Page 16 of All Her Ghosts

Yet, he flattens to his belly, reaching down so I can toss him my bag. With a deft catch, he swings it behind him, to the ground beneath the fence. He grins, thrilled.

“No turning back now, Jenny.”

I swallow hard.

“It’s Persephone,” I admit, cheeks heating. God, I hate that stupid, nerdy, dead god name. Hate my own clumsy legs, wobbling my way to the top of the trash can. But Bas just dangles up there, grinning at me, his wildness so stark against a gravity-certain, absoluteconviction.

He asks, “It’s not, though, is it?”

His question lights a fire in me. Dangling up there, all the possibility in the world glitters on his reaching fingertips like an endless sea of stars.

And I know better—in a week or two, he’ll get bored, find other friends that laugh at my retreating back from the cafeteria line. Two months from now, he’ll be one of the boys snapping the Addams Family theme song every time I pass by. Three months from now, I’ll be gone.

But I’ll be a different girl by then.

Shucking the person my mother made, I choose my name. I ball up my stolen electricity in my thighs and leap. Bas’s hands snap around my wrists. My combat boots hit the bars. Wedging myself between them, muscles shaking, I drag myself up. His hands climb my forearms, my elbows, his strength seeping into me. I’ve never been good at pull-ups, take any excuse to skip PE, but today I struggle my body up and over, gasping, laughing.

Bas hauls me up by the armpits, gathers me up so I’m sitting against his side, our legs dangling over the ground below.

“Ready?” he asks me.

Picking up the headphone cord dangling between us, I slot it back into his ear.

“Now I am.”

CHAPTER 5

Playlist: Pastel Melodies for Rotting

“Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time” by Panic! At The Disco

My head spins, messy anxieties colliding, creating entire new galaxies of things to worry about. Thankfully, with the music pounding in my right eardrum, I don’t have to think. I concentrate on the crunch of sunburnt pine cones beneath my boots, the rotting, stark-red sugar maple leaves spattering the needle-strewn ground. Bas holds my MP3 player and my hand both, his fingers blazing warm, looped through mine around the little metal box. I concentrate on that, instead—the impossible heat of him, the contours of his calluses tickling my knuckles—but the thing about new galaxies is, theyexpand.

Anxiety creeps in at my seams. What happened to me earlier? Sudden-onset narcolepsy? A seizure? Why does my brain keep playing me a compilation of some other chick’s greatest hits, and should I be worried this is more of the same? Am I even skipping school, hand in hand with a boy I met under a library table, or did I make this up too?

Taking out my earbud, I pass it over to Bas, kicking the heavy skirt of a spruce tree. Dreams can’thurt, right? Chewing on my chapped lip, I scan the copse floor, littered with dead limbs sloughing bark andsodden from the latest flash flood. Bending down, I grab the biggest, spikiest pine cone I can find. I squeeze it tight between my palms, pressing down as hard as I can, my skin whitening under its jagged teeth. It… kinda hurts? Uncomfortable more than anything else.

“So why did you steal a stethoscope?” Bas asks, dragon-puffing steam into his cupped palms.

My hand flies to my neck, smacking the tool’s rubber hosing. Crap.

“I didn’t mean to steal it,” I admit, unlooping its pincer headphones from around my neck. “I just…”

I don’t know how to finish. What do I tell him? That I’ve lost my mind? That I couldn’t put the stethoscope down because I heard anoceanin my veins? Because all day today, I keep getting these flashes—asphodel, an endless sky, black water—and when I blink back to reality, I’m once again in my own body with the taste of salt and copper in my mouth, a penetrating lightning strike of fear.

Bas frowns, stepping closer. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, the words tumbling out. My fists spasm, catching awkwardly on the chest piece of the stethoscope, and ithurts. It hurts, and somehow knowing that I’m awake feels so much worse. “The nurse tried to listen to my heartbeat, but I don’t think she could.”

I can’t follow the thought through. Miserable, head throbbing, I turn away, avoid his eyes, dig the toe of my combat boot into the earth so I don’t have to face his patient gaze head-on—and you know what?No. Anger spills into the riot of my head, coal into a ravenous furnace, burning out the anxious fumes. Am I really afraid of what he’ll say when I tell him—or just afraid I’ll risk my heart, make another friend, and inevitably lose him?

It’s time to be brave. Time to stop flinching, time to stop running, ripping out my roots every time I plant them.

Time to choose.

“Hey, I know this is mega weird,” I venture, “but can I try to listen to yours?”

Bas grins, the freckles on his nose crinkling. He tries to cock an eyebrow at me but can’t move one without the other and ends up wiggling them both like a caterpillar rave.