Page 60 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
I rubbed my face and set my iPad aside, shaking my head. “Don’t go making this trip weird, Liv. I can’t think of her like that.”
“Why not?” Liv asked, smirking. “She’s cute. You’re cute. You guys are on a romantic road trip—”
“Far from romantic,” I cut in, narrowing my eyes. “Don’t mess around with people’s emotions, Liv. We’re driving you across the country so you can makepeacewith your mother. Don’t try to disturb ours.”
Liv shrugged and crossed her arms, still wearing that smug, too-knowing smile. We both heard the water shut off in the bathroom, and I sighed tiredly, shaking my head.
No. I would not allow myself to think of Ellis Langley in any way other than as a snotty road trip partner who thought everything was beneath her. I refused to acknowledge there was depth to her, because to do so would be like sealing my own fate for a heartbreak I wasn’t ready to risk again.
My last girlfriend had been more than enough to put me off dating forever. And Ellis? Ellis was pricklier than a porcupine. So, no thank you.
I glared at Liv, who still wore that irritating smirk as she stared up at the ceiling like the very picture of satisfaction.
I ignored the pill container on the nightstand and turned back to my sketch. All I had to do was make it through this trip, get back to Chicago, invest in myself and Margaret’s shop, prove Uncle Bill and my mother wrong, and definitely not fall into some ill-fated pursuit of a woman who would almost certainly hurt me in ways I couldn’t bear to go through again.
Stick to the mission, Dove, I told myself, and went back to drawing.
ELLIS
Tip #9: Your scars are not spoilers. They’re just proof that the plot kept going.
My eyes snapped open as my internal body clock jolted me awake, that well-known feeling of unrelenting dread freezing me for a moment. It filled my body in that all-too-familiar way. My limbs were heavy, breath tight, as if the weight of the entire world rested solely on my shoulders, and no one was coming to help.
Breathe, I reminded myself gently, clutching the blankets beneath me as I stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, eyeing the long crack in the plaster and reminding myself I wasn’t alone.
In the other bed beside me, I could hear Dove’s soft snores. Well, not snores. More like gentle puffs of air than anything else. Not irritating. Just enough to let me know she was still unconscious and not currently documenting my morning ritual of dread driven paralysis.
I kept my gaze fixed on the chipped paint above me, searching for something, anything, to ground me, to bring me back to reality, to release my limbs and let me breathe again.
My phone.
How long had it been since I last sanitized it? Two days… maybe three? A personal failure. I mentally added it to my growing list of things to do before we disembarked for St. Louis. That was something in my control. Achievable. What else? A shower. Get dressed. Go back to the diner for breakfast. Take your pills.
Yes.
I exhaled and this time, the breath came easier. A little less pressure.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a blur of pink hair and turned my head, finding Liv lying in the empty space on my bed, facing the window, her back to me. I’d caught her humming “Bohemian Rhapsody” at 3:00 a.m.—she’d been on the sofa then—but she’d fizzled out around the chorus. Did ghosts sleep?
Honestly, it was easy to forget she was dead sometimes.
The way she lay there, sprawled on her side with one arm flung over her head, she looked truly asleep. I could almost imagine she was just another person. A friend. A loud, chaotic, deeply nosy roommate on a road trip.
Except she wasn’t.
Her heart beat so loudly in my chest, it sometimes felt like she was constantly reminding me it belonged to her. That I didn’t deserve it. That her death had been in vain because the life giving miracle meant for her had come to me instead.
“You’re walking around with my heart in your ungrateful chest!”
Harsh. But fair.
I didn’t deserve her heart. And her words had echoed in my mind ever since she’d first hurled them at me in Dove’s reading room back in Chicago.
A year ago, I’d been in recovery—physically healing, mentally spiraling—haunted by the knowledge that someone else’s living,beating organ pulsed inside me while whatever was left ofthemno longer existed. I had once again been given an extra chance at life. The get-out-of-jail-free card that so many before me had been denied, people who had succumbed to their illnesses while I, for some inexplicable reason, kept making it.
Why?
Why did I keep making it?
