Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of suicide.
Your bestie being murdered is the pits for so many reasons. Fake mourners, sitting next to strangers, obviously the bloated waterlogged corpse of your bestie, and remembering that you’re alone is the worst. No one believes Mila that Riley was murdered, but she knows her best friend’s aversion to dirty water mixing with her dye job would keep her away from the creek. Plus, Riley was not a copy cat and they’d both been to June and Dayton’s double funeral following their double suicide just a couple days before.
Xander, Riley’s brother and Mila’s crush, gives Riley’s eulogy and Mila has some inappropriate thoughts given she’s at her bestie’s funeral. Unfortunately the school choir, which Riley didn’t give a shit about, stands up to sing I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, which they just sang at the other funeral. Uggh, they must be competing with it. Mila flicks through the program and notices the christian quote which is ridiculous because Riley was pagan, poetry written by another student, and a picture of Riley, her final selfie taken in the bathroom. Mila can’t stand this farse one more second and gets up to leave, telling Aniyah Dorsey on the way out that her poem fucking sucked.
Mila heads back to school and as she’s sitting in third period, she checks out her classmates. Statistics prove you're likely to know your murderer, so which one of these fuckers killed Riley? While Mila eyes everyone, Caleb Treadwell, the principal’s step-son and Bro pain in the ass, invades her personal space with his stench of cologne and face wash. The pathetic asshole tries to make a fat joke about Mila, but the joke’s on him because she doesn’t care what he’s got to say and is too busy thinking about making an impotence potion for his inappropriate boners. He starts talking about the Rausch Scholarship which June, Dayton and Riley were all candidates for, and are now out of his way. Aniyah walks past them at that point and calls Caleb on his bullshit attitude and offers to quote him in the school paper on how his life is better off with the death of three classmates. Mila, sick of Caleb, sticks her foot out and makes him fall over. She’s sent to the office.
Worse than being sent to the principal, she’s sent to see Dr. Miller, the school psychologist. Dr. Miller asks Mila if she still believes she is [checks notes] a witch? Mila is a witch; she and Riley were. When Riley told her they were going to do great things together, it wasn’t difficult to believe. Whilst they started with charms, Riley didn’t have the patience so they switched to spells; mostly minor acts of vengeance: bumps to test scores, zits, show choir losing, but they didn’t need any witchy intervention for that. Mila tells her she's Wiccan, thank you very much, or Wix for gender neutral, though she has never really seen magic work. Dr. Miller questions Mila about paranoid delusion, which sets Mila off. Honestly, Dr. Miller is massively unprofessional, provoking, and a jackass. During this highly antagonistic conversation, Mila realizes Riley wouldn’t sit back and agree with everyone about her best friend being murdered when she was sure the whole situation made zero sense, so she decides to do a spell to find out the truth.
Mila skips out of school for the rest of the day, might as well use the dead BFF card while she can, along with her paranoid delusion, thanks Dr. Miller for the new vocab, and heads to the Yarrow House, an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of town. While most of the house is dangerous, gross or creepy, the kitchen is still in good shape and is where Mila and Riley keep all their witchy paraphernalia from books and tarot cards, to crystals, herbs, pots and pans.
Mila pulls down all their books and flips through every page of every book, the chances of finding an “identify a murderer” spell is slim, but she pulls a little from a few. A noise outside startles Mila, typically she would look to Riley, but for the first time she’s in Yarrow House alone. Sticking her head outside, Mila sees a car driving off and a white FedEx box under the kitchen window. Taking the box inside, Mila opens it and finds the oldest book she’s ever seen. Flicking through, Mila finds a spell called The Seven-Day Breath of Life and knows Riley sent her this book.
Mila heads to the magic supply store, Lucky Thirteen. Toby, the owner, who can only be described as biker grandma, instantly envelopes Mila in a huge hug. Toby makes up a charm bag for Mila while giving her advice about modern spells off the internet and too much plastic these days. She reminds Mila of the open invitation to join her circle. Mila, meanwhile, is looking for the supplies she needs for The Seven-Day Breath of Life spell and debating spending all her money on a beautiful iron rose hematite. When Mila tries to ask Toby about The Seven-Day Breath of Life spell, Toby gets pretty scary, warning her the dead never walk, it defies the goddess, and it will come back worse if she tries to cast it. Mila feels like she has lost another adult to her crazy. As Mila leaves, she slips the iron rose hematite into her bag.
