Page 114 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
“Wakey wakey, my littlegaybies!”
Liv’s voice shattered the moment like my shoe had shattered the mirror in our first motel stay. I jumped. Dove’s hand vanished as if burned, and I rolled onto my back aggressively just as Liv materialized through the ceiling with her flashing sequins, smug grin, her hands on hips.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said sweetly. “You know, like emotional growth or repressed feelings.”
“Liv,” Dove groaned, dragging a hand down her face, exasperation thick in her voice.
“Come on?” Liv huffed. “I leave two lesbians alone in one bed for eight hours and nothing happens? You two are lettingdown your own people.” She pouted and shook her head. “Disappointing.”
“Liv,” I said sharply, feeling any trace of emotional peace slipping away as I sat upright.
“Okay,” she said, holding up her hands. “I can smell the tension from here, but listen—savor that energy, okay? Because we’recampingtonight, and you two need your wits about you.”
“We’re doing what now?” I asked, unease sliding down my brain zeroed in on the word, my mind flashing back to the itinerary. “We didn’t have camping mentioned anywhere.”
“It was on the original itinerary,” Liv said airily. “Like, the actual original. The veryfirstcopy, which you never saw. It never made it into the Google Drive.”
“But we don’t have any camping stuff,” I told her, trying to keep a handle on my growing panic. “We—we need tents and sleeping bags and—”
“There’s this place called the Midpoint, in Adrian,” Liv began, and I frowned, whipping out my phone. “It has a campground—”
“We won’t make Adrian today,” I told her firmly, relief flowing through me. “We’ve got, like, a four-hour drive into Amarillo, and we’ve got some sites to see. We won’t drive out to Adrian until tomorrow.”
Liv’s slowly falling face brightened instantly. “Oh, great,” she said with a clap of her hands. “We camp tomorrow, then. Now we can go get all those little comforts you needed.”
“They’re not comforts,” I bit out as my ire rose, eyeing the pink-haired annoyance. “They’re necessities, for some of us who aren’t dead and actually need shelter.”
“So, camping!” Dove said brightly, clocking the rising tension and glancing between us.
Liv grinned, her eyes shifting to Dove. “Yes, camping. Real stars as far as the eye can see. Bugs—maybe snakes—and a realchance for the two of you to snuggle under a shared sleeping bag.”
“Liv!” Dove and I groaned in unison, our voices clashing while her joyful grin turned into more of a smirk.
“All right,” Liv said firmly. “Let’s get moving. According to the fun police over here,” she jerked her head in my direction, “we have a busy day. I’ll be in the car. Don’t take too long. The ghost of Route 66 waits for no queer girl crisis.”
With a flick of her pink hair, she vanished once more through the ceiling, and I had to ignore the way it made my stomach twist, seeing an almost real-looking human being float through the roof.
A thick silence followed her departure, and it suddenly felt louder in here than it had when Liv was around.
Dove turned to grin at me, her eyes alight, clearly excited at the prospect of camping, which only highlighted how different we really were. Her eyes were still shadowed with sleep, but something else reflected in them now.
Something deeper.
“I meant it,” she said softly. “What I said last night. I do feel it too. Do with that what you will, Ellis Langley,” Dove murmured, a smile curling around my name as she climbed out of bed, leaving me with my racing heart. “I’ll be here waiting while you spend the next however many hours overthinking it.”
My brows rose at her words, and I watched as she headed toward the bathroom, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
I fell back into the pillows with a soft thud, staring up at the ceiling once more as if it might give me the answer I was searching for.
The road stretchedout before us in a long, winding ribbon of faded asphalt, dusty hills, and open sky as we left the Leaning Tower of Texas behind, a new Polaroid stashed in my bag.
We were well on our way to Amarillo now, Dove behind the wheel as I frantically worked on a budget shopping list for camping essentials, thanks to Liv’s familiar spanner in the works. Yes, it had once again taken us off plan, but I wasn’t totally hating the idea once I’d sat with it.
I glanced at the empty sandwich bag resting in the console under Dove’s phone. She had decided to scatter Margaret as we drove this time. Right before we left Oklahoma, she held the bag out the window and let the ashes fly off into the wind behind us as we crossed the state line.
“End of the World” by Miley Cyrus played through the speakers as Dove drove along, nodding her head while simultaneously rummaging through a bag of sour worms in her lap. Her hair was twisted up into her usual space buns, with the same stray strands loose and blowing around her face through the open window.
My stomach fluttered with all-too-familiar nerves, and I glanced out my own window, biting the inside of my cheek as I was once again taken back to the memory of last night.
