The Greenways’ neighborhood is covered in a blanket of dead leaves that crunch and squish under my boots. I don’t know how many times I walked this block with Riley—shuffling between our houses before I got my grandpa’s old car, coming back from Lucky Thirteen with contraband in our pockets. Laurel Street has always been the road to Riley.
I look up at the house, a rush of pain passing through me as I realize that she won’t be on the other side of the door. Instead, she’s underground in one of the caskets from the showroom—the best one, the one made from high-gloss cherrywood and lined with cream-colored velvet. She’s empty, her body purposeless without the essence of her inside.
Heart hammering in my chest, I grab the hair band on my wrist, pull it back as far as it will go, and release.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I can’t help but yelp out loud as the elastic snaps against my flesh. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, but at least they’re tears of pain. Sadness is my enemy now. It means admitting defeat. And I am not defeated yet.
I hustle past the large street-facing GREENWAY FUNERAL HOME sign that fences in most of the perfectly maintained front lawn, which—regardless of drought or season—is Crayola green. I open the front door and step inside before I can chicken out.
I know it’s been just days since the last time I was here, but the main floor of the house looks so different. The wallpaper is still covered in yellow flowers tangled together in endless loops, but the color seems brighter with the light coming in from the big front windows. The heavy burgundy carpeting is homey, but it’s freshly vacuumed and seemingly untouched. There’s no cheesy music playing or people shedding tears over someone they didn’t even know.
There’s also no sign of the Greenways.
The showroom, with its neatly buffed caskets and dust-magnet display urns, is empty. I can’t say that I’m disappointed not to find Mrs. Greenway behind the service counter. I really didn’t want to have to talk to her, knowing that she’d likely derail my plan. Or ask why I’m not in school.
Xander has been out all week. Not that I blame him. People were already starting to act like vultures at the funerals. There’s no way he’d be safe in the Fairmont halls, where the rules of decency are nonexistent and the prying questions and shitty comments are endless.
He is safe here. Riley always said that when she and Xander were younger, no one ever wanted to play at their house because they lived above the funeral parlor. They couldn’t have birthday parties in the apartment because other kids would refuse to come past the showroom. I’ve never seen anyone other than the Greenways on the third floor. Xander stopped inviting people over after Chloe Wellington, one of Fairmont’s resident pseudo-goths, tried to convince him to fool around in the morgue.
Could Chloe Wellington have killed Riley to punish Xander for embarrassing her? June Phelan-Park did tell the entire school about how Chloe had a secret Tumblr full of poetry about Xander rejecting her.
The door to the third floor is locked to keep out unexpected guests and to alert the Greenways to the presence of customers. I press the doorbell. The chimes are ominous and loud enough to be heard in every single room of the three-story house. I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jacket, pushing past the empty plastic sandwich bags hidden inside. I dig my nails into the creases of my palm, one by one. Life line. Head line. Scar from burning my hand on the stove in second grade. Heart line.
There’s a pitter-patter of footsteps. The deadbolt shifts. The door opens, and Xander is on the other side, guilelessly handsome in a gray T-shirt and blue plaid pajama pants. My brain momentarily short-circuits, imagining him rolling out of bed to answer the door, his long limbs tangled in the sheets, his arms stretching out the knots of sleep, his shirt riding up his stomach.
“Hey,” he says, resting his shoulder against the doorframe. He doesn’t sound unhappy to see me. His eyes flick toward the carpet for a single bashful moment as he combs his nails through his hair and it falls into a perfect part. His geometrically impossible cheekbones flex with a smile. “Is everything okay? You aren’t here for business, are you?”
What a tactful way to ask if anyone else at school is dead.
“No,” I say with a sharp shake of my head that spills hair into my face. I brush it away with itching fingers. “I, um—this is kind of awkward, but I left some stuff in Riley’s room? Before she . . .” I trail off, praying he won’t ask what I’m looking for. This is a recon mission of the sketchiest variety. I need to stuff my pockets with as much loose hair and other random Riley-samplings as possible. Fingers crossed for fingernails.
“Of course,” he says hoarsely. “Come on up.”
After making sure to lock the door behind us, I follow the sway of his hips up the narrow staircase to the family’s apartment. The stink of pollen and petals on the edge of decay and old flower water coats the inside of my nose, making my head ache. Bursts of lilies and irises and white roses in vases wrapped in black ribbons line every flat surface we pass: the entryway table with the labeled key hooks mounted above it, the china hutch in the dining room, the long wooden table, the mantel in the living room, covered in stiffly posed portraits of the Greenways smiling in a field or sitting on their couch or piled into the back of the hearse.
I catch sight of a card nestled inside a spray of carnations. To Xander, it reads. You’re in our prayers. Love, the Fairmont Show Choir.
The vase next to that, filled with roses, has a card signed Dr. Cora Miller.
These aren’t touching tributes to Riley at all. They are offerings to the King of Fairmont Academy from his loyal subjects. June’s friends. Staff members taking breaks from writing his college recommendation letters. More people clamoring to be close to Xander.
Because now he isn’t just the hot guy with a dead girlfriend. He’s walking, talking tragedy porn. People will claw their way toward him the same way they watch Lifetime movies or read Nicholas Sparks novels—enraptured with the pain clouding his formerly perfect life.
No one who sent these flowers cares about Riley at all.
The thought makes me want to start smashing things. To yank fistfuls of petals and shred them down to white mulch. To crunch vases under my heel.
Would Xander help? Does he hate these symbols of false grief as much as I do? I’m scared to ask in case it makes me look jaded. Maybe he truly appreciates everyone keeping his family in their thoughts, even if they never did when Riley was alive.
Thankfully, the back hallway is devoid of flowers. The long wall of beige paint is broken up by doors—Mr. and Mrs. Greenway’s bedroom, Xander’s room, the bathroom, and, finally, Riley’s room. The door is closed. Maybe they like it better this way, the hope that maybe, just maybe, she’s on the other side.
Xander doesn’t hesitate before walking into her bedroom, but I do. I wasn’t expecting him to stay. Instead of looking for the items I’m here to steal, I watch him sit on the edge of Riley’s daybed. The comforter wrinkles under the weight of him.
He looks up at me. His eyes are ice blue. Not the color winter is but the color winter feels. The color behind your lids when peppermint floods your sinuses. The color the guy who wrote the Pocahontas songs meant when he made up the phrase blue corn moon.
Other people would call it sky blue, but the sky has never made me want to strip off all my clothes and rub myself against it, so I’m not convinced that’s the right term.
He shifts to the side, making space for me. Not an offensive amount of space—some people eyeball me and think I need yards of room to sit—but enough that I won’t have to brush by him to get comfortable.
“You left the funeral before I could talk to you,” he says, his tone light and nonjudgmental.