Who am I kidding? I know for a fact that we’ve never hugged. We did high-five once, and the memory of it kept me warm for many, many winter nights.
His arms are shockingly solid around my shoulders, squeezing tight without a hint of self-consciousness. I can’t help but notice how his hips latch perfectly inside mine like a key slipping into a lock. The realization makes my knees buckle. How do skinny girls fit with their dudes? Do they just rest up against each other? I could keep Xander Greenway’s sharp hipbones bolted in my softness forever.
Except he lets me go because he’s grieving and probably not thinking about boning down at the Fairmont Academy Celebration of Life.
“You’re back,” I say stupidly.
Yeah, duh, Mila. He’s back because he’s here in front of you, formerly very close to your front.
Has the voice in my head always sounded like June making fun of me?
“I’m back,” he says. “My parents finally let me out.”
His eyes follow the back of Riley’s Giants cap. Fear spikes like thumbtacks in my veins. I reach out and grasp his forearm. Now that I’m touching him—again! Twice in one day!—I have his attention, but I have no idea what to do with it to make sure he doesn’t spot Riley. She didn’t want him to see her. The girls agreed that seeing family was not okay. Do I cry? Or make a joke? Do I even know any jokes? Nora was pretty obsessed with knock-knock jokes a few years ago. I can’t remember the punch lines to any of them, though.
But Xander doesn’t seem to mind that I’m touching him. His head dips, turning the bright light of his attention solely onto me. Tired as he is, his face warms to fleecy softness. I can feel Dr. Miller watching us, waiting for a chance to leap into our conversation, so I use my gripping hand to lead Xander out of earshot of her and her pamphlets.
“Why is she so obsessed with me?” Xander asks as we come to a stop. He flicks a look over my shoulder at Dr. Miller, his face going shadowy and sneering. “I’ve only met her once. I don’t want her help. Didn’t anyone ever tell her that no means no?”
“Maybe you’re irresistible. You’re eighteen now, right? A woman has needs, Alexander.”
That shocks a laugh out of him. It wipes the gloom away for a second. “God, that’s sick.”
Doubt makes my lips itch to keep the words locked inside. I want to keep his laugh floating in the air around us, not wipe it away. “You’re a tragedy gold mine. I only lost one friend this week. You lost two and a sister.”
“It’s not a contest.”
“Of course not. You have me beat three to one.”
My smile must not be that convincing because his voice goes serious and his focus clasps on to my face. “Are you doing okay?”
I raised the dead, I think as I gaze into his arctic ice eyes. I raised the dead, and I let them crash their own funeral, and I should probably know where they are, but I definitely don’t.
I can’t tell him any of that, so instead I say, “Yeah, I’m fine. Eating, sleeping, functioning.” I gesture around us with the hand still branded with his arm warmth, the fuzz of his sweater trapped in the sweaty crease that is my heart line. “Celebrating life. Have you tried a Dayton cookie yet? There are rumors of a June sno-cone somewhere.”
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” he says. I wish I could replay the word pleasure in his voice over and over again until I wore all the meaning out of it. “I heard some people talking shit, and I had to get away from them. Something awful happened, you know? Three people are dead. They should show a little respect. At least pretend to be sad. I don’t want to hear my classmates talk about people I cared about. People I loved.”
I would love to press pause on the conversation here and make him dissect that last statement like a biology frog, examined and labeled within an inch of its death. Xander and June dated for most of last year, but they broke up over summer vacation without warning. Riley had almost no insight into what happened except, “I don’t know. The hell beast just isn’t around as much anymore.” The breakup hadn’t even changed them that much. June dated some other guys, but she and Xander had stayed friends. They stayed in the same clubs, kept the same company, shared study tables at the downtown Starbucks.
So, while it is possible that he loved her as a pal, it’s equally likely that his loins still burn for a girl whose neck is only kind of attached to her body when she’s more than a hundred steps away from me. Figures.
“People are assholes,” I say.
He laughs quietly. “That should be your catchphrase.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Maybe. It always seems to apply.”
“Who were the shit talkers?” I ask, looking around the packed courtyard. “Was it Dan Calalang? He seems like a real dickhead. He dented my passenger side door when he parked his giant-ass SUV too close, then he refused to pay for it.”
Xander nods. “He was one of them. Him and—what did you and Riley used to call them? The Nouns?”
“Everyone calls them that, Xander. Their names are, in fact, all nouns.”
“Technically, everyone’s name is a noun.” He chuckles. “But their friends tend to just call them Angel, Sky, Diamond, and Dawn.”
“Everyone says Dawn’s name last. Do you think she’s noticed?” Would that be motive enough for murder? “They must have been at June’s wake with you, right? They were friends.”
“Funeral reception,” he corrects. “They were there, yeah.”
Huh. The Nouns have an alibi. The killing spree couldn’t have been bangs-related. Which lends more credence to my Rausch theory.
“But I don’t know if I would call them June’s friends,” Xander continues, his shoulders slumping. “Friends shouldn’t spend your memorial spreading rumors about you.”
“What kind of rumors?” I ask.
His mouth turns into a scolding quirk, but his eyes laugh with me. “If I told you, I’d be helping to spread them.”
“Come on.” I nudge him with my elbow and give him my cheekiest smile. “Give me a ballpark. Are the rumors regular catty or wholly unbelievable?”
But I’ll never know because my knees go weak, and this time, it has nothing to do with Xander’s hips. I can feel each of the three girls passing out of the hundred steps. It makes the magic-induced nausea double, then triple. Pepto leaps up my throat, splashing my back molars in acidic mint. I force myself to swallow it and shove myself away from Xander without explanation—not that he’ll need much of one past the nasty gargling sound I just made. I’ll be humiliated when I have time to be.
Now I run toward the cafeteria, using my own sickness as a compass toward June, Riley, and Dayton.
Holy hell, I hope no one’s brains are being eaten.
ELEVEN
THE NOUNS ARE on the other side of the cafeteria, stuck between the line of metal dumpsters and the chain-link fence that cuts the parking lot off from the courtyard. June looms over her friends in full zombie mode. She has pulled her hair into a topknot to showcase the horrific bruising at her throat. In direct sunlight, I can see how blue her skin is, especially against the vivid red of the burst blood vessels in her eyes—eyes that are focused on the four quivering, weeping Nouns.
“I made you popular! I told people that speech and debate wasn’t for losers. I lied for you.” June’s voice is a menacing croak. You can almost hear the rattle of her collapsed windpipe. “And this is how you repay me? You come to my party and spread rumors about me? I will haunt the shit out of you! You’ll never win another competition or take a test or go to a dance without me there, being dead and reminding you what assholes you are.”
I start to run toward them, but someone grabs my elbow, yanking me around the corner. The rose quartz necklace bounces painfully off my collarbone as I am pulled to a stop, facing the parking lot. I turn and am greeted by a black-and-orange baseball cap, along with gray lips that turn pink as they say my name.