Page 26 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
I had come face-to-face with the startling realization that I had no idea how to talk to people in my own age bracket, and that I didn’t know how to talk about anything other than my illness. And how could I? My entire identity revolved around it.
Tears burned in my eyes, and I blinked them back furiously.
How was a person meant to casually chat about future goals and normal things when your future felt like it was running against a countdown clock? How was I supposed to tell someone I enjoyed this new chance at life when I lived with the constant awareness that the only reason I was sitting there, living and breathing, was because someone else had died?
My head hurt.
As I continued on my determined path toward Dr. Mason’s office, a door opened beside me, and the jingle of a bell startled me.
I paused as a woman stepped out, her lips curved into a blissful smile. She held a small brown bag and looked far more at ease than I felt. The door swung shut softly behind her, and she turned on her heel, sighing contentedly before walking up the street.
I glanced at the shop she’d exited. The name printed across the window read:
Margaret’s Mystique – Crystals, Tarot & Medium
I blinked, staring at the different colored stones. Crystals, I reminded myself. A memory hit me full force. Alexis and me sitting on her bed, flipping through book after book about all the different types of crystals. She’d given me so many stones for healing, for strength, for hope.
A small tarot display sat in the corner of the window, and I narrowed my eyes. Alexis used to pull my cards whenever she said she feltlost, shuffling the deck with such exaggerated drama it had been hard not to laugh. Then she’d launch into some vague, ominous interpretation that barely made sense.
I never took it seriously.
I just tookherseriously.
In my opinion, it was all a load of crap, and if you gave someone just enough information, they could make up anything based on the cards that fell out of the deck.
Yet, despite my less-than-stellar opinion on it all, I paused. A tingling crept down my spine as sunlight caught the crystals in the window display. Something gnawed at me. Something I couldn’t quite explain.
The urge to enter the store hit me so strongly that, before I knew what I was doing, I opened the door and walked inside.
DOVE
Tip #4: If the wind chime plays itself, stop blaming HVAC and start listening.
In the past, the jingling bell above the door ofMargaret’s Mystiqueused to excite me. I could feel it resonate inside my chest, gearing me up for whatever might come next. Today, however, had beena day, and if that bell jingled one more time, I was going to start hurling amethyst crystals at people’s heads.
Ida glanced up from her pile of receipts, peering over her half-moon spectacles, silver curls bouncing as she looked from the customer to me.
“Just browsing, I bet,” she murmured, licking her thumb and forefinger before returning to her stack of receipts. A pleasant smile spread across her face as she hummed softly.
I frowned—mostly at myself and my mood—glancing from the customer to Ida again. I had no idea how she did it. She was like Margaret 2.0, with the patience of a saint, even on a bad day. Not that she knew today was a bad day. I hadn’t exactly told Idawhy I was feeling off, but still, I couldn’t understand how she remained so serene.
I could hardly fake a smile today, let alone talk someone through their star sign or chat about whether their birthstone necklace had been properly charged.
Then again, Ida wasn’t the type of person who lived in her emotions—and if she did, she never showed it in front of anyone. She just got up and carried on, and while I knew that losing Margaret had punched a gaping hole in her chest, she wouldn’t appreciate me poking at her feelings.
“We’ll need more coffee soon,” Ida murmured, setting the receipts in a neat pile and clipping them together. “We also need to go a little more digital, I think, dear.”
“Agreed,” I muttered, rubbing my face. “I’m also thinking of expanding and opening up an online store. People are really starting to engage with my TikTok’s and I think we could get those views to translate into purchases.”
“A grand idea,” she said firmly. “My horrible daughter shops online all the time.”
A smile slipped onto my face despite myself, and I shook my head a little.
I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in the lavender, sandalwood, and the faintest hint of frankincense, the scent wrapping around me like a memory, taking me back to the first day I’d been dropped off at the shop by my work-obsessed mother. It was the scent of comfort, of childhood, of warm hands whispering secret truths in a candlelit room.
My eyes fluttered open, and I tried to ignore the burning behind them. I looked toward the display window, lined with crystals in every shape and imaginable color. Rose quartz, tiger’s eye, amethyst, and labradorite. Each one had been carefully placed to catch the light. When the sun hit just right in the afternoons, rainbow fragments would spill across theold wooden floorboards, beautiful prisms dancing across the shelves.
Those very shelves were freshly restocked, packed tightly with tarot decks, beautiful crystal bracelets, rune stones, and dried herbs in elegantly labeled glass jars—thanks to Ida’s impeccable handwriting—and a small selection of delicately arranged spell books, grimoires, and astrology guides. A hand-painted sign Margaret had made years ago still hung above the shelf, slightly crooked, bearing her favorite quote:
