Page 99 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Her eyes were wide. Her face and neck flushed.
And then…
Her gaze dropped.
To my mouth.
My skin prickled as I lost all sense of thought, every cell in my body seeming to snap to attention, my pulse roaring in my ears.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I felt frozen in time.
“Well, well, well,” Liv’s voice rang out suddenly, shattering the moment like someone had smashed a plate. “What is going on here?”
A few things happened in quick succession after that.
Ellis leapt backward, a shocked gasp on her lips at Liv’s sudden intrusion. Her jump made me stumble, and I could already feel myself overcorrecting. A shriek left my mouth, hands flailing as I watched Ellis topple backward into the water.
As my feet carried me forward, I hurled my phone onto the bank, and then I was down too, landing face-first into the shallow lake, the air nearly knocked out of me.
“Ahh!” I spluttered, my hand slapping the lakebed as I scrambled to my knees.
Ellis was gaping like a fish, sitting on her ass, completely soaked from the fall. Her hair had come loose from her clip, now dripping wet.
Liv let out a shrieking scream from the bank, doubled over with laughter.
“Oh my God, you guys!” she wheezed between cackles.
Ellis groaned loudly as she got to her feet, water sloshing around her. I followed, my feet slipping on the muddy lakebed.
“I don’t believe this!” Ellis hissed, stomping up the bank. I trailed after her, spotting both our phones, dry and untouched in the sand.
“Well, I can,” Liv sang as she twirled around us. “Honestly, the tension between you two was about to drown someone. I probably just saved a life.”
“You scared the shit out of me!” Ellis roared, then turned to me with wide eyes. “Oh my God, I am so sorry!”
I grimaced at the water in my shoes, shaking my foot uselessly. “Well, you couldn’t fall alone… you kind of dragged me with you.”
“I pushed you away!” Ellis defended.
“I slipped from the push!” I countered, mildly pleased she’d admitted it.
“I didn’t ask you to—”
“I wasn’t going to let you just fall in—”
“Man, if I had a nickel for every time a near-drowning kicked off some repressed gay feelings,” Liv cut in, voice full of taunting laughter, “I’d have one nickel.”
Ellis let out a strangled noise and actuallystomped her foot. “We need to change into dry clothes. There’s a bathroom block over there.”
Liv opened her mouth again, but Ellis held up a palm, eyes blazing.
“Not. A. Word,” she seethed, wringing out her hair.
Liv let out another shrill laugh and danced ahead toward the Mustang. She twirled, turning to face Ellis.
“Too late, Ellis. It’s literally going in my memoir. Chapter Fourteen: The Whale of Denial.”
From the look on Ellis’s face, if Liv hadn’t already been dead, she might’ve been.
