I get in my car in a hurry, throwing my backpack at the passenger seat before I buckle up. I take a second before I turn the ignition to sigh at my own paranoia. It must be leftover guilt at breaking into June’s locker. Even with her permission, it is sort of a breach of trust with my peers. If anyone saw me do it—especially if that someone was Aniyah—I’d be stuck in meetings with Dr. Miller until the end of time, talking about why I don’t respect other people’s grieving.
There’s a blur of movement outside. My heart leaps into my throat and I scream as two black-clad figures press their hands against the passenger window.
The figures stop moving. Riley lifts the bill of her Giants hat and frowns at me.
“Really?” she says, her voice muffled through the glass. “We look normal right now.”
They do look normal in that they aren’t zombied out. They do not look normal in that every single person on campus thinks that they are currently buried across town.
Swallowing embarrassment and panic, I unlock the doors. Riley tosses my backpack off her seat, and it lands next to June.
“Did you get my cards?” she asks.
She doesn’t wait for me to say yes before she rips open the zipper and starts digging around inside.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” I ask, twisting around in my seat and looking out the back window as people walk past us. “What if someone sees you? What if someone saw you before I got within a hundred steps of you?”
“If they see us now, we’re just three people in a car,” Riley says, pulling her seat belt over her chest.
June nods, pulling one of the loose Post-its out of my bag. “And if they saw us before, we would have told them not to tell anyone under pain of eternal haunting. We had a plan.”
I grip the steering wheel until my palms burn. “Why are you even here? This is, like, the number one place you could get recognized.”
“Dayton’s gone,” June says, flicking aside a note.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” I ask.
“Obviously you heard me,” June says, holding a piece of lined paper in front of her face. “Aww. Dan Calalang left me a note. It says, Wish we’d fucked. Ew.”
I yank the paper out of her hand, wad it up, and throw it at her shoulder. She gasps, and Riley rolls her eyes.
“What kind of gone is she?” I snap. “Did she poof? Did she die again? Did her head fall off and you guys lost it?”
“She’s been going out for Gatorade every morning,” June says, rubbing the spot where the paper hit her, even though we both know she can’t feel pain. “And today she didn’t come back.”
Riley scrapes the heels of her hands over her knees. I can tell that she’s worried but she doesn’t want to show it. “I tried to do a spell to find her, but nothing worked. I tried dowsing over one of her scarves, and I did, like, thirty tarot spreads, but they were all dead ends.”
“Probably because she is dead. There’s no energy to follow or whatever,” June says. “We don’t need magic. We need to put a bell on her. Like a cat.”
I look back at Riley. “Did you try a natural spell? Something more connected to the earth?”
She narrows her eyes at me, making the same face her mom does when she thinks she can smell incense. “Well, normally I would use my necklace for dowsing, since it’s been properly charged and acclimated to me, but since you have it, I had to settle for the big clear quartz pendulum.”
I try not to rise to the bait. I fist my hand to keep from touching the necklace. “I’m just saying that I’ve been more successful not using store-bought supplies. Organic matter gets better results.”
She scoffs. “You do one big spell and suddenly you’re the expert?”
“Riley.” I gape at her. “I brought back the dead.”
“Mostly by accident! And you must have fucked it up because you brought me back without my magic.”
“How do you know you had any magic before you were dead?” June asks.
“We don’t have, like, proof,” I say. There have been a lot of coincidences that could have been magic—boys who liked her back and tests aced without studying and finding keys lost between the couch cushions. But that was like saying that wishing hard enough made you a witch.
“You had enough proof to go and try to use a spell out of a book I bought! And it’s not like you did it perfectly since you brought them back!” She hooks her thumb at June. “Unless your organic ingredients included eye of newt and toe of bitch!”
“Excuse me, don’t drag me into your witch fight,” June says. “I’m here because I want to find Dayton. She’s never been gone this long.”
“Did you guys look anywhere else before you came here?” I ask. “Dayton wouldn’t come back here. She hated the Cele-bration of Life.”
“We all hated that stupid memorial,” June says. “We didn’t need to search the school. We needed you so that we could be people again. We’re still on a magical leash. It’s not easy walking around town with a broken neck, you know.”
“Dayton seems to be managing!” I say.
Riley huffs, watching someone walk behind the car through the side mirror. They don’t seem to notice us at all. “No one has formed an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, so I don’t think she’s been spotted yet.”
I try not to imagine Dayton with her broken neck and veiny face, holding on to a bottle of blue Gatorade like a teddy bear while the villagers of Cross Creek encircle her, ready to bash her brains in.
“Where would she go?” I ask, glaring over my shoulder as June digs back into my bag for a fresh round of memorial notes. “Is there a special gas station she goes to? Who has the best Gatorade selection?”
Riley bangs her head against the headrest. “She’s never told us where she goes. She leaves and comes back with food she stole. It usually doesn’t take more than a couple of hours, but she’s been gone all day. It’s not like she could get lost here. She’s lived in Cross Creek her whole life.”
“If she’s not lost, then why would she be gone for this long?” I ask. “June, you’re her best friend. Is there anyone she would reveal herself to? Other friends she’d want to see before she died again?”
“She wouldn’t want anyone to see her zombie face,” she says, looking at me over the edge of her note. “It freaks her out just seeing her reflection.”
“If she didn’t want to see people, what if she wanted to see a place?” Riley asks. She rubs her hands together, digging her thumb into her life line. “What if she went home?”
SIXTEEN
JUNE IS A shitty copilot. Despite remembering her locker combination and every slight she’s ever experienced, she claims not to know a single street name in Cross Creek. She shouts directions moments before I need them, so it takes me a few minutes to realize that Riley’s shoulders are creeping up to her ears because we’re turning the corner onto Laurel Street.
“Did you know that she lived near you?” I ask Riley.
Riley turns and looks out the window, her bloodless lips pressed together. The lawn of the Greenway Funeral Home is a bright green beacon coming closer and closer to us. Xander isn’t home yet, and there aren’t enough cars around for a service. I can picture Mr. and Mrs. Greenway inside, listening to the emptiness echoing throughout their home. I wonder if we’ll even find Dayton in the neighborhood or if Riley just wanted to glimpse her own house.
“We’re here!” June suddenly blurts out.
I slam on the brakes. Dayton’s house is across the street and four doors down from the funeral home, but it’s still too close for comfort. I can see the sun glinting off the hearse’s trim. Riley hesitates for a second before unbuckling herself.
June, however, pops out of the car and tips her face up to the sunlight like she’s photosynthesizing. I get out and run to her side.
“Can you attempt to be less conspicuous, please?” I whisper loudly, grabbing her arm and dragging her back over to the car. “If you get recognized, it will be really fucking bad for all of us. And for whoever recognizes you.”
Riley hugs herself, her spine so stiff that I’m positive she’s actively restraining herself from looking back at her house. Or running to it. “Aren’t we about to get recognized by Dayton’s whole family? How are we supposed to search for her without being noticed?”