The music throbbing out of the wooden walls of the Tonks's place was loud enough that it echoed down the canyon. At the very least, it drowned out the mooing and splashing of the cows wading in the nearby river. Light poured out of the few windows that weren't obscured by silhouettes; the setting sun glared at us, as if it knew our sins; the clouds cast shadows on the lawn.
Willa was standing on the grass, lurking near a bush that was under one of the front windows. In one hand, she was holding a black plastic cup with glow-in-the-dark spiderwebs all over it. She put in one of her mint-colored earphones when I approached.
She was wearing the same clothes as earlier, though it appeared that the splotches of black, gooey monster blood had been spot-cleaned from her clothes. The cat ears were different; they were held in place by a clear headband I could barely see in this lighting. A peek into her cup revealed that it was some dark, bubbling liquid. It was probably an appropriately-festive root beer.
"Who's that, with you? I've never seen her before and it seems like she's with you?" Willa cocked her head to the side slightly and gestured at Blanche.
"Someone was born with a caul over her eyes," Blanche quipped.
I jumped a little. I forgot she was following me, even with Willa's reminder. I clutched at my unbeating heart as though it was somehow jump-started. "Jesus, Blanche."
Blanche held out her hand to Willa; Willa, clearly a little bewildered, didn't shake it. Blanche frowned, shoved her hand in her pocket, and muttered something offensive under her breath.
I whirled around to glare at her. "What the fuck?"
"Don't be so uptight, Eve." She grinned, like nothing happened at all, like I was the crazy one for getting upset. "I'm going up to the bathroom. See ya."
I watched her sashay into the house. My shoulders were tense; I was uncomfortable and angry. When she was gone-- finally gone-- I turned back to Willa, who looked angry and, at the same time, completely used to what had just happened.
"I'm sorry. I thought she was cool at first, but she's gotten so much worse and-- I wouldn't have brought her if I didn't think we needed her. Are you okay? That was fucked up."
"Let's just--"
Willa sighed and downed the remainder of her drink. "It doesn't matter."
"It does, but--"
She looked me in the eyes, cutting off any objections I had rising in my throat and sending a chill through my shoulders and back. "Eve. Please. Drop it. It's easier for everyone if you just drop it." She paused, looked down at her cup, and didn't look back up at me. "I need a new drink."
Without saying anything else, she walked into the house. Even though she said it was fine, I knew it wasn't. I could see her hands balled into fists that she clenched and unclenched, crushing the black plastic cup between them.
After she filled a new, orange plastic cup, Willa leaned against a wall and looked out at the rest of the world. I stood near her, watching the party. We stood around for a while before it looked like Ethan was going to be a no-show. When I was wondering why he wasn't here in the first place, and reminded Willa that he was supposed to come with you, so where is he, she sighed and told me that he wanted to get let out on the side of the road on the way there. He said he had something to take care of.
Willa stared longingly at her friends across the room. I watched her watch them dance. She took a drink from her nearly-empty cup. Willa was holding it like she didn't care, loosely with two fingers to support the whole thing, but I could tell that she did. It was written on her face like the wrong answers on a test she did worse than expected on. She cared about everything. The fact that she was chewing on one of her lips made that very clear.
"You can go with them, you know. If you want."
"I don't think I can."
"You don't need to be a part of my mess. I know I dragged you into it. I know it's hard and shitty, especially when you don't like me and didn't like me to begin with. You don't have to like me. You don't have to help me or forgive me. This is your life. You should be living it, right? I know you don't need my permission for any of that, either. My point is, I'm dead. I get it if you want to let me go."
She took another drink, draining the remainder of the glass. "That's very kind of you, and I understand the sentiment, but there's quite literally a monster running around and killing people, and I feel obligated to stop from doing that. And, no, I don't need your permission. I still don't like you and, frankly? I don't care that you're dead."
I tried not to wince. Willa wasn't looking at me. Instead, she was staring at the middle of the room where someone I thought was one of those Molly Mormon types was drunkenly trying to play charades and/or spin the bottle. It was hard to tell from where we were standing. I wasn't really looking at her either way. I was looking at Willa, trying to figure out what she was getting at and how to not be a bitch about all of this.
After a moment's hesitation, Willa amended, "No, I do care that you're dead. You shouldn't be. It's just-- it's complicated. It's only been a week. I'm-- Well, shit, I'm trying not to cry! I don't want to ruin my eyeliner!"
