CHAPTER THE EIGHTH, in which Satchel, Dylan and second indie kid Finn throw themselves into research in the library, trying to find any mention of the Immortals; later that week, at Kerouac’s funeral, Satchel’s parents hug her and give her space to grieve; meanwhile, the Court of the Immortals, unable to live in this world for more than brief periods, begins its search for permanent Vessels in earnest; they find Satchel’s uncle, passed out in his police cruiser on a dark wooded road known for its night-time activities; “Sandra?” he says on waking, just before his head is removed from his shoulders, not entirely painlessly.

“But I’ve got German to study,” Meredith says, still protesting from the back seat, holding up her German worksheets.

“Don’t you like miniature golf?” I say.

“No one likes miniature golf,” she says. “You don’t like it either. You’re just doing it ironically.”

“Well, that’s probably true. Henna can’t even hold a club and it was her idea.”

“I still don’t see why I have to come.”

She has to come because no one goes out alone any more. Ever since the zombie deer, ever since two indie kids died. Me and Jared only do shifts together at Grillers, Mel claims she needs to study for finals so gets out of all her night hours at the drugstore, and Henna’s off work from the Java Shack anyway because of her arm. My mom is down at the capital more and more for her campaign, so Mel and I take over driving Meredith to her nightly lessons. And prom night (under three weeks away now, tick, tock) with all of us going together is now definitely on, Nathan included and Dr Call Me Steve a late addition, because we don’t think it’s safe any other way. Fun, fun, fun.

Mel glances in the rear-view mirror. “Quit complaining or we won’t take you to Bolts of Fire.”

“Mom hasn’t said yes yet, remember?” I say, as Mel pulls onto our little bit of freeway. “And we can still make her say no.”

“She’ll say yes,” Meredith insists. “I’ve already got the tickets– Oh.” She says the last like she’s revealed too much. Which she has.

I turn around in my seat. “You want to say that again?”

Meredith looks panicked, and I can see her brain whirring as she tries to think of an explanation.

“Meredith,” Mel warns.

Meredith sighs in defeat. “I already got the tickets.”

“When?” Mel asks.

“How?” I say.

“My credit card,” Meredith says, quietly.

“Your what?” Mel asks, her voice as sharp as a paper cut. Meredith stays quiet. “Mom got you a credit card, didn’t she?”

“It’s not mine,” Meredith says. “It’s linked to Mom’s.”

“Does it have your name on it?” I ask.

“Well … yes, but–”

“I don’t believe this,” Mel says with a harsh laugh. “That woman.”

“You both have jobs,” Meredith complains. “I had no way of buying things for myself.”

“You’re ten, Merde Breath,” I say.

“Don’t call me that. She got tired of always having to input the number for my online music courses.”

“So she got you your own card,” Mel says. “Because that’s the most logical solution to that non-problem.”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“I wonder why.” Mel’s voice is angrily light. “God knows she treats us all equally so why would there be any problem?”

“I’m being really responsible with it.”

“Bolts of Fire tickets weren’t responsible,” I say.

Meredith looks shifty. “She won’t get the bill until after the concert.”

This actually makes both Mel and me laugh out loud.

“I only had a short time for the fan-club tickets!” Meredith rushes on. “If I didn’t get them then, I’d never have got them. Anyway, they came in the mail yesterday.” She smiles like the sun rising. “Three tickets.”

“Why three?” Mel asks. “You could have just got two. Cheaper. Less trouble later.”

“You said you’d both take me,” Meredith says. “It’s more fun if we’re all there together.”

The simple love in the way she says this makes my heart hurt a little bit. Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you.

“That’s a pretty big gamble you’re taking on Mom saying yes,” Mel says, already exiting the freeway (told you it was little).

“She always says yes to me eventually,” Meredith says. “I don’t know why.”

The mini-golf place is literally right by the freeway exit, so Mel’s already pulling into the lot. She parks and says, without malice, “It’s because you’re the best of us, Meredith.”

Meredith looks at me. “I don’t think that.”

“It’s why you’re with us tonight,” I say. “We couldn’t leave you home alone.”

“Dad’s there.”

“Exactly.”

“Is this because of all the strange stuff going on?” she asks, almost as if she’s afraid we’ll answer.

