Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the Sparrow,
with my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.

—

Why the fuck was she trapped in a coffin?

She was pretty sure it was a coffin. It was dark, so Heather couldn't exactly tell where she was, but it was a small wood box with very little space inside it, and something in her just knew she was trapped underground. Maybe miles underground. Or six feet under, at least.

She didn't mean it to go this far. How the fuck had it gone this far? Did Veronica and J.D. do this to her as a joke, a joke that might as well be a real death?

She'd faked drinking Veronica's poison. She wanted to fake her death. Then things went black. Try as she might, she couldn't remember anything after that, except waking up here.

Fuck, how much air was there in here? She slowed her breathing down. She'd not die here. Heather Chandler would scratch and claw and kick her way to the surface, demand answers, demand everything those fuckers had to offer and then some.

Heather's nails broke. She kept scratching. She never fucking gave up. No surrender, you shit-faced maggots, you pathetic pieces of piss who can't find a boot to trickle down. I'm getting out of here.

Then she heard clinking noises above her. She could have started to cry. Instead she put her palms on her cheeks and felt foundation and blusher on there. Way too much, the stuff totally caked on her, nothing she'd have worn while alive. Anyway, she wouldn't smudge it. She'd scream and whoever was here would unbury her the fuck already. She let her lungs go.

And heard, muffled through earth and wood, "Shut the fuck up, I'm almost finished."

The shovel finally broke through Heather's timber. She sat up, breathed air, and looked up at the stars. Nightfall. J.D. was the only person besides her in the graveyard. "Way to keep me waiting, dickhead," Heather snapped. Dirt cascaded all over the pink dress she was wearing. It had been a bridesmaid's dress for her cousin's wedding. She'd never forgive Grandma Chandler for insisting she wear it, and she'd especially never forgive her family for burying her in it.

"Oh, good, you're moving around and complaining. And here I was getting worried they'd charge me for necrophilia," J.D. said.

Heather extended her middle finger. It felt good. "Fuck you too. You took your fucking time."

"It's funny how you freak out and make bad decisions when you start thinking, oh, oops, turns out crazy girl wanted to frame her best enemy for her actual death - and incidentally yours truly," J.D. snapped. "Did you miss the part where you took a swan-dive through a glass coffee table?"

Heather touched her arms. They were caked with makeup as well. She couldn't see any huge scars or blood there, at least not in the faint moonlight. Maybe the mortician did a good job. "I think I missed all of it. What day is it?"

He told her.

"Fuck. I missed my own funeral," Heather said. "What was the turnout?"

J.D. didn't even answer her, just pointed to a messy tarp he must've brought to the graveyard. "I brought a spare shovel, just in case. Time for you to help with the coverup."

Heather sat on a smooth gravestone, arranging her pretty dress around her. "No, this is your mess. You're re-digging that grave for me. After all, I'm dead. Can't arrest a dead girl for vandalism." She tucked her fists inside the folds of her skirt, hiding her broken nails, smiling in spite of the pain.

J.D. graciously gave her the finger, but he didn't have a choice and started shovelling the earth back where it belonged. "You're lucky they didn't cut you open," he said. "Or have you got a nice hollowed-out Y-scar under there? Feel free not to show me. And we're going to test whether you can still go out in sunlight. Have you grown any fangs lately? Hair in unexpected places?" he said.

Heather shrugged. She didn't think she was Dracula or the Wolf Man or whatever. Her broken nails were the biggest weirdness she could actually feel, and she sure as hell wasn't going to look under her dress in front of short, dark and greasy here, not that she'd find anything wrong if she did. She was hungry and thirsty, but paté and something alcoholic - a good strong cherry-flavored cocktail, for instance - struck her as a lot less gross than drinking blood. Like she was some loser gothic stoner in the school parking lot. Eww. It occurred to Heather that the sooner J.D. finished re-burying her coffin, the sooner he could take her somewhere that involved a roof and traces of civilization, so she decided not to interrupt him.

Her parents had chosen a marble angel statue with a heaven-tilted smirk that said 'I'm extremely constipated and if you can't direct me to the nearest bathroom I'll slit your throat', a beloved daughter inscription, and the quote The price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies - Proverbs 31:10. Screw them. Heather considered commenting on the shoddy job J.D. had done of filling in the dirt and grass above her grave, but maybe it would rain and hide his half-assed mess. It would just have to do.

"I'm staying at your place, for the time being," she informed him. "In fact, my dad owns it, so it's really more my place, isn't it? It's a dump, but I guess it'll do for now."

J.D. muttered something uncomplimentary that she chose not to hear. Heather followed him to a motorbike and sat behind him. The air chilled her.

"Give me your coat," Heather said. "It'll look weird. A dead girl in a light dress on the back of a bike." She got a mental image like the copy of some stupid overheated Mills and Boon like the maid liked to read, a woman with long blonde hair and a huge pale skirt flowing out behind her, accidentally on purpose showing most of her bosom while she rode a black horse through a heavy wind. "I don't want people to see me, not now, anyway."

