Adventures in Funeral Crashing by Milda Harris

I was with a boy. If I told him that he
wouldn’t have believed me that nothing happened even though it’s
totally true. Now that I think about it, it was a little weird of
my dad to let it go that I was out so late with no good reason. He
definitely wasn’t as mad as he should have been. He should have
followed me back to my room and demanded an answer. Then he should
have yelled at me and grounded me. He didn’t, though. Maybe he
thought I had made a friend or something and was happy about it.
Parents are weird like that.
    Any disapproval on my dad’s part was worth
it, though. Ethan and I had spent the night making plans for
attending Vanessa Martin’s funeral. There was an online obituary
already up and the wake was Monday night from 3 pm to 9 pm. Ethan
and I were going to go right after school. I coached Ethan a little
on funeral crashing, since I had been to so many. He had only ever
been to his sister’s and except for remembering talking to me, the
whole thing was a big blank for him. We were going to pretend to
have known Vanessa through Liz, if anyone asked. We were hoping
Troy Matthews would make an appearance. We were really, really
hoping for more good leads.
    There were definitely other leads that I
wanted to follow too. I had a list. I still wanted to talk to Suzie
about Liz and Olivia Reynolds. I was going to do that during school
on Monday. Maybe I could get Kyle to join me and at least introduce
him to Suzie. It would be like multi-tasking. Hey, if Ethan and I
could be semi-friends, Kyle had an awesome as hell chance with
Suzie.
    The other lead we had to follow up on was
definitely Troy Matthews. And, if he didn’t show up to Vanessa’s
funeral, Ethan and I needed to find a way to talk to him. The trick
there would be not to spook him, especially if he was the killer.
Neither Ethan or I wanted to end up dead just because we said the
wrong thing.
    And, then there was the thought of having set
plans with Ethan for a third day in a row. I was starting to get
cocky about it. I mean, if Ariel was going to Homecoming with him,
maybe Ethan was just taking her to the dance. Maybe it didn’t mean
that they were dating too. When did he have time? You know? I mean,
Ethan had spent almost the entire weekend with me. And, okay, a
dance is way more romantic than investigating a murder together,
but still, the amount of time spent with someone counts for
something, right?
    The first lead, I was going to follow,
though, was reading Liz’s journal. I opened it to the first page
dated about four months ago.
    May 23
    Today’s my birthday. Happy birthday to me!
For this year, I want to: save money to go to Paris, get into a
good college, see my first Cubs game, teach Paws five cool tricks,
and find a job working with a vet. It’s going to be an awesome
year, starting today!
    I felt exceedingly sad as I finished that
first journal entry. It was a short one on her birthday and Liz had
so much hope for her future and only a few months later it was
gone. I hope she had gotten to do at least a few of the things she
had wanted to do. I kept reading. I learned more about Liz and her
dreams, the mundane things in her life, volunteering at the animal
shelter, her job, about some of her friends and her dog Paws, but
there was nothing helpful, in terms of the investigation (and no
mention of drugs!), until I got to the last three entries.
    August 10
    I just met this great guy in my English
class. His name is Troy Matthews. Hot, right? Liz Matthews, I can
see it. Anyway, getting ahead of myself, he’s an art major and he’s
probably as into art as I am into animals. And, he’s cute! He asked
me out and we’re supposed to go have coffee on Friday. I can’t
wait!!!! Wait, that is a date, right? Even though it’s just
coffee?
    August 14
    So, my date with Troy was amazing! We met up
at Wired. He bought me a coffee, so it’s officially a date since he
paid. I even offered, but he said no. We talked all about his art
classes