Eight
I go with the first grave I can think of: Carrie Fisher. We’re still outside, but now that we’ve left the suffocation of the burial crowd, the heat has become more bearable. In fact, I swear a breeze has materialized just to breathe life back into me.
“The cemetery has always had strange connections to Disney,” I say as we walk through the windy roads, up the incline toward the grave site.
I navigate with my phone. “Walt Disney’s buried here, but they have an…
organization system. The different sections all have names.
Eventide, Graceland, Inspiration Slope, Sweet Memories, Whispering Pines, and Dawn of Tomorrow.
There’s even a heart-shaped section for babies called Babyland. ”
Beck’s walking in lockstep with me, yet I can’t fully swallow that we’re alone together right now.
After Paisley’s vigil, Beck’s one-time incident with Brendon turned into several ugly fights that left janitors cleaning blood off the Hastings asphalt and carpet alike.
Once Beck got back from suspension, she all but expelled herself.
I heard her name in the halls more than I ever saw her.
Beck crashed her car this morning. Beck came to school drunk today.
Beck is failing all her classes. Beck got kicked off the volleyball team. Beck isn’t going to graduate this year.
I don’t know how much of that is true, but a heaviness has fallen over her.
Beck makes a sound, but I’m not sure if it’s a laugh or a stifled sob. “That’s weird.” She pauses. “What section are we going to?”
I swallow, suddenly not certain where I heard about the different weird names. “I’m not sure.”
“What section is Paisley going into today?”
I shouldn’t be taking us down this rabbit hole. “Well, there’s a section for children and teens called Slumberland.”
Beck sighs. “Like a big ole slumber party, huh?”
I imagine Paisley, Harlow, and Opal having a slumber party with centuries of other dead teens and kids.
Maybe it’s the best party anyone could imagine, always going.
Maybe it’s a version of heaven. Yet I try to imagine it now, trapped in these perfectly green hills.
A view of Walt Disney Studios forever, only young people to hang out with.
It sounds like it would be fun at first, but what does it mean to have an afterlife of only Peter Pans?
Just standing here thinking about it, I’m suddenly itching to grow up.
Something my friends will never do.
We arrive at Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds’s combined grave.
Unlike the grassy knoll where my friends are buried, her and her mother’s tombstone is more of a production.
It’s situated against a wall, their caskets’ resting place set in marble and gold with a statue depicting the two of them sitting on top.
There’s already a bouquet of pink flowers sitting on the stone, but Beck finds a flower to add to the display.
She bends down to read the inscription, running her fingers along the words.
Her nail polish is chipped, nubs bitten down.
A twinge of nausea hits me as I think about what all that polish would taste like if you couldn’t stop yourself from chewing it and cracking it off your nail beds.
“You know what’s wild?” Beck says.
“What?”
“I don’t think Paisley ever saw any Star Wars movie. She dated so many nerdy guys, yet I have this distinct memory of her a few months ago, where she didn’t know who C-3PO was. She might have only ever known about him from the rides at Disneyland.”
I wonder if you can absorb every movie ever made after you die. It would almost make your life ending seem okay.
Beck bounces on the balls of her feet, hands clasped tightly together.
Eyes on the statue. I take a step closer to her, but I’m not sure if moving any more would be welcome or not.
I’ve been alive for almost eighteen years and still have no idea how to deal with people and their emotions.
The frustration hits me harder than I expect.
I don’t want to make Beck feel unsupported, but I don’t want it to feel as fake as it’s felt with everyone I’ve been around. I don’t—
“Everyone keeps talking about their deaths, but no one really wants to talk about it, y’know?” Beck says, turning to me. The redness has started to fade from her eyes.
“Yeah,” I say, despite not actually knowing what she’s talking about.
“Like, they didn’t have cancer or get hit by cars or whatever usually happens to teenagers.
They went into the woods and were found dead.
” She turns away from the graves, life siphoned back into her.
“Shit, Emma, they were found with missing parts.” Her hands gesture wildly.
“Paisley’s body was a huge chew toy for a bunch of wild dogs. ”
Paisley is dead and there isn’t even a proper body to bury.
The pieces of her that I always knew—her skin, her lips as she smiled and sneered, the curves of her body when we hugged or lay in each other’s laps—are not here.
She’s not alive and she’s not whole. None of them are. This should be a nightmare.
This is all real.
With Paisley in the ground, their story is finally over.
Beck’s mouth only twists more. “Whatever’s in that casket—I can’t stop thinking about the teeth. Something’s wrong.”
I turn to Beck as dread knots into my stomach. The only thing I remember feeling last night was visceral disgust, but is there something I missed?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Beck’s created more distance between us, but there’s something different about it. As Beck comes more alive, it’s like the space between us has suddenly gotten slippery. I would’ve skidded to a stop before reaching out to Beck before, but now I think she’d let me try to touch her in comfort.
I just can’t make the move as she puts her face in her hands, frustration with nowhere to go and no force to stop it.
“I used to be obsessed with wild dogs when I was a kid. Wolves, jackals, coyotes. I’ve forgotten a lot, but there’s one thing that came back to me as I was reading that ranger report,” Beck finally says. “Coyotes chew on bones, sure. But why on earth would they break a bunch of teeth?”
I clench my fists as the unease only grows. “There must be marrow there too, right?”
“No, there’s not. They wouldn’t.” Her nostrils flare. “But I’ve sure heard of human beings doing that. Especially when they don’t want someone to identify a body.”
Fuck.
A chill runs through my whole body.
That woman in the parking lot and on the side of the road—I had a feeling something was off about her that night.
I’ve spent eight months dismissing her as some sleep-deprived hallucination, but what if that visceral wrong feeling that overtook me was connected to what happened to Paisley, Harlow, and Opal?
They were, well, pretty randomly torn apart.
Why would animals have only taken an ear or finger? Why would they have broken teeth?
Ears, fingers, and teeth don’t have much tissue, but they do contain DNA.
Paisley said in her text that they were all going to die. Did she accidentally guess her own fate, or did she know somehow?
And if it wasn’t some random accident, if someone deliberately hurt them—the thought alone has my heart speeding up.
“You think she was murdered?” I ask.
“I do.” Beck massages her temples. “But I have fuck-all evidence. My mom would sooner die of a broken heart,” she glances up at Debbie Reynolds’s plaque, “than hear another grisly detail of what happened. Without a push from an actual adult with money, there’s no way those forest cops would want to dig into it. ”
I sigh. Beck’s theory is compelling, but she’s right. I doubt my text from Paisley is even enough to get cops to look.
My phone goes off. We both jump, our eyes falling to my screen.
My phone is on do-not-disturb, but somehow something came through.
A text from a number I’ve never seen before.
UNKNOWN: I assume you heard the news about Paisley Horne.
My blood runs ice cold.
What in the hell—?
Another text.
UNKNOWN: Your friends didn’t die because of a hiking accident. There’s something wrong with this town and your friends found out. Everyone in town knew she was dead back in October.
Beck gasps as my wooziness from this morning turns to world-turning dizziness. I bury my head between my knees. Beck grabs my phone out of my hand.
“Who the hell is that?” Beck says. She sounds like she’s on the surface while I’m underwater.
This is happening too fast. Beck just said she thought it was a murder. Who is this person? How did they get my number? How did they know what Beck and I were suspecting? How did they know we read the reports? Is someone watching us?
And more importantly, why reach out to me and not Beck?
Another text. Slowly, I sit up to read.
UNKNOWN: I want to help you. Here’s proof I’m not lying.
Then the person sends an attachment. A video.
The world turns on its head.
The thumbnail shows Paisley in selfie mode, recording herself in the woods where she died.