Page 155 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
No more stops.
No more detours.
Just the open highway, stretching endlessly toward our final destination. We’d put the roof back on, the sun had dipped below the desert rim hours ago, taking its warmth with it. The wind was cooler now, crisper. We’d gassed up at the next stop we found and stocked up on snacks, water, and some surprisingly good-looking sandwiches we planned to eat for dinner when it was time for Ellis to take her pills.
I was driving the first leg of our shift, the next two hours looming in front of me, my eyes fixed on the faded white lines slicing through the dark. Ellis sat beside me, one leg pulled up onto the seat, hair loose around her shoulders as she worked on editing her latest planned upload.
She was calm.
So calm about the abrupt shift in our plans. She had just… gone with it. I didn’t know if it was Liv’s revelation that made her shelve her own feelings or if the guilt—heavier than before—was eating at her so much that she refused to utter a single complaint about this new nonstop schedule.
I sighed quietly and watched the darkening road ahead, Dehd playing softly in the background. My mind flicked back to the cards, my gaze briefly shifting to Liv in the back seat. She stared out the window, watching the scenery blur by. I thought about her reaction to last night’s reading, the way she’d gotten so angry and left.
The way that anger had followed her into today—first as silence, then as that painful confession, and finally, as her decision to skip the pretense and head straight for the end.
To wrap it all up, urgency pouring out of her.
The cards.
My mind danced through the countless conversations Margaret and I had had about them. I pictured the shop—the back room with the white wicker chair, the mismatched candles, the salt lamps and incense, and the reading table.
Right on that table, facing the direction a customer would sit, was an A4-sized laminated message that had been taped down for as long as I could remember.
This reading is a guide, not a guarantee.
The cards show us the possibilities and the now. You are responsible for choosing your own path.
I used to roll my eyes at it, thinking it so out of place—a silly layer of protection Margaret had insisted on. She said it was to stop people from marching back in months later, furious with her or Ida for quitting jobs, dumping partners, or realizing their fresh start had ended in disaster.
“You would be amazed, Dovey,” Margaret murmured once when I questioned her about it. “You would be amazed at how many people will hand over their future to a piece of colourful card and a stranger with incense and heavy eyeliner.”
I’d always thought the statement a little dramatic back then, but now… now I wasn’t quite so sure.
“We have a responsibility to people, Dove,” Margaret had told me with steady eyes. “People come to us because they already know the answer—they just need permission to admit it and act. The things we tell people alter their lives. Don’t take that power lightly.”
She was right.
For the first time, I understood the laminated message and her steely words whenever she guided me through the practice. Because I had given Liv a reading last night—explained the cards as they fell from the shuffled deck—and now, thanks tothat reading, Liv had made a choice. She had finally settled on something she’d likely been deliberating this entire trip.
All because of my reading.
But it was something she knew she was always going to have to face. I hadn’t shown her or told her anything she hadn’t already known or seen in her own reflection.
I hadn’t pulled fate or played games.
I’d just held up a mirror.
“I met Kyle and Ryan in junior year,” Liv said, her voice cutting through the silence. Ellis paused what she was doing—not looking away from the screen, but her finger no longer dancing across it. I glanced back through the rearview mirror.
“Drama class,” Liv continued. “Ryan always gunned for the lead in everything, of course. Kyle was a loser jock that Ryan was tutoring. They spent like the entire year being complete assholes to each other. Then prom season rolled around, and Ryan practically dared Kyle to kiss him.”
A smile tugged at Ellis’s lips as she put her phone away and turned in her seat to face Liv.
“They were together from that kiss on. Kyle copped some heat from the team, but people got over it quick enough.” Liv grinned at Ellis, her voice softer than I was used to. She wasn’t sharing cryptic soundbites now. She wasn’t glossing over her life with humour or quips. She was sharing actual memories.
Memories about people she loved.
“Jedd and I weren’t very cutesy or romantic,” Liv went on. “We were more this easy, casual mess. Comfortable. We kind of just started hooking up, and then we were together. I mean, he knew I was planning on leaving with Bri—we just didn’t talk about it. It—it wasn’t like we didn’t care, we just didn’t do things like that. We didn’t have conversations about what we were or throw expectations onto each other. Sometimes… sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened the day I left with Bri. Wouldhe have come to see me off? Would we have kissed? Would we have just said ‘see you soon,’ like a pair of liars?”
