Owen glances at me and holds out his arm like a Regency gentleman, but as soon as I clutch his sleeve my fingers sink into a line of sweat. I want to pull away in disgust, but he is helping with the wooziness. Liam follows behind us.
Once we’re away from the Hornes and Mom and Dad, Owen asks, “Did you bring a granola bar or something?”
I shake my head. The heat of embarrassment only adds to the burn of the Burbank sun barreling down on us. Mrs. Horne is right. There’s something unintentionally cruel about being out in ninety-degree heat in our funeral best.
I take a seat at one of the white plastic chairs under the shade.
“Here,” Liam says, suddenly holding out a pack of Sour Patch Kids. “I’m gonna go talk to Henry.”
“Thanks,” I say as I accept the candy with one hand. Most of them have melted together in the sun, so I start the process of peeling one off the sugar-coated rainbow mass.
Owen jumps to his feet, seemingly done with babysitting too. “Yeah, Xavier’s here too.”
I watch my brothers leave and force myself to eat a couple candies. The sugar and sourness are an instant punch of life. I rake my non-candy-covered hand through my part; I never should’ve read so much about that damn incident report.
Someone takes Owen’s seat next to me.
“You sharing?”
I look up to find Beck beside me. She’s wearing sunglasses, stiff black heels, and a black romper with an ostentatious GucciGon the belt, something so obviously forced on her by her mom. I stare at herin a strange moment of disconnect. My heart aches for the fight that must’ve transpired before this, but my stomach flutters at the sight of how the romper cinches at her waist and flows to her muscled legs. I’ve never seen her in something that hugs her body this way and I’m suddenly eager for my sketchpad I left at home.
That is, until she pulls her sunglasses off to wipe her eyes. Her face is bare. It makes her look so much younger than eighteen and emphasizes how red her skin is from the crying. The splotches sit as bruises under her eyes, redness around her nose and mouth. Grief like a creeping skin condition. Paisley would hate to look that way if everything had been reversed.
I hold out the candy. “Please.”
She chews slowly, each twinge of her jaw and bob of her throat a reminder that she’s alive while her sister was torn to pieces and guzzled away by animals.How are you doing?It’s such an easy script to say. But all I do is keep staring.
“Thanks.” Her voice is even deeper than usual. She really does sound like her mother. It’s sad, in a way: Beck has an actress’s natural timber that she has no interest in using that way. Was Paisley jealous of it?
I’ll never get to ask.
“You know a bunch about dead celebrities, right?” Beck replies.
And that question is nowhere in my grief scripts I’ve been refining the past eight months. I chew the Sour Patch Kid until it’s completely dissolved to buy some time.
“Uh,” I say, rubbing my flaming neck. “Yeah.”
“Can you take me to one of their graves right now?” She wipes her nose. “I don’t wanna be here anymore.”
Eight
I go with the first grave I can think of: Carrie Fisher. We’re still outside, but now that we’ve left the suffocation of the burial crowd, the heat has become more bearable. In fact, I swear a breeze has materialized just to breathe life back into me.
“The cemetery has always had strange connections to Disney,” I say as we walk through the windy roads, up the incline toward the grave site. I navigate with my phone. “Walt Disney’s buried here, but they have an…organization system. The different sections all have names. Eventide, Graceland, Inspiration Slope, Sweet Memories, Whispering Pines, and Dawn of Tomorrow. There’s even a heart-shaped section for babies called Babyland.”
Beck’s walking in lockstep with me, yet I can’t fully swallow that we’re alone together right now. After Paisley’s vigil, Beck’s one-time incident with Brendon turned into several ugly fights that left janitors cleaning blood off the Hastings asphalt and carpet alike. Once Beck got back from suspension, she all but expelled herself. I heard her name in the halls more than I ever saw her.Beck crashed her car this morning. Beckcame to school drunk today. Beck is failing all her classes. Beck got kicked off the volleyball team. Beck isn’t going to graduate this year.
I don’t know how much of that is true, but a heaviness has fallen over her.
Beck makes a sound, but I’m not sure if it’s a laugh or a stifled sob. “That’s weird.” She pauses. “What section are we going to?”
I swallow, suddenly not certain where I heard about the different weird names. “I’m not sure.”
“What section is Paisley going into today?”
I shouldn’t be taking us down this rabbit hole. “Well, there’s a section for children and teens called Slumberland.”
Beck sighs. “Like a big ole slumber party, huh?”
