We step inside and the musty smell that only exists in the presence of old furniture greets me. It reminds me of Skye because we spend so much time in places like this. “Shoe size?” I ask.

“Twelve . . . Wait . . . we’re getting shoes here? I don’t know if I can wear shoes other people have worn.”

“I think you just made a philosophical statement. Now suck it up, baby, because it’s that or ruin your pretty shoes.”

“I’m okay with ruining my shoes.”

“Wait. Did I give you a choice? Never mind, you obviously can’t be trusted with choices. We are buying your shoes here.” I drag him to the shoe section. There are only three choices in his size. I pick him out the most hideous ones—high tops with neon laces. Then I put him to work trying on clothes.

While he’s in the dressing room I look through the sweatshirt section. Flipping through the rack, I stop. In between an awful neon orange sweatshirt and a University blue one is a black dress. It has hand-sewn beading, a sweetheart neckline, and cap sleeves. I check the size. It would fit me. I bite my lip and look at the price tag: forty bucks. That’s expensive for a thrift store. But it’s priced right. The dress looks vintage. The best find I’ve ever come across. The fact that it’s hidden between two sweatshirts makes me know someone else has their eye on it, too, hiding it in hopes to come back later. But forty dollars is way beyond my price point. I still haven’t been paid this month and I’m debating whether I’m going to cash my paycheck anyway. My mom can’t afford to pay me. My piddly paycheck won’t make much of a difference to my mom’s debt, but it would make me feel a little better.

“I’m trying not to think about who wore these before,” Xander yells from the dressing room.

“Do you need a tissue or are you going to stop crying? Come out here and let me see.”

I move the next sweatshirt on the rack to cover the black dress. Even if I had forty bucks, where would I ever wear a dress like that anyway? To some fancy event with Xander? I hope I’m not turning into that girl, the one who daydreams about a guy she can never have.

The dressing room curtain slides open and Xander steps out while still buttoning the bottom few buttons of the flannel shirt. “I feel like a dork.”

“It’s good to feel like a dork once in a while. Now you just need a sweatshirt.”

“I have my jacket.”

“You mean your really expensive trench coat? Yeah, not going to work.” I pull a gray one off a hanger next to me and throw it over two racks of clothes to him.

“Okay, I’m going to change back into my clothes now.”

“No. You’re wearing those out of here, boy. Come on, meet me at the register.” I give the dress one last look and then walk away.

The lady at the register gives us the Seriously? look.

“Here,” I say, turning Xander around. I pull the tag for the jeans off the back belt loop. Then I snag the one off the sleeve of the shirt and hand her the sweatshirt and shoes.

“That’ll be fifteen dollars,” she says.

Xander hands her a twenty. “Fifteen bucks? For all this?”

As we walk back to the car Xander is still surprised. “I bought a pair of socks last week for thirty bucks.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“Love your new shoes, by the way.”

He rolls his eyes. “If humiliation is a career, I’m going to tell you right now that I don’t think I’m interested.”

“But you’d be so good at it.”

We pull up to the cemetery and Xander looks at me. “What are we doing here?”

“Exploring our potential.”

“Here?”

“Remember, I’m morbid. Let’s go.” I brought him here for a couple of different reasons. One, because it’s free. I have no money to take him on the equivalent of some fancy photo shoot career day. And two, I honestly think Xander needs to get his hands dirty, relax a little. So far he’s being a good sport, but he has no idea what I have in store for him.

“Hi, Mr. Lockwood,” I say, walking up to the funeral home that’s slightly elevated from the plots. Skye’s dad is so cool. He looks like he should live in the middle of a graveyard with his long white hair and crooked hooked nose. I always wonder if he owns a cemetery because he looks that way or if he looks that way because he owns a cemetery.

“Hey, Caymen.” He holds two shovels. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yep.” I grab the shovels.

“Okay, I got it started for you so that you could get a sense of the dimensions. It’s past that oak tree down there.” He pulls a walkie-talkie from his back pocket and hands it to me. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

I hand Xander a shovel. “Okay.”

“Gravedigger?” he asks as we walk toward the site. “Really? You thought this was a serious option?”

“It’s not just grave digging, Xander. It’s about this whole place. Living a quiet life surrounded by peaceful death.”

“You are morbid.”

Dirt clings to his hair and is smeared across his cheek. But even in his present state his confidence and stiff posture come through. “We’re not going to be buried in here, right?”

“You caught me.”

“You didn’t think I’d do this, did you?”

Never in a million years. “I had my doubts.”

“I wish I would’ve brought some gloves.” He opens one of his hands and I catch the glimpse of a bloody blister on his palm.

I gasp. “Xander!”

“What?”

