My phone lights up with a message from Bethany: I’m downstairs! I run down to let her in and bring her back to my room so we can finish getting ready for the party. Daphne’s here too, standing at her mirror straightening her hair.

So, yeah, it’s death day. Bethany brought me a daisy this morning and made me cry, but those are the only tears I’ve shed today. I still haven’t talked to Liza, though—surely that’ll break the dam.

“Guys, I’m gonna go call my sister, okay?”

Bethany gives me a knowing nod, and Daphne shrugs. I haven’t told her. I don’t know why. I feel guilty that she told me about her sister dying and I haven’t said a thing about my mom, but I promise myself I’ll tell her the next time there’s an opportunity.

In the hall, Liza’s face appears on my phone screen. She’s smiling, but with her head tilted and her lips pursed, like she’s sorry we have to see each other under these unfortunate circumstances. “Hey there,” she says.

“Hey.”

“We can Skype on other days too, you know, like, not just ones that our mom killed herself on.”

I grimace. “I know. Are you okay?”

She waves a hand. “Pfft. Of course I am.” Silence. “Of course I’m…not. We’ll never be okay again, Mal.”

“Don’t say that,” I tell her. “We’re working our way through the stages.”

“What stage are you in today?”

This is a thing we do sometimes. “Denial. I’m about to go to a party and pretend it never happened. How ’bout you?”

“Anger.”

I nod and take a deep breath.

“I want to kill him. And I will, if I ever get the chance.”

“Liza.”

She shrugs. “What, is the CIA tapping our call? They wouldn’t convict me, anyway. He’s a fucking psycho and everyone knows it.”

My skin is crawling. I know she needs to talk like this, that it’s her way of dealing, but it’s too heavy for me. Maybe because I actually believe she would kill him. “Okay, Liza. Easy. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“You’ll really call tomorrow?”

“I will if you want me to.” I know she means to say I haven’t been great about texting, but I’m going to pretend I misunderstand her. I have a tight, guilty feeling in my chest.

“How could I not want you to? I’m stuck here with…” She looks around, which means Aunt Bonnie is in the trailer with her.

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. Listen, I’m going to send you another hundred this week, okay?”

“You don’t have to.”

“You don’t need it?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s got her chin on her knees now. The camera angle shifts a little and I can tell by the posters on the wall behind her that she’s in our bedroom.

“Anyway,” I tell her, “I want to. It’ll be there by Wednesday at the latest.” Even if I have to play for three hours downtown. Maybe I can try playing somewhere else…the mall, or the outdoor shopping centers nearby.

She fidgets. “Miss you.”

“Miss you too, little sis. Two more years and you’ll be here with me.”

“I hope.”

I flinch at the lack of hope in her voice. Maybe I shouldn’t have left her. I could have taken a couple of years off to practice and busk and take lessons. It wouldn’t have set me back much. “Grades?” I ask.

“Straight A’s, same as before.”

“Don’t fuck up.” I say it light, as if I’m joking, but we both know that sometimes Liza gets so angry she forgets to care. She’s read thousands of books, but I swear she would bomb a test just out of spite.

“I won’t,” she says. “I’m actually trying. Plus, I have musical theater now, and that’s really fun.”

“I’m so glad you’re doing that.” I smile at her.

“Me too.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go. Love ya.”

She pretend-kisses the phone, and we disconnect.

Back in my room, Daphne is flattening Bethany’s red curls with a straightening iron. “What are you doing to her?” I rush to Bethany’s side. “Her curls were beautiful!” God, how must Bethany feel, Daphne snatching her like that and trying to ‘fix’ her?

“Oh, stop, it’s fine.” Bethany waves a hand at me. “I’ve always wanted to see how I’d look with straight hair.”

“I can’t handle this color,” Daphne says, sectioning off another lock of Bethany’s hair. “It’s fucking ridiculous.”

I step back, chastised. “As long as you’re sure, Bethany.”

“I was a huge nerd in high school…shocking, right?” She grins, but she’s a little stiff about it, like she’s afraid she’ll botch Daphne’s work. “I never got to do the whole ‘dress up together’ thing. It’s fun.” She turns as red as her hair.

Daphne sticks her tongue out at me. “You wanna go tell Gabby and Ava we’re almost ready?”

Who? “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“They’re coming with us. Room 220.” She’s so focused on Bethany’s hair, she’s not even looking at me. It’s actually turning out really pretty—long and shiny and sunset orange—but watching them together makes me feel like an outsider. Daphne and Bethany have suctioned onto one another, I have no idea who these other chicks are, and I’m on my own, grieving my dead mother. My stomach’s heavy and cold, a big block of ice inside me. Ugh, I’m being emotional. I shrug off the feeling and leave to find the other girls.

