Page 33 of Cemetery Boys

Julian scowled. “The fuck?”

“Right?” Yadriel huffed. “They’re so stuck in their ways and traditions, they wouldn’t even let me try.” He undid the sleeping bag and shook it out with a snap. “So, Maritza made me a portaje and I did the binding ceremony myself.”

Julian grinned approvingly. “Badass.”

Yadriel found himself smiling back. He hadn’t really had the time to process everything that had happened, what with Miguel dying as soon as he’d completed the ritual. It was badass, even if he was going against his dad and the other brujx.

“So I’m gonna help you find your friends,” Yadriel went on, laying the sleeping bag out on the floor. “And you’re gonna help me by letting me release you to the afterlife, then they’ll have to accept that I’m a brujo.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees. “On the second night of Día de Muertos, we have an aquelarre where the brujx who had their quinces that year are presented. This year, they’re going to have to let me be part of it,” Yadriel said with fierce determination.

Julian’s expression was suddenly pinched. “Back up a sec—are you trying to prove to them that you’re a brujo, or that you’re a boy?”

The bluntness of the question caught Yadriel off guard. It took some of the wind out of his self-satisfied sails. “It’s the same thing,” he said, prickling with annoyance.

“’Cause, if it’s to prove you’re a brujo, didn’t summoning me already do that?” Julian asked.

Yadriel huffed a laugh. “You just don’t get how it works,” he said, crossing his arms. “That’s not enough.”

“Not enough for who, though?” Julian questioned. He wasn’t being pushy about it, not on purpose, anyway. He just seemed curious, which only irritated Yadriel further. “Not enough for them, or not enough for you?”

Yadriel froze. The question stuck in his chest. “It’s the same thing,” he repeated, but was it? Yadriel shook his head. He was tired, and Julian’s incessant questions were just confusing him.

“You just don’t get it because you’re not one of us,” he insisted. “Here.” He tossed Julian a pillow from his bed.

Julian easily caught it out of the air. “Hey!” He flashed his teeth in a triumphant smile, giving the pillow a shake. “I caught it!”

Yadriel threw himself onto his bed. “Good job. Now go to sleep. I have to get up for school in”—he checked his phone and groaned—“three hours.”

SIX

Yadriel went into the bathroom to change out of his clothes and binder and into an oversize sleep shirt and pajama pants. When he got back to his room, he awkwardly dove under the covers of his bed. He didn’t like being seen without his binder on, and that was especially true with Julian.

Luckily, Julian seemed unfazed, or, at the very least, uninterested.

“Do ghosts even sleep?” he asked, lounging comfortably on the floor with his hands tucked behind his head.

“I have no idea,” Yadriel said, pulling his blankets up to his chin.

Julian refused to settle down. As Yadriel stared up at his ceiling in the pitch-black room, Julian’s sighs and huffs floated from the floor. They were quickly followed up by the most asinine questions Yadriel ever had to endure at three in the morning.

“If you turned into a ghost, where would you wanna haunt?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure the Jack in the Box on Whittier is haunted.”

“Mm.”

“One time, we were chillin’ in the parking lot, and there was definitely some haunted-ghosts stuff happening in the dumpster.”

“Mhmm.”

“But it turned out to just be a raccoon.”

“Cool.”

“It almost bit me.”

“Wow.”