Page 97 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
I wondered what had gotten the gears turning in her head so quickly. Was she cataloging this moment, adding it to the invisible Dove Marley file?
Then I mentally slapped myself. Bold of me to assume I took up any time in the mind of Ellis Langley.
“You guys don’t have to look so horrified,” I said with a sigh. “It was ages ago now.”
“I mean, it’s pretty horrible,” Ellis said quickly, shaking her head. “What an asshole.”
“Eh,” I said with a shrug and a forced half smile. “She sucked. It’s over. Whatever.”
Liv clicked her tongue beside me and said, “Well, you’re currently in a car with an emotionally complicated lesbian and a ghost. Statistically, I still feel like it’s more emotionally safe here than your last relationship.”
I laughed loudly, despite the tension that had been building, suddenly dissolved by Liv’s words. Ellis laughed too, surprising me, and even Liv’s brows arched slightly.
“So, Ellis,” Liv said brightly. “Are you going to tell us the details of your sordid love life?”
“Not on your life, Liv,” Ellis replied quickly, grabbing her phone again and retreating into the safety of editing.
I snorted and adjusted the volume on the music, turning it up, letting Liv know that girl talk was officiallyoverand that Ellis was not to be pushed.
She flopped back down on the seat, legs hanging out the window once more.
I took a deep breath and focused on the road, my words still hanging in the air, mostly around me. Talking about my ex was one thing, but it felt like I’d shaken loose some dusty, buried part of myself. Words I’d refused to confront, yet now found myself staring straight in the face.
“You need to grow up and get a real job, Dove,” Sarah had told me gently, stroking my hair. Her voice had been soft, full of care, but the words had sliced through me all the same. “Surely you don’t think the shop will be around forever...”
“I’d be a business owner,” I’d replied with a frown, my voice rising with growing defensiveness. “I would call that a real job.”
God, her words still lived in my brain like a shitty roommate who refused to move out. But it wasn’t just her, and that’s what made it worse.
It was my mother’s voice too, layered underneath. The way she’d scoffed when I was told the shop would be mine. The wayshe’d looked at it like it was some second-rate lemonade stand, and I was just playing pretend until the real world came for me.
“You need to do something real, you know?”
Something real? Like the years I’d spent following Margaret to carnivals, watching her do readings, helping her set up, and studying under her. Feeling her magic. Like the hours I’d spent stocking shelves, taking inventory and polishing crystal displays. Watching Margaret hold the hands of desperate people—dying people, the deeply lost—and guiding them through their grief, like that wasn’treal?
The aftershocks of her words had lingered for months.
They left me feeling like a fraud. And even now, I struggled to connect with the magic I’d once trusted so easily. The energy I used to feel from people. The truths hidden inside words that were once so easy for me to extract and untangle.
Then there was that part of me that had been festering ever since Margaret’s death.
The part that feared I’d screw it all up. That I’d tarnish years of history.
Was I still that same young kid playing dress-up, sitting in Margaret’s chair, trying to fill shoes I was never truly meant to grow into?
Half the time, I didn’t even feel like a grown-up.
What evenwasa grown-up?
I paid bills on time. Helped Margaret balance the books. Sometimes, when customers wandered in with red eyes, I knew exactly which deck to recommend or the right thing to say. Sometimes, I’d pull a card with eerie accuracy, and I could almost feel Margaret’s undying smirk over my shoulder, approval trembling down my spine.
But most times? I felt like I was faking it. Still waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say it was time. ThatI was done. That I was being sent off to the boring horrors of reality.
I’d never air these thoughts out loud. Never share them with anyone. Never admit that the ache growing in my chest since my ex’s careless words had taken root, that I’d carried it with me, let it weigh me down, let it settle in some ugly, dark corner of my mind where it whispered doubt into my ears.
I let out a breath and flexed my fingers around the wheel, letting the motion ground me. I listened to the hum of the Mustang’s wheels, rolling steady against the asphalt.
All I could do was prove everyone wrong.
