Ashes to Ashes

FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS I POST UP AT REEVE’S house, just to make sure Mary doesn’t figure out a way to come and get him. Also, it’s easier to sleep here than at my house, where Shep would have been trying to climb into my bed with me all night. He might’ve been as old as hell, but he died like a champ, protecting me. My poor puppy.

I take out my Shep grief on Reeve and basically order him around like crazy. His room is disgusting. I make him throw out the booze, take a shower. The essentials. That first night after Mary’s bound to her house, he sleeps like a baby. An overgrown snoring baby. The stuff at school eases up on him too. He catches as break when two juniors get stoned during lunch and then go swimming in the fountain nude, and that becomes the thing everyone talks about.

Reeve’s mom has tears in her eyes when she thanks me for looking out for her Reevie. God. I almost tear up too, been super emo ever since Shep died. I had to make up some shit to Pat and my dad about him running in front of a car on the road.

I do drive past Mary’s house once, to make sure the spell worked. As soon as my car pulls along the curb, she runs up to the window in her bedroom and puts her palms up to the glass. It scares the shit out of me, and I burn rubber the hell out of there.

The hardest part for me, really, is to go back to normal life, to pretending I don’t know what I now know to be true. I go over every minute in my mind of the time since I met Mary, looking for clues. There are plenty, and the books help me understand why people could see her on Halloween, but I still don’t know if I’d ever have figured it out on my own. And since that’s the case, the only thing to do, really, is to try to forget.

Lil and I basically have a new unspoken pact. We haven’t talked about Mary once since that night. It’s easier that way.

At school Lil asks me if I’ve bought a dress for prom yet, and I tell her I already have something, and she gives me this dubious look. “Send me a pic,” she says.

So when I get back home, I put on the one semi-fancy dress I own, a black strapless bandage dress. I look like a hooker. Why didn’t I realize I looked like a hooker when I bought it a year ago?

Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just wear black pants and a button-down and a bow tie, and go for an androgynous formal look. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the more edgy actresses wearing tuxedos at awards shows.

But I just end up looking like a waiter. So I put the dress back on and figure I’ll wear a blazer on top of it.

I text Lillia a selfie, and she writes back, UM NO. Come over right now. I tell her thanks but no thanks, but damn, that girl can be persuasive when she wants to be.

So that’s why I’m sitting on Lil’s bed in my bra and leggings, tearing up my nails while she’s taking her sweet time sifting through her ginormous closet. From inside, Lillia calls out, “Close your eyes, Kat. I’m going to present you with two different but equally striking options. Whichever one you gravitate toward first will be the right one. Just follow your gut.”

I roll my eyes. “Lil, it ain’t that deep.” Lillia steps out of the closet holding up two dresses. One is a floor-length teal silk halter dress that drapes in the front and dips low in the back; the other is a corseted canary-yellow cocktail dress that nips in at the waist and hits right above the knee. I let out a low whistle. “Holy shit. Why do you have such fancy stuff?”

“This one was for a black-tie wedding of a family friend, and, um . . . this other one I just had.”

I reach for the long one. It still has tags on it. Six hundred and ninety-five dollars from some store called C’est La! Holy shit. “I can’t wear this. It’s too expensive. I’ll be scared of spilling something on it. Give me the other one.”

“The yellow one was even more expensive,” Lillia says.

“Well, I don’t want to wear this one if you haven’t.”

She shoos my hand away. “Don’t worry about that. Which one do you like better?”

“I don’t know!” I feel suddenly insecure—what if I look like I’m trying to be something I’m not?

Lil holds the teal dress up to my face, then the yellow. “You’d be a knockout in either . . . but the teal one brings out your eyes, and it’s more grown-up. I think you should wear that one. Try it on.”

I slip it on over my bra and leggings, and Lillia helps me with the zipper. She ties the halter neck into a bow, and the ends float down my back like streamers.

I stand in front of the full-length mirror, and Lillia and I stare at my reflection. “It’s perfect,” she breathes. She pulls my hair up and away from my face. “You should wear your hair up. It might not be too late to get a hair appointment at Cut. You’ll probably get stuck with a super-early time, but that’s better than nothing. I have the perfect shoes for this dress too. Suede, crisscross with a hidden platform.” She pulls her hair into a ponytail. “What size shoe do you wear again?”

“Eight.”

“Darn. Why are your feet so big?”

I glare at her, and she giggles. Then she screams, “Mommy! I need your help!”

Mrs. Cho appears in Lillia’s doorway a minute later. Breathless, she says, “Lilli, you scared me half to death. Don’t scream like that—” Then she notices me standing by the mirror, and her face lights up. “Oh, Kat! You look gorgeous!”

“She’s wearing it to prom,” Lil tells her.

Confused, Mrs. Cho says, “I thought you—”

“Can she borrow a pair of your shoes, Mommy?”

I break in. “Wait. Mrs. Cho, I don’t need—”

“I’ve got the exact right pair,” Mrs. Cho says, nodding to herself. She disappears into the hallway and comes back with a red shoe box. Valentino. Shit.

They’re gunmetal gray, studded, with a pointy toe. Rocker chic. Brand-new. I’m pretty sure these shoes are worth more than my car. They’re freaking gorgeous.

Lillia pouts when she sees them. “I’d die for those shoes. God, I wish I had big feet like you guys.”

At the same time Mrs. Cho and I say, “Size eight isn’t big!”

I strap my feet in. Suddenly I’m four inches taller, and the dress even hangs on me differently. “What if I mess them up? Mrs. Cho, do you have a cheaper pair of shoes I could borrow? Like, Aldo or Nine West?”

Mrs. Cho smiles at me. “Honey, you were made to wear these shoes with that dress. No arguments.”

When she leaves to go get me a clutch, Lil says, “Just promise me you won’t smoke in my dress.”

“I won’t. I’ve been really good lately.”

Lillia gives me a look like she doesn’t believe me. “Smoking gives you wrinkles around your mouth, did you know that? Plus, and I’m sorry to say this, but it makes your clothes stink.”

I groan. “Stop with the lectures, Lillia!”

As prim as can be, she says, “Fine, but please just don’t smoke in my dress, that’s all I ask.”

I roll my eyes.

We’re going back and forth over how to do my hair and what color lipstick, when I notice Nadia standing outside Lillia’s door with her arms crossed. Reminds me of when she was a kid and she would spy on Lil and Rennie and me. Our eyes meet. She says, “That color lipstick isn’t right for her. It’s too bright. It should be darker. Richer. More like burgundy.”

Surprised, Lillia says, “I don’t know if I have anything that dark.”

“I do,” Nadia says with a begrudging sigh.

I wink at her. “Thanks, beotch.”

She gives me a tiny smile back and disappears to find the lipstick. Lil falls back onto her bed and says, “I’m sad that high school’s almost over. It feels like you and I just found each other again but we already have to say good-bye.”

“Lil, we have the whole summer! Let’s just make it amazing, all right?” Lil nods a teary kind of nod. I go sit next to her on the bed, and in an instant we’re hugging and crying. Over Rennie, over Mary, over everything.