Dead Girls Society

by Michelle Krys

  Our lips meet. It’s soft, and sweet, and searching, and warmth pools in my belly. When I fantasized about our kiss, I thought about unearthly soft lips and the perfect amount of pressure, but God, it’s even better than I imagined. I become acutely aware of my pulse pounding, the blood rushing through my veins, the slow burn in my belly. His heady scent fills my senses, and all I want to do is breathe him in.

  His lips move from my mouth, to my ear, to my collarbone, making my back arch and my fingers dig into his arms. I thought kissing Tucker felt amazing. I didn’t even know what kissing was.

  I’ve somehow ended up on my back, with Ethan balanced above me on his elbows, and I want him closer. I grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him down to me. He moans into my mouth, deepening the kiss as he presses me into the mattress. A hot line shoots straight through me, and then it’s not soft and sweet anymore. I open my mouth for him, and our hands grasp at each other, pull each other close, as if we both know crazy things could happen tonight and this could be our last chance. Electricity races through me everywhere we touch. Nothing has ever felt so good.

  There’s a knock on the door, and we pull apart fast and straighten up. Mom steps inside, and I struggle not to wipe my lips and rearrange my clothing.

  “Hi, Mom!” I say.

  She frowns at my enthusiastic tone. “Hi…Ethan, it’s late.”

  Ethan pops up. I don’t miss the fact that he’s strategically holding his backpack out in front of him. “You’re right. I should get going. Hope, I can pick up your homework on Tuesday.”

  “Great, thanks,” I say, though I can’t quite meet his eyes.

  We kissed. Ethan actually wants me. It feels so unreal, as if I’ve imagined the last five minutes of my life.

  When Ethan leaves, Mom bustles back into the room with Edna. She holds it up, and I slip the vest around my shoulders. For once I’m actually happy to get an intensive therapy session. Who knows what trials I’ll face tonight? It doesn’t hurt to go in extra prepared.

  When my treatment is over, Mom puts Edna away, then climbs into my bed and strokes my hair, singing me the same lullaby she has every time I’ve been sick, ever since I was old enough to remember. On the surface it’s a sweet song, but when you really listen to the lyrics, it’s about a mother who loses her son and longs for him. It’s depressing, and I’ve always hated it—hated how close to home it feels—but I don’t say so. It feels so good to have her near, babying me, that my eyes flutter closed, and I think, just for a second, wouldn’t it be easier if I went to sleep?

  Mom slips out of the bed. Her footsteps make the wood under the floorboards creak. When she shuts the door, I pop my eyes open.

  It’s time to end this game.

  I’ve snuck out of the house so many times now that I have the whole thing down to a science. I’m at the front door, slipping on my shoes in the dark, in under a minute.

  I should have been more careful.

  “Where are you going?”

  A shot of panic ripples through me. When I spin around, Jenny is leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. A sliver of moonlight from the kitchen window fractures onto her pajamas.

  “You know where,” I whisper.

  “Don’t go.” She’s crying now. She smothers the sound with her palm.

  Anger bubbles in my chest. How dare they involve my little sister.

  “I don’t have a choice, Jenny, but this is the last time. I’m going to end it tonight.”

  “I’m worried about you,” she protests. “I haven’t heard from the Society all day. Since you came to my school. They know. They know, Hope.”

  I take a bracing breath. I have to be brave for my little sister. “I’m going to fix this, okay, Jenny?”

  She sniffles, swallows audibly. “Just be careful,” she whispers. “Please.”

  I nod and slip outside.

  Lyla’s waiting for me in the car, gripping the steering wheel with both hands as she peers out at the lot.

  “Hey,” I say, settling into the passenger seat. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “No worries.” She shifts into drive.

  We’re actually doing this.

  One time when I was in the hospital for a gastro infection, I met a boy a few years younger than me who’d had surgery as a baby for a hole in his diaphragm. Because of the hole, he’d been born with his insides in the wrong place, pushed up into his lung space so there wasn’t enough room for him to breathe properly. And that’s how I feel now. As if everything inside me is twisted and tangled and there’s so much pressure on my chest that I can’t get in more than shallow gasps of air.

