I closed my eyes. The wind smelled like her hairbrush.
The cops ruled it a gas leak. The town buried her on a Tuesday. I stood at the grave until everyone left, then I carved into her headstone with the same scissors:
Megan was at her locker when she heard the news. She smiled.
She blew on her nails. “Chip was a boy. And he tasted like insecurity and AXE body spray. Next question.” Jennifer--s Body -2009-
“Go to the kitchen,” I said, pulling my comforter to my chin.
She touched it, looked at the red on her fingertip, and licked it clean. “Am I?” That night, she showed up at my window. I didn’t hear the glass slide open. I just felt the cold.
I wanted to believe her. I’d been her best friend since we traded juice boxes in fourth grade, back when she cried over a dead salamander. But three days ago, I’d watched the Satanists from the next town over drag her into their van after the indie band’s show. I’d watched the fire. I’d watched her walk out of the woods, naked and smiling, while the band’s trailer burned behind her. I closed my eyes
I picked up her hairbrush. It was crusted with something dark at the bristles. “The thing inside you. Can you feel it?”
I knelt beside the pool and held her hand as the water turned clear again. Her face softened back to the girl I knew. Then it went slack.
“You said boys,” I said. “Not Chip.” The town buried her on a Tuesday
“The hunters,” I said.
The night the fire department pulled two rabbit hunters out of a ravine, no one in Devil’s Kettle talked about the smell on their breath. The hunters said they’d been chasing a buck, lost their footing, and blacked out. But the nurses noted the way their chests caved in—like something had sat on them and gotten bored.
I should have run. I should have called the police, a priest, the guy from the Discovery Channel who debunks myths. But Megan leaned in and pressed her cold forehead to mine. For one second, she smelled like the girl who let me copy her algebra homework. Then she smelled like the inside of a slaughterhouse.
“Freak accident,” she said, tilting her head. Her hair, which used to be mousy and fine, now fell in a black curtain that seemed to drink the fluorescent light. “Poor guys.”
I smiled.