She remembered his eyes, sea blue and bright with the sting of her laughter. A wave of acid raced up her throat. She scrambled to her knees and splashed the linoleum with vomit.
“Gross!” someone cried, and suddenly there was a crowd around her that she hadn’t noticed a moment earlier. She wiped her cheek with her sleeve. She wanted to tell them all where to stick it, but if she opened her mouth again, the rest of her breakfast would find its way out.
“Oh dear,” a voice said, and there were hands on her. Warm, maternal hands pulling her up and away. “Are you all right?” the voice was asking. Evie couldn’t answer. She was being dragged down the hall, feet stumbling over each other.
“We’ll just get you to the nurse’s station,” the woman said. Evie glanced at her. She recognized the teacher but couldn’t remember her name. Everything seemed to be slipping from her head.
“But my—” Evie craned her head around to look for her backpack, but the teacher didn’t slow down.
“We’ll get someone to bring your things, don’t worry,” she said.
At the nurse’s station, Evie was given an empty wastebasket and told to lie on a cot. She didn’t bother lying down. She hugged the basket and just stared over the rim at a spot on the floor, letting it shift in and out of focus. Eventually a nurse arrived to take her temperature.
“I’m fine,” Evie said around the glass rod. “Just ate something weird.”
“Well, you’re a bit too hot for my liking.” The nurse wrinkled her brow at the numbers. “I’d really like it if you could lie down.”
Evie scowled at her, then fell to her side, sneakers still on the floor, empty basket tipping sideways.
“That’ll do,” said the nurse, going back to her desk.
Evie barely blinked as she stared out the open door into the now-empty hall. All the normal crush and noise of the school had faded, leaving just the lonely squeaks of shoes racing the last bell to class. She could hear her own heart beating in her ear.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
A moment later the phone rang. The nurse murmured into it, pretending not to look at Evie, who stared back, expressionless. When the nurse put the phone down, she had a crease between her brows.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “we’re having a little trouble reaching your mom.”
Evie just blinked. So?
“Are you able to get home on your own, or would you like to just stay here for the rest of the day?”
Evie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to decide what would be worse—lying here all day in her puke-stained hoodie or going home, where Shaun’s ghost lay waiting. Acid scratched in her throat again.
“Psst.”
She opened her eyes. Sunny stood just outside the doorway with Evie’s backpack in her hand. She jerked her head sideways, gesturing for Evie to follow.
“I think I’ll go home,” Evie told the nurse. “I’ll just call my mom on the way.”
“Well, all right. But take this.” She scribbled an absence slip and handed it to Evie. “And you get straight into bed when you get there, okay?”
Evie stood, dropping the wastebasket onto the cot behind her. She shoved the slip into her pocket and mumbled thanks to the nurse. Outside the room, she let Sunny put a bony arm around her. It was more comforting than it looked.
“Where are we going?” Evie whispered. There was no way Sunny was taking her straight home.
“The question is, where do you want to go?” Sunny grinned and raised her other hand. From it hung a worn-soft, black leather keychain, jangling a half dozen keys.
Evie’s eyes popped. “How did you get those?”
Sunny shrugged, still grinning. “I asked.”
“Seriously? And he just gave them to you?”
“Not exactly,” Sunny said, and threw her hair back with a laugh.
They crossed the school parking lot to a blue Buick parked under a big maple tree. It was pocked and battered with rust and dings. A total boat, with a trunk big enough to hide bodies in. It was called a Century, and it was about that old.
Evie stopped and stared. Réal Dufresne’s car. She’d ridden in it dozens of times, but never shotgun and never with anyone but him at the wheel. It was always the boys who sat up front with Ré. It was always Shaun, Alex squished between her and Sunny in the back, his bony joints all jammed into her.
Sunny hopped in the driver’s side like she’d done it a hundred times and leaned across, unlocking the other door with two fingers. Evie swallowed her nerves and slid into the passenger seat, where that familiar burnt-oil-and-sour-milk smell greeted her.
Sunny’s brow arched wickedly as the engine roared to life. Evie was surprised at her confidence with the massive steel machine. The Buick was sacred ground. Réal and his car—they were like two parts of the same object, though it was a really shitty, old car.
As the girls nosed out of the parking lot, Evie’s eyes darted sideways. A police cruiser was parked half up on the boulevard, and two officers were striding across the lawn toward the front doors of the school.
She remembered the principal saying police were investigating Shaun’s death. What did that mean? “Do the police think Shaun was murdered?” she asked aloud.
Sunny glanced at her. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I guess so.” They turned left and rolled out into traffic, heading away from those dark blue uniforms. “He was, like, really beat up, Ev. That doesn’t happen by accident.”
Alex’s description floated through her head again. No shoes, no teeth. “Who would do that to him?”
Sunny tsked her tongue. She didn’t say anything for a second, just reached across and squeezed Evie’s hand.
Then she dropped it, taking up the wheel again. “Asshats, that’s who, Evie,” she said. “People with no respect for true grandiosity. Cock monkeys. Penis wrinkles.” Sunny went on, throwing out every expletive she could think of, until
