Evie wondered what bug had crawled up Sunny’s butt and died, but she said nothing, just counted streetlights as they went by.
“Earth to Evie!” Sunny snapped impatiently. “God, you’re so spacey, Ev. Seriously, if you don’t want to talk, why did you call me?”
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just been kind of a weird week.”
“Yeah,” Sunny agreed. “Tell me about it.” But neither of them said anything more.
Sunny drove toward town just a little over the speed limit. It was a bad habit every local shared—knowing the roads too well. Letting their shapes unfurl beneath the wheels, curves and dips and hidden stops as familiar as old gloves. Evie pitied the rare tourist who found himself a car length ahead of Cold Water drivers like Sunny, her high beams up his tail, insistent, annoyed, shouting, Go faster.
On the south side of the highway, just before town, a flat-roofed strip mall stretched out. Its faded fluorescent-lit signs twitched and flickered, though the shop windows were mostly dark. The parking lot was empty, just a handful of cars catching red lights off the Chinese restaurant at the far end of the strip. Sunny pulled in, parking in front of the late-night pharmacy.
“I gotta pick up a prescription,” she said. “You coming in?”
Evie shrugged. “Sure.”
There was a nicer pharmacy on Hope Street, just across from the Olympia. It was homey and well stocked, with leaded windows lit by string lights. Its aisles were filled with the plastic-vanilla scent of decorative candles, more like a gift shop for the unwell than an actual drugstore.
This place was its opposite. Dingy and medicinal, with cold fluorescent lighting. Dust bunnies huddled under the shelves, awaiting extermination. Evie followed Sunny inside, but the other girl took off toward the back with a speed that said she didn’t actually want the company.
Instead of chasing her, Evie wandered the aisles, poking through bins of cheap chocolate and tubes of sunscreen, the bright lights making her feel as faded as an old photograph. It was nearly closing time. She and Sunny were the only customers, maybe the only ones in hours, but the girl at the cash didn’t once look up from her magazine.
Evie ran her fingers over plastic pots of eye shadow, lip pencils and rows of nail polish that looked like bright, bottled candies. A whole wall devoted to making women more enticing, lips and eyes like fishing lures twisting in river water. Masks to hide behind. Evie flicked a glance in the shop girl’s direction, then slid a twenty-dollar lipstick into her shirt pocket.
“Christ, let’s get out of here,” Sunny said, stuffing a small paper bag into her fringed purse and pulling Evie along with her momentum. “This place is like a fucking zombie movie.”
Evie smiled at the girl behind the cash as they sailed past her. “Thanks,” she said.
14
E
Sunny parked behind the Olympia. A single streetlamp threw faded yellow across the parking lot and into the trees. It was barely enough light to see by as the girls picked their way down the cement steps into the park.
At the band shell, Sunny jumped up, swinging herself easily onto the stage. Evie was too short for that route and went around to the stairs at the side. She crossed the wooden planks and sat next to Sunny, her fingers gripping the edge of the stage.
Sunny had been tight-lipped all evening, which was not like her. She was never short on words like Evie was. But unlike Evie’s long silences, Sunny’s appeared to work furiously below the surface. Words seemed to boil under her tongue. Evie could almost hear them lining up to be said.
When Sunny did speak, her voice was as hard-edged as her limbs.
“What’s going on with you and Ré?”
Evie’s mouth turned to glue. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Sunny said, sounding like maybe she did know. “Seems like you guys are all super tight or something now.”
“Oh.” Evie looked down at her bare legs. She could smell the sweetness of the stolen lipstick on her mouth—it tasted like cake.
Sunny kicked her feet impatiently, boot heels smacking the wooden facing of the stage. She jutted her chin toward the park. “I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do,” she said. “That’s all.”
That dark feeling seeped into Evie’s chest again. She wanted to ask Sunny how well she thought Evie knew him. But she didn’t speak. Sunny had been friends with Réal a lot longer than she had, and maybe she was right. Maybe Evie didn’t know him at all.
Sunny’s long hair shook as she spoke, hiding her eyes. “He was with Shaun the night he died. Did you know that?” Her words were full of defiance and challenge, but they showed surprise too.
Evie looked at the side of Sunny’s face, trying to pick out the meaning behind her challenge. “I knew,” she said.
Sunny looked at her, lips pressed tight. Her eyes seemed to flick all over Evie’s face and arms, making Evie shrink behind the lipstick. Then she turned away, long hair hiding her face again. “See what I mean?” Sunny muttered. “You’re all tight now.”
Evie expected Sunny’s voice to throw the knife it always carried, but instead it was a strangled, hurt sound, laced with envy. Totally un-Sunny.
Evie sighed, looking away from her.
Inky trees blurred the edges of the star-pricked sky; dull purple light shone in the streets beyond the river. It was a warm night, and they weren’t alone in the park, but Evie didn’t know the other voices floating in the grass, and they didn’t call out to be known. “Sunny,” she said, “Shaun is dead. My boyfriend, Ré’s best friend, is dead. Ré and I kind of have a lot in common right now.”
“So what happened at the lake?” Sunny asked, with just the edge of the knife. “He’s been weird ever since then.”
“Weird how?” Evie asked. Ré had never fallen asleep