Mel and I exchange a glance and decide silently in about half a second that we’re not going to lie to her. “Yeah,” I say. “All the strange stuff.”

Meredith nods, seriously. “I thought so.”

We get out of the car. I see Henna waving to us with her good hand from the little hut where you get your putters. She’s with–

“Jared’s here!” Meredith says, happily. “But who’s that?”

And I say, “That’s Nathan.”

I only make it to the first hole, where I discover that, even a week after the accident, the slight torso twist to make a putt in mini-golf is too much for a still-aching muscle in my back. Jared surreptitiously heals it while Mel and Nathan take their turns.

“Sore?” Henna asks from a bench next to Meredith, who’s practising her German conjugations.

“It’s mostly better,” I say, sitting down next to her, gingerly. “Every once in a while I get surprised by something I didn’t know was hurting.”

“Me, too,” she says, running her fingers along her cast. “Jared helped.”

Jared has rejoined Mel and Nathan at the first hole, which is decorated with little plastic dinosaurs. Mel takes her putt, then thrusts two fists in the air. “Hole in one!” she shouts. Mel is ridiculously ace at mini-golf.

“I’m surprised your parents let you come out,” I say to Henna.

“And you would be right in your surprise,” she says.

“Ich schreibe, du schreibst, er schreibt–” Meredith whispers next to us.

“But nearly dying seems to have made a whole bunch of things clearer,” Henna says. “Don’t you think?”

“Not really, if I’m honest.”

“It has for me.”

Jared and Nathan and Mel are all laughing at Nathan’s inability to get the ball in the hole. “You’re supposed to give up at seven strokes,” we hear Jared say.

“I told my parents I was going out to see you guys,” Henna says. “They didn’t want me to, but I didn’t ask permission. Amazing the difference it makes. Being firm. Being clear.”

“Your mom and dad are right to be worried, though. Two kids are dead. They probably won’t be the last.”

Meredith pauses for a moment, then goes back to conjugating. “Ich möchte, sie möchten–”

“That’s actually the reason I gave,” Henna says. “I could have died. We could have died in that car accident. But we didn’t. I could die at home just as easily as I could die out with my friends. Or, you know, in the Central African Republic.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. ‘Ah’.”

She’s looking right at me. I don’t know what her eyes mean.

“I don’t feel any clearer,” I’m surprised to hear myself saying. “I just feel like my body is in all these different pieces and even though it looks like I’m all put together, the pieces are really just floating there and if I fall down too hard, I’ll fly apart.”

“Like a fontanelle,” Henna says.

“A what?”

“The soft spot on top of a baby’s head.” She taps the spot on her own head. “Babies’ skulls aren’t fused together when they’re born, otherwise they’re too big to get out of the mother. They’ve got this spot called a fontanelle that’s just kind of unprotected until the hardness grows in.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “I’m just one big fontanelle.”

Henna laughs lightly. Then she takes my hand in hers and holds it. “Mikey,” she says, but not like she’s about to say anything more, just like she’s identifying me, making a place for me here that’s mine to exist in. I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I’m grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn’t say it felt this sad.

The mini-golf park is old and really narrow, so even though Jared, Mel and Nathan are already on hole number three, they’re still pretty much just right there, laughing, looking over to where we sit. Especially Nathan.

“Ich esse, wir essen.” Meredith looks up. “I’m hungry.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Nathan calls. Henna lets go of my hand. “Anyone want any food?” Nathan asks, coming over.

“A hot dog,” Meredith says.

Nathan raises his eyebrows.

“A hot dog, please,” Meredith says.

“I’ll help you,” Henna says, getting up. She looks back to me. “You want anything, Mikey?”

“Ich liebe,” Meredith mutters under her breath, “du liebst–”

I aim a sideways kick at her. “Nah, I’m good.”

I watch them head back to the hut which sells your standard mini-golf food: hot dogs and nachos. I watch Henna go inside with Nathan. Jared’s watching, too, then he looks at me and I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking it’s long past time I gave Henna up.

And maybe he’s right.

But she held my hand again. And said she was seeing things more clearly.

I wish I was.

“Two!” Mel shouts, triumphantly.

