Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley

Author:Codie Crowley [Crowley, Codie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Published: 2024-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

IN MY DREAMS I float through Hagley, scrawling messages for my killer in the bloodred that coats my palms.

On the big wooden pumpkin sign out in front of Decker Orchards, I streak with my red fingers: I CAME BACK FOR YOU.

Slashed across the shiny steel side of the diner: YOU CAN’T GET RID OF ME.

On the weathered stone alongside the bridge over the Paulinskill: LET’S MEET AGAIN BY THE RIVER.

Down the obelisk monument by the old mill:

THIS

TIME

I’LL

BE

THE

KNIFE.

I wake up late in the day and roll over in the hammock to blink past the tangerine sunlight pouring through the windows, reflected brightly off the tops of the autumn trees outside. I hold up my hands and stare at the peeling paint that sticks to the lines of my palms, scarlet as it was in my dream.

Sam is no longer at my side, but there’s soft music humming from the record player, and I’m not alone in the attic. Fern and Dear sit opposite each other with a very vintage game of Battleship spread out on the coffee table, talking quietly.

“C-three,” Fern declares.

“You know,” Dear says as he jams a peg into one of his plastic ships, “you ain’t even supposed to be playing this game.”

“Why not?”

“Well, look at the box,” Dear says.

Fern glances over to the weathered cardboard box on the shag rug beside her. “What about it?” she asks.

“I’m just sayin’, the instructions only show cartoon men playing this game.”

“Oh.” Fern reaches for the box top and flips it over to inspect it. After some consideration she says, “Not only are they all men, they’re all white men.”

“Well, you’re really showin’ them what you think of those game-playin’ qualifications now, ain’t you?” Dear says. After a pause he announces, “F-five.”

“Miss.”

“What the hell, woman! You playin’ with submarines?”

I laugh. I can’t help it. They look over at the sound, and Fern starts to twist at the braided bracelet on her wrist. I swing my legs over the edge of the hammock and set my feet against the floor, toes warm in Sam’s wool socks.

“Hey,” I say.

“Mornin’, darlin’,” Dear says. “You all right?”

I shrug. “I’m fine.” I look down at my palms, streaked with phantom red, and I think of blood on my palms in the moonlight. “I had a weird dream, though.”

A dream that didn’t feel like a dream.

A dream that is on my hands still, like I woke up in the middle of vandalizing my hometown with taunting messages for my killer.

I look up at them, holding my palms up as evidence. “Is this, like, a thing?”

“No rest for the wicked, sweetheart,” Dear says.

Fern cuts him a look, but she sits forward and puts her elbows on her knees to tell me, “The dead don’t dream. Dreaming pierces the veil, and we’re locked here on this side of eternity. So, when we rest, we wander as vapor instead.”

“Good news is, dogs can’t get you when you’re nothin’ but mist,” Dear adds.

“It’s no fun, though,” Fern says. “I always feel like a balloon someone let loose the string to, floating around all alone out there.

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