Excerpt from Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Today is an office day, Wednesday, so I do not run. I trudge from school, moving especially slowly so that I miss Real Nice Clambake. She honks and waves on her way out as we pass through the Manderleys. In the office, I toss my backpack beneath the desk and shove the dusty stack of back issues of Mortuary Monthly magazine to the floor. (Why do we continue to get this thing? We're not a mortuary! I've called them twice to cancel already.) This stupid brown cave. Tiny building beside the pond, the hills of graves rising all around it. There are windows on every wall, large and well positioned for crow's-nest-type spying, but the dark wood paneling, matted brown shag rug, and black vinyl wingback chairs seem to suck the light right out. Like the clientele aren't depressed enough. The shag and walls are gummy with residual pipe smoke from the previous owner, who sat in here puffing for fifty-three years before selling Sierrawood to Wade and packing his pipe off to Maui. Who in the world who isn't a British detective smokes a pipe? People who own graveyards, apparently. I bet he wore a monocle, too. The smell makes my head hurt.

I prop the door open and heave the ginormous English lit book we've been assigned onto the funeral-scheduling desk calendar.

The heartsick Ceres seeks her daughter / She searches every land, all waves and waters.

Okay. Here's the thing about Ovid, about Metamorphoses: I do get it—Troy falls, Rome rises. The universal principle, nothing is permanent, everything changes, anything, anyone you may have to hold on to, take comfort or care from, will leave. Die. Which is awesome. But then really, Ovid? You need fifteen books of narrative poetry to present this worn-out thesis? That I don't get. Beauty for beauty's sake, Mrs. McKinstry says, and we're not reading all fifteen books, just the greatest hits, so count your blessings. Keep reading. She keeps quizzing.

Through the open windows I hear the sound of tires on the drive. My hands go damp—Not today, just let me sit here with Ovid, please oh please—and thank God it's not a customer, just the flower van. Rivendell Nursery. They seem to be Sierrawood's number one provider of beauty-queen-contestant-sashed wreaths. Mother. In Memoriam. Miss Sierrawood Hills. A lady brings them, and she also does weekly and monthly bouquets for out-of-town relatives and infirm or lazy local family members. Birthdays, holidays. Paying a stranger to visit your dearly departed seems sort of beside the point, but whatever.

The van passes the pond, and halfway up Poppy Hill the lady hops out wearing denim overalls; her hair is tied in a knot on top of her head and she lugs heavy baskets of uninspired calla lilies across the grass. But then someone else climbs out the back of the van.

Emily.

My only friend, left behind at the ocean. Months since I've seen her and I thought she was gone forever, but now here she is.

Emily?

No. My brain loves to turn every small, dark-haired girl I see into Emily, but no. This girl is maybe a little taller, and she's out there wearing a dress—a dress, for crying out loud—and tall black boots. She runs to help with the lilies. She heaves armloads of arrangements and potted plants, refers to a list, searches for headstones, places blossoms and baskets. That dress is going to get filthy.

Just some girl.

Not Emily.

I salt the wound, pick up the phone receiver. Dial Emily's Mendocino house.

The number you have reached . . .

Same as the last hundred times I tried. Why do I do it to myself?

Back to Ovid.

Chill October air moves through the window and the open door, swings the dust and stale pipe residue around my head full of Ceres searching for her daughter and a sound track of ducks quacking beneath the willows.

Excerpted from Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo. Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Longo. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.