Page 105 of She’s a Doll

Sounds messy.

“It’ll fit in with the rest of my life.”

For the next few minutes, we just watched The Walking Dead, time penduluming back and forth, sometimes slowing and sometimes speeding up, but never enough to really bother me. It felt like I was bobbing along in a lazy tide, my head above the surface, the water carrying me forward, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but never so violently as to drag me under or smash to a stop against the nearby rocks.

“Hey, Lucy,” Nicola whispered after a while, voice so soft I almost didn’t hear it.

Hmm?

“You ever going to tell me what happened to Kyle?”

Maybe one day, I lied, and rested my porcelain head back against her chest, watching the TV.

“Because, you know, the reward for his location is up to $55,079, and you still haven’t paid a cent of rent.”

You’re still going on about that?

“Sure I am,” she said, and wrapped an arm around my head in a playful headlock. “Until I get my money, you’re not going anywhere, capisce?” Her bad Al Capone accent couldn’t hide the slight quaver in her voice or the shake of her fingers. “You ain’t sleepin’ with da fishes until I say.”

Sleepin’ with da fishes? That’s the best you got?

“Is that a challenge?”

No, why would it be a⁠—

“You ain’t joining no heavenly choir,” she said. “You ain’t pushin’ up no daisies neither. The bucket? Unkicked. Those fjords? Not worth pining over. I don’t care how tasty that dust looks, how bad the skeleton army needs new recruits, or how nice the farm over yonder is. You’re not leaving, you freaky undead weirdo. You’re not.”

Quit it, I said, snipping my claws at her hands. I want to see this part. She released me and I settled down on her, trying to pretend my metal limbs weren’t clanking as I shivered through a strange surge of emotion.

Not anger.

Not pain.

But something that felt just as sharp, just as powerful, just as deep, if not deeper.

And I’m not undead.

36

I threatened Ginger, of course.

One day, when Nicola was at work, I took my scrappy old flip phone and poked Ginger’s number into the keypad. Then, in my best D-grade-horror-movie voice, I told her that if she didn’t love and cherish Nicola, I’d kill her. Actually, I said if she broke Nicola’s heart, I’d get my good friend⁠—Mr. Reaper, first name The, middle name Grim⁠—to escort her out the door and straight down to hell. It didn’t matter how many Hail Marys she said, it didn’t matter how many times she crossed herself or cried, she would spend eternity with her piece-of-shit husband if Nicola so much as shed a single tear.

Ginger listened silently to every word, sitting cross-legged on the floor, phone against her ear, watching me as I clanked and clattered around, still clutching my phone. She was wearing cupcake earrings, a sparkly white scarf around her hair, and a pink denim vest that should’ve looked ridiculous but somehow didn’t, not on her. Her gaze shimmered with tears, the happy kind, which was annoying because I was still threatening her.

When I’d finished telling her exactly how her entrails would look, hanging like Christmas decorations from the nearest tree, she spoke in a soft, sweet voice, like she meant every word she said, like they came straight from the gooey pink inner chambers of her heart.

“It’s good to have you back, Lucy.”

37

When Disney first released Snow White, everyone thought it was going to be a faithful adaptation of the fairy tale. Having read the Brothers Grimm version, I can see why Walt took things in a different direction. If the film’s immortality is any indication, I’m not the only one. The theory is that back in 1937, what with the Great Depression and all, everyone needed a happy ending.

The dead girl needed to come back to life and then the credits needed to roll.

No blood, no guts, no evil queen being made to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. A nice happy ending for a nice happy movie⁠—no revenge, no ugliness, just a golden castle in the sky. And, honestly, I like it. I like the way the music swells when Snow White opens her eyes, the exaggerated expressions of joy drawn on the faces of all the dwarfs. Grumpy no longer grumpy. Sleepy wide awake and dancing. It’s so good, I don’t even care that it’s corny as hell.

Because sometimes you need a fantasy, a happy ending, a rotoscoped prince to ride in on a white horse and deliver true love’s first kiss, a little late, but hey, postage is free, and now you get to live happily ever after.