THE VOICES FROM the common room intrude on my solitary grief. Zoya and Veronica are exclaiming over something in impressed tones, Ruth shushing them. I roll out of bed. Tears soak my pillow. My head aches from crying, but at least it’s a tangible pain.
I push open the door and walk toward the sound, swathed in an oversized Atwood sweatshirt, my hair frizzing the edges of my vision. I’m already packed to go to Veronica’s place over the break. My parents didn’t put up a fight—they’re going out of the country for the holidays anyway. Luke is gone, God knows where. He left a voicemail a few weeks ago to tell me he was sorry for everything, that he hadn’t spoken to Dylan since, that he was trying.
I love him. I hate him. Both can be true, and neither one changes what I need to do. I have to protect myself.
I didn’t call him back. I don’t know if I ever will. If even the dead can change, maybe he can, too, but I will not be sacrificed to that hope ever again.
Veronica, Ruth, and Zoya are clustered around the coffee table, bent over something that it takes my cotton-wrapped mind a few seconds to recognize. The Grave Belles pages.
I found them when I was packing, shoved in the back of my desk drawer where they’ve been since Del—Delphine—gave them back. I threw them in the trash last night, unable to stand looking at them. They must have fished them out. “What are you doing?” I ask.
Veronica looks up with an accusatory expression. “Are these yours?”
“I threw them away,” I say by way of answer, stepping forward to grab the page she’s holding. She yanks it out of the way.
“Why? They’re fantastic,” she says. “Why didn’t I know you could draw?”
“Please tell me there’s more,” Zoya says. “I have to know what happens.”
Ruth is carefully stacking the pages back in order, pausing to read each one as she does. She stops, looks up. “Eden, these are really good,” she says. “How long have you been working on this?”
“A few years,” I admit. I stare between them. I’ve kept Grave Belles hidden for so long, and suddenly I can’t remember why.
“I told you she was the sneaky one,” Veronica says in a voice filled with—pride? “Why the heck didn’t you let us read this?”
“It’s just doodles. I know that you . . .” I stop myself. Take a deep breath. “I was afraid that it wasn’t as good as something you could draw. Or something Zoya could write. I thought you’d think it was silly or . . .”
“Eden, babe. We need to work on your self-esteem,” Veronica informs me.
“Is this what you want to do?” Zoya asks. “Draw comics?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I say. “Yes. Or write. Or something. I’m not sure. I don’t have things figured out like you all do.”
“You don’t have to,” Ruth reminds me.
“What you do have to figure out is how this ends,” Zoya says. “Because right now it’s a cliffhanger, and I may actually die if I don’t find out what comes next. At least tell me it’s a happy ending.”
They look at me expectantly. “They live,” I say, a small smile at the corners of my mouth. “They both live, and they’re together, and they’re happy. That’s how it ends.”
Quietly, Veronica reaches out a hand. She draws me down to the floor beside her, and I settle there, her head resting on my shoulder. “Tell us. The whole thing,” she says.
Lenore looks for Belle, but she’s missing. And so is the gravedigger’s shovel, and a rope . . .
I sit with my friends as rain begins to fall against the window.
It’s only the rain. The night is empty and still and calm. The Narrow lies neatly within its banks.
Deep beneath the surface, a drowned girl with nothing left to reach for surrenders to the undertow.