Page 36 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
A name.
Finally, a name to go with the face of the girl whose heart now beat so steadily in my chest. The person I had thought about every night for the past year before falling asleep, wondering who she was and who she’d left behind.
Her wild pink hair curled at the ends, her lashes dark and full. Pale skin. Bold lipstick. Heavy eyeliner. She looked like she’d been dressed for a concert… or a club.
And underneath all of it… she looked about my age.
I swallowed uncomfortably.
“You’re real,” I whispered, my throat dry.
She rolled her eyes. “I mean, I was.”
“No, I mean… this is all real. You’re here. I mean… dead, but here.”
Another stretch of silence settled over us, as if the weight of the truth had just begun to sink in. And while I briefly wondered if I was hallucinating or if maybe I had some undiagnosed brain tumor. I didn’t think I did.
Because there she was.
The ghost of my heart.
Sitting across from me in the back room of a crystal shop in downtown Chicago.
You couldn’twritethis stuff.
“You said you’re stuck to Ellis?” Dove asked tentatively, her eyes eager. This must be a novelty for her, I guess. Was her having a ghost in her shop the equivalent of an archaeologist finding a dinosaur bone?
Liv nodded and flicked a pink curl over her shoulder. “Uh-huh. I don’t know why. I mean, one moment I was standing in a white room, watching all my functioning organs get removed—honestly, that was a bit much—and then I covered my eyes, and when I looked again, I was standing over her,” she flicked her head toward me, “watching my heart get put into her chest.”
It sounded like a horror movie.
“I mean, when Miss Morbid over there did all her deep-dive Googling about the heart, I caught some interesting shit about energy and cellular memory, I don’t know if it’s true. All I knowis I died, I was carved up like a cow at a slaughterhouse, and suddenly, I was stuck toher.”
I glared but couldn’t quite form the words to defend myself, even as she spat outherlike it was a dirty word.
“So… so there’s no, like, spirit guide telling you what to do? Or why you’re still here?” Dove asked in awe, her hands clasped together. I eyed the chipped nail polish on her fingers, feeling myself starting to dissociate.
“No,” Liv said with a shrug. “I’m just here. I can’t move on. There’s no white light or whatever shit you see in the movies. I mean... things seem duller over here, like there’s some kind of veil between me and reality. Color seemsless. Ifeelless. When we came in here... I—I finally felt something.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, rejecting any hint of acceptance and marching right back down the road of denial. “This is some kind of stress breakdown,” I added with a nod, explaining the situation more to myself than the people in the room with me.
Dove gave me a shady side-eye. “Do you always hallucinate full-blown personalities when stressed?”
“Only since I started hanging out in dusty rock shops with strangers,” I snapped, letting my glare land squarely on her.
She didn’t shrink back, though. No, her lips twitched, just a little, like she was trying not to smile.
“Honestly, believe what you want, heart thief,” Liv said coolly. “Regardless, I’m here now, and there is no way I’m going invisible again.”
Dove bit her lip and tucked a loose strand of hair into one of her haphazard space buns. “Okay, so, let’s just rally for a second. We have a ghost, a heart transplant patient in denial, and me. I…I’m not quite sure what my role in all this is yet.”
Liv snorted. “No way. You’re the key here. I’ve been stuck in that silent void for ages, and the second we came here,bam! No,you’re important. Maybe the cards too. That deck is throwing off a lot of energy.”
Dove’s mouth dropped open slightly as her eyes flicked to the deck.
“So—so what?” I asked, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “You have unfinished business? You’re here to tell me how ungrateful I am? What do you need us for?”
“Unfinished business,” Dove echoed, raising her brows.
