The first time she was offered the chance to visit Heaven for an evening, Claire didn’t think too much of it. 

“Is that a new club or something?”

Claire’s voice dragged as she scratched another phone number off her list. Her manager, Lenny, lowered the heater again, so she had begrudgingly put on her wool cardigan over her romper. Even with the turtleneck providing some coverage, the wool itched at her neck. She grumbled and scratched at the irritated skin. 

There was something dreadfully depressing about mid-January. Claire always thought the clothing crept a little too snugly around her throat, as though it were the winter fashion to deliberate which way you wanted to strangle yourself every morning. 

She threw mousy hair into an oversized clip, adjusted her headset, and dialed the next number, not waiting for Juniper’s reply.

Juniper was once again chewing on her namesake berries in her cubicle, as if the little seeds were tobacco. She stored them in the pocket between her molars and her cheek, and when she spoke into her microphone, she breathed piney words. Claire found the choice peculiar, but there was something alluring in the way Juniper fiddled the berries around with her tongue, the way she didn’t seem to care if her teeth might rot where she cradled them, the way her words tickled Claire’s ears like a winter’s snowfall.

“No, babe,” Juniper scoffed and twirled her neon green hair.

Claire spoke cheerfully into her headset. Then her face fell and she clicked to hang up: another dead end voicemail. She crossed another number off the list.

“You know I don’t do that scene,” Claire said.

“God forbid you live a little,” Juniper muttered.

“Bite me.”

“You wish.” Juniper said this with an upturned smirk, and it was only a shallow breath before Claire joined her.

 

Juniper asked Claire again over lunch the next day, as she tore her tuna salad sandwich into uneven, globby strips.

“You want to go to Heaven with me tonight?” Juniper delicately dropped one of the pieces of sandwich into her mouth.

Claire speared her caesar salad with her fork again. “Yeah, sure,” she said sarcastically. “Pick me up at seven?”

“Ten would really be better.”

Claire laughed. “So it is a club!”

“The most exclusive one in the universe,” Juniper said.

“Come on, June.”

“Aww, won’t you be my PharmaPal?” Juniper said. “‘We sell dreams here,’ after all, Claire Bear!” She smiled cheekily. 

It was one of those sedentary friendships, the ones without legs. Juniper and Claire made snide comments during Monday morning meetings, bemoaned the ennui of selling lucid dreaming pills, and saved each other donuts from the breakroom. But they didn’t talk once they left the third floor of PharmaPal’s offices, not even an email or page. And they certainly didn’t meet in-person. For all Claire knew, Juniper disappeared into the void once she left the parking lot.

Not that Claire wished the void on Juniper. On the contrary, the woman fascinated her with her berry-chewing, fish-eating, green-haired je ne sais quois. It was… what was it, exactly? It wasn’t that she didn’t like Juniper. It was just, well, she wasn’t one to hang out with her sort.

“‘At PharmaPal, your dreams can become your friends,’” Juniper elbowed Claire encouragingly. “‘And your friends can become your dream!’”

Claire rolled her eyes, then sneered and pushed the skin of her jaw upward to resemble their manager, Lenny’s, butt-chin. “‘Lucid dreaming is the joke we’re all in on.’”

“That’s the spirit!”

Juniper laughed and licked the tuna salad from her fingers, and Claire bit her lower lip.

Sighing, Claire wavered, “Ten is after my bedtime, and we have work tomorrow.”

“You trust me, babe?”

Claire looked at Juniper, at her neon space buns and sticky fingers. She was the type of woman her mother would gripe about at the dinner table. A bad influence, ruining that pretty face of hers with that eyebrow piercing. A maneater if I’ve ever seen one.

“Not really.”

Juniper sat forward, a devilish smirk dancing across her lips. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Claire thought about it for a moment. A lot could happen to two young women in a club on a Tuesday evening. What sort of people went to such a place on such a night? Not the type that Claire wanted to share company with. 

Juniper, however, was the type of person who would. She’d take some party drug and rally the next morning with a crisp AriZona Iced Tea in hand despite this abysmal cold. Or, at least, Claire assumed as much. That was the persona her coworker aimed to give off to those around her. The older workers in the office were standoffish toward her, but most people minded their own business in call centers.