The party is on the other side of campus, too far for Daphne, Ava, and Gabby to walk in heels, so I offer to drive. Bethany doesn’t drink, so she’ll be the designated driver later on. Gabby and Ava are bubbly cheerleader types, several degrees perkier even than Daphne, and the more they chatter, the more I want to stab myself in the head with my car keys. They make Daphne bitchy, gossiping about other girls in our dorm and swooning like idiots over different guys. This is the Daphne I don’t like—the stuck-up Daphne who thinks Rome isn’t good enough to be my friend because he’s too “street.” That it’s my mother’s death day only magnifies their childishness—every swishy jostle from behind my seat, every squeal of exaggerated delight, is a sandspur raking across my skin.

My knuckles are white on the steering wheel by the time I find an empty parking spot, and I practically fall out of the car trying to escape Daphne and her friends. They’ve melded into a trio and have all but forgotten me and Bethany. Good. When I meet Bethany’s gaze, she widens her eyes at me, but I can’t tell if it’s because she also thinks the other three are annoying or if she’s trying to tell me to calm my shit. Probably both.

The party is three houses down from my car, but the bass vibrates through the whole neighborhood, and shouting and laughter echo over the rooftops.

Bethany snorts beside me. “They’re not playing Mozart? What kind of uncivilized chaos are we subjecting ourselves to?”

I’m the only one who laughs, and it comes out like a hiccup. Jesus, I need a fucking shot.

The five of us walk toward the party, Daphne speaking animatedly, and I’m thinking again how much I hate this version of her—this person who says “like” so much and flutters her hands in the air when she talks.

“I mean, two hours in the gym today and I hardly ate anything,” Daphne’s saying. “For once I feel skinny.”

“You are skinny,” I say from behind her. “Too fucking skinny.”

She keeps walking, her little kitten heels click-clacking on the street. “Please. I have so much junk in my trunk it’s not even funny. I was just saying, for today—”

“Fine, Daphne, you’re fat. You’re a huge, fat cow.”

She glances back at me, stunned, but Ava saves the moment by starting up about the texting conversation she had with some guy she likes, and the effervescent girlishness of her voice, combined with the banality of her allegedly electrifying exchange, makes me want to vomit. God, I’m a fucking grouch. This day needs to hurry up and be over.

We’ve arrived at the party house, where people are milling in and out of the open front door. Most of the crowd is in the backyard though, judging from the volume of chatter coming from behind the place. I look over at Bethany and she smiles wanly.

“I need a drink,” I say. “Immediately.”

In the backyard, speakers blare music over the throng of people. There’s a keg to the side with a line of students waiting to fill cheap plastic cups.

Bethany nudges me with her elbow. “You holding up okay?”

“I guess.” I gesture to the keg. “I’m gonna fill up, but I think I want something stronger than beer tonight.”

She gives me an uneasy look. “Should I emotionally prepare myself for holding your hair later?”

“I can put my own hair back.” We join the line, elbow to elbow. The other three girls have drifted away from us, to the other side of the keg. “Sure you don’t want even one?” I ask.

“I hate beer.”

“Shots?”

She curls her lip in disgust.

“You don’t drink at all, ever?” We’re at the front of the line now. I hold out my cup to be filled.

“I prefer being in complete possession of my faculties at all times.”

“You’re a nerd.”

“And proud of it.” She smiles.

I smile back, then swig half my beer in one go. “Let’s go inside,” I say, “and see if they have hard liquor.”

She closes her eyes for a second. “Oh, lordy, Malory.”

“It’s my mother’s death day.”

She sighs, exaggerating it so I can’t miss it over the blaring music, and follows me into the house. Daphne, Ava, and Gabby have completely disappeared.

I push my way into the tiny kitchen, where a thin, shaggy-haired guy in flannel is standing at a rolling kitchen island, brandishing a giant bottle of tequila. I think, He either plays guitar or wishes he does.

“Can a girl get a shot?” I ask.

“Hell yeah, you can, gorgeous,” he drawls.

I chug the rest of my beer and hold out my empty cup, which he fills with only an inch to spare. I thank him and take a sip, then wince as the liquid lights my esophagus on fire.

“None for your friend?”

“I’m the designated driver,” Bethany declares, and I giggle because I love her for being so unabashedly responsible. The guy gives her a sarcastic thumbs-up.

I take another fiery gulp of tequila and go outside again with Bethany. People are dancing now, their cups held up over their heads. I’m warm all over. “Come on,” I tell Bethany, “let’s dance.” I want to not care about anything. I draw another sip of tequila, swallow it down.

