I think I'm running late but I'm hanging outside Starbucks for nearly half an hour before Flint shows up. I feel her before I see her, a shape bounding up beside me, so when she leans in and says "Boo!" I'm almost ready for it. Still, it's a bad day to test shattered nerves.
"Whoa, sorry," she says when I turn to her. "Douche move. You okay?"
I nod, and she makes up for it by taking my arm, marching me through the door. She sits me down in a booth and goes to order. It's not busy in here, for a Saturday afternoon. The whole mall's quiet, but that suits me. I'm not one for crowds or company, especially on a day like this. Flint's different, because she's Flint.
"So what the actual fudge?" she says, sliding in beside me. She passes me a chai latte and I breathe in the sweetness of it, suddenly hungry. Luckily she's got chips as well and she breaks open the bag like she's cracking them out of prison. Some of them don't even stay on the table. "Dead girl? Cops? You writing crime stuff now or do I need to be afraid?"
Despite everything, I laugh. She laughs too, running a ring-heavy hand over her shorn head, scratching her scalp.
"But seriously, you look like crap, Tommi, what happened?"
"If you shut up a minute I'll tell you," I say, and she mimes a zipper across her lips, locking it tight with an invisible key. I take a sip of tea first, still too hot, then I start at the only place I can start. "She happened."
Flint shrugs. "The dead girl?"
"The witch," I say, and I see the smile break on Flint's face like a second of sunshine before the clouds swallow it.
"The witch? Jesus, Tommi, what brought her back? I haven't heard you talk about her since, like, eighth grade."
I take another sip, then a deep breath, then I tell her everything, squeezing her arm every time she looks like she wants to stop me. I leave out the bit about the photo on Facebook, it doesn't even seem real now. Cara was probably just goofing around with somebody, and those fingers in the bed? The way I'd been feeling I could have seen that witch anywhere, everywhere. I know if I look again they'll be coat hangers, or drumsticks, or just gone.
"I knew her," says Flint when I sit back. The sugar helps with the shakes I didn't even notice I had, all the same I still sit on my hands to keep them still. Flint's pushing her mug around in a puddle of coffee and sugar and I'm doing my best not to grab a napkin and wipe it up. "Cara Pierce. She went to the rich kid school across town."
"Fullerson," I say.
"I wasn't friends with her or anything. But she used to hang out with..." She clicks her fingers. "Bruce. No, Bert, Bart, what's his name? The fruit stall guy."
"Brent," I say at the same time she says it.
"Stupid name. But yeah, I think they were cousins or something. She hit the same parties sometimes. Small girl, short hair, had that twisted pixie look down to a tee. Wouldn't have guessed she was into all that story stuff."
"Story stuff," I say. "You mean writing. It's not a dirty word."
"I don't know, I've read some of yours. I think I spoke to her once, we were waiting for the restroom together. I was drunk as shit, though, so who knows. I didn't know she'd died, that's messed up."
"They think she killed herself," I say. "I mean, they never said it, because Donnie was there, but they weren't hiding it either."
"You didn't do this," Flint says, pushing a finger against the middle of my head. "I know you, I know exactly what's happening in there right now. You don't know what stuff that girl had going on in her life."
"I know," I say, squirming free. "But there's got to be a reason why they came to talk to me. I mean, I bet there were a load of books on her shelves, movies, whatever, but they only came to talk to me. It was just a story, Flint, I mean it's just a stupid story about a stupid witch that wasn't even..."
Even now, even though I'm sixteen years old, I can't bring myself to say it. I can't bring myself to say she isn't real. I scream behind my teeth.
"She'd written on it. Like, she'd written 'She sees me too.' So what, she sees the witch?"
"Maybe she just meant you?" Flint asks, checking her cell. "Like, you see her. Maybe she was just desperate for likes?" She clicks a few things on her phone then looks up at me. "Come on, Tommi, I know it's freaky but look at the facts. There was a girl who was into writing, and horror, and the same stuff you are, right? She prints off your story, maybe for research, maybe for a school project, maybe just because she really liked it. But she wasn't happy, bad shit was going down in her life, so she ended it. There's nothing else to it, it's just coincidence."
"I guess," I say, looking across the café. Everybody looks pretty happy, pretty oblivious.
"And you want people to read your stuff, right?" she says. "You're a writer, she read your story, that's, like, a natural process. That's how it works."
"I guess," I say again.
"So come here," she says, opening her arms. I slide into them and she holds me so tight her cell phone digs into my neck. "Forget about it, Tommi. We don't got long in this world, don't worry it all away."
I nod into the smell of her, make to pull away. But she doesn't let me go. It's like she's frozen, except I can still hear the wet thump of her heart right beneath me—that and another of those weird, whining pops, right inside my ear.
"Flint," I say, planting my hand on her ribs and pushing. If anything she's holding me tighter, ratcheting me in, and her arms feel too thin, just shards of bone, knuckles pressed into the flesh of my neck.
I see her too.
"Flint!" I scream, ripping away from her so hard that when she lets go my head cracks into the window.
"Jesus, Tommi, seriously," Flint says, holding up her hands. "Seriously."
"You didn't..." I start, then shake my head. Pain sloshes around inside my skull like muddy water. Flint's doing her best to smile at me but there's an edge to it, like she doesn't quite remember who I am. Half the people in here are looking at me too, their heads turning away like a Mexican wave as I scan the café. "I'm fine," I say, folding my hands over my chest. "Just rattled."
"No shit," Flint says. "Let's unrattle you." She glances at her cell. "Marcel is having a thing tonight, come along."
"No," I say, drawing even further into myself. "Flint, I—"
"Flint I'm so glad you mentioned it, because I've had the suckiest of days and I could do with unwinding and whatever. I'll see you there at seven, and don't worry it's fine because it's not a school night and my mom will be okay with it, and I've definitely got something to wear so that doesn't matter and—" she presses her hand to my lips, and despite myself I snort a laugh past it. "And I know I have crippling social anxiety and would rather curl up under my bed and listen to thrash metal or whatever but I really do think I should get out with my gorgeous, talented, sexy as hell best friend and just chill. Right? That's what you were about to say?"
I can't reply because her hand is still there, I can taste salt and caramel on it. I just nod until she pulls her hand away.
"It better not be a party, Flint."
"It's not a party," she says. "It's a thing. I'll see you there."
She slides out, stretches like a cat. I clamber out after her, stand behind her, casting my eyes around the room and knowing that everyone will be watching me. Only they're not. Nobody is watching me. Every single person here, there must be twenty of them, is looking away, looking at the far wall. Even the barista has turned, his face pressed to his shelves like the naughty kid in class. I can only see the back of their heads and they're all so quiet, all so still. Flint is mid-stretch, like she's forgotten how to put her arms down. I study the ridge of her skull, the pattern of her stubble. I wonder, if I walk around her, how long it will take me to find her face.
"Christ I'm tired," Flint says, her arms slapping to her sides. She looks over her shoulder at me, her face etched with a frown. "But I don't think I'm as tired as you. Go home, Tommi. Go home and try to forget about it."
I nod, following her out the cafe. We part at the entrance to the mall, and she takes my hand as I'm about to walk away.
"And for god's sake no more stories."