WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN, I came home from school, went into the house and got a snack, and then walked across the lawn to the office. I opened the door and found Dad standing in the center of the room in an apron that said YOUR OPINION WASN’T IN THE RECIPE, singing that awful song from Titanic, while Mom was sitting at the desk—atop which rested a severed arm—crying. I turned right around and left, and to this day I still have no idea what I walked in on.
Finding Zora Hood pounding on the window of my car in a Taco Bell parking lot while shouting July’s name produces about the same level of confusion. The major difference being that I can’t walk away this time.
“Hey, Zora. What’s going on?”
I’ve known Zora on and off since middle school, and we were both in theater together with July. She’s the kind of person who drifts through different groups but never sticks with one for long. Basically the M&Ms of school acquaintances; neither particularly exciting nor objectionable.
“Dino?” Zora’s breathing heavily and her olive cheeks are speckled pink. “Where’d you come from?”
“Taco Bell,” I say, so that I don’t have to explain why I’d walked from Walmart. “What’re you doing to my car?”
Zora adjusts her glasses and squints. “Your car?”
“My mom’s, officially,” I say. “But she hates driving, so I use it more than she does.”
“Then why was July Cooper driving it?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Not cool. You know July’s dead. It hasn’t even been a week.”
“I’m serious!” Zora’s voice rises into its upper range. “She was at 7-Eleven and I caught her reflection in the door’s glass and I was like, ‘Hey! That looks like July Cooper.’ ” Her glasses fog up and she pulls them off and cleans them with the hem of her blouse. “So then I followed her down Military and stopped at a light and it was her! She made a U-turn and I caught up to her here.”
I have so many questions. Not that I can ask the person who may have the answers seeing as I have no idea what’s going on or if she’s even in the car.
July’s the actress, not me, but I do my best to look skeptical. “Nothing you said is even remotely possible.” I hold up my hand and cut Zora off before she can jump in. “First of all, this is my car. I drove it here so I could enjoy a burrito. I parked it here, where it’s been the entire time. Second, July Cooper is dead. Want to guess how I know? Because her body is in the freezer in the mortuary less than fifty feet from my house.”
Zora rests her hands on her hips. “I know what I saw.”
Motion behind Zora catches my attention, and I glance up to see a Palm Shores police officer exiting Taco Bell and walking toward his cruiser. Zora sees me looking and turns.
“Good,” Zora says. “He’ll settle this.” She waves the officer down. “Excuse me! Officer, sir?”
The cop stops, looks, sighs heavily, and then trudges toward us. He’s wearing the look of a man who just finished a bunch of tacos and wants only to find a quiet place to park his cruiser and take a quick nap. Instead, he gets us. His name tag reads RODRIGUEZ.
“Problem?”
Before Zora can take control of the situation, I leap to answer. “Sorry, sir. I came out of the restaurant and this girl was pounding on my window, and I want to go home but she won’t let me leave.”
“That’s not true!” Zora says, her voice reaching dangerously high.
Office Rodriguez barely hides the eye roll. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Tell him how you claim you chased this car, which has been in the lot for at least an hour, down Military and that the driver was a girl who died last week.”
“It was!” Zora says. “Her name’s July Cooper, and she was driving!”
“Are you sure this girl is actually dead?”
I nod. “Look, Officer, I don’t know why Zora’s doing this—she goes to my school, but I don’t know her well—but the girl she’s talking about? She was my best friend and her funeral is tomorrow and none of this is funny. I just want to go home.”
Officer Rodriguez looks from me to Zora. “Wait here a minute.” He motions at Zora and leads her off to the side.
“I hope this was worth it,” I whisper. If July heard me, she doesn’t reply.
Zora talking emphatically, pointing at the car, and Rodriguez keeps calmly telling her to slow down. My phone buzzes and I pull it out. Another text from Rafi. A few. I read the chain but the officer returns before I finish.
“You can go,” he says. “My condolences about your friend.”
A flood of relief rushes through me at those words. I was terrified he was going to call my parents and they were going to show up and everyone was going to find July in the car, and then I’d have to explain why, and my life as I know it would be over forever seeing as, dead or alive, July’s still a corpse.
I turn to open the door but—duh!—it’s locked.
“Problem?” Officer Rodriguez asks.
“Forgot to unlock it,” I say loudly, hoping July gets the message. I reach into my pocket where my keys would normally be and pretend to press the unlock fob. The locks click and the lights flash and I could kiss July if I didn’t also want to shove her out of a speeding car into the middle of the interstate.
“Drive safely,” the officer says, and heads toward Zora.
July’s hand pokes up from between the seats and shoves the keys at me. As quickly as I can, I start the car and leave. July stays hidden, and I don’t speak. When I’m sure we’re far enough from Taco Bell, I turn down a side road, stop in front of Belvedere Park, and get out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
I’m sitting on the wood fence when July approaches.