“I suck at dancing.”

“Just stand by me and kind of bob up and down. That’s all dancing is.” I pull her into the crowd. She’s making a face like she wants to kill me, and that makes me giggle some more.

I down more tequila, now having consumed what I guess is the equivalent of three shots. My coordination is going, my thoughts are loose and fuzzy, and I’m already feeling much better, much less capable of stabbing anyone in the temple with a set of car keys. I close my eyes and immerse myself in the beat. I’m supposed to go to Garrett’s tomorrow night, but I wish he were here now. I wish for his hands on me, I wish for his hands off me, I wish for him to stand on the other side of the room and make me fuck myself while he watches, and whoa, I’d better not think about that. I’ll burst into flames.

Then I open my eyes and of-fucking-course, there he is; Garrett has magically appeared across the yard as if some higher power has heard my silent wish and granted it. I stumble backward a little. He’s the most beautiful person here, in his dark denim and black shirt that highlights his almost-black hair, but his clothes, his body, that’s not what makes him so magnetic—it’s the way he stands like he owns the place, it’s how he’s talking to whoever-the-hell-that-is, smiling at them and leaning in just a little and crinkling his eyes, making them feel so damn important. I stretch to get a better look, and thank goodness it’s not a girl but just another guy. Several guys, actually.

Bethany nudges me with her arm. “Who are you looking at?”

“It’s…him. Over there.” I’ve told her a little about Garrett, but not enough for her to suspect that my legs have gone as flaccid and useless as a pile of yarn—even though he’s not looking at me, doesn’t even know I’m here.

A girl comes up behind Garrett, lays a hand on his elbow, and a jealous rage consumes me, so intense that I feel like I could grow into a giant, stomp over there, and pinch her pretty little head between my fingers until it pops. Bitch. Holy shit, I’m a psycho. But Garrett steps aside, almost recoils from her touch, and I’m so relieved I have to catch my breath.

“He’s hot,” Bethany says. “You weren’t kidding.” She’s bobbing up and down exactly as I instructed her to and absolutely oblivious to the whirl of emotions in my head.

“I know,” I tell her. “I think I’m…ugh. I…” My ankles are wobbly, like they’re about to roll out from underneath me.

“Why don’t we go say hi?”

“I’m…not sure. We’ve never been…out in public before.” Why haven’t we? I’m dancing still, but less enthusiastically than before. Just bobbing now, like Bethany. I’m pretty tipsy.

She frowns. “Where do you go?”

“For walks. And we…swim with manatees. Holy shit, Bethany, I’m drunk.”

She presses her lips together and gives me a matronly smile.

I take another swig of tequila, the last of it, and throw my cup in the trash. “I’m too drunk,” I say. “He wouldn’t—”

But then he turns his head and looks right at me. Waves, and I wave back. Is that it? He returns to his conversation, makes no move to come over, does not look at me again. I feel like I’ve just taken a kick to the stomach.

Bethany’s chewing her lip. “I mean, he sees you’re with a friend, and he’s obviously in the middle of—”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.” But I’m crushed. My throat is constricting. I’m trying not to burst into tears over rejection by a stupid boy on the anniversary of my mother’s suicide.

Doesn’t he remember it’s my mother’s death day? He must. I think of how I begged him to fuck me, how I spread myself for him, fingered myself for him.

I imagine him as a puppeteer, and me, a wooden doll dangling by strings, naked and spread-legged and touching myself while he jerks me around.

My mother is fucking dead. I can’t cry over a fucking boy. “Fuck this,” I say. “I want another drink.”

“Oh dear.” But she follows me, lets me drown myself in tequila, lets me be sad and drunk and stupid. At some point during the night I see Daphne with her tongue down Gabby’s throat, of course, WOOHOO, girls gone wild, have at it, ladies! I don’t remember getting in the car and I don’t remember the ride home but I do remember being on my hands and knees outside the dorm throwing up in the grass, and I think I forgot to put my hair up but it’s not in my face so I guess Bethany’s holding it after all.

In the morning, Bethany’s there, in Daphne’s bed, and Daphne is somewhere else, maybe Gabby’s room? I don’t care. I grab the trash can and heave painfully, vomiting on top of vomit. I don’t remember throwing up in the trash can last night, but I’m glad it’s here now, that Bethany was kind enough to put it by the bed for me. I spit a few times, trying to clear my mouth of bile, and then I go rinse my mouth at the sink in our room.

My black eyeliner, that silly attempt at pretty, is smeared down my face in a torrent of black tears. I do look like a doll, actually. A doll, carved and painted by an amateur but propped upright too soon, and now the still-wet paint, so carefully applied, has dripped down my expressionless wooden face.