Later, in her bedroom, Mila is going over the spell's ingredient list. It’s a mixed bag between a trip to Walmart and waiting for the full moon, and “a heart to beat for each day he walks” which she may outsource while concentrating on the bigger stuff. Mila’s sisters, Nora and Izzy, bring Mila some dinner and she asks her sisters to catch seven huge moths from the porch, which Nora will do in exchange for a stuffy. Izzy, meanwhile, hands Mila a hairband and suggests to use that on her wrist when things get too much, her constant screaming is freaking Nora out. Mila takes it, feeling shame, but it also gives her an idea on where she can get some of Riley’s DNA she needs for the spell.
Mila heads over to Riley’s house above the funeral home. Xander answers and lets Mila into Riley’s room. Mila and Xander talk about how terribly fake Riley’s service was, and Mila confesses she feels guilty for not being available for Riley on the night she died because of homework, but all the while Mila is basically writing a porno in her head about her dead best friend's brother while sitting on her dead best friend's bed! Xander tells Mila his parents are already getting rid of Riley's stuff and goes to grab her favorite quartz necklace. While he's gone, Mila looks around Riley’s room for some DNA ripe stuff like a hair brush or toothbrush.
Later, with a backpack filled with spell ingredients, Mila heads to the cemetery to perform the spell. She sets out all the pieces in the correct places and at the witching hour, she starts the spell. At the end of the spell, Mila screams dramatically, “so mote it be” and… nothing happens. As Mila is pounding the ground an earthquake starts, so she crawls into the fetal position and then can smell cotton candy. A raspy voice says “Mila.” It’s Riley! And she doesn’t remember she’s dead.
Mila breaks the news to Riley that she’s been dead for a week, and Riley takes it really well. She explains that she brought her back using her new Grimoire, which again, Riley doesn’t remember. Their reunion is interrupted by two people wanting to know exactly what the fuck Mila has done. It’s June and Dayton, risen from the dead too, and they are sick of Mila’s shitty fake witchy stuff, and don’t know they’re dead too.
It takes a little while, but Mila is able to finally get them to believe that they’re dead and she raised June and Dayton on accident, oops! Dayton and June protest about having completed suicide, they’re much more murderable than Riley and have so much more to live for! Plus, hanging? That’s brutal. Dayton then gets all hysterical about being a zombie, but Mila explains she’s only temporarily undead. As they’re planning their next steps, it’s decided the newly undead will stay at Yarrow House while Mila goes to school, except they want to go to the school-wide memorial service for them. Yeah, that’s a great idea. So is visiting Walmart at 1am with three girls back from the dead and no money a bad idea?
As Riley inspects her roots, Mila tries to ask her about her death, but Riley can’t remember anything and she seems really mad. Hello! Magic is real! Mila brought the dead back to life! Riley pointed her to the spell with the Grimoire she sent! To give her friend some time, Mila walks away to get some shopping done, but then she gets a terrible sick feeling and runs back toward the undead girls. Mila finds them around a shattered mirror and they look like decomposed nightmares, but in a blink, they come back to themselves. Riley demands to know where Mila went, figuring their transformation to grotesque corpses is distance based. Mila pulls the grimoire from her bag and they look over the spell.
Once everyone is dressed in their shoplifted clothes instead of what they were buried in, they decide to test the parameters of the spell. When they’re about a hundred paces apart, Mila starts to feel sick and the undead girls shout for Mila to come back. As Dayton and June come to terms with being tied to a witch for a week, Riley tells them the reason they came back is to kill the fucker who offed them.
The next day, Mila is at school and even more confident that someone killed Riley, Dayton and June, after all she brought back the dead, she clearly knows stuff. Mila spends class thinking who would kill them and why, and decides it might be for the Rausch Scholarship, but then it's time for the memorial service, which is massively fucked up. There is a horribly ironic bake sale fundraising to plant a memorial tree for Dayton. It seems the fundraisers forgot Dayton and June were found hanged from a tree. In addition to the bake sale, the swim team is asking people to sign Dayton's framed swim cap, there a station for a yearbook tribute called, Gone but First Let Me Take a Selfie, there's a raffle for a Starbucks gift card to the person who can list June’s favorite things, and a My Little Pony face painting booth. Dr. Miller accosts Mila, sarcastically asking if Riley, who is there in disguise, is a new friend, but then Xander walks by drawing the psychologist's attention. He doesn’t acknowledge Dr. Miller and instead hugs Mila.
