Page 103 of She’s a Doll

Why did Kyle do that to me? I didn’t know.

Why couldn’t I stop him? I didn’t know that either.

What’s going to happen now? Another big fat question mark.

I couldn’t leave yet. I wasn’t done. Except that was bullshit. Those questions were bullshit. They anchored me in the world of the living, but anchors don’t need to be solved to free yourself of them . . . they just need to be let go of. Even as I thought that I felt myself loosen, the grip I had on my mechanical limbs and porcelain head slackening and slipping. Darkness welled up, not the darkness of grief but a bigger darkness, an alien void, empty and yawning.

In panic, I seized control of my small metal limbs and screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed until suddenly Nicola was there, crushing my clattering spider body to her chest and squeezing tight.

“It’s OK, Lu. It’s OK. It’s OK.”

I don’t want to die, I heard myself think, frantic and blubbering, metal limbs a juddering rictus of terror. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to die. Please don’t make me die. I don’t want to die.

“It’s OK,” she kept repeating, calm and clear, like a ghost begging not to die was normal and OK, not sad and pathetic. “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK.”

That night, Nicola, Ginger, and I all cuddled up beneath a blanket and watched The Walking Dead, starting from season one, episode one. The hard metal joints of my legs couldn’t have been comfortable squished between their bodies, but neither Nicola nor Ginger complained.

Ginger brought drinks, my drinks, the pink vodka Cruisers I’d brought to her tea party, so radioactive with chemicals that they looked as crisp and fresh as the day I’d plucked them off the shelf at the bottle shop. Ginger used her car keys to slowly pry the cap off her bottle and then offered them to Nicola.

Nicola made full eye contact with her as she twisted the cap off with her hand.

“Oh,” Ginger said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You’re so sheltered it’s scary sometimes,” Nicola replied.

Real scary, I agreed, even though I hadn’t known they were twist-offs either.

“Lucy says so too,” Nicola translated.

Ginger’s eyes flicked to me, picking off the cap of my own drink with my claw, even though I couldn’t actually drink it. Still, it was nice to see three bottles sitting in a row on the coffee table. By the second episode Ginger’s and Nicola’s were empty. Mine stayed full, but when Nicola tried to steal a sip, Ginger elbowed her so hard that I was briefly worried she’d broken her rib.

We stayed there for hours, slowly getting more horizontal as the autoplay carried us from one episode to the next, not even bothering to skip the intro. Eventually, sometime in episode eight, as Ginger snored and zombies swarmed, Nicola pulled me close and whispered into my porcelain ear.

“You wanna see something that will piss you off?”

No. Why would I want to see that?

“I want you to see it.”

Why?

“Because you’re funny when you’re pissed off.” She rolled around, careful not to jostle Ginger, and picked her discarded suit jacket off the floor. From the pocket she pulled out a brochure. It had my name written across it in swirly black letters. “They handed these out at your funeral.”

My metal felt cold. Oh . . .

She opened it, turned to the last page, and showed me a photo printed there. I knew that photo. It was the one that had been posted onto Instagram the night I died, the one that had made me throw my phone into the laundry pile. I was dressed as the Hatter, my feet propped up, empty teacup in my hand, hat pulled down over my eyes. “Still can’t believe you wore a waistcoat and tails. Totally unfair to upstage us all like that.”

My Meccano felt oddly warm. You looked good too.

“Nothing like this.”

I’m not seeing the part that’s meant to piss me off.

She tapped the caption with her pointer finger.

I reached out, pinched the brochure between my crab claws, and pulled it close so I could read it.

Lucy May McQuinn, age 20, at a tea party, dressed as Willy Wonka.