  So much is at stake now. Not just for me. I feel for my inhaler in my purse as we bump out of the parking lot. Still there. Of course it’s still there. I blow out a breath to calm my nerves.

  I look at the city whirring by outside the window. Even three blocks out from the Quarter, the streets are teeming with pedestrians zigzagging around cars with lime-green hand grenades and Solo cups in hand. Music and cheers seep through the windows.

  Lyla brakes hard when a couple of girls with Mardi Gras beads looped around their necks stumble onto the road. A guy in a sweaty polo shirt runs past, drumming his hands on the hood of the car. We edge forward in the start-stop traffic.

  “Shit, we’re going to be late,” I say, peering out the window. Will they wait for us? Will they think I bailed and leave?

  “It’ll be fine,” Lyla says. “We still have ten minutes.”

  Ethan will worry. He’ll think something happened.

  I pull out my phone and tap a message.

  “Who are you talking to?” Lyla asks.

  “Just Ethan. Letting him know we might be a minute late.”

  Eventually we get past the craziness of the Quarter. The roads thin out, and we hit the interstate. I should feel better, but instead a worm of tension winds around my spine. We’re so close now. The plan felt sound from the comfort of that diner booth, but now that I actually have to do it, confront Nikki, I realize how unprepared we really are. I don’t even know what I’m going to say. Do I come straight out with it? Trap her into admitting the truth? And how will she react? What if she tries to attack?

  I have to sit on my hands so they don’t shake in my lap.

  Lyla blasts past the exit that leads to the docks and Schilling Street.

  I sit up and look behind me. “You just passed the exit.”

  “I know,” Lyla says. “Just making a quick pit stop first.”

  “But we’ll be late.”

  “We have lots of time.”

  “It’s eleven fifty-eight.”

  “It’s fine. Relax.”

  She pulls off the interstate onto a narrow, winding road. The car bumps over pitted gravel. Soon we pass under a vine-covered wrought-iron gate that says GREENLAWN CEMETERY in thick Gothic script.

  “It’s a potter’s field,” Lyla explains. “One of the only cemeteries with belowground tombs in New Orleans. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “I guess. What are we doing here?”

  Lyla shifts the car into Park and palms the keys. “Just need to grab something.”

  “Grab what?”

  “Are you done with the Inquisition yet?” She laughs. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Lyla, they’re all waiting for us.” But she’s already out of the car.

  I huff, watching as Lyla’s blond ponytail swishes up an embankment. What could she possibly need to do right now?

  Something buzzes in the glove compartment. Lyla must have left her phone in there. The buzzing drags on and on. I look for Lyla again, but she’s gone, disappeared into the shadows of the cemetery. I open the glove compartment and pull out the phone.

  It’s got a worn skull-and-crossbones case, and there’s a giant crack down the middle of the screen. It isn’t Lyla’s phone.

  It’s Hartley’s.

  Why would Lyla have Hartley’s phone?

  I go cold all over. Hartley hasn’t
been to school since that night at the meat factory, but she’s been answering texts.

  All the signs I didn’t see before suddenly come together.

  Why Lyla never wanted to call the cops.

  Why she showed up at my house the night I wanted to quit and persuaded me to keep playing. How she never asked for my address. Why she was there every other time I questioned things, telling me I could do it. Telling us all we could do it.

  Why she insisted we not go looking for the Society at Rheem.

  How she figured out the meat freezer combo in ten minutes.

  How Tucker showed up at the exact moment I was snooping around in his bedroom.

  Why I ever suspected Nikki—Lyla was throwing me off her own trail.

  The Society was right under my nose the whole time.

  It was Lyla answering Hartley’s texts. It’s Lyla who wanted revenge for her sister.

  I feel so stupid. How did I not see it? How didn’t I put it together?

