Page 9 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

But near the front of the plane, almost still, someone stares back. He’s propped up, standing from his seat despite the seatbelt light still on, and despite looking like the most boring middle-aged businessman ever in a slightly wrinkled suit, his eyes lock onto Delina with something approaching malice.

If the seatbelt light wasn’t on, Delina would march up to him and ask him what his problem is.

But instead, she glares back at him, lifting an eyebrow. People don’t stare at her like that, with that intensity. Either they’re staring at her boobs or they’re ignoring her, their eyes sliding off of her as yet another blonde girl of Arizona, blending into the background.

This man stares at her like he knows what she did wrong. Like she is wrong.

The stewardess leans over to him, and he cocks an ear to her, before continuing to glare at Delina, his lips curling up into a sneer.

“Fuck you,” Delina mouths to him, and he flinches back, before finally lowering himself back down into his seat.

She settles back down, grinning to herself just a bit, for a second, just a little bit alive.

The momentshe lands in Seattle, before the familiar haggling for a rental car (trickier when she’s paying with cash) and the wrangling of suitcases, a strange fog enters her.

She’s still aware, of course, but everything matches the weather outside. Like something inside of her was transformed by the three-hour flight, changing her from someone terrified and afraid to someone…separate. More akin to viewing her life from outside a window, watching herself move through the motions, but not connected to them.

Like she’s a different person.

Her thumb still tingles, her hip aches like it always does after a flight, and she fumbles with opening the car door more than she should.

The mist of the parking lot chills against her cheeks and tugs at her hair, chilling her to the bone as she stops and buys a cell phone from the first sketchy store she can find, a gas station/convenience store charmingly named Buggies. The outside is less than inspiring, with broken glass all over the asphalt and paint peeling off of a sign that claims the grand reopening was less than a month ago.

Her dad told her to find some place that looked less than ideal, and if he hadn’t she would have never pulled over to such a spot.

“Buggies, huh?” she says, the moment she shrugs off the mist and steps inside.

The inside smells a bit too much like damp, the sort of humidity that never happens in Arizona, but the disinterestedclerk in a polo shirt doesn’t question her at all. Despite the disrepair outside, however, the floor is pristine, mopped clean and scrubbed within an inch of its life. All new shelving adorns the walls, and none of the packaging is even dusty.

She gives the clerk her widest grin as she places the phone on the counter, the sort of grin she uses to get free drinks at bars, but he barely glances at her. He’s missing more teeth than not, and wears weathered overalls over the bright red polo shirt.

The counter has a smear of glitter on it, even though everything else is clean. A small sign hung off the end of the counter, says the counter is ‘part of the original build.’

“You re-opened?” Delina asks, after the clerk is still completely silent, counting her dollars.

He nods, giving her a slightly suspicious look.

“What happened?” she asks, something digging inside of her to have the conversation, to have some little bit of normalcy.

“Explosion,” he replies, gruff. “Took a year to rebuild.”

Out of all the answers, that wasn’t one she anticipated, so she cocks her head at him, her ponytail exaggerating the movement.

“Are you on your way to Canada?” he asks, finally, opening the brand-new cash register with the same suspicion he gave her.

“No, to…above Bellingham. Up the mountain.” she says, trailing off, thinking back to the will in her pink suitcase. “I’m…in the area, visiting friends.”

That sounds plausible.

“That’s a two-hour drive.” Slower, he re-counts the money, like he’s not used to seeing such crisp bills. “There’s food in Bellingham, not much more until you go to Woolley, and even then it’s not great.” He raises an eyebrow at her, at her pristine gym clothes. “No cell signal there, this will be useless.”

Of course her insane mother had to give her a property with no cell signal. “I’ll make do.”

Finally, he pushes the cell phone across the counter, and she grabs it as fast as she can, her hand grazing the counter.

An audible snap cracks out the moment her thumb touches the glitter, and she jerks back, almost dropping the phone.

He gives her a blank look.

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