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

Emily would never have put up with this garbage. She would say right out loud, "There is no way in hell I'm selling graves for you, dude. Do it yourself."

"Hey," Wade pipes up, "how much Spanish do you know?"

"How much what?"

"Español!"

"Like . . . words?"

Do two months of refried freshman Spanish in Señora Levet's class count? Because so far, mostly we've been memorizing verb conjugation grids, spending our afternoons singing "Parácuaro, Song of My Father," and exchanging diálogos such as:

Me: ¿Te gusta musica?

Ken Dale, my Spanish partner: Sí, yo prefiero Sade. Mucho gusto "Smooth Operator."

Me: Sí. Yo también.

Ken Dale: ¿Vamos a la playa ahora? ¿O quizás Taco Bell?

Me: Bueno! Sí, como no. ¡Vamos!

I consider my limited vocabulary, my frequent use of los when I mean las, and my complete lack of interest in why Wade's interested in my language skills.

"Sure," I sigh. "I guess."

"Fantastic!" he practically sings. "¡Fantastico! Study hard, I have a feeling it's gonna come in handy. Might be worth a bonus in your paycheck, if you know what I mean."

"No. What?"

"Just what I said!"

"Okay, doesn't 'bonus' mean extra money?"

He winks. "That's right!"

"So . . . extra money, that's what you mean."

"Yes!"

"Then what's with the winking? Who doesn't know what 'bonus' means?"

"It's cemetery jargon!"

What? "Bonuses are not cemetery jargon!"

He hangs happily out the trailer window, laughing. Not at me—he just loves being the funniest person he's ever met. I start again toward the house.

"Leigh!"

I turn back.

"You around Saturday? First thing?"

"Saturday?"

"Yeah."

"This Saturday."

"Yes, keep up! The nursery charges extra for weekend delivery. Help me load the truck—five minutes. Ten, tops."

I drop my backpack. "Saturday."

"Yes!"

I pull my ponytail out, wrap the hair tie around my wrist.

"I guess I could ask Kai . . ." He hems.

"Okay, fine," I say. "Just wake me up."

"Good!"

He jiggles the windowsill, messes with a loose bolt.

"You know Saturday is my birthday, right?"

A loaded pause.

"Well, obviously!" he says, though his tone tells a different story. "Of course! That's why, you know, I can't have you here to ruin . . . the surprise."

"Oh, really?"

"Sure! So we're on? Saturday early?"

I nod.

"You're a good girl!" He waves a socket wrench at me, ducks back inside the trailer. Eyes up, I march over the mistake headstones. Safe in the house, I slam the door shut. Waves crash. Gulls cry.

I drop my backpack on a chair, swallow two glasses of water, and follow the sound of pounding surf down the long hall to the laundry room, where Meredith perches on a stool before an easel, ferociously intent on the canvas before her.

Landlocked and yearning for the ocean, helplessly shanghaied by Wade's ninja graveyard purchase, Meredith had one foot out the Manderleys before the first moving box was unpacked. She proclaimed absolution from anything even remotely related to the graves from day one. The minute we moved into Sierrawood, Operation This Woman Is an Island kicked into high gear. She went to work turning the laundry room at the back of the house into a tiny art studio, where she spends her days listening to record albums with titles such as Ocean Shore Sound Effects for Stage and Screen, filling the air with a predictable tide, the acrid scent of acetone, and the walls with seascape after seascape, all framed with weather-worn driftwood.

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.