“Thanks—” she starts, but I cut her off.
“Do you know how that felt?” I ask. “I just gaslighted Zora Hood. The best-case scenario is that the cop lets her go home and Zora spends the next ten years in therapy trying to convince herself that she didn’t actually see you at 7-Eleven!”
“I know but—”
“Worst case is that he humiliates Zora by calling her parents and making them pick her up. Either way, I lied to her and a cop in order to convince Zora that the truth isn’t true, all to save your ass!” My lip is quivering, and my whole body is shaking.
July clenches her fists and squares her shoulders. “So what? She deserves it.”
“No one deserves that.” My face twists in disgust. I know she doesn’t have a heart, but I didn’t know she was heartless.
“Then take me back,” she says. “Or give me the keys and let me go alone. I’ll admit to the officer that Zora was telling the truth about seeing me. That I died and returned and stole your car so that I could go to 7-Eleven.”
The way she’s standing, I believe she’s serious. And I’m almost willing to let her. This situation is so out of my control, but letting July go wouldn’t make anything better. It’d only drag me and my family into it.
“You’re not going.”
July grabs for the keys, but I pull them out of her reach. “Give ’em here!”
“Stop it!”
But she doesn’t. She reaches past me to get them and I lean away to keep them from her, but I lose my balance and topple backward. July slips and falls on top of me, and not even that stops her. She wrestles for the keys, and I go to grab her hand, but something comes off between my fingers.
“What the hell was that?” I scramble for my phone and turn on the flashlight.
“Oh, fuck!” July’s holding up her right hand, and her thumb is all muscle and sinew. And cradled in my hand is the skin, slipped off like a glove.
“Gross!” I toss the skin at her and crab walk backward.
July picks up the skin and tries to slide it on, but it looks loose and wrinkled. She keeps trying, but when it’s clear it’s not going to stay on, her entire body deflates. Well, not really. It’s actually likely that she’s already filling with gases that are going to have to escape sometime, and I’m hoping it’s not while we’re together.
I climb over the fence and pop the car trunk. I dig around in my mom’s roadside apocalypse kit, which is a lot like a regular emergency kit except that it also contains powdered coffee, a couple of MREs, and a few other things one might need if their car broke down at the end of the world.
July’s still sitting in the grass when I return. “Here,” I say, and toss her a tiny tube of superglue, and then sit across from her. “Spread it on your thumb and then slide the skin back on.”
I watch while July struggles to position it straight. The ragged edges where it tore look horrible, but she smears some glue there too. I have no idea how I’m going to explain that to my parents when they prepare July’s body for the funeral.
“What did you mean before when you said Zora deserved it? I thought you were friends.”
The more July fiddles with her thumb, the worse it looks, but it’s no use telling her that. “We are. She’s my understudy.”
“So?”
“Did you see her hair?” July asks. “That was Tracy hair. Which means she’s already stepped into my role. Mine. Do you know how long I’ve been dying to play Tracy Turnblad?”
“Since forever,” I say, which is true. Hairspray is July’s favorite musical, but she could never get Mrs. Larsen to stage it at our school, so she auditioned for the summer program at Truman High, which is open to all students, when she learned they were putting it on, which I know thanks to Benji.
“Exactly! And now Zora’s going to ruin it with her annoying voice and her skinny, waifish ass.”
“Crapping on someone for being thin isn’t any better than crapping on them for being chubby.”
July lets out a frustrated sigh. “I know, I know.”
“Then stop doing it.”
July doesn’t respond, but I said what I needed to. I doubt it will make her stop, but hopefully it’ll make her think before the next time she calls me a skeleton. Besides, her anger at Zora makes sense now.
“You gonna get your phone?” July asks.
I didn’t even notice it buzzing, but I mute it. “It’s only Rafi. Again.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants me to come over. He’s having an issue with one of our friends and he wants me there to help him.”
July’s face perks up. “Then let’s go.”
“We’ve been through this. Your skin is literally falling off. Don’t you think it’s time we talked about what to do with you?”
“I’m a person, Dino. I decide what to do with me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No one cares what you meant.” July holds out her thumb, though it’s tough to see it in the dark. “This doesn’t prove I’m dead. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Anyone dead,” I mumble.
“What’re you scared of? I promise I won’t embarrass you.”
My phone vibrates, and I know what it says without needing to look at it. Rafi is almost as persistent as July when he wants to be. “Fine,” I say. “But we’re only staying for a few minutes.”
“Deal.”
“And after, we are going to discuss what’s happening to you and decide what to do.”
“Maybe,” July says, and I know it’s the best I’m going to get.
I let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess you’ll finally get to meet Rafi. But first, we have to make a stop.”