“I can show you, Zora.”
A pale waif of a girl slid from Mads’s shadow. I jumped high enough to drip cookies ’n’ cream up my arm.
“Jesus, Lorelei.”
“Sorry,” Lorelei said. Her pale cheeks flushed with brilliant color. She had a habit of coming out of nowhere, but I don’t think she meant to do it. You probably get pretty good at being quiet and sneaking around when your dad is pig-face-on-a-rampage Buster Gates. Only her ability to talk helped me pick her out from the actual ghosts. She pushed her glasses up her nose. “You c-can borrow my phone, if you want to see what got posted.”
“Yeah, in a minute. Thanks.” I cleaned up the mess and ran the cups back to the man at the window. “Twelve twenty-five, please.”
“You didn’t deliver them upside down,” he said, looking smug. “I get them for free if you don’t deliver them upside down, right?”
“That’s Dairy Queen,” I said. “We just do it for the kids. Twelve twenty-five.”
He scowled but handed over the cash. When he reached for the cups, he brushed my prosthetic fingers. He froze and stared long enough to make anger flush over me. I let it pass right through.Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.I let go of my desire to ring the Bell of Shame.
“Is there something wrong with my hand?” I asked, voice flat.
“Oh. No. Sorry.” He hurried away without waiting for his change.
The same stares and mild hesitation happened with the next five customers, until an older woman came up with her granddaughter, an adorably runty little girl who squealed with delight when I leaned out of the window with the freezie upside down. Not a blink from that old lady. Classy as hell.
I didn’t get a chance to take Lorelei up on the video offer until an hour later. The weather shifted from chilly breeze to warm stagnation. In Indiana you learn not to rely onconsistency from the weather. As the lines died, we settled into our routines: Mads cleaned up spills around the machines and topping dispensers; Hal sorted through receipts at the counter; Lorelei gathered up a trash bag to take out back.
At different points I caught each one of them glancing at me. I didn’t say anything about it, and neither did they. The three of them were the closest thing I had to friends, so if they believed I had anything to do with the fire, there was no hope for anyone else.
“Here, Zora,” Lorelei said once she’d come back from taking out the trash. She handed me her phone. “Just... don’t get mad enough to throw it, okay?”
“I’m not gonna throw your phone.” I took it from her. “I don’t break other people’s property.”
The video was of me and Greta arguing outside George Masrell’s house. The person shooting the video had been nearby, in one of the groups I’d hidden behind.Tourists. The jerks always had their phones out. We hadn’t been yelling, but everything we said came through loud and clear.
It didn’t look good. The only thing that gave me any sympathy was my age—it clearly looked like an older woman accosting a teenage girl. But next to Greta, I looked grungy, and I blew up so fast it looked like I’d done something wrong.
The comments were all accusations. I started counting down from ten. One near the top saidI go to school with her!Somehad my name. One recounted my family’s highlights from the last ten years: Mom going missing, Dad going to prison, me going to the hospital. Laid out for the Internet to see, forever.Zora did it, Zora’s the worst, Zora sets fires.
The pressure of the day finally snapped my resolve.
“Fu—” I began, then caught Hal’s pointed glance out the shop windows at the customers, and bit off my sweet release. “—dgecakes!”
“The news got ahold of this,” Mads said. “I don’t think it’s going to die down now.”
“Aren’t there laws about showing people being wrongfully accused of things on video?”
Hal shrugged. So did Mads. Lorelei gave me a scared-mouse look and slipped her phone from my clawed hand.
If the Harrisburg news crews had gotten ahold of that video, that meant my name—and probably my image—was past Addamsville’s borders. People would look me up. They’d make connections. Sadie would have to deal with it at work. All I could do about that was pray it brought her more customers, even if it was only the true-crime podcasters.
Almost as soon as I thought of her, Sadie pulled up in the parking lot.
I waited at the window for her, arms hanging out and head poking through. She was wearing the neon orange top and black pants she’d worn to the salon that morning. Her hair wasstill up and her black-frame glasses still perched on her nose. That was about par for the course; no time to go home and shower or change her clothes. And once she did go back home, she wasn’t leaving again. She looked angry, like she almost always did outside the bluffs—angry and distracted, rubbing at her ears.
Her boyfriend Grim trailed behind her. He wore a dark-blue jumpsuit with the words GATESAUTOMOTIVESCRAPYARDprinted across the breast pocket. Grim didn’t walk anywhere; he loped. Lanky and long, hands in his pockets, his wild tangle of dark hair bouncing with him as he went. He could pass for a stoner, but even the stoners in town thought he was weird.
Sadie’s lips drew into a thin line. Grim looked worried, but he always looked like that.
“Hey,” I said as they drew near. “What’s the matter, Grimmie?”
Grim gave me a sad smile. “You’ve probably had a rough day, huh?”
