Page 96 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
“I mean, really, she spent most of my childhood working, and Margaret basically raised me. She taught me how to pull cards, how to read and interpret them. Mom hated it, but apparently not enough to actually be around more.”
“What about your dad?” Liv asked with a frown.
“Don’t know him,” I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. “He was never around, never mentioned, and I just... sort of knew not to ask. Margaret never brought him up, and Mom definitely didn’t. I could just feel it—I just knew not to.”
Silence met me, and my palms started to sweat.
“But it wasn’t just Margaret who raised me,” I said, my mind moving to Ida and Diana as I smiled softly. “Margaret was in a poly relationship with these two women—Diana and Ida. Ellis, you met Ida at the store. Diana died about five years ago. But, God, just growing up around them, being raised by three powerful women…” I shook my head in wonder. It did flash in the back of my mind again that I needed to tell Ida about the ashes.
“Margaret sounded so cool,” Liv said with a dreamy sigh. “A medium, and she had her own harem—like, come on.”
Ellis laughed nervously beside me.
“Okay, well, that was the warm-up,” Liv said suddenly, her voice a little breathless. “What about relationships?”
I barked a laugh. “Why is that important?”
“Please. It’s girl talk,” Liv said, her voice dipped in a sweetness I wasn’t sure I trusted. “Humor me, okay? We’ve passed so many state lines together no. It’s practically cosmic bonding.”
A laugh slipped from my lips, and I glanced over at Ellis, who said nothing, but her attention was full and focused, like she was genuinely interested in the answer.
Or was I imagining that?
“Um, fine,” I said with a sigh, keeping my eyes on the road. “I dated this girl in my senior year. She was nice. Cute as fuck. But when we graduated, she got into UCLA and didn’t want to do long distance, and I understood, you know? It was fine. Like, whatever.”
It had not been whatever.
Ellis was still silent, but I thought I saw her flinch a little. At what, I didn’t know.
“Then I dated this girl who was going to school in Chicago. We were together for, like, two years. We broke up... ten months ago now? I don’t know. We lived together and everything.”
“Really?” Liv asked with interest. “What happened?”
That pain that had once been searing hot inside me was dull these days, a small ache that reminded me I’d once been shredded.
My jaw still tightened, though.
“She cheated.”
A beat of silence passed between us.
“In our apartment,” I added. “In our bed.”
“No,” Ellis gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Yep.” I popped the p and found myself clutching the wheel tighter. “With a guy.”
“What a slut,” Liv hissed, just as Ellis offered a horrified, “No...”
“Yeah,” I murmured on a soft exhale, forcing the lump in my throat back down. “Anyway, she hated the shop. Hated the cards and stuff. She acted like it was cute at first. She would bring her friends in for readings, buy crystals and shit. Margaret didn’t like her. I mean, she never outright said it to me, but I wasn’t stupid. She told me I’d have to grow up one day and get a real job.”
Ellis’s brows pulled together, the expression on her face like she’d been wounded on my behalf.
“Yeah, so that relationship definitely had a shelf life,” I continued, trying to maintain a breezy note in my voice. “It just... soured faster than I thought it would.”
Liv didn’t crack a joke, and Ellis didn’t say a word.
I risked a glance at her. She was staring straight ahead now, at the endless stretch of road before us. But her jaw was tight again, and she was picking at invisible lint on her beige shorts.
