Page 29 of Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

She has to be. There’s too much blood—it’s matted in her hair, thick and glistening grotesquely in the light of my flashlight. Her skin is ashen, half of her forehead and much of her face obscured by the creeping red blood stain. Despite the blood, though, I can tell that she’s young. That, combined with the formal dress she’s wearing, tells me one thing: she’s a student.

Or rather, shewasa student.

My mind whirls at the implications of this sight. What happened here? Is this—

But a little whimper from next to me reminds me that I’m not alone, and I turn just in time to see Juniper crouched down, hand extended, her fingers hovering under the girl’s nose.

Searching for breath.

“Don’t look,” I say without thinking. It’s the first thing that pops into my head: that Juniper should not see this. No one should see this. I turn off my phone light and shove the whole thing into my pocket.

It’s too late, though—I hear the guttural sound of retching, followed by a sickening splatter that makes me wince. I don’t blame her for vomiting; my stomach is turning too. When the splattering noise stops, I reach into my chest pocket and pull out the handkerchief, passing it blindly in Juniper’s direction. It takes a second of feeling around in the dark before my hand finds her shoulder; I tap gently.

“Here,” I say. “Wipe your mouth.”

I had assumed that without the light of my phone we wouldn’t be able to see the body, but I was mistaken; the moon is too bright, and if anything, the faint illumination makes it worse. I can see, but not well; shadows become monsters and men, tree branches turn to greedy, grasping hands. The wind through the leaves plays tricks on my mind, carrying whispers of death and the faint scent of decay.

“Aiden,” Juniper says. I’ve never heard her sound like this, her voice unnaturally high-pitched and shaky. “That’s a dead body.”

I swallow, the chill in the air settling over me. “Yes.”

“Like,deaddead. Unalive. She’s unalive. She’s not breathing. She’s too young—Aiden, she’s too young—” Her voice rises higher and higher with every word that spills out of her mouth, and I can feel her practically vibrating with panic from next to me. “And what about us?” she says.

I jump when her hands find my arm, clamping around my elbow in a vice-like grip. She shuffles closer to me; I can just make out the shimmer of her dress in the pale moonlight.

“Who did this?” she says. “Are they going to kill us? I’m too young to die—”

“Juniper,” I say firmly.

She continues babbling like a madwoman. “And that girl was too young to die—”

“Juniper,” I say again.

“Didn’t even get to go to college—”

“Juniper!” I finally bark.

She whirls on me, her voice hysterical as she shrieks, “How is she going to get a job?! Higher education is important, Aiden!”

I think she’s spiraling.

And sure enough, a handful of seconds later, she slumps to the ground next to me and begins to cry.

It’s hard to make out all of her words, but I catch snippets.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs, and I think she’s talking to the girl. “I’m so sorry. You’re too young. You should go to college and fall in love and do stupid stuff—” And then more crying, more words that I can’t quite interpret as a weight settles heavily on my chest.

We need to get out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is not someplace we want to be found.

“I’ll remember you,” Juniper is saying now, her voice still thick and broken with tears. I think she’s still talking to the girl. “If everyone else in the world forgets you, I promise I’ll still remember you. I’ll come play the music for you to dance around the graveyard—”

And even though we need to leave, even though there’s an ominous, creeping sensation slithering across my skin, I can’t make myself stop her. For whatever reason, it sounds like these are promises Juniper needs to make, and though I don’t understand half of what she’s talking about, I find myself filled with a grudging respect for my pink-haired roommate.

We keep our dead, and our dead keep us. We remember them, and they in turn find us at the moments we don’t expect—a flash of memory on a summer’s day, a snippet of an old favorite song, a long-lost photograph unearthed.

“Juniper,” I say quietly when she finally falls silent, her words fading into soft sobs. “We need to go.”

“We can’t leave her here,” Juniper says.

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