“Next time,” I whisper. “I’ll stay next time.”

“Promise?” she asks.

“I promise.”

I wish we could linger here a little longer. I wish we could sit in what’s left of this room, the three of us laughing at those men, laughing together, me with Mina and Bee, my two best friends united at last. But that will have to wait for another day. Voices break through from the other side, Jane and Michael and Daisy and all the girls we left behind, and it’s time. It’s time for Mina, too, the darkness beyond the walls filling with a golden light, more blinding than the California sun.

I give Mina one last smile, and she smiles back, as our bodies dissolve, slowly at first until there’s nothing left, Bee and me disappearing back into the world.

This time, it doesn’t hurt a bit.

nineteen

It’s past sundown in Los Angeles, and we’re sitting cross-legged beneath the Hollywood sign.

Bee and Jane and me, the dust settled around us, the wind whipping at the NO TRESPASSING signs.

I shiver. “I always forget how cold it gets up here at night.”

It’s already October, the months creeping away from us quicker than we can hold on.

Bee and Jane are nestled beneath the rickety letter H, the two of them giggling, bantering back and forth. There are no more secrets between them. Between any of us. We used to think keeping quiet would keep us safe, but it turns out there’s nothing more dangerous than that.

Jane’s brought a portable radio with her, and we listen to the day’s news. Somebody’s performing nuclear tests over in Europe. And closer to home, all the kids in the Haight held a mock funeral this afternoon. “The death of the hippie,” they called it.

“People need to move on,” one of the organizers tells the reporter, the static of the city crackling behind them. “Summer’s over. Go home. We’re done here.”

Jane shakes her head. “We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to,” she says, and I smile, because that’s the way it should be.

I lean back beneath the sign, my long hair whispering in the wind. It isn’t so bad up here, especially without any urns to bury. And there won’t ever be another urn again. We’ve combed through the slog of the projection booth, every charred rafter, every half-melted film cannister, but there are no ashes from those men, no remains at all. They’re gone, and this time, they’re not coming back. All the hands in that room have made sure of it.

The ghosts are no longer restless. They’re no longer bound by these men either. Neither are we.