Page 154 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Ellis’s voice took on a new tone—one of disbelief.
“Being with me all this time… watching me. Watching me waste…”
She trailed off, and my heart pinched at the sound of breathless guilt in her voice.
Another car roared past us, heading in the opposite direction, and I wondered what they made of us. Two girls on the side of the road, staring into an empty back seat. Clearly, anyone who’d passed us in the last hour or so hadn’t been too concerned. No one had stopped.
Thankfully.
“You know,” Liv said, her voice suddenly louder, losing some of the bleakness it had carried, “the only reason I signed up to be an organ donor was because I figured once you’re dead, you’re dead. End of story. Like, what would I need organs for, you know?”
She looked at us both, righteous indignation rising in her voice.
“I must have missed the small print where it says,‘You might also witness organ harvesting in the afterlife and then get stuck to some depressed twenty-something illness influencer with a ring light and a guilt complex.’”
I blinked at her, her words catching me off guard—and then—
I laughed.
Any politeness or sensitivity for the moment flew out the window as the bubble in my throat burst—sharp and loud and uncontrolled. I clutched my stomach as hysteria rolled through me, and Ellis looked at me, wide-eyed, for a moment before her own lips trembled and laughter escaped. She quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound behind her fingers.
Liv looked between us, deadpan, as she said, “You two are more twisted and broken than I am.”
But then her mouth twitched.
And she was laughing too.
It wasn’t pretty, the laughter we shared. It was unhinged and desperate. It was the laughter that’s left only when crying has taken everything out of you. We laughed until the cackling faded, carried off on the desert wind that was slowly picking up—more chilled now, the sun seeming to carry less of its warmth.
Liv didn’t speak for a moment. She sat there wringing her hands, then squared her jaw and bounced a curled fist against her thigh, something resolute forming in her eyes.
“Okay,” she said with a nod. “I’m done drawing this shit out.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“I don’t want to see anything else,” Liv said as she brushed her hair out of her face. “I don’t need to see any bears or volcanoes or museums. I still want to drive the route, but I want to go straight through to Santa Monica now.”
“But—” I started, as Ellis blinked with surprise beside me.
“I want to get to the end,” she cut me off, raising her hand. “I do. But I can’t—I don’t care about seeing shit anymore. I’ve had my fun. I’ve done some stuff. I need to get home. I need—I need to make sense of everything. I have to face my life. Being… beinganywhere else just feels wrong now. I’m sure you guys can see whatever else you missed on the way back. When I’m… gone.”
Ellis looked at her—not with outrage at the abrupt dismissal of the laminated, color-coded schedule, not with anxiety at the sudden change in plans. Her face was calm, full of understanding, and she nodded wordlessly, tapping her fingers against the headrest.
“Okay,” Ellis murmured, looking to me. “We drive straight to Santa Monica. We’re just outside of Williams… roughly six hours, maybe seven, from the end of the route. Driving safety says you should take a break every two hours,” she mumbled, rubbing her brow. “There’s two of us. We can split it.”
I looked back to Liv, who smirked and rolled her eyes, throwing her arms behind her head—waiting for Ellis to sort it all out in her mind before she took charge and organized the situation. No smart comments. Nothing to set her off. She just let her go with it, until Ellis seemed comfortable with the change.
“Okay. We can do this,” Ellis said with a nod, yanking the binder out from under my seat. “We’ll have dinner here, and we can stop at this small minimart and get extra food. Just in case we need anything. Extra water. Whatever. We’ll get in late—I’m not really sure where we’ll sleep, but surely there’ll be a motel…”
“You can go to Jedd’s,” Liv cut in. “Now we know he’s alive. He’ll be fine.”
Ellis shot me a wary look.
I shrugged.
She squared her shoulders and stuffed the binder back under my seat, then spun around, buckled up, and turned the engine over with a determined look on her face.
“All right,” she said, her voice high-pitched. “All right. We can do this. Let’s go.”
