‘What?’
‘I’ll kiss you,’ Alice said, adopting her bossiest tone. ‘So you can go to college having kissed someone.’
‘But you just said it didn’t matter,’ Briar countered.
‘It doesn’t. But it seems like you want to kiss someone, and I’m here…’ Alice was quickly losing steam as Briar stared at her as though she were speaking a foreign language. ‘One kiss couldn’t hurt.’
‘I didn’t tell you so that you would kiss me,’ Briar said, and her voice sounded strange. For once, Alice had no idea what she was thinking. She suspected Briar was trying to bow out gracefully, but she tried one more time to make her see the benefits of the situation. She knew she could help Briar with this, if she was given the chance. And she wanted to be a good friend to her.
‘Obviously,’ Alice said. ‘I mean, I know I’m not exactly your first choice, but I’m here. So if you want to try, just to see…’
Briar’s cheeks went pink. ‘Um, oka—’
Alice kissed her before she lost the nerve to. It took a few seconds for her to realize that Briar had probably expected some sort of build-up, like what would normally happen before a first kiss. But for some reason, Alice hadn’t been able to wait.
Their mouths were frozen, touching but not moving, for a long moment. And then Alice realized she had done exactly what she’d promised, that she should pull back. So she did. For exactly one second before she leaned in more slowly and kissed her again, harder.
And Briar responded this time, her mouth moving, getting the hang of it quickly.Veryquickly. Alice got lost in it in a way she hadn’t expected, because kissing Noah had never felt this good, this right. It occurred to her that maybe this was how kissing someone was supposed to feel, that maybe Briar had been the missing element from all her previous kisses.
Because of course the person who knew her better than anyone else would also know exactly what she liked, exactly how to suck on her lower lip to get her to moan, in a way Noah never had. It should have occurred to her sooner that kissing your best friend was actually the most sensible way to go about having a good kissing experience. It was only logical.
Alice had never felt better, freer, more herself than she did while kissing Briar.
Chapter 1
Alice
Susan’s posthumous instructions had been as forceful as her ones in life. No one ever argued with Susan, not even if they’d received an email like the one Alice had the week before.
Alice, if you’re reading this, it means I’m dead. Excuse the melodrama. I would like you to speak at the funeral – you’ll know what to say.
Alice didn’t want to argue with a ghost. If she could argue with a ghost, though, she’d have some choice words for her. Primarily,Actually, I don’t know what to say. She wouldn’t have known what passage to choose to represent Susan’s life or death under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances weren’t the best. The circumstances were possibly theworst.
Alice stood behind a podium 3,665.36 miles from her London flat in front of a sea of mourners she didn’t want to look at, either because she loved them too much, didn’t know them, or was actively estranged from them. In the first row, left side, Susan’s children sat with Alice’s ex and his new fiancée.
She leaned forward, fixing her eyes on the ends of her friend Freddie’s head of floppy hair and reminded herself to tell him to get a haircut later. ‘The reading I’ve chosen is fromThe British Scientific Journal of Plants,a publication Susan cited liberally in my time with her at Camp Lakeside. You may recall her favorite passages the way that I do. This was one of them: “Within the continuum of earth’s perfect systems, death is not just death. Through death, nutrients are conserved, often relocated, and may aid in the creation of new resources.”’ She chanced a glance down at Freddie’s eyes, saw they were welling with tears, and quickly looked away. ‘“Furthermore, scientists have developed evidence to support a hypothesis that some processes of decay are the result of a dynamic cross-kingdom functional succession.”’ Freddie looked more confused than sad now, which couldn’t be a good thing. When she talked about decomposition, Alice was known to digress in ways that most people had trouble following. So she ditched the last part of what she’d spent her red-eye flight writing – honestly, the bit about the distinction between invertebrate and vertebrate species was arcane even for her – and spoke from the heart, something that was never easy for her. ‘To conclude, whether you believe death has a meaning, or is simply a necessary part of the creation of new life, we can take from this passage that nothing after death can be done alone. Genesis can only be achieved through the creation of a community. You all are that community for Susan, so thank you for being here today.’
She walked back to her row, sliding past the line of former campers she was sitting with and arriving at her seat between Freddie and Sierra. If they felt like she’d intruded on their group after nearly a decade away, they certainly didn’t show it, and Freddie had insisted she sit with them when he’d run into her, disoriented and anxious, in front of the funeral home.
‘Nice one,’ he muttered now, surreptitiously wiping at his cheeks with the back of his hand. His Welsh accent seemed to only intensify in his grief.
‘You really had to remind everyone about decomposition?’ Sierra whispered. ‘That’s morbid, even for me.’
‘Quiet,’ Alice said. Having been their camp counselor for five years, the line had a nostalgic quality. ‘It’s Briar’s turn. And, anyway, Susan’s been cremated.’
‘Next we’ll hear from Briar Elwood, Susan’s eldest,’ the funeral director announced.
Briar stood, and Alice allowed herself a first real look at her old best friend. As she walked up to the podium, Alice was struck by the familiarity of her strides, the slightly uneven gait she’d had since childhood. The walk was comforting, because it was the only thing that appeared the same about Briar on the surface.
It was the hair that was most different, Alice reflected, as Briar turned and tucked her overgrown bangs behind her ears. Briar had always had the most beautiful, long strawberry-blonde hair. Alice had run her hands through it and braided it so many times that she could recognize it by touch. She wondered if it still felt the same, even though it was cut into a bob slightly below her ears now.
‘She looks good for her mother’s funeral,’ Sierra mumbled, and Alice cut her eyes sideways in an approximation of a glare. ‘Okay, okay, not appropriate.’
Not appropriate, even if everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. Alice certainly was.
Briar rolled her shoulders back slowly, letting out a breath before speaking. ‘We’re all here because we agree that my mother was an incredible woman. It feels silly to list her accomplishments, the lives she touched, or describe her in simple adjectives. She was not… describable.’ She spoke in a low voice. Briar had never been a natural public speaker, but seemed more self-assured than Alice had known her to be. She found herself analyzing Briar’s confident posture, wondering how she could be so brave in the face of tragedy. Then again, Briar’s whole look screamedbrave, from the short hair to the stack of ear piercings and the tattoos scattered down her right arm. Alice had been there for her first tattoo, but somehow, even though she’d catalogued the changes through the years on social media, she hadn’t expected them to be real. It was like studying the characteristics of a mushroom in a book only to encounter it in the wild and be stunned by the life of it.
‘I won’t tell you the story of my mother’s life, because I assume she held you hostage at some point and told you everything, from her birth in Northumberland to her home in the mountains of Virginia where she passed, and all the places in between. She will have told you about her brief stint in the circus – that one was a hit in our house growing up – and probably also the names she had given to every tree at Camp Lakeside. I won’t tell you the story of her life, because I already had to write the obituary and, honestly, I’m tired.’ She glanced up, her eyes sweeping across the room, and Alice quickly looked at her hands. ‘That was a joke, you can laugh.’