  The car door opens, and I gasp, quickly dropping Hartley’s phone into my lap.

  “Told you I’d only be a minute,” Lyla says as she falls into the driver’s seat.

  My heart thunders so loud I think there’s no way she can’t hear it. I shove the phone under my thighs. The car suddenly feels too close. I have to get out of here. Away from her.

  “Is something wrong?” Lyla asks.

  “What? No, just, you know, anxious to get this over with.” I clasp my hands over my knees to hide how badly they’re shaking.

  She frowns, and her gaze slips to the side. I see her taking in the open glove compartment. The missing phone.

  Panic spikes in my system.

  I grab my cell out of my purse. “Ethan’s probably wondering where we are. I should tell him we’re on the way before he takes off.” I manage to get out “91” before a cool hand covers my wrist.

  “I don’t think so,” Lyla says. She takes my cell out of my limp fingers.

  Game over.

  Dread washes down my skin.

  “Lyla, whatever you have planned, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Trust me, I do. Your little investigation has proved that. Now get out of the car.”

  I’m cemented to my seat. She squares her jaw and climbs out, leaving her door hanging wide open. While she crosses around the nose of the car, I unclick my seat belt and jump over the center console to swing her door shut. I slam the lock just as she bends down at the passenger-side window, sneering at me calmly through the smudged glass. She holds up a set of keys and jangles them. The naked fear on my face pulls her lips into a grin.

  Before I can do anything, the door swings open. She snags my arm and yanks me outside. I kick and punch and bite, but she’s the athlete, and I’m the sick girl, and she pins me easily.

  “They know where I am,” I spit. “The other girls. They’ll send help.”

  “The other girls?” She laughs. “Like who? Farrah? You’re definitely not talking about Hartley.”

  The floor drops away at the pointed way she says the name.

  “That’s right. Hartley won’t be coming to your rescue. She’s still hanging around that meat factory.”

  I remember the meat hooks, and shake my head. She wouldn’t. I’m misunderstanding her. She isn’t that cruel.

  “Y-you killed her?”

  “Mmm, not really,” Lyla says, pretending to think. “She killed herself, if you want to get technical. She’s the one who couldn’t crack the code.”

  I shake my head.

  “Aww, don’t feel bad for her,” Lyla says. “She got what she deserved.”

  A strangled noise escapes me. She killed her. She killed Hartley. And now she’s going to kill me.

  I need to get out of this. Need to get away.

  “You’ll get caught,” I say.

  Lyla releases a brittle laugh as she shoves me forward. I trip over a root, but she forces me upright, and pain sears my shoulders.

  I swallow hard, panic taking over my ability to think straight. All I know is, I need to keep her talking—when she’s done, I’m done. “It wasn’t Nikki who wanted revenge,” I say. “It was you.”

  “What was your first clue?” She twists my arm. “God, you really are a genius, aren’t you?”

  “There was never a prize,” I pant. “You wanted to get back at all the people you think made your sister kill herself.”

  “Think?” I don’t have to see her face to know it’s twisted with rage. “Try know. But who cares what you did to her, right? Who cares, because Farrah’s dad gave us money, and aren’t we so lucky to have so much money now?”

  My breaths wheeze out in short gasps. Even if I could get away from her, I couldn’t run.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, Lyla. You have to know that.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I give my head a minuscule shake. I don’t know what to say, what to do.

  “She was your best friend,” Lyla says.

  “No. I barely knew her.”

  She gives a cruel, humorless laugh. “You really have no shame, do you? At least the other girls can admit they did something wrong. Do you have any idea how hard it was to sit there at that diner while you spewed lies about my sister? I wanted to scratch your eyes out.”

  “Whatever she told you, it’s wrong,” I say. “I know you don’t want to see your sister like this, Lyla, but I barely knew her and she was calling me her best friend. She dyed her hair like mine after a week of knowing me. She started wearing all the same clothes as me, showing up everywhere I went. It wasn’t normal.”