And yet, Juniper leaned toward her now, her piney breaths waiting in eager anticipation.

Claire’s wool sweater encroached upon her throat again. The fabric clung to her sweaty neck, itching once more. Stupid, cheap Lenny.

“Fine,” she said.

Claire waited for Juniper’s eyebrow piercing to dance in surprise, but it didn’t, and Claire’s stomach sank a little when her coworker leaned back into her chair. As though Juniper knew all along that Claire would bend to her whims. 

Juniper’s next word was soft: “Sublime.” She didn’t look at Claire as she spoke, and she left the breakroom and her mangled tuna fish sandwich on the table.

 

At quarter to ten, Claire dissociated as she sat at the edge of her double bed, curling her toes around her jade, plush rug. She’d spent thirty minutes placing butterfly clips in her hair and attempting to subtly add body glitter to the tips of her locks and along her collar bones. 

Somewhere in her mind, she imagined she’d look radiant under the dimmed lights of a night club. But as she stared at the shiny, uneven globs across her skin and the strands of hair falling from the barrettes, she felt positively childish. Like an undercover cop posing as a preteen. Claire considered diving under her covers, but, knowing Juniper, she would let herself into her apartment, find her lame friend, and drag her out regardless.

Would Juniper be wearing body glitter? At first, she thought so, but now the pit in Claire’s stomach churned with regret. She ran to the sink and scraped at the sparkly patches of her chin and hair.

When Claire opened the door to Juniper, she flushed as her co-worker’s gaze meandered to the red, splotchy bits of skin where she’d applied friction to erase her mistake.

Juniper reached a hand toward Claire’s face, cupping her jaw, her thumb gently brushing back and forth along her cheek. A wave of heat pulsed through Claire. She was suddenly glad she wasn’t wearing a turtleneck, though she felt the phantom itch near her collar anyway.

Juniper’s lips merely curled as she pulled her hand back to show her glittering palm to Claire. 

“You should’ve left the glitter,” she said.

 

 

The two women sat in Juniper’s whining Hyundai Excel, stalled in the parking lot of the corporate building housing the PharmaPal calling center. There was only one other vehicle in the lot, probably the night custodian. The single street light cast severe shadows within the car; even Juniper’s neon green hair seemed tamed, brown almost. But Claire didn’t need much light to recognize the purple pills Juniper extended in her palm: an offering.

“We’re—why are we back here?” Claire barely spat out the words.

Juniper furrowed her brows. “You wanted to go to Heaven. Here we are.”

She flickered her gaze from Juniper’s unbothered expression to the pills in her hands. You have to be joking, Claire wanted to say. But the rest of the thoughts flooding her mind froze her in embarrassment. 

“I’m not like… that.” Claire stopped herself short of saying you. “I don’t do drugs.”

“No, you just sell them.”

Claire’s breath caught in her throat. “It’s not the same.”

“Why not?” Juniper asked.

Claire wanted to explain that selling lucid dreaming pills was a way to make ends meet, a way to get out of that horrid childhood bedroom full of ponies and unicorns, a way to get closer to… something. Her stomach sank as she realized she didn’t even know where she wanted to go next, what the goal was after PharmaPal. So she stayed silent, grinding her teeth, resisting the urge to scratch her neck.

You idiot, Claire scolded herself. You should’ve known better than to hope for something more.

“This isn’t safe,” she mumbled weakly at last.

Juniper sighed. “Judge all you want,” she said, “I’m going to live a little tonight.” 

Juniper threw a small handful of the purple pills back on her tongue and swallowed them dryly. Claire’s dark eyes widened as she watched Juniper lean in toward her, extend her tongue back out. Empty. Piney. Inviting. 

Juniper’s fingers found Claire’s, opening her clenched fist, resting her icy palm on Claire’s clammy one.

“June,” Claire breathed, then forgot how to inhale.

Juniper playfully booped Claire’s nose with the tip of her cool tongue. Claire jolted back, a shiver running down her spine as Juniper cackled, chewing once again on her namesake berries. Juniper closed Claire’s fist tenderly, and Claire felt something small and sticky in her palm. As she uncurled her fingers, she saw the three purple pills resting on her hot skin, threatening to melt if they stayed much longer.

