Try as she might to be guarded and apathetic, she was (and probably always would be) the type of girl who walked around with her heart on her sleeve.
It was especially bad during those first few months after the Winter Wonderland Dance. Alice did her best to hide the hurt expression on her face whenever she bumped into Summer in the halls or drove past Tiernan’s street, but whomever she was with only needed to take one look at her face before they would inevitably ask what was wrong. Just another example ofthe many differences between the person Alice wanted to be and the one she actually was.
“Any final words?” Summer asked, opening her eyes.
But there would be no words for what happened next, as a paw, then two, then the squirrel’s entire gray furry head thrust its way through the earth. For what felt like a good ten seconds, nobody moved or spoke—the only sound came from the squirrel, whose twitchy black nose sniffed the air as its eyes darted from Alice to Summer to Tiernan, then back again, as if they were all stuck in some strange interspecies staring contest.
Even Tiernan was too stunned to utter a snarky remark.
For a creature that had just been buried alive, the squirrel looked surprisingly chipper, as if things like this happened to him every day. And before Alice’s brain could even begin to process what her eyes were seeing, the little rodent gave one final wriggle and freed himself from the hole—sending Alice, Summer, and Tiernan straight from their stupefied states into pee-in-their-pants hysteria.
By the time the squirrel had scampered off into the woods, all three of them were howling and crying and rolling around on the grass in a good old-fashioned laughing fit, just like they used to do, back in the day.
But as happy as Alice was to be sharing this hilarious moment with Summer and Tiernan, the shock of it all left her feeling strangely off-balance. When the squirrel was dead, the world was a place Alice was familiar with—a place of unwaveringcertainties, where what was buried stayed buried, and what was done (like she’d said in her mantra) was most definitely done. But if a squirrel could rise from the dead, maybe the past had more power than Alice had previously given it credit for. Maybe the past was only the past until it decided to claw its way back to the present.
“THE COUNTDOWN”
THE ROCKET I BUILT
OUT OF PAPER AND GLUE
JUST BROKE APART IN THE ATMOSPHERE
OVER YOU.
AND NOW ALL THE PIECES
ARE FALLING TO EARTH
AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT,
WHAT AN AMAZING SIGHT.
—from Level3’s third CD, Natural Causes
Chapter Six
THEY WERE BARELY THROUGH THE TOLLS ON THE MASS TURNPIKE and already Jace had called and texted twice. It was hard to say which annoyed Summer more—being stalked by the guy who just dumped her, or being forced to endure Alice and Tiernan’s not-so-subtle digs at her expense.
“Summer, I actually think you were right.” The sarcasm oozed from Tiernan’s voice. “I think it was dead, and the thing that crawled out of the grave was a zombie squirrel.”
“Either that, or maybe the rodent Jesus?” Alice joked, ever the faithful sidekick.
Somewhere between the “gravesite” and now, the ice that had been broken by their laugh had quickly refrozen again. Summer assumed things would be different after four years’ time. But apparently old habits (like Alice and Tiernan ganging up on her) died just about as easily as squirrels hit by vans.
So, she’d made a mistake. Whatever . It wasn’t as if either of those two rocket scientists could tell the different between an unconscious rodent and a dead one.
“Hey, Summer,” Tiernan called. “Maybe we should swingby the cemetery and check on your grandma. Just in case.”
Summer didn’t even dignify that remark with a response. It was classic Tiernan. The girl never knew when to quit.
“Summer, what does your GPS say?” Alice asked, thankfully changing the subject. “I already mapped out