“Great.” He picks up a pair of keys. “Ugh, pray for me. I have to go put the haunted eye in the back.”
The museum is small, with just one featured exhibit that rotates every six months. The back section of the building is converted into a wonderland of horror props and objects themed around different subsections of horror—’80s horror, ’90s horror, teen horror, and right now, occult horror. We’ve got immersive rooms themed after every movie that has the word “witch” in its title, including the owners’personal collection of their strangest occult oddities. Then, once customers leave the museum portion, there’s every version of tarot cards, incantation books, and cursed objects for sale before they exit.
“I swear last time I went into the back I wasn’t alone,” Amari continues.
I eye the keys, contemplating if I really want to risk my food getting even colder to do Amari a solid. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the ghosts that supposedly haunt this store, but isn’t it too coincidental that there are ghosts in a horror museum? I’d be more inclined to buy it if the cat-themed thrift shop down the block also claimed to have a ghost.
“What do you think’s here?” I ask as I lean on the empty counter space adjacent to the cash register. Not so close that we’re leaning into each other but close enough to chat. We’ve occasionally had to climb over each other in a store as small and jam-packed as this one, but my preference is always a safe, friendly distance that no one can misinterpret as me pushing some personal space boundary.
Amari shoots a glance at the door leading into the museum portion of the store, just past me. “Some presence that makes you feel physically ill being in the room.”
After tonight, I think I could recreate the same experience at Bob’s. “How delightful.”
He hits the wooden countertop, psyching himself up. “I swear to god, if something touches me, I’m quitting.”
I chuckle. Amari’s mom makes him spiritually cleanse after every shift because of the “energy” our witchy white owners pump into this place with all the spooky objects. Amari, a bigger horror fan than me, has been trying to convince her for years that there’s nothing spiritually wrong with the place.
A genuine smile spreads across my face as my muscles relax. “Yourmom would be pretty vindicated if it’s true,” I say. My voice always has the most life in it in places like this.
“Ugh.”
I open my to-go box from the cashier counter and take a bite of my burger. Amari steals a few of the wilted fries for his ghost hunt and disappears into the exhibit in the back. For a moment, I’m engulfed in silence, and I can’t help but think about the diner again.
Could all that sneaking around and the texting have really just been because Opal canceled our sleepover? It can’t be, can it?
But before I can think about it a second longer, someone new enters the store. With Amari out and me not legally allowed to work right now, my social anxiety sets in with a kickstart to my heart.
When I see who it is, my heartbeat only gets faster.
Beck.
Rebecca “Beck” Horne is Paisley’s sister. She’s a senior at our high school, ten months older than Paisley and her polar opposite down to the way they style themselves. Unlike Paisley’s long blond curls and designer aesthetic, Beck’s got a shaggy haircut she’s dyed black for as long as I’ve known her and tattoos along her arms that she must’ve gotten the second she turned eighteen. Today, she’s decked out in black Docs, high-waisted jeans, and a home-cut cropped Iron Maiden shirt that looks both effortless and perfectly curated. Despite Paisley and me being friends for so long, I’ve only ever interacted with Beck in passing.
Beck is most famous for having punched Brendon Hayes in the school parking lot so hard last fall that no plastic surgery could get his nose back in place—and she then proceeded to win the state semifinals for the volleyball team right after. Hastings couldn’t expel her because she’s too good of a player and they couldn’t risk their championship streak by getting rid of her.
I’ve always kind of wished Paisley would invite her to hang with our group, but Beck has better things to do than listen to us bounce around ideas for movies we could make together when we become an actress, costume designer, producer, and graphic designer respectively.
Beck approaches the gift shop counter, perfectly at ease.
“Hey,” she says in a voice that can only properly be described asearthy. “Do you know if you still carry those Xenomorph socks, or did those go away when the cosmic exhibit ended?”
I find myself unable to do anything but blink at her. One, because why can’t I remember Beck ever coming in to see the cosmic exhibit. Two, because we’ve never been this close before. Her eyes are blue, so rich they almost seem black in these lights. They’re so unlike Paisley’s eyes, which are always a crystal-stream blue.
“Uh, I’m not actually working tonight,” I say.
Beck springs back from the counter, palms forward. “Oh. Is someone else working?”
“Someone else” is fighting off some supposed demon, and I feel like an asshole. “No, wait! I’ll show you.”
I move from behind the counter, feeling very unfashionable in a boxy T-shirt and jersey shorts. The store is tiny, and the seconds are ticking down before Beck will leave as quickly and mysteriously as she showed up.
“Are you a bigAlienfan?” I cringe as soon as I ask it.
“The biggest. Ellen Ripley made me who I am today,” Beck replies, not missing a beat. “I was sitting in bed and all of the sudden had this flash memory of seeing those socks here. I figured I’d see if they were around. I thought you’d be working tonight.”
A wave of giddiness hits me. Beck Horne thinks about my workschedule? Paisley doesn’t even remember I have a job. “You knew I’d be here tonight?”
Beck’s liner-smudged eyes widen a moment. “Let me try that again. I figured since you’re not with Paisley and Harlow and Opal, you’d probably be here.”
