“I love you, too. I’m sorry I had to let him die.”
It’s such a stupid understatement that we both laugh, even though our eyes are still wet and our hearts still hurt.
After thirty minutes, Riley’s hair is as unnaturally yellow as ever. She makes me keep my index finger poked into her side so that she can use Ms. Chu’s blow-dryer and admire herself in the mirror. When we finally leave the bathroom, she is once again a very gnarly looking corpse with very shiny hair. But she skips across the living room and flings herself into a pile of pillows, obviously very pleased with herself.
Seeing her so happy, even for a second, is worth every single moment of this week.
Riley, June, Dayton, Caleb, and I watch a slew of movies and TV shows, eventually devolving into watching single scenes that make us laugh. I eat leftover pizza and lava cake for dinner. June has three grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch while going through the notes I rescued from her locker. She writes replies on the back of each of them, mostly apologies. Dayton uses Caleb’s laptop to fall deep into a Tumblr rabbit hole. We have a dance party in Ms. Chu’s bedroom while listening to “Uptown Funk” ten times. We watch the sunset while laying in the grass of Caleb’s backyard.
It feels a lot like what I would do if I knew the apocalypse was coming.
Caleb’s parents are minutes away from pulling up in the driveway when we get the last dish into the dishwasher and the pizza boxes smashed down into the trash can. Dayton, Riley, and I hover next to the front door, giving June and Caleb a sliver of privacy around the corner. Still, their voices float back to us. None of us try that hard not to listen.
“You have to be here when they get back,” June says.
“I don’t care. What are they going to do? Ground me?” Caleb’s voice is rough with the macho bullshit that I’m used to him pulling in chemistry. I sort of forgot that’s how he normally talks to me.
“I don’t want you to watch me die. It’s bad enough you have to remember me like this.” I imagine she’s referring to her corpse-form, maybe even going so far as to do that thing where her head wobbles too much on her bendy neck.
“Look,” she says, suddenly serious. “The last guy I made popular ended up killing me. Maybe it’s not as fun as I think it is. Just . . . be happy. And don’t kill anyone, okay?”
There’s a soft wind of whispers. The whistle of words so private that they won’t even turn a corner for us.
June leaves the house silently, her white eyes as wet as spilled milk.
* * *
Motorcycles roar up to the kissing gate under the willow tree. The Cross Creek coven silence their engines as they walk their bikes between headstones. Tonight, they wear matching jackets that have the words THE QUARTER MOONS IN A TEN-CENT TOWN embroidered on a giant patch on the back. Toby leads the pack, of course. Her helmet is hooked to the side of her seat. There’s a huge white pentacle painted on the back of it.
June, Dayton, and Riley shiver closer to me. None of us can bring ourselves to stand on top of Riley’s grave, even though there isn’t anyone inside it. Yet.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. “They promised to play nice. They need to watch you go so there are no more misunderstandings. Or shotguns.”
Toby parks her motorcycle next to a giant angel statue. She peels off her jacket and her leather gloves and drapes them over her bike seat. Despite the cold, she’s wearing a white peasant top. Her tattoos show through the fabric like dark stains.
“Merry meet,” she says.
“Hey,” I say.
Riley throws up a hand. “Hi, Toby. Other witches. Blessed be.”
There are some begrudging blessed bes from the other witches. I wonder if they’re mad about being out late on a work night. Or at all. I don’t know how late old ladies party.
Toby reaches into the saddlebag on her motorcycle. My breath catches as she draws out the old red grimoire.
“Take this with you,” Toby says, shoving the grimoire into Riley’s hands. “I spent a day looking over it, and the shit in there doesn’t need to be floating around the land of the living. That is hardcore black magic.”
Riley recoils, craning her neck away from the book as though she’s thinking about throwing it somewhere. “I kind of figured that when it made my brother’s body explode into mushrooms.”
“Jesus Christ.” Toby sucks the spit off her teeth and hooks her thumbs in the belt loops of her jeans. “You guys are lucky you didn’t end the world with this shit. I told you to be careful, didn’t I?”
“We’ve all done magic we’re not proud of,” says one of the other witches, a black woman with tight braids swirling against her scalp in a conch swirl. “Toby, didn’t you spend three years trying to drag your soul mate to you?”
A gray-haired woman laughs huskily. “Oh no. You can’t fuck with fate like that.”
Dayton widens her white eyes at me, apparently shocked to hear cursing coming out of the elderly. Even zombies can be scandalized, I guess. I give her a shrug.
Dr. Miller, in pink-and-white leggings more suited to yoga than midnight motorcycle riding, pinches her hands together daintily. “I’m sorry if we scared you girls the other night.”
“You mean when you tried to literally hunt us?” June asks coldly. It’s particularly threatening in her pitted voice.
“If you didn’t want to be hunted, you shouldn’t have gone skipping around town without decent disguises,” Toby says airily.
Dr. Miller slips into her pacifying therapist voice. “It’s normal for witches your age to attempt big, messy magic and have it go wrong. That’s why it’s best to practice in a group.”
“A lesser witch would have brought back shadow versions of the girls. The mindlessly hungry, without conscience or memory,” says the woman with the conch braid.
“The kind of zombies that make The Walking Dead look like It’s a Small World,” Toby growls.
Dayton sucks in a gasp. “I’m scared of both of those things.”
“I guess you haven’t looked in a mirror recently,” says the gray-haired woman.
“Hey!” June snaps, aiming a blackened fingernail at her. “We’re about to die, so have a little respect.”
“Why?” Riley mutters with a scowl. “She’ll be joining us soon.”
“We only have a couple of minutes left,” I say, loudly enough to keep any of the Quarter Moons from thinking about starting a fight with my zombies. “Do you mind if we have a minute alone?”
I shove the girls farther down the slope of the graveyard, tripping over my boots as I try not to stomp on any flowers. I check my phone. Five minutes until midnight.
“Okay,” I say with a sharp sigh. “Here are the rules. No crying. No promising to watch over me from heaven. Nothing that we wouldn’t do on the last day of school. I mean, we probably wouldn’t have seen each other again after senior year anyway, right? It’s like we’re all going off to college.”
It isn’t. And we all know that it isn’t. But I’m not going to stand here and cry until the graveyard slurps them back up.
“Oh, I wish we’d made life yearbooks,” Dayton says, pressing her fingertips to her lips. “Mila, I would sign yours: Love, your guardian angel.”
I tsk at her, sounding unforgivably like my own mother. “That is heaven talk. Forbidden.”
“That’s not fair,” June whines, tilting her head back in a theatrical pout. Her neck flops too far, and she has to yank on her own hair to move her head back into place. It is disgusting to watch. “You didn’t mourn me or Dayton at all the first time.”
“True,” I say. “But I will have the rest of my life to miss you.”
“Fine,” June says. “You are way too practical for a Libra.”
“All right,” Riley says, hugging the grimoire to her chest. “I’ll start. Um. Keep in touch?”
“Don’t ever change,” Dayton adds with a grin.
“Have a great summer,” June says. “But I’d really mean: Have a great life, loser.”