Idiot, she reminded herself once more. She resisted scratching her neck. Claire knew Juniper was a bad influence when she accepted her invitation tonight. What more did she expect? 

Her stomach churned as she ignored the answer screaming in the back of her head.

“Come on,” Juniper beckoned as she flung open the car door and stepped outside.

“Where are you going?” Claire’s eyebrows furrowed. “You can’t walk around once that kicks in, let alone drive.”

Juniper bent her knees to peek through the car window, her neon green space buns illuminated from behind. With the woman backlit, Claire could see Juniper’s flyaways sprouting wildly from her head, as though each tendril threatened to abandon its reckless, irreverent host.

“I’m going to Heaven tonight,” she said matter-of-factly. Juniper’s eyebrows raised as her black eyes surveyed Claire. She looked her up and down: calculating.

Claire knew, deep down, what Juniper would say about people like her. Juniper had said as much about Janine, and Frank before her, and someone named Cyan before them. Claire only knew them from Juniper’s retellings: previous friends who came and went before Claire ever stepped foot in the PharmaPal office. None of them could allegedly handle Juniper. She’d said, Squares don’t know how to handle a star that burns as bright as me. Claire remembered that when Juniper proclaimed such stardom, her friend had worn a plaid pair of men’s boxers as shorts, and her hair was a deep magenta then. That same, flushed hue as her lips as they curled in the devilish way they always did when Juniper laughed.

Claire was a square. She’d been one her whole life. When she eventually left PharmaPal, like all of Juniper’s friends had shortly after their fallings out, she would be another name to pepper Juniper’s stories of a lackluster workplace, of people she never missed enough to see again, of ghosts whose names barely grazed Juniper’s lips save for in the name of indifference. A pit formed in Claire’s stomach, roiling into lead, or so it felt. 

Juniper silently resolved some decision about Claire. The pit in Claire’s stomach dropped; her cheeks heated.

“Come with me, stay in the car—your choice. But I’m going.” 

Claire’s skin flushed as she locked eyes with her in silence. She’d heard the words unspoken: with or without you. Juniper would leave her behind if she chose not to go with her now, if she listened to every instinct screaming at her to call a cab, go back home, and hope that Juniper survived whatever waking lucid dream she planned to succumb to. 

She wondered if she’d ever be able to handle a star as bright as Juniper. Probably not. She’d fade into the nothing nobody she’d always been, had always felt like. The thought saddened her, and that pit in her gut churned in despair as Juniper turned and began to walk away from the car.

A twinkle caught Claire’s eye. Her gaze followed the glimmer to her own hand, which she moved back and forth in a sliver of the severe streetlight that found its way into the car. Stubborn, residual body glitter reflected back at her, and she traced the chance constellation with her finger. She did so delicately, as Juniper had been with her when she touched her hand, her face. Claire glanced back at her friend, who became smaller as she walked further and further.

If Claire did go home, if she let this friendship stagnate without legs, there would be no second invitation after tonight. Juniper would be the piney-breathed, neon-haired, enigma of a woman who sat near her every day. And their world together would begin and end with those double doors. The double doors that Juniper made a beeline for at this very moment.

 “Wait!”

Juniper did not turn or slow as Claire threw open the passenger door, stumbled out, and ran after her companion. She was out of breath by the time she caught up to Juniper.

“Wait,” she panted, putting a hand on Juniper’s shoulder.

Her friend spun around. She eyed her up and down. “Yes?”

“What, uh, how… How many of these should I take?”

Claire opened her palm, exposing the melting, purple pills.

Juniper shrugged. “One, if you’re following the dosage recommendation.”

There was space in the air after her sentence. Claire waited for her to fill it. She didn’t. 

Juniper’s dark eyes watched her, and she bit her bottom lip, which looked a little paler than it had ten minutes ago. A little more orchid and a little less magenta.

“How many did you take?” Claire asked.

A wicked grin spread across Juniper’s face. “I knew you were more rebellious than you looked.” She shook her head in approval, but Claire shivered.

“I’ve been at this longer than you. Take three if you want the slow ease. Take four if you want a good time.”

There was that pregnant pause in the air again from Juniper’s unfinished thought.

“What happens if I take five?” Claire said cautiously.