I grab his hand and study it closer, gingerly touching the broken skin. “You didn’t tell me it was killing your hands.” I had pulled my sweatshirt sleeves down over mine. His sweatshirt was a little on the small side.

“It’s not too bad.”

I unclip the walkie-talkie from the pocket of my jeans. “Mr. Lockwood, I think we’re done.”

“This hole isn’t nearly deep enough,” Xander says.

“I know. I just mean that we’re done.”

There’s a burst of static on the walkie-talkie, then Mr. Lockwood says, “You ready for me to send the tractor?”

“Yes.”

“Wait,” Xander says. “A tractor is going to come dig the rest of this hole?”

“Yeah, they haven’t hand dug graves in years. I just thought it would be fun.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“This would be the perfect place.”

He charges me, sweeping my legs out from beneath me with one of his feet but catching me then lowering me to the ground gently. I laugh as I struggle to get free. He pins my wrists above my head in one of his hands and uses his legs to pin mine. With his other hand he scoops up a handful of dirt and smashes it into my hair.

I laugh and continue to struggle but then realize he has gone still. I suddenly become very aware of every place his body presses against mine. He meets my eyes and his grip on my wrists loosens. A sense of panic seizes my chest and I grab a handful of dirt from above my head and smash it against his cheek. He lets out a groan and rolls away from me, to his side, propping himself up with one elbow.

I lay there in the soft dirt for a while. It’s cool against my neck. I can’t decide if I just prevented something from happening or if it was all in my mind.

Xander lets out a large sigh. “I needed this after a week with my dad.”

“Is he hard on you?”

“He’s hard on everyone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I can handle him.”

I’ve seen the way Xander “handles him.” He shuts down, becomes hard, closed off. But if that’s what gets him through, who am I to argue? I don’t deal with my mom in the healthiest ways either.

My back aches and lying down feels great. I close my eyes. It’s fairly peaceful, the silence seeming to press against me being surrounded by dirt walls like I am. Maybe here I can forget all the stress in my life. Forget that I’m a seventeen-year-old living a forty-year-old’s life. Thinking about it makes it feel like someone dropped two tons of dirt on my chest that I wasn’t expecting.

“What’s wrong?”

I open my eyes to see Xander staring at me. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing. You’re off your game today.”

“What game is that?”

“The one where you take every opportunity you can to make fun of me.” He looks at his hand. “There were a million jokes you could’ve made about this.” He shows me his blister again.

“I know. I really should’ve gone off on your soft, under-worked hands.”

“Exactly.” He brushes a piece of dirt off my cheek. “So what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Sometimes I just feel older than I am, that’s all.”

“Me, too. But that’s why we’re doing this, right? To have fun. To stop worrying about what’s expected of us and try to find out what we want for ourselves?”

I nod.

“My dad would die if he saw me here.”

“We should’ve invited him, then, right?”

He laughs. “He wouldn’t be caught dead out here.”

“Well, actually, that’s exactly when he’ll be caught out here.”

He laughs again. “You’re different, Caymen.”

“Different than what?”

“Than any other girl I’ve met.”

Considering most of the girls he’d met probably had fifty times as much money as I did, that wasn’t a hard feat to accomplish. Thinking about that makes my eyes sting.

“It’s refreshing. You make me feel normal.”

“Huh. I better work on that because you’re far from normal.”

He smiles and pushes my shoulder playfully. My heart slams into my ribs.

“Caymen.”

I take another handful of dirt and smash it against his neck then try to make a quick escape. He grabs me from behind, and I see his hand, full of dirt, coming toward my face when the warning beeps of the tractor start up.

“Saved by the gravediggers,” he says.

Chapter 17

Xander hops up and helps me to my feet. We throw our shovels out of the hole, then he gives me a boost out and hefts himself out after me.

As we walk back toward the funeral home, our shovels propped on Xander’s shoulder, he says, “So this is where your best friend lives?”

I nod.

He laughs a little. “You live above a porcelain-doll store; your best friend lives in a cemetery. You’ve pretty much grown up surrounded by creepy things. Is there anything you’re afraid of?”

You.

He meets my eyes, almost as if he had read my mind or maybe my thought is written all over my face.

I clear my throat. “Dogs.”

“You’ve been bitten by a dog before?”

“No. But the thought of them biting me is enough.”

“Interesting.”

“Oh, please. Don’t analyze the statement. Dogs have sharp teeth. They bite people.”

He laughs.

“What about you? What’s your biggest fear?”

He twirls a shovel on his shoulder once, thinking. Either he doesn’t want to tell me or he doesn’t have a strong fear of anything because it takes him a while to say, “Losing. Failure.”

“Failing at what?”

“At anything. Sometimes it’s hard for me to start something because I’d rather not try at all than fail at it.”

“But nothing good ever happened without risk.”

“I know this. And yet . . .”