This Delicious Death


 
 
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 Books. Change. Lives.
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Kayla Cottingham
 Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
 Cover design by Natalie C. Sousa
 Cover image © Micha/Shutterstock, Moustache Girl/Shutterstock, Second Studio/Shutterstock
 Internal design by Laura Boren
 Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
 Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks
 P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410
 (630) 961-3900
 sourcebooks.com
 Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress.
 
 Contents Front Cover Title Page Copyright Content Warning One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Epilogue Excerpt from My Dearest Darkest Acknowledgments About the Author Back Cover 
 To Ally, Alex, and Simone—
 I don’t know if I believe in fate, but if there is something out there pulling the strings, I’m so grateful it brought us together.
 And that it made sure we didn’t peak in high school.
 
 
 Content Warning
 This book contains the following: 
 Alcohol consumption by minors
 Anxiety disorders (mentioned)
 Blood and gore depiction
 Body horror
 Cannibalism
 Captivity & confinement
 Dead bodies & body parts
 Deadnaming (deadname not stated)
 Death of a grandparent
 Death of a sibling
 Drugging (fictional drug)
 Drug use (mentioned, not explicit)
 Fire
 Grief & loss depiction
 Gun violence
 Intrusive thoughts
 Murder
 Needles & syringes
 Nightmares
 Parental neglect
 Pandemic (fictional disease)
 Scars
 Sexism
 Suicidal ideation (implied)
 Transphobia (mentioned, not explicit)
 
 
 One
 Am I still a monster
 If I run my fingers through your hair
 And kiss you to sleep?
 Baby, you’re in too deep.
 —“Monster” by No Flash Photography
 When my parents asked if I wanted a Mini Cooper for graduation, I didn’t think ahead to whether or not it would have enough trunk space to accommodate my cooler full of organs.
 Also, the cooler with all the sparkling waters, but that was less of a priority.
 “Can you stack the coolers on top of each other?” my best friend, Celeste, suggested, pointing to my trunk with a finger that ended in a sharp pink acrylic nail. “Or put one of the back seats down?”
 I shot her a look, one eyebrow raised. Celeste Fairbanks was white, with pink hair, a slim build, and long legs that seemed to go on for miles. She was taller than me by a good half a foot, accentuated by the fact that she was currently wearing white platform heels. They paired nicely with her pink heart-patterned pinafore and pearlescent eyeshadow—both newly purchased using her growing influencer income.
 Leave it to Celeste to look cute before 8 a.m., the absolute monster.
 “They’re too tall to stack,” I pointed out, crossing my arms. “And unless you want Valeria to sit in your lap the whole way to the festival, we need all the back seats.”
 Celeste hummed in agreement, grimacing. We were currently standing in front of the Fairbanks house, packing up the Mini for our first-ever road trip to Desert Bloom, a music festival in the Mojave Desert a few hours’ drive away. The house was a modest box-shaped bungalow with a lush garden of desert plants adorning the front. Solar panels glinted on the roof, unlike most homes in Aspen Flats, whose occupants were far too stubborn to consider converting to sustainable energy—despite recent proof of the consequences of not doing so.
 “You’re gonna have to consolidate,” said Wendy, Celeste’s mom. She was nearly a foot shorter than her daughter, but she made up for it by wearing tall leopard-print heels. Despite living in California for decades, her thick Jersey accent still clung to every syllable she spoke. “See if you can fit it all in the bigger cooler, and I’ll take the other one back in the house.”
 Celeste sighed. “It feels…kind of wrong to put seltzers in the flesh cooler.”
 “The flesh cooler,” I repeated under my breath, biting back a smile.
 Celeste’s lip twitched for a moment before she cracked and broke into laughter.
 Which immediately made me break too, with an inelegant snort that made Celeste laugh even harder. Something about seeing her double over trying to catch her breath only made it worse. Playfully, I shoved her shoulder and she batted my hand away, giggling behind her hand.
 “All right, all right.” Wendy opened the cooler with the sparkling water and added, “Help me consolidate these. You’re burning daylight and I don’t want you to have to drive out there in the dark. That’s when all the creepers come out.”
 Celeste and I both groaned—though we were both still smiling—and stooped down to the other cooler to gather an armful of plastic-wrapped organs. We took turns tossing them in the cooler with the drinks. Each one was branded with the required LAB-GROWN SYNTHETIC TISSUE, FOR CONSUMPTION ONLY sticker across the front—I guess to dissuade someone from attempting an at-home organ transplant. They each made a faint crunching sound as they landed atop the ice.
 “Sweetie, you sure you don’t want a few more livers?” Wendy asked Celeste. “You know I got a whole bunch from Costco during that half-off sale—”
 “Mom,” Celeste said. “We’re fine, seriously.”
 “All right, all right, I get it. My