“Excuse you,” June says. “Riley was only there because she’s Xander’s sister. No one thought she was cool.”
“And you were only there because you were Xander’s girlfriend, and you puked all over the dashboard of his brand-new car on the way home,” Riley says.
“People are already talking about how you guys dying means that the scholarship is up for grabs now,” I say. “All we have to do is figure out who would want it enough to kill you.”
Dayton takes a pull from her soda and wrinkles her nose. “And then what?”
“And then we get them to confess or take them to the police. Justice, revenge. You know, the whole reason I brought you back to life?”
“You brought us back by accident,” June corrects. “You just wanted your friend back.”
Irritation makes my lips crackle. I rub them together to keep the first ten things I think to say in reply from shooting across the room like bullets. “Okay, sure. But don’t you want someone to go to jail for killing you guys?”
The room goes quiet except for the sound of Binx’s rolling purr as he rubs his head into Riley’s side.
June takes a loud slurp from her soda. “Whatever. It’s not like they could kill us again.”
“The affairs of the living aren’t really our business anymore,” Dayton says with a world-weary flounce of her wrist.
“What?” I gape at them. “You’re not serious, are you? Someone murdered all of you in one week. It was a fucking rampage. Why would they stop murdering people now that it’s working out for them? They’ll probably try to kill me when they realize that I’m searching for them.”
Riley pops a nugget into her mouth. A drop of honey mustard splashes onto her lower lip. “Then stop searching.”
“I can’t!” I yell. The sound makes Binx dart across the room and leap up the stairs. “If anyone else dies, it’ll be my fault for not stopping it. And have any of you considered that what you do while you’re here might have an effect on what happens Sunday night?”
“Sunday night we die again,” June says. “Kind of no matter what, according to your old book.”
“And what happens after that?” I snap. “Do you think you’ll get to go to your ‘eternal reward’ if all you did with your second chance was yell at the Nouns and steal from Walmart? Assholes don’t get to go to heaven.”
June slams down her soda. “We didn’t ask to come back to life! You brought us here.”
“No one asks to be born either,” I counter. Barbed anger curbs my hunger. I toss aside my burger, letting it skid and fall apart on the floor, beef rolling over pickles. “You still get judged based on what you do with your time on earth. And, guess what? You have been a total dick for sixteen years, so maybe spending a couple of days doing something for someone other than yourself would help your chances of a decent afterlife.”
“I’m not a dick,” Dayton says, masticating fish sandwich angrily at me.
Riley snorts. “Yes, you are.”
Dayton gasps, her eyes saucer-wide. “I was always nice to you! Name one mean thing I ever did to you.”
Riley grips her own knees until her knuckles angrily jut, bone white, from her hands. “You made fun of me for years. You convinced everyone not to come to my birthday parties. You ruined any chance of me having any kind of social life. You labeled me a freak, and everyone believed you.”
Over the years, I have heard many stories about Riley’s lonely childhood. The solo piano lessons and Bible study and birthday parties alone with Xander and a cake. But she never mentioned how it all started.
“You never told me Dayton was the one who told people not to go to your birthday parties,” I say.
“Well, she was,” Riley snaps. “I didn’t want to dwell on it or anything. It seemed pathetic to stay mad about things that happened in elementary school. And I guess I thought I would live long enough that it wouldn’t have ruined my whole life. But that didn’t happen. So thanks, Dayton. You’re the reason I had literally one friend before I died. You scared everyone else away from me.”
“You live in a funeral home,” Dayton says shrilly. “It’s a scary place!”
“It’s really not,” I say. “Unless you’re scared of carpeting, it’s just an apartment over a showroom.
“A showroom for death!”
“Caskets,” Riley corrects. “Empty caskets. They’re fancy boxes with different kinds of fabric inside. It’s like being scared of jewelry boxes.”
“Jewelry boxes of death!”
“It is pretty creepy,” June says, twirling a fry.
Riley narrows her eyes at her. “Don’t even get me started on you. I can’t believe my brother dated someone as stuck up as you. You wouldn’t even come to dinner with my family.”
“Okay, but you guys were always eating somewhere bizarre. I don’t want to eat food from Thailand or India or wherever. Who even knows what’s in there? Why couldn’t you eat something normal?”
“We can’t all subsist on buttered noodles and self-righteousness,” Riley growls.
“And, for fuck’s sake, stop using normal as code for white,” I snap. “Your life isn’t the ruler that the rest of the world gets measured against.”
“I never said that it was,” June says stiffly.
My face goes hot as I think of all the reasons June has ever made fun of me. I’m brown and she’s not. I’m fat and she’s not. I’m Wiccan, shorter than her, live on a different side of town, drive an older car, prefer Coke over Pepsi. And on any given day when she was alive, she found a way to make me feel ashamed of that. I think about the wave of shameful relief I felt sitting in the pews at her funeral, listening to Xander eulogize her. As his eyes filled with tears, a euphoric calm settled over me knowing that June Phelan-Park would never torment anyone ever again. That there would never be new June insults to make me doubt myself or anyone else.
“Yes, you did. Every single day, all you did was point out how people weren’t like you and how that made them weird or shitty or just less than you. You tried to make everyone fit into a June-shaped box, and you cut them down until they understood that they never would. How many people have cried in your face after you said something to them? Because, let me tell you, that’s a super-easy number for me to figure out, personally. The only people I have ever made cry are my sisters. So what about you? Yesterday, you hurt all the Nouns enough to make them cry.”
“They were saying shitty things about me first!” she shouts. Her cheeks are flushed with anger.
“Yeah, but they thought you were dead, so they weren’t doing it just to hurt you. You went for blood. So that’s four people you’ve made cry in the forty-eight hours since you’ve been back. What about before that? Who else did you eviscerate with your words? Can you even remember all of them? Or did you not care enough to keep count?”
Her mouth stays clamped shut, but her eyes shimmer with hatred. Given enough time, she will be able to craft my own personal nuclear-destruct codes. But I’m not interested in breaking down today. There’s a murderer on the loose.
“If you guys don’t want to help me find your killer, then fine. Sit here until Sunday and then walk yourselves back to the graveyard, for all I care. I’ll find a way to get justice without you. But I promise, if anyone else dies this week, it will be your fault for sitting back and doing nothing.”
“I don’t care what she said about their debate competition,” June muses. “I still think it was Sky. She used to love listening to Serial. That’s so creepy.”
“Sky has an alibi,” I say. “She was with the other Nouns and Xander at your wake when Riley died.”
“What about Dan Calalang?” June asks. “He’s always had a crush on me.”
“He’s a senior. He isn’t eligible for the scholarship.”
“God damn it,” Riley groans. She stands up and blows out the nearest candle. As it gutters tendrils of smoke into the air, she kicks the stack of books it was resting on so that they all slide across the floor. Wicca in the Kitchen. The Witch’s Encyclopedia. Herb Magick. Spells for the Teen Witch. “Are you a witch or aren’t you?”
THIRTEEN