That devilish grin grew. Juniper put two more pills in Claire’s palm. An electric pulse shot through Claire as Juniper’s icy skin touched hers again.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to find out?”

Claire stared at her palm, heartbeat racing, then tossed all five of the melting, purple pills into her mouth. She let them melt, their acrid, surprising sweetness coating her tongue. If she didn’t know any better, she would say she was eating candy. A powerful mint. Tears lined her lids as she dry swallowed.

A sharp ache threatened to ride through her sinuses to behind her eyes. She inhaled the cold air, then exhaled, then inhaled once more, fighting off the violent, piney air that begged her to expel the contents of her stomach. Her heart began to race as a nervous nausea rose in her throat. 

What had she done? Had she even eaten dinner? No, she’d been too nervous about the club. Claire swallowed again, reminding herself of Juniper’s words: you’re more rebellious than you look, more rebellious than you look, more rebellious than you look.

When she looked back up, when she cleared the tears from her eyes and forced the nausea to subside, Juniper was walking toward the double door entrance of the office building.

As Claire rushed toward Juniper, toward the double doors that she always entered and exited to bookend the workday, she could swear she saw a shimmer of iridescent light peeking through the cracks of the entrance. Surely, it would take longer than a minute for the effects of the pills to take root, she told herself. Right?

Juniper opened the door, the iridescence swirling where there once was a lobby. It was a void: a beautiful, otherworldly wall that bent and swayed like ocean waves. She walked through it without looking back for Claire, without an ounce of hesitation.

Claire shuddered. Between the cold, the nausea, her heightened emotions, the late hour, and the impossible scene in front of her, she was shaking. Not out of fear, she realized, but the implications of her decision. Of deciding to step away from the quiet, docile, obedient version of herself she once knew. As her temperature cooled, she felt it now. The possibility that this maneater offered her. Even if she never spent time with Juniper again, she knew she would leave a piece of herself behind once she stepped through that iridescence. But, perhaps more frighteningly, she would become somebody, and she wasn’t sure if that nobody she had been her whole life would still be waiting in the parking lot when she returned.

She took another icy breath, and then Claire entered the void.

 

The last thing Claire expected to see in Heaven was a rollercoaster. And yet, as soon as she walked through the void, there it stood: towering, bright red, and bringing utter delight to its passengers as the connected cars dipped and climbed, twisted and looped, and careened right for her at a hundred miles an hour. She dropped to the ground, covering her head, and braced for impact. As quickly as the churning of metal on wood, screams, and a gust of wind rattled her bones, it passed, fading in the distance. 

When Claire squinted her eyes open at last, not only did she find herself unscathed, but hovering mid-air over a green-haired maneater lying with her back on the ground.

“Ah!” Claire startled, but she didn’t fall… or stand. She remained stuck on a parallel plane to the ground, her nose mere inches from grazing Juniper’s.

Floating. She was floating. In the air? But, but that was, how could she— 

Juniper arched up her pierced brow coyly. “Welcome to Heaven, Claire Bear.”

 

Claire’s chest felt like it could explode from joy as Juniper gave her the tour. Gone was the nervousness and nausea. Juniper hadn’t meant a nightclub after all. She’d meant Heaven Heaven. That had to be it, Claire thought, because in front of her was the most beautiful memory turned into a lucid dream.

At first, Claire could’ve sworn Heaven looked like the same boardwalk near her nana’s home. The water had that deep seafoam hue that Nana always said was opaque enough to hide a body if someone wanted to. Claire used to be scared she’d go out swimming and run into a bloated belly or rigid leg of a poor murder victim, but over the years, she’d just learned that Nana had that sort of way of talking. She seemed to look for death in things, and so Claire learned to tune her out and dunk her head under the surface of water without a second thought.

Now, as she and Juniper walked down the boardwalk, a gaggle of children played hopscotch on the waves. Their shoes stayed untouched by the water that must’ve been at least five feet deep, if Claire recalled rightly. A smile twisted at the corner of her mouth as she imagined her Nana comparing the children to Jesus walking on water, though she probably would’ve said they were blaspheming the son of God by playing hopscotch in his vision.

