Chapter 9 #2
That wasn’t exactly true. She’d put it on me that night at the motel, the night I met Death, and just…never asked for it back. And I’d never offered.
“You must be a special case. Shiloh never lets anyone wear that coat. I’ve tried.
” Chloe eyed the coat a beat longer, and I still don’t know if I imagined the flicker of jealousy that crossed her face like a shadow.
Whatever it was, it passed quickly. She turned on her heel and began to comb through the rack in front of her, pulling things I would’ve never even considered wearing: creamy silk camis that pooled like melted butter in my hands, cardigans with leather elbow patches, and knee-high military boots that looked like they’d been pulled from the feet of a fallen soldier.
I realized only after she’d herded me into the fitting room that she’d never asked my shoe size.
But the boots fit perfectly, like almost everything else that Chloe had selected for me.
And it wasn’t just the size that she’d gotten right, it was the way I felt in the clothes.
They were so…comfortable, and I was surprised by how much I liked the way I looked in them.
Whenever I’d worn Adeline’s clothes—whenever she’d dressed me—I’d always felt like I was in costume, and I acted in turn, awkward and sheepish, never quite feeling like myself, as if I needed to pretend to be someone else so her clothes would fit me right.
But it wasn’t the same in the outfits that Chloe had selected for me.
“What do you think?” Chloe asked, and I could tell that she really wanted to know.
I squinted at my reflection in the mirror, didn’t hate what I saw. “I like the top. But the skirt’s a bit frilly, I guess?”
“Swap it out with this one.” She handed me another. This one was sleek, silky, and so light that all I could feel was the weight of the hanger when I took it.
I checked the price tag and winced. “Can’t afford it.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Chloe. “Clothes are complimentary.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s part of our agreement,” she explained, whispering now. “We do Death’s bidding, and Death provides. I mean, in moderation, of course.”
The skirt was one hundred fifty bucks. The cardigan eighty. I couldn’t find a price tag on the cami, but I noticed that the yellowing tag at the back read, in wispy black thread, Miss Dior, so it had to be expensive too. “This is moderation?”
Chloe snatched it back. “It’s quality. Everyone needs statement pieces.”
The girls finished their shopping and loaded their selections onto the countertop.
It seemed that everyone had found something.
Skye clung to a beaver-skin muffler, insisting that, when they traveled north in the winter, it would spare her fingers from frostbite.
Iona wanted an old rotary phone that we didn’t have any room for in the RV.
Riley had discovered a tarnished Japanese chef’s knife, which she was convinced she could restore with a little bit of oil and elbow grease.
Naomi found a bracelet of bluish river pearls.
Chloe had procured what appeared to be a monster romance novel from the seventies that featured a swooning woman beside some sort of bulky swamp humanoid.
To accompany the book, several long nightgowns that matched the one the woman was wearing on the cover.
It took the shopkeeper a full thirty minutes to check us out, and the total came to over a thousand dollars.
I felt sick.
Shiloh sidled up to the register, sensing my unease as if I’d voiced it aloud. “Don’t worry about the money.” She pulled a few hundred-dollar bills from a fold-over wallet. “It’s yours to spend.”
But I shook my head. “It’s too much. I can’t accept all this—”
“Why not?” Shiloh’s gaze passed over me. She took in my new outfit, her coat that I had yet to return. “You got the clothes you needed, and…they suit you.”
I tried not to read into the compliment, but it was hard when she looked at me like that, with a question in her eyes that I didn’t know how to answer.
We got back into our cars and drove another two hours, into a nearby town to break camp for the night.
We made a pit stop at the first pharmacy we saw, and the girls stocked up on necessities—dessert-flavored lip balms, tubes of mascara, eyeliners, and craft glitter glue to be smeared over bare arms and shoulders.
“We have to look the part,” said Skye, chucking a couple of eyeshadow palettes into her cart. One of them cracked on impact, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.
“And what part are we trying to look like, exactly?” I asked.
“Pretty and interesting,” said Skye, very matter-of-fact. “If we’re going to be one of the last things people see before they die, we should attempt to be something worth looking at.”
Chloe nodded in agreement and said, “This one guy, Jordan, heart attack.” I was surprised that they could even remember the names and deaths of the people they’d killed.
“He told me I looked like his wife before he died. Said she used to wear the same lipstick and then he named the exact shade and brand I was wearing at the time. Felt serendipitous.”
“There’s nothing serendipitous about it. They’re just nervous and stalling,” said Riley, tossing a box of tampons into her cart. “Trying to find something to hold on to to prolong their lives, talk their way out of death.”
Skye nodded enthusiastically. “It’s like when you come to the conclusion of a paper you wrote the night before it was due, and you don’t know how to tie all your batshit crazy ideas together, as if you can talk your way into an A if you ramble long enough.”
“Or maybe they’re just grasping for the right moment to end on,” said Iona.
“I think it’s just a distraction,” said Naomi.
She held a basket in the crook of her arm, only a few things in it: a small round of blue eyeshadow—her signature—a carton of eggs, a bag of tangerines, and a small pack of toilet paper.
“They talk to reassure themselves. The sound of their own voice reminds them they’re still alive.
The memories of people they loved bring them comfort.
I think they’re all just desperate bids for connection.
I think that’s all anyone really wants in the end. ”
“Or maybe they don’t want it to end at all,” said Iona in a soft voice, and I wondered if she was thinking about the woman at the bar.
“I mean, can you blame them for wanting things to go on forever? If their lives suck, they want to live long enough to remedy that. And if their lives are great, then why would they want them to end?”