Page 48

“Happy?” she fills in, perfectly arched eyebrows raised as she bats her dark eyelashes.

“Horny,” I correct, tone clipped.

She huffs a breath, eyeing me sideways as she drags the broom from the back of the retort toward the front, directing the cremated remains to a collection funnel. “What crawled up your hiney and died?”

I scoff, adjusting my Billie Holiday T-shirt.

She leans the broom against the wall then kneels to pull the bin of cremains from its cubby, giving it a little shake. “You’re grumpy, what’s going on, honey?”

“Do you think I’m a bitch?”

She cackles, loud, before stifling it when she catches my annoyed expression, tops of her boobs bouncing like Jell-O in a bowl. She clears her throat. “I think that you can be a little . . . harsh . . . when you feel uncomfortable.” She sets the bin on a table and rests her hands on my shoulders, sliding her palms down the dark blue sleeves of my blazer. Her big hair moves like a solid mass as she tilts her head. “When people in here thank you for what you do, how you handle each person with such care even if you didn’t know them. You say something funny, self-deprecating about how you have them fooled. Hell, you told me I could stay in the apartment, and when I thanked you it was almost like you wanted to jump out of your skin. But you have a heart of gold. Sometimes you hide it, but everyone still sees it, honey.”

I rub my tongue behind my teeth. My mother’s words don’t usually hang with me—and it was by no means the first time she’s ever called me a bitch—but hearing it yesterday in relation to Ford after making him swim across the lake stuck with me.

“Do you ever, I don’t know, think because of who you are you’re trapped?”

She must. Wanda the Wicked, unable to get a normal job in her field or an apartment with her name, can’t possibly be happy in her life in a town like Ledger.

“I think,” she says, adjusting the ruffled hem of her shirt so somehow more cleavage appears at her neckline, “that I was trapped in one situation, so I did what I had to do to get out of it.” She raises her eyebrows with her maybe-confession. “I’d rather be where I am now than where I was. I know what people say about me, but I don’t care. And you don’t seem to care. And based on what Dondi does to me with his tongue in your bed, he really doesn’t care.”

At my grimace, she giggles, picking up the cremains-filled bin and starting toward her workshop, me following.

“All I’m saying is, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If I’m going to be damned, I’d rather it be on my own terms. I decided long ago that I’d stop worrying about what was and worry about now.”

“Now,” I repeat, considering, as she sets the bin on a table and drags a magnet through its contents, nothing sticking to it.

She glances at me before dumping everything in the cylindrical canister of the cremulator, putting the lid on, and starting it. The hum fills the room as it works to turn the cremains into an even consistency.

“Now to forever,” she clarifies, “that’s what matters. What happened before?” She shrugs. “Ain’t no changing that, honey. Ain’t no point dwelling on it neither.”

“Hm.” I watch as she moves around the room to take makeup out of a drawer in preparation for the next body. Like a broken spigot blasting water, the last couple of days flood me. Ford’s words from days prior calling me scared. His face against my window after I made him swim. June’s annoying-ass texts. And Glory. Just . . . fucking Glory. “You just, what, pretend it didn’t happen?”

She snorts a laugh. “Can’t live through that and pretend it didn’t happen, honey. One piece of life doesn’t have to determine the rest is all.” In my silence: “You ever had bad sex?”

I laugh at the segue. “Haven’t we all?”

“You have sex again after that?”

She pops a bubble with her gum, and I nod. “Sure.”

“Well, think of it like sex. Just because it’s bad once, don’t mean it has to be bad forever. You find someone else, someone that knows what you need. Life ain’t no different. Who cares about the bad lay, you think about the now. The good one that’s comin’, if you catch my drift.” She winks. “Learn from the past but don’t dwell on it, you know?”

“Now to forever.” I let her slogan roll around on my tongue, unsure about its flavor. About the idea of just living today and looking at the future like all the shit that came before isn’t relevant. Like I might not be damned because every Armstrong that came before me was.

She raises her perfect eyebrows, looking at me as she rests one hand on the door to the body cooler. “Now to forever, honey.”

The linoleum I’m attempting to pry from the kitchen floor is clinging to the wood beneath it like it’s adamantly opposed to being removed, and I hate everything about renovating a house.

Molly barks and I scowl. The dog is my nemesis. Aside from eating my vibrator and shoes, she has acquired a taste for the wooden handles of tools and my best underwear.

Wren walks in—cutoff shorts, dark-blue sweatshirt with a mountain design on it, a whole stick of eyeliner smeared on her lids, and combat boots—and drops her backpack inside the door. Molly trots over to her and obediently sits, acting the opposite of the little shit-bitch she is.

“Hey,” I say without stopping my work. I push the large floor scraper like a push broom with a grunt, wedging up a mere millimeter of flooring with my efforts. “Haven’t seen you in a few days.”

She blows out a breath with a loud puff. “We had stuff with my grandparents. I had a big essay that was due and some social studies thing.”

“Ah.” I shove the scraper in vain. “I’ll be sure to dock your pay.”