Page 76 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
My stomach growled at the thought.
I quickly flicked my mom a message to let her know we’d arrived at our next location, then set the phone back down, sinking properly into the bed and flicking on the TV with the outdated remote. The room felt warm, and I noticed a heater against the wall, likely something Dove had turned on to help dry her clothes.
I frowned at the TV as the opening credits to a movie began playing.
An Officer and a Gentleman.
I snorted. I only recognized it because it was Mom’s favorite.
I left it on.
The door creaked open five minutes later, and Dove stepped inside, carrying a brown paper bag and two bottled waters, balanced precariously. Liv flounced in after her.
Dove looked windswept as she entered, her cheeks pink from the cold, and I realized she was still in her wet clothes.
“Food delivery,” she announced, setting the bag down on a corner of the table and placing the waters beside it.
I sat up straighter at the smell. “What is it?” I asked eagerly.
“Soup,” Dove told me. “Tomato basil and grilled cheese—because yum, obviously. Also, I got you a cookie for dessert. Only because I was getting myself one, and honestly, I didn’t want to share.”
“Sounds fair,” I murmured as she handed me a bottle of water and passed over a warm foil-wrapped sandwich. The soup was in one of those old-school styrofoam cups that made me slightly anxious about BPA, but I wasn’t about to complain, considering she’d gone back out in that awful weather, still wet, just to get us food.
“I’m going to go change and shower,” Dove said, leaving her food in the bag. “I’ve miraculously found a pair of pretty dry pants and a shirt. I’ll be back.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, and I sat cross-legged on the bed, realizing Liv had once again vanished, leaving me alone with my soup and the grainy footage of Richard Gere riding a motorcycle. I sipped the last of the soup before standing to toss my trash in the bin, my stomach finally full.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I knew it was my pill alarm. I took them and chased them with water before putting the container away.
My hand brushed against the laminated Route 66 binder, and I dragged it out, flipping to today’s page. I spotted the black line drawn through Meramec Caverns with disappointment. I’d be going there on the way home, for sure.
Liv had refused it when we were planning, said it was her friend’s choice, not hers. And since bestie wasn’t on the trip anymore, it had to go.
“Claustrophobia exists in the afterlife, Ellis,”she had hissed at me.
So that had been that.
I flipped to tomorrow.
Springfield, Missouri, the self-proclaimed birthplace of Route 66. Our morning would start with the Route 66 Car Museum, then the History Museum on the Square. We’d try one of the historic cafés for breakfast. When we headed for Tulsa, we’d stop off at Red Oak II, a town modeled after the artist Lowell Davis’s hometown.
“God, I’m starving,” Dove groaned as she emerged from the bathroom in an oversized black T-shirt and a pair of worn-looking pants. Her hair, like mine, was wrapped in a towel.
She immediately unwrapped her sandwich, took the lid off her soup, then took an eager bite and glanced over at the binder.
“So,” she said around a mouthful of grilled cheese and a smirk, “what’s on the agenda for tomorrow, Captain Itinerary?”
“Ha,” I said with an eye roll, closing it. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”
She took another bite and nodded toward the book. “You know what? I thought you were neurotic when I first saw that binder, but really, imagine if our phones died on the road? You’ve got a real-life map in there and everything.”
“The horror,” I said mockingly. “Well, binders can get damaged and lost just like phones. There’s still time for it to go up in flames, you know.”
Her smile widened as she dunked her sandwich into the soup. “Well, it always does eventually.”
Liv’s voice suddenly echoed in the room, and she appeared in a chair beside the bed. “You should always expect mild chaoswhen traveling with emotionally repressed queers and a ghost who’s still trying to make sense of whatever post-death tourism is.”
“Liv, I swear to God,” I muttered.
