Page 19 of All Her Ghosts

Mom 12:07 p.m.: ETA

Really? I stare at the screen, disgusted. No questions? Noare you okaywhen I’m clearly not okay, when I haven’tbeenokay for the last three states, six houses, and almost four years? Hell, even before that, I was clearly not okay when we were only moving once a year and every friend I made, I lost, until I stopped even bothering.

When I’ve maybe never been okay?

Distantly, I kind of think I should feel anxious. I’m in so much trouble. But I don’t know, I guess Jenny isn’t the kind of girl who cares. I stare at the screen, watching it scroll, fuming with a grievance so old it’s worn threadbare down to its warp and weft.

Mom 12:08 p.m.: ETA

Mom 12:08 p.m.: Did someone drive you? You better not have hitchhiked.

Mom 12:09 p.m.: Where are you?

Mom 12:09 p.m.: PERSEPHONE PRIMAVERA GREEN

“Ooh, full name.” Bas winces. “Ouch.”

I shrug. “It’s whatever,” I say, and set my phone to silent. “What about you? Are you going to get into a lot of shit for this?”

“Nah.” He shrugs, holding out his hand for me to take, my MP3 cradled like a promise in his palm. “Babynapper won’t care.”

Stepping close, I take the dangling earbud, slot it into my ear. Music floods into my aching head, soothing away the pain, the frustration, filling up my empty places. By the time the chorus hits, I feel like I’m kicking off the bottom of the deep end, from the ocean floor, from the riverbank. My head breaks water, my lungs feel clean.

Temple to temple with Bas, I lean over the screen, finger outstretched to select the next song but stop. My eyes catch on the needle-strewn ground, the base of the log where we’d just been sitting. There, poking up through the dead leaves and needles, stretches a single, spindly weed—bright green when it should be brown, a tight white flower bud when it should be dying.

My mouth tastes like blood, ozone, soil; like… stars—a sky so full it tumbles into the river and crawls up the banks as flowers, blanketing my bare feet in endless white, spidery fingers catching at my hem.

I’ve never seen this flower before in my life. So why do I know exactly what that bud will look like?

“Was that there before?” I whisper, throat tight.

Bas hums, looking up, a question in his arched brows.

“That flower,” I insist, pointing. “Was that there before we sat down?”

Grinning, Bas hands me his earbud.

“Nah, I think it grew just for you,” he says. Bending down, he breaks off the stem with the flat of his thumbnail. When he stands up, hisbreath whispering summer promises against my frozen cheek, his fingers brushing the shell of my ear to tuck the spray into my hair, I forget to breathe. I forget to worry. I forget to think of anything at all but the intensity in his black eyes, his fingers trailing my arm, my fingers, plucking the earbud from my hand like a pomegranate seed.

“Your turn to choose,” he murmurs, lips curling, thumb doubling over mine on the selector wheel. “Pick a song, any song.”

My not-heart roars like a storm at sea, drowning out anxiety. A wildness seizes me, the wind running warm fingers through my hair, freedom singing in my blood. I squeeze his hand, our fingers tangled. I’m not sure when they got there, but I don’t care. Music courses between us, a shared breath, and in that moment everything is possible. I can choose any song. I can choose any name. Any life.

It’s my turn.

I push the button, pick my poison.

Beneath the music, I tell him, “Let’s get out of here.”

CHAPTER 6

Playlist: Pastel Melodies for Rotting

“The Horror of Our Love” by Ludo

Hand in burning hand with Bas, I outrun myself. I leave my worries in the woods, my constantly simmering rage, the itching, impending doom that dogs me with every new house, new school, new state. We wander the autumn-draped neighborhood like colorful ghosts, the red string of fate looped between us ear to ear, brain to brain, music beating in our blood, in the shared heartbeat we don’t have.

At least until tomorrow. Until the magic wears off and the logic sets back in. But today, it starts to rain, and Bas tugs me into a run, sprinting for the nearest corner store. We tumble inside in a heap of tangled legs and wet fabric, palms slapping filthy linoleum, and I can’t stop laughing even after I slip-scramble onto my feet again.