Page 133 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Or had been.
My thoughts drifted as I looked out through the glass at the expanse of sky, my heart squeezing.
I wondered if Margaret would have liked her.
If my wild, wise grandmother would have seen that same softness in Ellis the moment she entered the store. If she would’ve overlooked the pastels and the pinched expression instead of fixating on them the way I had. Would she have seen past the typecast I’d assigned her? Seen that, beneath Ellis’s guarded shell, there was something gentle and true?
That softness I could feel myself stumbling toward?
I frowned at myself.
Would I ever be as good as Margaret when it came to people? When it came to delivering the truths the cards wanted told? I’d finally had a breakthrough with Ellis in that bathroom in Oklahoma—truly seen what she carried, felt it like it was my own—and in that moment, I’d wished I had a spread of cards in front of me.
But it hadn’t happened again.
How did I make it happen again? Margaret could walk down a street and find five people in a minute she could read thoroughly—tell them what they needed to hear—then move on as if she’d just stopped to chat about the weather.
Why couldn’t I do that? Why had she been so hell-bent on the idea that I could?
I let out a heavy sigh, and Ellis turned her head to look at me, her expression questioning. I gave her a weak grin and shook my head with a shrug. She smiled softly and turned back to the window, and I caught the twinkle of her green irises reflected in the glass, lit by the sun.
From the roof of the tram, Liv let out a loud “Cooo-eeey!”—a sound only Ellis and I could hear—and I let out a silent laugh. But what followed wasn’t amusement. It was confusion.
She’d gone from completely broken at the petroglyphs to buzzing, energetic chaos, and the whiplash was real, if I was being honest.
She still couldn’t remember how she died, and I couldn’t forget the way Ellis had looked at me in that moment—desperate, wide-eyed, and silently pleading with me to do something. Liv had looked so afraid, so shattered at the idea of being stuck in this limbo forever. Of never finding peace.
Despite my own lack of confidence, my hands had been itching for a deck of cards ever since. I wanted—needed—to spread them out for Liv. To try to help her.
We were so close to the end of this trip, and I couldn’t help feeling like I’d failed her. I hadn’t asked how she died because it felt rude. But what if I was supposed to ask? Was it really a coincidence that Ellis showed up in my shop so soon after my grandmother died, with a ghost in tow?
Was Margaret testing me? Testing whether her instincts about me had been right? Whether she’d left her store and her legacy to someone worthy?
I took a sobering breath and immediately began to compartmentalize.
I was about to go on a date—a pretty unique one—and the last thing I wanted was to be caught up in my own head. Especially considering how far down Ellis’s guard had dropped. I didn’t want to be distant, trapped in my worries and fears, missing the chance to finally get some real answers from her, without a pillow wall between us.
So instead, I took in the moment. The higher the cable car climbed, the smaller the world became beneath us. I mentally snapped a picture and tucked it away for safekeeping.
For when I needed it.
As the tram reached the peak and Ellis mumbled something about being 10,300 feet above sea level, a soft ding filled thespace. The doors slid open with a whisper, and a rush of cooler air swept in—fresher, thinner, and sharper at this altitude.
We hung back as the people closest to the door milled out. I reached for Ellis’s hand, lacing my fingers through hers. She didn’t flinch or pull away. Instead, she gave me a devastatingly shy smile and squeezed my hand slightly, her expression open.
We followed the others out, passing hikers, couples, and day-trippers as we made our way toward the observation deck. The platform curved around the peak, offering a view so breathtaking that even Liv—who had been letting out a sarcastic whistle—fell momentarily silent as she took it all in.
The world looked unreal, twisted into layers of orange, red, and copper, with a tinge of bruised purple bleeding across the horizon. The setting sun put on a show for us, casting a golden wash over the landscape that made everything seem dreamy and cinematic.
Everything suddenly felt sacred, way up here, viewing it from the sky.
“I need to do it, Maggie!”
A girl’s voice to my left caught my attention. She gripped the railing, eyes wide and brimming with delight.
“You don’t,” her friend hissed, glancing nervously at the rest of us. “There are people here who—”
But the first girl cut her off with a throaty yell. She clutched the railing and roared into the void, her voice echoing and bouncing off whatever rocks or ridges were close enough to catch it.