He scowled, but saw her point. Heather wouldn't have voluntarily gone within ten feet of that coat under normal circumstances. It stank of J.D.'s recent manual labor and it hadn't been particularly clean before that. But she tucked her hair under the collar and felt a little warmer. The bike hummed below her as they rode through Sherwood's streets at an ungodly hour, almost alone in the waking world.

Heather Chandler had defied prophecy and lived through her own death. An image of swords and a blonde woman facing down the darkness came to her mind - just a stupid cartoon that Heather Duke had cared about and she hadn't. No living man could defeat the evil guy, but the blonde woman let down her hair and proclaimed that she was no man. Prophecy destroyed, defeated, done. Stick a fork in it and call it Joan of Arc, because that thing was beyond barbecued. Heather grinned triumphantly at the dark streets. Suck it up, Veronica.

Heather stalked indoors in the rented house and flung off the coat on the floor. She left trails of gravedirt behind her, not bothering to wipe her feet on the mat. She scowled at her windblown hair as she looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her parents should have known better and buried her with it tied up, preferably with one of her good scrunchies. The house sounded pretty empty; it seemed J.D.'s father wasn't home.

"Thing is, I did it," J.D. admitted. "Veronica picked up the wrong cup. It was an accident. You should tell her the truth."

He was defending Veronica. How interesting. "You're one of many as far as Veronica's concerned, so don't flatter yourself." Heather stalked into what she guessed would be the kitchen. "She has a type. I think it's a stupid type, but most of my friends couldn't tell a hawk from a handjob if their lives depended on it. Most people at Westerburg are stupid. Hell, I guess most of the world is." She despised herself for turning on the philosophical ramblings. "You flirted with her like I told you to. You ... " Heather prided herself on reading people. "Great. You fucked. Your idea? No, I see it was her idea. You're welcome."

Fuck, she'd really done it this time, hadn't she? Heather had walked herself into some stupid romantic comedy, playing the wingman who arranged for the guy to tell the lies that got him the girl but would lose her again in a hot second after Heather spoke up. J.D. looked annoyingly smirky, far too much like Heather's boyfriend David after she gave into him. Heather threw open the fridge, relieved to find some white wine of middling quality in there, and might have thrown the bottle at J.D.'s head if she wasn't so thirsty.

"Fetch me something to eat," she said. The wine hit the spot, but it made her realize she was hungry as hell. "I don't cook, so don't ask."

"Veronica didn't want to choke you on drain cleaner, but she wanted you out of her life and puking your guts out," J.D. said. He set cast-iron pans rattling as he moved around. "Who'd blame her? I saw what you and your lovely friends did to that girl in the caf."

Heather thought back, to before she'd been buried. She had played the note trick on Betty Finn over lunch; Westerburg's chief dweebette was such a great target she'd say sorry for making you do it. "Sure, I gave Betty Finn shower-nozzle masturbation material for weeks," Heather said. "I did it for Veronica. She used to have a sense of humor, I thought she'd find it funny."

"You need a new sense of humor." Something splattered up from a pan with a great deal of oil. "Banana skins, whoopee cushions, pie in the face. Preferably yours."

"I don't eat pie."

"Then try some fettucine. Made it with extra garlic, just for you." J.D. flung a plate in front of her.

It was pretty gross. Pasta, packet tomatoes, fragments of once-green-now-black stuff, all slathered in what looked like melted Velveeta. And a heavy garlic stench.

"I don't eat pasta either. Goes straight to the hips," Heather said. J.D. looked at her as if he seriously wondered whether she were some horror movie thing. Which Heather would have instantly dismissed as stupid, if not for the way she'd died on Saturday and was dug up on Tuesday.

But he didn't bother accusing her again. "Congratulations. You've picked the microwaved cabbage option on our menu tonight. Can I trust you to operate a microwave? Read the manual first, it's somewhere under the dead cockroaches on top of the fridge," J.D. said. He combined the contents of Heather's plate with his own and set to it. "Don't touch the protein shakes if you get the urge; they're not mine."

As if. With a poor grace, Heather threw the bowl of green stuff in the microwave. If only she wasn't half starved. She ate it and tried not to think about what she was eating.

"I'll give you a shopping list," Heather said. "Hair dye, for one thing. Then I might be able to walk around despite being dead." Although walking around would be no fun if she couldn't go shopping. They should have buried her with her credit cards, like ancient Egyptian mummies got to have all their treasure and a few sacrificed servants following them to the afterlife. She'd probably be able to convince J.D. to rob her house if she promised him a share of the profits, but they could speak of that later.

"On to more important things," Heather said. "What did they say at my funeral? How much do they all miss me?"

—

Heather Duke sat across from Veronica in the library. She wore a tasteful British-schoolgirl white shirt and a gleeful smirk, and had a half-eaten Kit Kat next to her book.

"Are you happy she's dead, Veronica?" she said. "Me too."