Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,80
place.
I nod.
Cuellar holds his bottle up, bracing his wrist with his other hand, ready to jab. He tips his chin at the door handle for one of us to open it.
Like clockwork precision, as if we’ve planned or somehow rehearsed it, Blair jumps forward and grabs the door handle to the dressing room. She twists it and lunges silently into the room. Simultaneously, she plasters herself flat against the door, getting out of the way of our weapons should we need to fight.
But the dressing room is still empty.
We hustle into the space. Blair closes the door silently behind us, muting the noise from the zombies across the hall.
Cuellar wastes no time. He quietly puts the bottle down on a dressing table counter and grabs the other vanity stool, the match to the one that Simon has.
“Don’t take too long,” he murmurs to us.
He slides silently back out the door into the hallway.
“What a jerk,” Blair whispers. She looks around the dressing room.
“Seriously,” Siggy says.
“I didn’t like the way he was talking to you,” Blair says, glancing at me with that ready-to-brawl light in her eyes.
“Thanks for backing me up,” I say. And I mean it when I say it, but at the exact same time, the partner thought spikes out, and lodges in my throat.
Wish you were always so loyal.
I don’t say it, but there must be a residue of the emotion in my eyes, because Blair winces slightly, and moves to explore the small bathroom attached to the dressing room.
Imani doesn’t say anything, just waits by the closed door.
Siggy goes to the drawers set in the middle of the vanity table counter. There’s only one left that has a front piece, the top drawer, narrower than the other two.
Siggy opens the drawer and starts tugging at the front.
I walk over to a metal table lamp on an accent table, unplug it, take off the lampshade, and tuck it under my arm for Mia.
“Why didn’t you argue with Cuellar, back there?” Imani asks, her voice a low murmur when I lean against the door with her.
I shrug.
“Because he wasn’t wrong,” I whisper. “Linus is dead, and it’s my fault.”
Tears jump to my eyes, but I can’t hide from it, can’t hide from the guilt and the shame that I ever thought I knew what to do.
“What?” Imani’s whisper is pressured with incredulity. “No! Don’t you dare think that, June!”
Blair comes out of the bathroom carrying a heavy driftwood sculpture.
Siggy has the drawer front loose, but not completely off.
“Need a hand with that?” Imani asks her.
“I got it.” Blair walks over to the counter, puts her piece of driftwood down, and grasps the opposite side of the narrow front piece. Together they strain to quietly pull the drawer front the rest of the way off.
“It’s true, though,” I say to Imani. “Maybe he’d still be alive if—”
“That’s bull.” Imani’s whisper cuts over mine. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d already be dead or we’d be zombies. In the ballroom, remember? You found that bag. You opened the door.”
It helps a little to remember that.
“But—” I start.
“No buts!” Imani loops her free arm around my shoulders, squeezing me tight. “Sure, we might have made some mistakes, but they didn’t look like mistakes when we made them! No one’s psychic! No one’s right all the time, no matter what it looks like from the outside.”
She squeezes me again.
“We didn’t make the zombies. We didn’t cause this. We’re just doing our best to get through it. So, don’t you dare say that any of it’s your fault.”
I take a deep breath and nod. The tight feeling gripping my shoulders and chest loosens.
“Guys, we’re going to have to make a little bit of noise here,” Siggy says, standing up and panting, her breath moving a loose lock of white-blonde hair.