Page 7 of Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

“Who do you think did it?” Alice’s grating voice cut through our moment, and I lifted my head off the ground. The strain on my neck annoyed me, though.

“Did what?” I asked, stopping short of giggling now that I was blissfully high.

“The hit-and-run.”

My head flopped back down. The crow was gone, perched instead on a tall gravestone a few rows away, or it could be a different crow. Who knew? It was a mystery. “I don’t know, Alice.”

I could feel her size me up, her lips curling back over her pearly white teeth. I was dirt beneath her shoe, but since Dustin and Lily had accepted me into their clique, she had no choice but to tolerate me. “Maybe it was you?”

“That’s enough,” Dustin growled, shifting onto his side and pushing up on his elbow, his feet crossed at the ankle. “You don’t need to be a bitch.”

Just like Dustin was into me because I didn’t swoon over him, Alice had a thing for Dustin. He was the only boy around who didn’t look at her twice. Maybe it was true that we all liked the chase more than anything else. We always want what we can’t have. Maybe that was why I’d crushed on Nate.

He’d barely looked at me twice, but he’d looked at Alice. They’d been an on-and-off thing for the last year before he was killed. How fucking cliché.

Evelyn handed me a joint, which I gladly accepted. It crackled as I inhaled a deep breath into my lungs, feeling more relaxed than I had been in a long time. After passing it to Dustin, I reached for his red cap, laid back down, and placed it over my face. If I could exist here forever, high on drugs, I would.

Alice continued moping, throwing me the stink eye that burned a path over my skin beneath my clothes while I floated in a sea of pure bliss.

“Maybe he’ll come back to haunt us all on his death anniversary,” Lewis jested, his arms wrapped around Harper’s waist.

“Maybe he’ll stand over you while you sleep,” Max said to Alice, reaching out to poke her in the side.

She threw him a glare, less than impressed. “You have no class. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Oh, lighten up.”

“We should do a séance,” Lewis suggested, earning him an incredulous look from his girlfriend, Harper.

Beside me, Dustin scoffed. “A séance, Lewis? Really?”

“Maybe we can find out who did it.”

Evelyn quietly drank her beer, but I could sense her unease from here.

Dustin removed his cap from my face, peering down at me, and I squinted against the bright light. His eyes stayed locked on mine as he said to Max, “You expect answers from a ghost?”

“Well, why not? It’s not like the police are doing anything to catch the killer. It’s a cold case by now.”

My stomach swirled with unease as the hum of conversation took on a menacing tone that wrapped itself around my shriveling heart. They were all laughing at me, leaning over me with cruel, cold eyes. I was sure of it. Everyone knew my secret, and now they were taunting me.

Evelyn stared out at the forest, unusually quiet, and when she looked back at me, her eyes were haunted. She reached for my hand and squeezed gently. This secret we shared would eat us alive.

“We’re not doing a fucking séance,” laughed Lewis, but it lacked humor.

I sat up abruptly, causing Dustin to frown at my side.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied quietly, looking out over the forest. The wind picked up, whistling through the trees like a haunted lullaby that sang for me.

Only I seemed to hear the eerie call, which whispered to the regret inside me.

I swallowed thickly, staring at a particular spot between two fir trees where a shadow shifted. It could have been a trick of the eye.

Dustin’s arm around my shoulders drew me back to the present moment and I looked away from the woods to smile at him reassuringly, but my gaze soon wandered back over, and this time, I stiffened.

Nate, coated in darkness, half hidden behind two thick branches, watched me steadily with a smirk pulling at his lips. My heart had stopped beating, but then it thudded back to life, slamming against my ribcage.

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