  “It’s not normal to love your friends? And no one else can have blond hair but precious Hope?”

  “It was the exact same color! She said, ‘We match now.’ ” I shiver, remembering the day she turned up at my door looking like a carbon copy of me.

  Lyla’s grip loosens a fraction.

  “You must know it’s true, Lyla. You know me. I’m your friend.”

  She hesitates, but then her fingers dig into my arms harder than before. “You’re a liar,” she spits, breath hot on my neck.

  “No!”

  “I know my sister. She told me everything. You betrayed her. You went to the principal and said she was stalking you.”

  “She was! I was scared, Lyla. I didn’t know she would— I had no clue what she was going to do.”

  “I guess you had no clue when you ditched her that day too, huh? Told her you would meet her at the library and then screwed off with Ethan to the Grill instead while she burned in that place?”

  “How was I supposed to know there’d be a fire? It’s not like I wanted her to get hurt! Lyla, you know me. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know she was going to give you that brooch that day. She saved up for a month to get it for you because she knew you couldn’t have real flowers.”

  The rose pin, I realize. The gift we got at the warehouse.

  “Yeah. That’s how much she cared,” Lyla says. “And you weren’t even sorry after. You should have been on your hands and knees begging for forgiveness, and you didn’t even come to see her.” Spittle hits my neck with the force of her words.

  I look around for an escape. A weapon. Some way.

  But there’s nowhere to go.

  “She wouldn’t want this,” I say, changing tack. “Sam—she wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  But she doesn’t take the bait.

  “You know, at the Pavilion they talked a lot about the five stages of grief,” Lyla says. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Can you believe that? Acceptance—as if I would ever get over this. What you did. For the longest time I thought they were a bunch of quacks. But the more I thought about it, I realized I could get over it if you weren’t flouncing around scot-free. It’s you girls who were holding me back.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “You were mean,” she interrupts, shoving me forward. I grunt in pain, stumbling up the slopin
g, grassy embankment. “You made her do this. She could have gotten past everything if you were just there for her like you should have been. But you weren’t. And now you’re going to pay.”

  Fog floats over the twisting, root-covered paths, moonlight casting deep shadows onto broken, moss-covered gravestones that stick out of the ground like rotten teeth. No city lights. No traffic whirring close by. We’re alone out here.

  Lyla fists a handful of my hair and gives me a vicious shove. I squeeze my eyes shut against a rush of tears. She pulls me up short in front of a giant pile of fresh-tilled dirt. Next to it is a hole that stretches several feet beneath us. A wooden casket lined with pale satin glints from down below. An open grave, ready and waiting.

  “Jenny and Tucker aren’t the only ones in my pocket. Pretty neat, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No.” I shake my head and stumble back.

  Lyla grabs me roughly.

  I haul back and spit at her. It lands right on her cheek. The condescending smile drops off her face, morphing into one of undiluted hatred. The spit slides slowly down her cheek, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to strike. The waiting is almost worse than the hitting.

  Almost.

  She slaps me. White-hot pinpricks of pain flash across my cheek. Tears spring to my eyes, and my mouth yawns open in a silent cry.

  Lyla shoves a cloth into my mouth and hauls me up straight again, arms twisted painfully behind my back.

  “You know, you’re actually getting off easy.” Lyla’s breath is hot on my ear. “Sam had to burn because of you. Can you imagine what it would feel like for your skin to be on fire? Count yourself lucky you’re going this way. I could have cremated you.”

  Dread sinks into me, hollows me out. I scream into the bitter, salty rag, fighting to free myself with everything I have left. But her grip on my arms is strong, pinching on my skin, blunt fingernails digging sharply into flesh.

  “So here it is,” Lyla says. “Your final dare. Although, I do have to say, this one is going to be pretty hard to win.”

  Something clobbers me on the side of the head, and I tumble, clattering hard into the casket. A hot flash of pain slices into my skull. The last thing I see is the lid coming down.

  Oh playmate, you would not play with me,