Xander is equally disgusted with the celebration of life, he’s lost two friends and a sister and this [gestures around] is gauche. As they’re talking, Mila feels nauseous, obviously the undead girls are more than 100 steps away, so she flees. Mila finds June accosting her friends, showing them her bruised neck and calling them out for their lies and bullshit. Before Mila can reach her, Riley grabs her, not wanting Mila to out herself as a witch by changing June back. Mila secretly makes her way to June who is demanding to know which of her “friends” killed her before giving them a few hard truths. Luckily, Mila scares them off.
Mila and June head to find Riley and Dayton so they can escape this farce of a memorial. It would be so handy to have some walkie talkies to contact them, especially as it would mean that Mila doesn't have to listen to June as she reminisces about dating Xander before realizing Mila has a thing for him. Ha! Eventually they find Riley and Dayton in the auditorium, Riley playing piano and Dayton singing.
The next day, Mila heads to Yarrow House, the undead girls have trashed the witchy supplies in the kitchen. As they eat, Mila points out the only reason she can think someone would murder them is the Rausch Scholarship. Surprising her, the undead girls aren’t really bothered about finding their murderer. It all deteriorates from there and Riley gets sick of the girls bickering and knocks a pile of their witchy books toward Mila, asking her if she is a Wiccan or not.
Mila, Riley and June are looking in the witchy library trying to find spells or something to help discover who the murderer is while Dayton disappears to a gas station for Gatorade, and upon her return, instead of helping, spends her time getting a social media kick. Suddenly Riley remembers where June was the night she died. Dayton comes back into the room showing a livestream of Caleb Treadwell from a couple of days after June and Dayton’s death. In it, he’s playing video games but he’s wearing June’s necklace. June tries to push all this information away, and wonders what does catching your murderer really mean when you’re dead? It's not like anything is going to change. Eventually though she gives in, pulls out the ancient grimoire and turns to the spell Draw the Rot from the Heart of Your Enemies, a disgusting spell she wants to do to her murderer.
The next day, Mila picks the undead girls up from Yarrow House and heads to Mercado Del Valle, a Mexican grocery store, for spell supplies like a calf’s heart. Back at Yarrow with bellies full of real Mexican food, they head into the basement which turns out not to be as creepy as Mila thought, and set up for the spell to Draw the Rot from the Heart of Caleb Treadwell. Mila holds the heart and casts the spell. There is a sense of urgency as she repeats the necessary words until a flame consumes the heart. They did magic!
At school, Mila risks a tardy to investigate June’s locker for any clues. In chemistry, where Caleb is Mila’s lab partner, she spots June’s necklace just peeking out of his collar, and notices his arm is mottled red and shredding. Looks like the spell is working, motherfucker! After school, Aniyah stops Mila asking if she’s okay as she looks sick. Mila blows her off and gets into her car where Riley and June sneak up on her. They came to tell her Dayton is gone, she went out for Gatorade like usual and she didn’t come back. They figure the best place to look is home.
Dayton’s house turns out to be only four doors down from Riley’s family's funeral home. They sneak around the back but the house looks empty, though there is a body in the pool, which is thankfully just Dayton. She’s been sneaking in the pool everyday, but had to hide when the gardener came and then her family came home. It's a good thing that the undead girls don’t need to breathe! Mila heads to the car while the undead girls raid Dayton’s family’s bulk buy snacks, but unfortunately Xander sees her and stops her, wanting to know what she’s up to. Awkwardly she blurts that she's going to the farmers market and swoons a little when Xander volunteers to come with her.
As they head to the farmers market, they talk about their grieving processes and how judgmental people are about the right and wrong ways to grieve. It’s too much and frustrating. The farmers market is busy and Mila sees that Toby has a table. She fake smiles at them and, by her snide comments and tone, she lets Mila know she knows she stole the rose and has been up to something. With a blessed be, Mila asks Xander to dance to escape, and it turns out, Xander can move! As they dance, Xander asks Mila not to disappear again because he doesn’t want to lose her too, he’s lost so many people lately.
The next day, Mila has her first text conversation with Xander that isn’t about Riley and it’s flirty! After, Mila logs into June’s Facebook and sends a message to Caleb as June telling him she’s not gone and to meet her at Yarrow House and to bring her necklace or she’ll haunt the shit out of him. To further entice him, she includes a picture of June outside the farmhouse. Just as the message is sent, another text comes in from Xander and Aniyah walks by, and blatantly reads Mila’s message. Rude. They’re really not pleasant to each other, but then, when one always gives fuck off vibes and the other shit talks a dead BFF and her family just because they're morticians, what do you expect?
