Page 116 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
I found myself smiling. “I can totally see it.”
“I know,” Liv sighed dreamily. “My best friend, Bri, was going to be my manager. She said I had star power, and she had the smarts. That’s what we were moving to New York for. I was going to sing in bars, and Bri was going to manage my gigs and stuff. The rest would sort itself out.”
There was a soft pause. I turned my head slightly, watching Liv’s wistful face like she was stuck in a memory. Something about her looked different. Her face was softer than usual,absent of its typical cockiness and spark. It seemed more pensive… there was more ache in her eyes.
“Anyway, we would go camping every summer,” she continued with a smile. “Her family had this old-as-the-hills RV with the world’s loudest generator, I swear. I can still hear it. It sounded like it would explode any minute. But I mean, that thing was around from when we were six to, like, sixteen. Her family would take me on their trips every summer.”
Dove bit down on a sour worm as she listened, one hand on the wheel.
“We’d stay up too late, lying on the roof of the RV in our sleeping bags, watching the stars and making all these crazy plans for our lives. Everything seems so possible when you’re staring at the stars, realizing how insignificant everything really is. We planned Route 66 since we were ten.”
She went quiet once more, and my stomach twisted at the ache in her voice—so raw and soft. So un-Liv.
“What happened to her?” Dove asked gently.
“No idea,” Liv murmured, sounding dazed as she stared out the front of the car, entranced by the horizon. “I don’t know what happened to any of them.”
I blinked. “Any of them?”
Was this our moment?
“Oh!” Liv squeaked suddenly, pointing. I followed her finger to the bigWelcome to Amarillosign. “We’re here! Cadillac Ranch, here we come. Woo!” She threw herself into the back seat and smacked the roof of the car. “One day, this roof is going to come down, Ellis Langley, and you’ll love every goddamn minute of the wind in your hair.”
The smell of sunscreen,rubber, and dust filled my nostrils as I browsed the camping aisle with a less-than-hopeful feeling in my stomach. The shelves looked as if they’d been cleaned out, like there’d been some sort of apocalypse we hadn’t realized had occurred. Either this place didn’t get very busy, so they never bothered ordering new stock, or we were about to come face-to-face with some zombies.
I spied a few pop-up tents in aggressively colored neon bags and some foam mats rolled so tightly you just knew they’d smack you in the face the second they popped open. Plastic-wrapped pillows sat under a thin layer of dust, suggesting they’d been there a while. I stood still as I took in the camping items, my fingers grazing the edge of a boxed torch.
My phone vibrated once in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Mom’s reply to my latest update sat on the screen.
Mom [12:06 PM]
Camping? I love it. I don’t know if you remember, but the last time we tried that, you ended up in the hospital. You’d been excited for it for weeks. You were sleeping on your floor in your sleeping bag for practice.
Mom [12:07 PM]
Maybe this time you’ll actually get to set a marshmallow on fire.
Mom [12:09 PM]
I’m excited for you, Ellis. Let your inner child live a little. She deserves a night under the stars—and so do you.
I stared down at her words, my fingers tightening around the phone as I read.
I remembered exactly what she was talking about.
We had been supposed to drive out to a national park. It was just for one night, nothing fancy. Thomas needed to do something for school, and Mom had decided on an overnight trip to her favorite national park with us. I could still picture the sleeping bag I had picked. It was light pink, covered in purple butterflies, and I even had a tiny headlamp.
But then my fever had spiked in the driveway.
Thomas had a meltdown and demanded Grandma and Grandpa pick him up.
I spent the night in the hospital.
I hadn’t thought about it in years, but I remembered it as clearly as yesterday. I remembered lying in that hospital bed, staring out the window and watching as the sky slowly darkened, trying to imagine myself around a campfire with my family instead of lying in cold sheets with a drip in my arm, my parents talking to doctors outside more than they were with me.
I swallowed thickly and pocketed my phone, my eyes finding Dove and Liv huddled together farther down the aisle, heads bent over a table of clearance items. They seemed to be debating something, and I glanced around, making sure no one was nearby. The last thing people needed to see was Dove arguing with herself.
