful performance by the show choir, I skip the receiving line with the totally real excuse that I need to get to work. My hours at Lucky Thirteen flex since there are very few customers and I’m not being paid, but my parents don’t know that. I told them that working there is helping me make peace with Riley’s death. I’ve even started toeing the line and referring to it as “her suicide,” even though I know that she didn’t mean to die. It makes them feel like I’ve made emotional progress. It makes them less scared of me.
The graveyard took back Riley, June, and Dayton but kept the iron rose hematite, so I’ll be working off my three-hundred-dollar debt to Toby by stocking shelves and tying together different kinds of herb brushes. On top of my new weekly meetings at school with Dr. Miller to discuss my PTSD and depression—apparently wanting to stay in bed for weeks at a time and not talk to anyone isn’t the healthiest coping tool?—my life is suddenly full of those meddling old witches.
The sky is blanketed in white, the sun’s light and warmth smothered by clouds. I stop at the edge of the bright green lawn to button up my jacket. I adjust my cuffs over the seed-bead bracelets I’ve started making again. Dr. Miller thought it would be a good idea to return to some of my non-magical hobbies so that I don’t accidentally fuck with the balance of the universe again out of sheer boredom. It feels good to craft. Counting out the tiny beads is almost meditative. And they’re prettier than wearing a hair tie on my wrist every day.