Mila heads to Yarrow House. It’s almost time for Caleb to arrive so they start getting things ready. They have prepared a truth potion and three sigils, one for peacemaking, one for free-flowing speech, one for luck. Once everything is ready, June tells Mila to leave so they can look suitably scary and gross looking for Caleb. She’s far enough away to feel the snap of her connection with the undead girls, but also close enough to see Caleb arrive, scout around the farmhouse, and go inside. Riley calls Mila back to the house on the walkie talkie and when she arrives back to the basement, Caleb is being tied up and is sobbing, he can’t stop looking at June.
June orders Mila to truth Caleb, but before she can, Caleb whispers he knew June wouldn’t have killed herself, that Aniyah was right, they had faked their deaths and she’s writing an article about it. June forces Caleb to drink the truth potion and they start asking him questions. As they do, there is a rumble overhead and Dayton goes to investigate. Finally they get to the meaty questions: where was Caleb the night June and Dayton died? He was with June until she called Dayton for a ride home. June pulls at Caleb’s shirt and realizes he’s not rotting, he has eczema. Suddenly June is saying how much she missed Caleb, but then Dayton calls on the walkie. There are a lot of old people on motorcycles in the driveway.
The undead girls head into the woods to hide and Mila ventures out front to find Toby waiting, shotgun in hand, to call out Mila, and with her is her coven including Dr. Miller. When the back door bangs, Mila uses the distraction to run for it and feels her connection to the undead girls. Dayton finds Mila, tells her Riley and June are already gone and she needs to go too. Mila heads to her car and Riley’s house.
Mila calls Xander for help and he invites her in. She looks a mess, like she’s run through the woods, which she has. After Mila cleans up, dressed in Xander’s PJs and his dad's robe, she heads to Xander’s room. They watch TV, they spoon and Xander touches her hair. There is tension as soon as Xander confesses he’s always like-liked Mila but wanted to keep his distance because of Riley, and then things get intense as they start making out. The PJs and robe Mila is wearing fall open and she pulls at Xander's T-shirt. Something isn’t right though, his back is covered in acne. No, not acne. Mushrooms. All kinds of mushrooms, smooth and porous and brain-like... Oh shit! "That which rots you marks you."
Xander forgives Mila, he figures she just fucked up a spell and this is the result, but knows she can fix it. Wrong and wrong. Mila gathers her things, heading for the door, but then Riley is there and she looks awful. Mila runs past her BFF toward her car and Riley follows, the sound of Xander driving off behind them. Mila begs Riley for it not to be true that Xander killed her and Riley confesses he didn’t, but that she needs Mila to listen to her.
Riley finally remembered everything. After Dayton and June’s deaths, her dad said the damage on their bodies wasn’t consistent with death by hanging. While Xander was at June’s memorial, she found Dayton’s shoe behind Xander’s bedside table when she went to steal his phone charger. Riley got scared but wanted answers so she went to talk to her brother. On the way, Riley realized she was crying over a shoe and felt ridiculous, just because her brother had a shoe didn't mean he killed anyone, but she went to throw it in the creek anyway, just in case. She managed to throw the shoe into the creek but then fell and died. But why did Mila’s spell bring June and Dayton back? Why is Xander’s back covered in mushrooms? Riley turns on Mila, calling her a bad witch and exclaims she shouldn’t have brought her back. Mila walks away from Riley.
Later, Mila makes an anonymous call to the police that Xander was seen in the park the night of June and Dayton’s deaths. Mila spends the day being seen by people, scared of Xander and of Toby and her coven. Eventually Mila messages Caleb because the undead girls are with him and he invites her over. June and Caleb are holding hands and Dayton is excited at having slept in the principal’s bed. June says she still can’t remember her death, but does remember she was secretly dating Caleb and that they’d told Dayton the night they died. Also, their relationship started while she was still with Xander. Mila tells them she thinks Xander killed them, which they laugh off, but the mushrooms on his back, having Dayton’s shoe and Riley’s accidental death suggest otherwise. June just tells her to chill and rest.
When Mila wakes up, she finds Dayton doing dishes and watching June and Caleb playing outside. They reminisce about what will happen the next night when they’re time is done. Strangely, they’re going to miss each other. Mila pulls out her cell and sees a voicemail from Xander and Riley’s mom. Xander is missing and she wanted to see if he was with her because they’ve received a very strange phone call. Mila also sees some strange text messages from Aniyah warning her to keep away from Xander because there is something fucked up with the Greenways followed by replies arranging to meet at Yarrow House at 8pm tonight. It’s quarter to eight now. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Mila texts Aniyah back, telling her not to go into the house but to instead call the cops because she's being set up. Mila and the undead girls rush to Yarrow House.
