THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

4_flint_

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."