There was much that was the same as that boardwalk she’d visit in the summers: the teal or white wooden huts with vendors, the carnival rides at the end of the pier; a balloon artist making wonderfully fantastical shapes; the cry of gulls that threatened to swoop down from overhead; the crisp, blue sky with fluffy, white clouds; the smell of salt and sand and damp wood.

And yet, there was so much that was fantastical about it, too.

People were flying above them, next to them, alongside the roller coaster. Once Claire got right-side up again, she tried to leap into the sky but kept stumbling to her knees. She decided she preferred to walk for now, but would try flying once she soaked in the surroundings. Maybe once they got to the end of the pier, she’d told Juniper. That way, if she fell, she’d be diving into the water and not falling flat on her face. Juniper shrugged and resigned to walking with her, itching to sate the hunger she clearly was ignoring.

The sun wasn’t sweltering hot like it always was either. Rather, Claire’s skin felt refreshingly cool, though perhaps that was from the ocean spray tickling her skin as they continued down the boardwalk. This place never provided reprieve in her youth. Claire was notorious for returning with blaring red splotches of burnt skin after failing to find a lick of shade on the boardwalk. But that relentless sun didn’t bother her at all now. Instead, it felt like early spring.

Albina Sobakov, who had been Claire’s childhood neighbor before the car accident in third grade, sold them cotton candy that tasted like their favorite meal. At first, Claire was silent in her shock: Albina had been positively mangled, and frankly, she was an unkind girl with a penchant for pulling Claire’s pigtails. But at Nana’s boardwalk, Albina was whole once more in her four-foot glory and wore a seemingly pleasant smile. Claire was surprised that this was her final resting place, but when Albina extended them two delightfully huge cotton candies, she stomached her doubt and accepted the treat with a warming smile. Juniper’s favorite meal, and thus, her cotton candy, was canned beans and toast. Claire’s was her mother’s kitchen sink lasagna, but the inner layers of her confection tasted like the confetti cake she had for her 5th birthday. Although, between layers, the two sometimes merged into something akin to a dumpster fantasy of flavors.

Ava Gardner, of all people, was offering to paint their face to illuminate a piece of their soul. Claire remembered watching the beloved actress in Barefoot Contessa, The Killers, and The Merry Widow with her Nana. They had wept when Ava died. Nana would sob to see one of her favorite film stars here, in Heaven. 

Claire’s high deflated a little at that thought, but she watched as Ava painted a neon green serpent on Juniper’s cheek and a glittering lamb on her own.

“Why do you think she picked a snake for you?” Claire asked Juniper. She held a corn dog that the vendor—Barbara Newcastle, the rigid reverend from Claire’s mother’s church—assured her wouldn’t give her stomach cramps later. All of the gluttony and zero consequences, the reverend proffered, and Claire raised an eyebrow while taking it, reminding herself that she didn’t actually have to eat the corn dog. She only had to walk away looking like she might eat it. After all, it was made by the woman who scolded Claire in her youth for wearing too audacious a color of pants in middle school.

“I dunno, because I could turn any man into stone, like Medusa?” Juniper shrugged. “Or maybe the movie star just thought I was hot like the gorgon. Medusa was a babe, ya know?” She chomped on her corn dog.

“Was she?” 

Claire decided to take a bite of her own corn dog. It was juicy and crispy, soft and airy. The perfect balance that she never was able to grasp from a corn dog on Nana’s boardwalk. Maybe Claire could forgive the reverend for her closed-minded speeches after all. Maybe, she realized, the people who came to Heaven were the ones with the potential to become better, not just the ones who started out good.

Claire’s neck itched as she looked around to find someone in the crowds who wasn’t there, and she frowned slightly.

“Totally. I feel like men or the gods or whatever were just intimidated that she was all that.”

“And you’re… all that?”

Claire was kidding herself for even implying that she didn’t believe Juniper to be all that. Of course she was. Claire looked at her again, with the neon green space buns, the eyebrow piercing, and the berry chewing.

Juniper sniffed. “You know it, twinkle pig.”

Claire scoffed. “It’s a lamb.”

“Whatever.”

“You thought—you thought she made me a pig?” Claire felt lightheaded, bubbly, but a twinge of sadness entered her belly all the same as words tumbled out of her mouth: “You’re calling me fat or filthy or something?” Or something.

