We’re surrounded by all things green and alive, by pine trees and bracken and lush forest greenery. The vibrant green stretches across the vast lawns, through the flowered gardens, and lasts right up until you get to the cliffs, where it finally and abruptly turns reddish and clay.
I guess that’s pretty good symbolism, actually. Green means alive and red means dangerous. Red is jagged cliffs, warning lights, splattered blood. But green… green is trees and apples and clover.
“How do you say green in Latin?” I ask absentmindedly.
“Viridem,” he answers. “Why?”
“No reason.” I glance into the side-mirror at the house, which fades into the distance behind us.
Huge and Victorian, it stands proudly on the top of this mountain, perched on the edge of the cliffs with its spires poking through the clouds. It’s beautiful and graceful, at the same time as it is gothic and dark. It’s a funeral home, after all, at the end of a road on a mountain. It’s a horror movie waiting to happen.
Last Funeral Home on the Left.
Dad will need a miracle to rent the tiny Carriage House out, and I feel a slight pang of guilt. Maybe he really does need the money, and I’ve been pressuring him to give it to Finn or me.
I turn my gaze away from the house, away from my guilt, and out to the ocean. Vast and gray, the water punishes the rocks on the shore, pounding into them over and over. Mist rises from the water, forming fog along the beach. It’s beautiful and eerie, haunting and peaceful.
But it’s also a prison, holding me here beneath the low-hanging cloud cover.
“Do you ever wish we could move away? Like far away?” I muse aloud.
Finn glances at me. “Berkeley isn’t far enough for you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m talking someplace far away. Like Italy. Or Scotland. It’d be nice, I think. To get away from here. From everything we know.”
From the memories.
From the people who think we’re weird.
From everything.
Finn’s face stays expressionless. “Cal, you don’t have to go around the world to re-invent yourself, if that’s what you want. You can do that in California. But you don’t need to change yourself at all. You’re fine the way you are.”
Yeah. Being known as Funeral Home Girl is fine. But he’s right. No one will know that in California. I can get as good a new start there as I can anywhere. I won’t be surrounded by dead people, and people won’t always be asking How are you feeling?
We drift into silence and I continue staring out the window, thinking about college and what my new life there might be like. Since my father has agreed that Finn and I should stay together, there’s nothing scary about it. It’s just exciting. And it will include a lot of expensive shoes and pashminas. I’m not exactly where what pashminas are, but they sound sophisticated, and so I need them.
“Well?”
Finn’s insistent tone brings me out of my thoughts. He’s obviously waiting on an answer to something.
“Well, what?”
“Well, did dad decide? About the carriage house. We could just share it, you know. I’m sick of smelling like formaldehyde all the time.”
For real. I can’t even count how many times I’d hear snide girls at school whispering as I walked past, old tired jokes like, “I smell dead people.” I always wanted to tell them to quit ripping off old movies and come up with something original, but of course I never did. To them, I was Funeral Home Girl. But I never gave them the satisfaction of knowing that their words hurt.
“We don’t smell like formaldehyde,” I assure Finn. We smell like flowers. Funeral flowers. It’s not much better.
“Speak for yourself,” he grumbles. “Can we, or not?”
I shrug.
“Apparently, dad’s going to rent it out, after all.”
Finn stares at me for a second before returning his gaze to the road. “Seriously? I didn’t know we were that hard up. We have mom’s life insurance money, and the money from the funeral home.”
“College is expensive,” I murmur. Because that’s the only explanation I can think of, other than maybe dad just wants to follow through with something that he planned with mom. Finn nods, because it’s an acceptable answer. Obviously, sending two kids is expensive.