Midway through our second round of mini-golf – Mel won the first with a score of fifty-nine; Jared had eighty, Nathan ninety-seven, which was pleasing – we have a surprise visitor.

“Hey,” a tired-looking Dr Call Me Steve says, holding his car keys, still wearing hospital scrubs.

“Hey,” Mel says, every word of her body language turning into a smile. “You came.”

“Who could say no to putt-putt golf?”

“Almost anybody,” Meredith says, writing down answers about the adventures of Dieter and Frederika in Hamburg.

“Can I play in?” Steve asks, after Mel introduces him around. (“Wow,” he said, gently palpating my nose. “That’s healing amazingly fast.”)

“You can have my spot,” Nathan says. “I’m doing so bad you’ll be lucky to break a hundred.”

Steve takes Nathan’s putter. “I like a challenge.”

We’re on the new course at the back of the mini-golf place, though it’s only new like New Mexico is new. It used to be jungle-themed but the statues of “natives” were so racist they all had to be removed. Now it’s just leafy with one chipped-paint, fibreglass tiger in the middle, emitting a tinny, pre-recorded roar every four minutes.

Henna immediately joined Mel at the arrival of Dr Steve – for moral support, I guess – so Meredith and I get Nathan all to ourselves on the bench. Yippee.

“How you feeling, Mike?” he says, sitting down between us.

“Oh, you know,” I say, not meeting his eye. “Just the physical and emotional fallout of a near-death experience. Nothing big.”

He laughs. Which I find irritating. “I know,” he says. Which I find even more irritating.

I get up. “Anyone want any more food?”

“Nein,” Meredith says, crunching a nacho. “Ich habe viele Nachos.”

“You don’t like me,” Nathan says, and I stop.

“Who says I don’t like you?”

“Every single vibe coming off you. Unless I’m wrong?”

I hesitate – not on purpose – just long enough to make it awkward.

“I suppose I kind of get it,” he says. “You’re already ninety per cent out of here, aren’t you? All you want to do now is spend the last weeks as close to your friends as possible because you don’t want to think about leaving them behind when you go. But here comes this interloper, breaking up your tight-knit group right at the time you want it the most.”

“Well,” I say. “Yeah.”

He looks at his hands, flexing them and unflexing them. “When we lived in Florida, my sister was a full-on indie kid, so I became kind of a mascot to them. The little one” – he glances at Meredith – “who tagged along and said funny things.” He looks at his hands again. “And then the vampires came. My sister fell in love. Before it was all over, she and every one of her friends were dead.”

“Oh, no,” Meredith says, wide-eyed.

“My mom’s been moving around from base to base ever since. Keeping busy so she never has to think about it. But we show up here and now there’s two dead kids and I don’t know anyone…”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, all right.” We’re quiet for a second, then I say, “You know, Henna’s older brother–”

“I know,” he says. “Cool to talk to someone who knows what it’s like.”

Shit. I mean, come on. How am I supposed to react to all of this? How am I supposed to hate him now?

“You have a really stupid haircut,” I say.

“I’m self-conscious about my ears,” he says.

There’s a burst of laughter from the golfers and we look up to see Mel pulling a sheepish Dr Steve out of the six-inch-deep water trap.

“We good?” Nathan asks.

“Oh, God,” I groan. “We were until you said ‘We good?’.”

Mel and Dr Steve head off to a late dinner together, so I take her car to drive Meredith home. Jared drives himself, and Nathan gives Henna a lift. Before they go, Henna hugs me.

“Clear doesn’t mean I know what to do,” she says, so only I can hear it. “It’s just that the accident made it clear how important you are to me, Mikey. How much I love you.”

“Just not in your stomach,” I try to smile.

She doesn’t say anything for a second, then, “You working Sunday?”

“No,” I say. “Getting graduation pictures in the afternoon. I’ll be under about five inches of make-up.”

“Pick me up after,” she says. “I’ll skip evening church. Let’s do something. Just the two of us.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

And then she leaves. With Nathan.

Meredith falls asleep singing “Bold Sapphire” while we’re driving home. She wakes up once and says, “I wish you and Mel weren’t going away.” Then she curls into herself and goes back to sleep.