She looked at her own fingers, intrigued by the sudden length and grace they seemed to possess. Claire wasn’t quite sure how the words tumbled out, or if they even did, now that she thought about it. Maybe that was in her head, and this was all just a dream. Maybe—

“Slow your roll,” Juniper said, matter-of-factly. “It’s not my fault Ava Gardner should’ve stuck to looking pretty on the big screen.”

“Oh.”

Claire looked over her shoulder to see if she could find Ava once more. Her gut instinct when she saw her was to hug her, to thank her for all of the memories from childhood with her and Nana. But that instinct had felt so silly with Juniper there. In fact, most of her instincts seemed silly whenever Claire’s co-worker was around. She wanted to tell Juniper that Ava was more than a pretty face, but that would’ve been her instinct talking, and right now, she felt like the world was so open, so vast, so bright, just like Juniper.

As she looked behind her, though, she couldn’t find Ava at the facepainting stand. As a matter of fact, Reverend Barbara wasn’t at the corn dog stand either. But the stands weren’t empty either, she noted. There was something familiar there, not a person but… but the words were escaping her now.

Gosh, this bubbly feeling was overwhelming her. Maybe that was the appeal of Heaven after all. If your troubles floated away, how could you ever be unhappy?

Juniper jumped in her line of vision. She took Claire’s hand in her own, only this time, it didn’t feel icy. It was warm, almost. Warm and soft and fuzzy, but not fuzzy like an animal. Fuzzy like… were hands supposed to feel fuzzy?

Juniper said, “Babe, who cares if it’s a pig or a lamb? It was cute. Just like you.”

Claire’s lips twitched, not knowing quite what to do with this frozen weight inside her chest. Her neck began to itch again despite leaving her turtleneck in the car. Even though Juniper had complimented her, something about the niceties didn’t quite reach Claire’s core. She resolved that maybe Juniper was pitying her. Maybe she wasn’t that cute, and that was the truth that didn’t sit well with her. For all of the bubbles in her head, for all of her pining, Juniper’s words left her wanting for more.

“Yeah,” she conceded quietly. “Ok.”

She looked away from Juniper, at her hands. Her left hand held Juniper’s and her right hand held her corn dog. Claire focused on her corn dog and its one missing bite. Another pang of nausea churned at her stomach, and she wondered if Reverend Barbara’s promises were too good to be true.

Reverend Barbara. That was right. Where was she? Claire looked up and peeked past Juniper’s shoulders, back at the stands. She squinted, frowning as she struggled to identify the word for what she saw. It was circling her thoughts, bounding around in her head. Two words, maybe? Or maybe one. Starting with a ‘k.’ No, a ‘c’? 

That ocean spray was quite dense at her hairline. She wanted to dab at it with her hands, but they were otherwise occupied.

Juniper thrust her corn dog into her own mouth, tearing a heaping bite off while lapping it up with her tongue. Claire could only focus on the sharp movements, on that tongue allowing not even a crumb of Juniper’s corn bread to escape her maw. 

She seemed to radiate in the sun. The nice, gentle sun. No, not radiate. Claire let out a gasp as she witnessed a subtle but present halo hovering over Juniper’s head. 

Claire let out a sigh that she didn’t mean to voice, but she couldn’t seem to care that she did. “Oh, June,” she whispered. She said the next words like a prayer. “You’re right. You really are all that.”

Tears brimmed in Claire’s eyes at the sight of her. At her neon green hair, the eyebrow piercing, the snake paint. How could her mother, the reverend, even Claire herself at times, hate people like Juniper? Hate people like them? There was nothing purer in this world, she realized, for they were not even in this world anymore. Juniper had let her escape, and Claire… Claire had become a star. A radiant star that welcomed herself, a square, a lowly, insignificant, unaccomplished square to this beautiful place. And how beautiful it was. Claire stared at Juniper’s magenta-lined lips, smelled her wintery breath, and shivered.

She would say it, she decided. Out loud. She wanted to be somebody, a true somebody, a star. What’s the worst that can happen? she asked her bubbly brain, echoing Juniper’s earlier words. And wouldn’t it be fun to find out?

That devilish smile of Juniper’s returned, the one Claire had loved from the first day she’d laid eyes on her. And now, with this bubbly sensation, with the world slowing, with the ocean spray dewing her skin, she released the truth that she hadn’t been able to admit fully to herself for months now. 