Yarrow House is dark when Mila and the undead girls arrive, but Riley is waiting for them. A few moments later Aniyah turns up. It takes a bit for her to believe Riley, June and Dayton are undead but she’s pretty chill about them being literal zombies. Mila tells Aniyah that she needs to get home, but then she realizes that Xander is there, but before she can run away, Xander, covered in mushrooms, is standing in the doorway. He rushes inside.
Xander stops before fully coming in, but he’s holding the very sharp ceremonial knife, and Aniyah is finally freaked out. Xander flings Aniyah sideways, her head cracks and she sinks to the floor. Xander begs Mila to help saying he’s not mad and that he knows she made a mistake when she used June’s lipgloss she took from Riley’s room for the resurrection spell. He kept her lip gloss as a special memento… just like the shoe. Mila accuses Xander of killing June and Dayton, but he's not concerned about that at the moment. Instead, Xander is getting angry, snapping at Riley, and shouting at June and Dayton for helping Aniyah. He throws a lit candle that sets the kitchen aflame. He orders Mila out, and tells the undead girls they don’t exist to him anymore.
Xander, in true bad guy form, starts monologuing about how June and Dayton undermined and cut people down causing nothing but pain and how the scholarship and the competition were killing Riley. While he's talking, Mila realizes the only way out is the window upstairs and indicates that to Aniyah. Xander continues to complain about all his grievances, but June sees Aniyah moving to the window, so she stands in front of her and antagonizes Xander so he won't notice. He rages at June for cheating on him with Caleb and how her family tortured his family and whispered dangerous vicious rumors that segregated them. He ends telling her that how she died was too good for her.
The fire spreads quickly but Aniyah has made it up and should be able to get out. Dayton shoves Mila up the stairs, too, while June punches Xander and Riley jumps on his back. June and Riley then follow Mila and Dayton upstairs. The undead girls jump out first, but Xander grabs Mila before she can get out. Mila’s survival instinct kicks in, but Xander foolishly thinks she is staying for him, but she’s calmly trying to pacify him. She gently holds him, strokes his hair and reaches down to his pants pocket for the ceremonial knife he was holding.
Mila brings the knife down on Xander and as he screams, she can see mushroom caps in his throat. The knife goes into his flesh so easily and with one last stab, the knife goes through his shoulder and into the wooden wall. Mila turns and jumps out of the window, leaving Xander behind to burn to death. She wakes up later in her bed, her mom telling her there has been an accident, but Mila pretends to be asleep. When she wakes up properly, it’s to her two younger sisters sandwiching her.
There will be a lot of questions needing answers soon, like what Xander was doing at the abandoned Yarrow House and why he was covered in mushrooms. The cops will likely need to talk to her, but today is the last day the undead girls will be resurrected. Mila heads to Toby’s but encounters Dr. Miller who invites her in, though Toby is none too pleased. Over tea, Mila tells Dr. Miller and Toby everything, and that she wants the coven to be there so they know the undead girls have gone back and are gone for good.
The undead girls are at Caleb’s house having a tiny going away party since their funerals sucked. As Mila helps do Riley’s roots, they make up and resolve all the tension of the last week. They spend the day eating pizza, chips and drinking Gatorade. They have a dance party to Uptown Funk, lie in the garden and look at the sky and watch movies. It’s a good day. Eventually though, it’s time for June to say goodbye to Caleb and the undead girls to return to the cemetery.
Toby and her coven are already at the cemetery. Toby hands Riley the grimoire telling her it needs to go to the grave with her. Mila and the undead girls walk away to say goodbye and Mila gives Riley her quartz necklace back. Dayton finally gets her solo and sings I’m Always Chasing Rainbows as the earth trembles and the graveyard goes silent.
Xander’s obituary is tiny and his death is ruled an accident. There is no mention of why the dress his sister was buried in was found at Yarrow House, nor are questions asked about June and Dayton’s deaths. Likely, the police just suck. Because the cemetery didn’t spit back out Toby’s iron rose hematite, Mila will be working off her debt for a while and seeing Dr. Miller about her PTSD and depression. Mila and Aniyah start to bond, they both have annoying younger sisters and shared mushroom monster trauma, so they decide they're going to start the fat brown girl clique, which will be dope as hell.
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