Page 98 of Written in the Stars
Elle shook her head. She could come up with plenty of things friends were for, but it was easier to ask when Margot made it sound like she had something specific in mind.
Margot headed into the kitchen and put the ice cream back in the freezer. Then she grabbed a paper bag from beneath the counter hefting it into the air. Stamped across the paper was the logo from the liquor store on the corner.
She grinned. “Tequila.”
***
Elle rolled over, trying to get comfortable, but the couch was so hard. Something dug into her side and something under her gave off a terrible, shrill squeak. She shifted away, smacking her funny bone on something even harder. A frisson of pain shotdown to her wrist all the way up to her shoulder, her fingers tingling.Ow.
Cracking open an eye—ah, bad idea. Elle burrowed her head into— Styrofoam?
She tried again, cracking open her eyes slowly. Beneath her face was one of the many takeout containers. And she was using it as a pillow because... she was on the floor. “What the hell?”
Ew. Her tongue was gummy and her teeth needed to be scrubbed. Twice. For good measure.
Sitting up slowly, Elle squinted around her. The coffee table was still littered with all the same junk, plus a bottle of tequila... missing most of the tequila. Oh. She pressed a hand to her forehead. No wonder she felt like hell and had slept on the floor.Fucking tequila.
“Oh, hey. You’re up.” Margot bounced into the living room looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and not at all hungover. Not one bit. She was wearing real people clothing, black jeans and a lace bodysuit. And makeup.
“Mar,” she croaked. “What the fuck? Please tell me there’s not a tiger in the bathroom.”
“There’s not a tiger in the bathroom and I promise you still have all your teeth.” Margot winced, eyes darting over to the tequila. “Yeah. You had a lot of that.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” Margot set the glass of water she was holding on the table in front of Elle. “I drank a little, but I wanted to keep an eye on you.”
Elle tilted the glass and let the cool water run down herparched throat, soothing the burn. She was so thirsty she felt the water run down through her chest and into her churning stomach. Now all she needed was some ibuprofen and—
“What the heck is that?” Elle pointed at the floor beside the couch where a strange doll-shaped bundle sat.
Margot followed her gaze, eyes widening and lips rolling together. “I meant to get rid of that before you woke up. You... how much do you remember?”
There’d been ice cream. And crying. Then tequila. She and Margot had made a list of all Darcy’s most annoying attributes and... her memory went fuzzy. “We made a list?”
“Good, yeah.” Margot chewed on her thumbnail. “We made a list and you kind of lost the plot and started saying things you liked about Darcy so I tried to get you back on track. Which worked. You got pretty amped up and you decided to...”
“To what?” Between the alcohol and Margot’s reluctance to give Elle a straight answer, Elle’s stomach churned and her mind flitted from one worst-case scenario to the next, her panic escalating. She had decided to call Darcy? FaceTime her? Elle brought her glass to her lips and took a slow sip to soothe her tummy.
Margot winced. “You made a Darcy voodoo doll.”
Elle choked, sputtering water down her chin. “What?”
“You know, a Darcy effigy—”
“I know what a voodoo doll is, Margot.” Elle set her glass down roughly, water sloshing on the table. She scrambled across the carpet on her hands and knees and grabbed the human-shaped doll off the floor. In reality, it was a T-shirt stuffed with what looked like pillow fluff made humanoid bytying off limbs with hair ties at the joints. Thankfully, it looked like she hadn’t gotten to the point of doing something crazy—crazier—and poking pins in the damn thing. “What the hell was I thinking?”
Margot bared her teeth in a grimace. “Tequila. You weren’t doing much thinking.”
“Did I... did I realize how stupid this was?” Elle shook the doll in the air. She’d even attached those twisty-ties they kept in the junk drawer, the red ones from bread loaves, to the doll’s head like hair. It looked terrifying, like some rustic doll of olden time possessed with the spirit of a vengeful child. Elle was creeped out thatshehad made it. “Please tell me I came to my senses.”
Margot’s head seesawed side to side. “Uh. Honestly? You started crying that you couldn’t get the freckles right and then you passed out beside the coffee table.”
She stared at the doll with wide eyes. Sure enough, there were scribbled splotches, smudged dots that had bled into the cotton fabric. Freckles. Elle slammed her eyes shut and clutched the doll to her chest.Fuck.
She hadn’t had enough time to commit the constellations those freckles and moles connected into memory. Not nearly enough. She was never going to see those freckles again.
A hand landed on Elle’s shoulder making her jolt. Margot tugged the Darcy doll from Elle’s hands, setting it aside. In its place, she pressed Elle’s phone. “You might want to check that.”