Claire leaned into Juniper’s lips, her tongue exploring her wintery mouth. If Juniper was surprised, she didn’t show it. Her hands found the base of Claire’s back, and she pulled her closer, their hips touching in cold friction. Claire clawed at Juniper with a manic desperation, like if today were the last day she had with her, she would memorize the caverns and curves of her body. She moaned, and real world Claire might’ve been horrified at herself. But Heaven Claire wanted more, and it was only another moment before some of Juniper’s berries that she seemed to always have tucked away in her cheek found their way into Claire’s mouth.

Claire threw her head back in unabashed mirth and cackled, the berries bursting tart against her tongue. 

But as she chewed, her eyes flew open—and the sweetness rotted in an instant.

She gagged, stumbling back from Juniper, spitting the pulp on the boardwalk as she knelt to the ground. The taste was rancid, like berries soaked in garbage water. Claire coughed, then wiped her lips with a shaky hand, unable to clear the taste from her mouth.

The world tilted. 

Claire blinked hard, fighting the urge to vomit. She focused on breathing: in, out, in.

As she exhaled, her fingers loosened their grip on the corn dog without her permission. She moved to pick it back up, but her hand barely twitched, her fingers refusing to bend in response to her command. 

A horrible panic set into her stomach as she tried again to no avail. She was so lightheaded, so bubbly, but the acrid taste in her mouth awakened a gut instinct that had been gnawing at her since she arrived. It stirred, awoke, and then roiled in her.

There, just beyond Juniper’s shoulder. The vendor stalls. Where the balloon artist had been. Where Reverend Barbara had promised no stomach cramps. She squinted. The figures manning the booths… they weren’t people.

They were cardboard cutouts.

The words slammed into her skull: cardboard.

Claire’s mouth went dry. She peeked at a nearby vendor, the one that, just moments ago, was drawing caricatures of a school of clownfish that came out of the ocean. As she focused, really focused her attention, the rounded shape of the man faded away, and, instead, there was another cutout.

Droplets fell from her hairline to the ground below her when she realized sweat had been cooling her skin, not ocean spray. She was drenched, her heartbeat hammering against her ribs.

The sun disappeared behind the clouds: her shadow disappearing and planks of the boardwalk suddenly graying. The giggles of the hopscotch children were gone, too. Only a heavy silence pushed her body toward the planks.

She was shivering. Her heart thudded in her ears. Her hand responded so, so slowly to her now. The taste of rot was still in her mouth. Something was wrong. Something was wrong.

Juniper crouched down next to Claire at that moment, and ice shot through Claire’s veins. She realized with a dawning, horrible certainty, that Juniper hadn’t spoken since the kiss. Hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t moved. Until now.

And as Claire took in Juniper’s devilish smile, the scent of rot and decay wafted over to her: dense, cloying, inescapable. Claire’s entire body recoiled.

Claire forced herself to speak through gritted teeth: “June, if this is Heaven, why isn’t my Nana here?”

Juniper pursed her lips. For a moment, she looked almost sympathetic. But her eyes— bottomless, hungry, cold—were flat in amusement.

“Awww,” Juniper said, and her tone was nothing short of a mockery.

Claire wanted to scramble back, to run, but her limbs betrayed her. She was so slow now. She trembled violently.

Stupid, Claire reminded herself, realizing she had been right all along. You should’ve known better. You should’ve known better. You should’ve—

Juniper’s hand cupped Claire’s chin again. The gesture was soft, at first. Tender like in the car, like at Claire’s door, the one she would never see again. She knew that now. Juniper’s thumb brushed Claire’s glittery cheek. She let her sharp nail dig into the flesh. Claire gasped, and red, warm blood dribbled down to her jaw.

“Sorry, Claire Bear,” Juniper said. Her voice was syrupy in its apathy. A forked tongue slithered past her lips, rattling. “It’s not that kinda heaven.”

Juniper’s jaw unhinged wider than anything human, revealing two rows of sharp, wet teeth that glistened in the dim grayness. 

Claire’s scream caught in her trembling, itchy throat. The last thing she felt was the unbearable cold.

And then Juniper lunged, swallowing Claire whole.