“You want to go to a stranger’s funeral with me?” Drew asks.
Sure, it’s probably not the most appropriate thing to do, but I’m going to go crazy if I don’t get out of the house. “Please?” I venture.
“Yeah, okay, it’ll be nice to have some company,” Drew says after a moment.
I ask him to hang on for a second then race upstairs to throw on a gray dress and a black sweater, which are the most somber pieces I spot in a scan of my closet. I shoot Meredith a text to tell her I’m going out and will talk to her later, but she doesn’t reply.
When I get back downstairs, Drew points to my ballet flats. “You’re going to want something other than those. It’s really muddy after all the rain this week.”
I settle for the battered motorcycle boots that saw me through last winter’s snowstorms in New York, and although I feel stupid wearing them with a flouncy dress, Drew gives me a thumbs-up. “You look real pretty,” he says, his cheeks turning a cute color of pink.
I leave a note for Aunt Bea, then hurry out the door. “So what happened to the girl who died?” I ask as we trudge through my backyard.
“I can’t believe you didn’t hear,” he says. “She committed suicide. The way she did it was awful, actually.” He points to a spot in the cemetery wall where a few bricks are missing, and he offers me a hand to help boost me up and over. I land with a wet thud, and mud flies up around me, staining my dress.
“Why, what did she do?” I ask as he splashes over the wall too.
“Apparently she drank a bottle of vodka, then stabbed herself in the chest. Right through the heart.”
“Through the heart?”
Drew looks down at the soggy ground as we begin walking again. “The medical examiner told the paper she was probably dead within seconds. But what a horrible way to go.”
I shudder. “The police are sure that she did it to herself, that it wasn’t murder or something?”
Drew looks at me sharply. “Of course not. Things like that don’t happen in Carrefour.” His tone is final. “Anyway, I heard the police found a suicide note. There’s a rumor that it was some kind of a satanic ritual or something.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Drew shrugs. “Let’s just say that this is a place where things sometimes happen without an explanation. Strange things.”
“Oh, great,” I mutter. What has Aunt Bea gotten me into by moving us here?
The ceremony has just begun as we approach, and we’re careful to tread quietly. People still turn and stare, though, and I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m the new girl in town or because sloshing into the middle of a funeral is plain rude.
“Sorry I made you late,” I whisper to Drew as the minister begins to read from the Bible in a monotone voice.
“Don’t apologize.” He reaches for my hand and squeezes. “I’m glad you came.”
He lets go, and I can feel my heart thudding. I don’t exactly have a ton of experience in the boy department. Back in Brooklyn, Meredith was usually the one at the center of attention while I played wingwoman, which was fine by me.
My mind wanders as I scan the crowd, wondering which people here will be my classmates at Pointe Laveau.
And that’s when I see them.
Across the group of mourners, two impossibly beautiful girls are staring right at me. One is a beautiful honey blonde with perfectly tanned skin, ridiculously long legs, and huge blue eyes. The other, who’s even more stunning, has glistening cocoa skin, a perfect model’s body, and mounds of wildly gorgeous ebony curls that surround her like a halo. Both are dressed in clothes that are obviously designer and expensive; the blonde is in a black lace minidress plus open-toed stilettos and loads of pearls, while the dark-haired girl is wearing a formfitting leather sheath, fishnet stockings, and leather spike-heeled boots that come up over her knees. Both have nearly identical black stones with jagged edges hanging from long chains around their necks. They’re surrounded by three guys and two other girls, all of whom are also gorgeous, but not as much so as the two in the middle.
The dark-haired girl’s eyes burn into mine, and I look quickly away, embarrassed to have been caught gawking. There’s something vaguely familiar about them that I can’t quite put my finger on. “Who are they?” I whisper to Drew.
“Everyone calls them the Dolls,” he says, and I sense disgust in his tone. “The whole group of them. They all go to Pointe Laveau too.”
“Oh.” My heart sinks. I hoped to make a fresh start here; I’d even hoped that coming from New York City might make me seem a little edgy. But with girls like that at Pointe Laveau, my hope is fading fast. In the cool department, I obviously don’t hold a candle to them.