Page 89 of The Fall of Iris Henley
But Kendra shakes her head. “I hate it. It just reminds me that he’s never going to do anything else.”
I close my fingers around the grainy ash for a moment. She’s right, of course. The dead don’t change. For better or worse, the chaos and mess and fear and hope of the living are settled fact for the dead. And it’s so sad, and so unfair—especially because Rocky wasn’t even eighteen.
But now that his name’s been cleared, it doesn’t seem wrong to hope that death is also peaceful. That now he can rest.
“Well, now he can be part of the ranch,” I say softly.
I hold up my hand and let the breeze pick up the ashes. I watch as they swirl out and away from me, vanishing when they disperse.
I hope he does become a part of the ranch. That his ashessettle into the soil, become a part of the plants and the animals here. He loved this place. But I hope, too, that a part of him goes farther. I hope he rises above Varda and when he looks back, we’re smaller than he remembers.
I hope he rides the wind as far as it will take him.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER 52
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 6:43PM
HENLEY HOUSE
“If you can’t hold still I’m not going to be able to get the shading right.”
It’s Halloween night, one week after the night Carter and Hayden took me out to the ranch. Just one week, and yet it might as well be an entire epoch between now and then. I am sitting in my bathroom in costume, getting ready for a Halloween party, which is normal enough. The thing that is absolutely bizarre?
I’m getting ready with my sister.
“Sorry,” I say. “This is just so weird. I can’t believe you’re better at this than me? I mean, I was a cheerleader, you’d think I’d have an edge on makeup.”
“You’d think,” Noelle says brusquely. “But honestly, your contouring game has always been pretty weak.”
“The nerve,” I say, but I’m not mad.
The truth is it feels like a luxury, sitting here while someone else fixes my face. It makes me feel loved, taken care of. It’s a feeling I’ve gone without for a while now.
We are going as Anna and Elsa fromFrozen. She’d pitched Loki and Thor, but I’d worn her down. “I had to be a superhero last year,” I whined. “I want to be a princess.” So she’d busted out her sewing machine. The costumes are super simple, not as detailed as she’d like—she muttered about it the whole time—but it looks great for something thrown together in a couple days. I may even have to tell her that out loud at some point. It breaks my cardinal rule of saying anything nice to my sister, but it’s like I said before—the norm sucked. So why not try something else?
Besides, like my grandpa used to say, you can’t get some horses back in the barn. Meaning things with my friends—even the ones that have apologized for believing the rumors—are never going to be the same.
So I’m not going to the party at Molly Jun’s McMansion on the lake, even though she invited me. Not because I’m scared to face those people, but because I don’t want to spend any more time with them than I have to.
I’d planned to spend the night giving out candy at our own door. But Noelle had surprised me by informing me that I had to accompany her to Sarah Braun’s costume party. “It’s a ton of cosplayers, so it’s always really fun,” she’d told me.
“I’m not going to that,” I’d answered. But Noelle is nothing if not a total pain in the ass, and by Thursday I was helping her pick out blue glitter tulle for my dress.
I’m still not sure I’m in the mood for a party. But the fact that my sister is trying to make amends? That’s worth the effort.
My phone chimes. I make a move to grab it, but Noelle cups my chin in her hand. “Don’t… you… dare,” she says, putting the finishing touches on something and then pulling back with makeup brush in hand. “Okay. Now you can look.”
“It’s Jonah,” I say. I show her the picture he’s sent: He’s dressed up like an eighties glam rocker, complete with facepaint and a truly unhinged wig. He’s got his tongue out in a waggling leer. It makes me grin to imagine him out like that, goofing off with his friends.
Noelle gives it an appraising glance. “He’s kind of cute, actually.”
“Yeah,” I say. He is. But I’m not expecting anything to come out of this. Things are just too weird.
We’ve been texting again—or, I guess, texting for the first time, since the other version was just Hayden all along. The other day we actually FaceTimed so I could explain what’d happened and apologize again for dragging him into the whole thing. He was really sweet about it.
“Are you safe now?” he’d asked.