"Hey, it's a lot. Normal people don't have to deal with this."
"I just... I wish.."
"I know."
She couldn't put it into words, but I was pretty sure that I knew exactly what she was trying to say. At least, I thought I could intuit what she meant. You can never be truly sure of what intentions lie in the heart of another.
She wished I hadn't come back to haunt her like this, didn't she? I got it. I understood. She didn't need to elaborate. Truth be told, I didn't want her to.
The best course of action, standing there in the middle of a party I wouldn't have gone to if I weren't stuck in this whole convoluted mess, was to change the subject. "Do you know where Ethan is?"
Willa shrugged. She pushed herself off of the wall she was leaning against. "I don't know. Should we just... proceed without him?"
"I guess so?"
"Cool."
"Cool. Let's go intersect Blanche at the bathroom."
Willa tossed her cup neatly into an open black trash bag tied to the banister at the bottom of the stairs. As we began the climb, with her in the lead, taking the stairs two at a time, the music switched from Dua Lipa or whatever it was to Bobby "Boris" Pickett's The Monster Swim. Not The Monster Mash, the other one. It felt oddly fitting for what we were about to do in this shitty B-rate horror world.
Upstairs was fairly less chaotic than everything that was happening below. There were the distinct sounds of laughter and moaning from behind closed doors (I didn't want to think about it or become accidentally involved in that). The only lights came from the cheap plastic Jack-O-Lanterns on a table at the end of the hall and a thin line of yellow from under the bathroom door.
Willa knocked on the door. It was barely audible over the sound of everyone else, but someone yelled from inside, "Someone's in here!" It was half-whispered, half-shouted, and full of urgency.
Shit. I knew that voice. I heard it so infrequently that it was always stuck in my head like a little poking weed in the sole of a shoe. That was Sandy in there. Shit.
Of course Blanche ruined the moment by sticking her head and shoulders through the door. Those emerging parts of her glowed faintly. (I wondered if I were capable of doing the same.) "Hey, trash sacks! Are you ready to take this bitch off my hands?"
"What the fuck, Blanche." It wasn't a question. I didn't want to know. "You were supposed to ask first. You were supposed to torment someone I don't know, someone I don't care about."
She fake-pouted. The contrast between her inner lip and the intense pink of her lipstick was jarring. She made fake crying motions with her hands as she said, "Oh, are baby's morals weird and hypocritical? Is baby's conscience hurting?" She dropped the act as soon as she put it on. "Buck up, Eve. You have work to do. Whether you knew the person I was talking to or not wouldn't have changed the overall effect. It would have just helped your precious little conscience."
Willa gave me an I can't fucking believe you invited this bitch to our monster-killing party look, then said through the door with a voice as sweet as apple pie filling, "Sandy? I'm coming in."
Without waiting for an answer or for Blanche to move, Willa opened the unlocked door.
The scene inside was almost exactly what I expected. Like so many other white families' bathrooms, this one was beach themed. Everything from the shower curtain to the teal soap dish was decorated with shell shapes and starfishes in disgusting shades of blue and tan. The three throw towels on the metal bar were embroidered with sayings about white people and sand.
The beautiful facsimile of suburban originality was interrupted by three things. The first was Sandy, who had mascara and eyeliner streaming down her cheeks. It actually looked kind of good on her wet, weeping face, but that's not for me to decide. The second was a small puddle of partially-dried puke on the white rug surrounding the toilet. Who would put a white rug around their shitter? That's just asking for stains. Either way, it clearly wasn't Sandy's.
The third was the most glaring. Scrawled across the mirror in hot tickle-me-pink lipstick was the same message I saw on the walls of the bathroom at Punkin's.
"CHIN UP, GIRL. YOU'LL FEEL BETTER SOON! OR ELSE..."
I whirled to look at Blanche with an accusation resting behind my teeth, but was able to easily see that the lipsticks were different shades. There would have been no point in accusing her. Still, I glared and, still, I looked at Sandy with concern. We had gotten what we wanted. We had lured the Eye For An Eye to where we wanted it to be-- but at what cost? Was this really the road to redemption? Did the ends (me getting what I wanted out of my afterlife) justify these means?
I swallowed my malaise and looked at the wall. "Well. Time's ticking. Let's go. Chop-chop."