The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(64)

I tap my fingers on my legs to keep my hands busy so I don’t strangle her.

“Listen,” Zora says. “I’m not saying this situation isn’t weird, but it does kind of make sense. You had Dino and you never made much of an attempt to be friendly with anyone else.”

“I was friendly!”

“When you wanted something.” She pauses and waits for me to argue, but I can’t, seeing as our friendship began when I called her and asked her for help. “You may have had other friends, but he was your anchor. Even Mrs. Larsen mentioned how much you’d changed after Dino dropped out of theater.”

“Teachers were gossiping about me?”

Zora shrugs. “One teacher.”

I think about what Zora said, and maybe she’s right. I was so certain Dino was the one clinging to our friendship that I didn’t stop to think that it might be me.

“I recognize that face,” Zora says. “You have an idea. Do tell.”

It’s not much of a plan, and I doubt it will work, but it’s what I’ve got. “Do you have a dress I can fit into?”

Zora grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. “Let’s find out.”





DINO

I’M DREAMING ABOUT RAFI. JULY probably thinks my Rafi dreams are naked romps through fields of cake, but they’re actually pretty mundane. We go to the mall and hold hands and shop for books or a new case for my phone or socks. We go to the movies and argue over the snacks—he insists on dumping M&Ms into the popcorn, and I think it’s sacrilege to ruin hot, buttery popcorn in such a grotesque fashion—but then we spend the movie trying to pretend we’re not intentionally letting our greasy fingers linger together in the bucket.

And then someone I’m going to kill is shaking me awake. Delilah is standing over me looking like she’s murdered someone and needs my help dismembering the body, which is silly since she could butcher a corpse far more efficiently than me, and she’s opening her mouth and spitting out words, but I don’t understand them because I’m still hearing Rafi’s voice telling me he loves me.

Reality needs load screens, like in video games. Gentle transition animations to ease us from one state to the next so that waking into reality doesn’t completely jar our fragile brains. We’re meant to enjoy dreams, but how can we when the return to consciousness sucks so hard?

I try to sit up and pull the blankets over me and crunch myself into as small a ball as possible.

“Jesus, Dee, what time is it?”

“Four something,” she says. “But didn’t you hear me? I’m calling off the wedding.” Delilah’s wearing a long T-shirt that I assume once belonged to Theo, and she’s pacing back and forth in front of the couch I was trying to sleep on, spewing nonsense into the air like ash from an erupting volcano.

“You’re not calling off the wedding.”

“Of course I am! Everyone should call their weddings off. Weddings are an outdated tool of the patriarchy. Before you know it I’m going to be popping out babies and I’ll have to quit my job to stay home with them and they’ll consume my identity. I’ll stop being Delilah DeLuca, kick-ass mortician to the rich and famous, and I’ll become Delilah Kang, soccer mom.”

Even if I’d had the chance to ease from my dreams into this nightmare, it’s still a lot. Delilah’s shorting out my ability to think. “First off,” I say, “where are all these rich and famous dead people you’ve been working on?”

“Do you think I’m joking, Dino?”

Delilah doesn’t do overwrought. She’s calm, methodical. Even at her most bridezilla, she was merely slightly pushy. When she was in her third year of college, she took on too many classes but didn’t realize it until the middle of the semester. Instead of freaking out and flunking or buying drugs to help get her through the coursework, she calmly spoke to one of her professors, explained the situation, and worked out a deal to allow her to take an incomplete and finish the assignments the next semester. That’s who she is. Queen and King of Calm.

“Are you pregnant?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Not yet.”

I shake my head. “Then don’t get pregnant until you’re ready. There’s a birth control procedure Theo can have done that’s totally reversible, you’re on the pill, and you can keep using condoms if you want to be extra cautious.”

Delilah stops pacing. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Sex ed at Palm Shores is super comprehensive.”

“Whatever,” Dee says. “Theo still wants to have kids eventually. So do I, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Delilah flops down on the couch beside me. “No, I do. But I’ve already seen some of my friends from school travel this path and it’s like they transform from interesting people with lives who do things into people who have babies and talk about babies and post pictures of babies on every social media site they have a log-in for. All the hopes and dreams they had for their careers and lives get funneled into their babies.”

“Why do you think you’d ever be one of those people?”

“Because why wouldn’t I be?”

“Our mom, for one,” I say. “She didn’t trade in her combat boots for whatever kind of sensible shoes the stereotypical Stepford moms wear in your prewedding fever dreams. She didn’t quit her job. She didn’t give up anything.” I shrug. “The baby-picture-posting fixation I can’t help you with. I’m pretty certain babies emit brain altering chemicals that instigate that behavior and make it impossible to resist. Sorry.”