How did Eddie live with that? It was too terrible to even think about.
She glanced at the side mirror, watching Eddie grow smaller and smaller behind them.
CHAPTER
12
Hendricks’s parents were still up when she pushed the front door open and trudged past the living room, holding her dripping shoes in one hand. They were curled on the couch, sipping wine and watching something Hendricks couldn’t see from her angle in the hall. David Attenborough’s slow, accented voice drifted out of the speakers.
Hendricks cringed. It looked like they were on a date.
As gross as it was, it was also sort of adorable.
Her dad pointedly glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re home an hour before curfew,” he said.
“I don’t think that ever happened in Philly,” her mother added, her eyebrows going up.
“Don’t get used to it,” Hendricks said, heading for the stairs, “I’ll let you guys do . . . whatever it is you’re currently doing.”
“Did you have fun tonight, honey?” her mom asked.
“Yeah!” she called back down from the staircase. “I did.”
She rounded the corner into her bedroom, and just before she pushed the door closed, she heard her dad say, “Did she look wet to you?”
Hendricks quickly changed into her pj’s and hurried through her bedtime routine, pulling her hair into a sloppy topknot and applying a sheet mask that looked like a tiger. She quietly hummed the song that had been playing on Connor’s car radio and danced in place as she brushed her teeth.
She couldn’t help it. For the first time since moving to dreary little Drearford she was starting to feel like maybe this place could be home. She’d jumped into the damn quarry, after all! Connor said that made her legit.
She grinned as she spit toothpaste into the sink.
She crawled into bed, flicking all the lights out and snuggling down in her pillows. Darkness gathered around her, and the beer she’d had at the party made her feel pleasantly sleepy and warm.
Mew.
Her eyes blinked back open. It was the kind of sound that you were sure you’d heard one moment, and the next you couldn’t quite figure out whether it had been real, or part of a dream.
Hendricks stared into the darkness for a long time, eyes strained, muscles tense.
You didn’t hear anything, she told herself. It was just your imagination. Just a dream.
Her eyelids started to get heavy again. She felt herself sink deeper into the pillows, her breathing gone shallow . . .
And then the mattress shifted, as if someone had lowered themselves to the foot of her bed. Hendricks felt something brush her foot, leaving her skin prickling.
A sickening wave of fear rolled through her. She jerked her head around, suddenly wide awake. She couldn’t see anything, though she blinked and squinted into the darkness.
She knew there was something there, though. She could still feel it, how the mattress dipped, just slightly, beside her foot, curving toward the weight still sitting there.
Her chest grew tight, and a sound like static filled her ears. She clenched her eyes shut.
This isn’t real, she told herself, balling the edge of her blanket in her fists. It’s just anxiety, PTSD, it’s not—
Then, all at once, the weight was gone.
Hendricks could breathe again. Still shaking, she tried to close her eyes, but her entire body had gone cold. She couldn’t imagine falling asleep now.
Then—
“Who’s a good kitty?”
Hendricks sat straight up, her heart pounding. She’d definitely heard that.
It sounded like it came from the hall.
She crawled out of bed and crept to her bedroom door. Minuscule hairs rose on the back of her neck. She pressed her ear to the wood. Listening.
She heard the distant murmur of the television downstairs, the steady whirr of Brady’s white noise machine, wind rattling the windowpanes. But that was all.
She exhaled, slowly, her breath ragged. She hadn’t heard anything. But she had to see what was out there, to know for sure.
Jaw clenched, she lowered her hand to the doorknob and turned, careful not to let the latch click. She eased the door open, and the movement rustled the plastic sheets hanging over the walls. She froze, skin creeping.
She stared at the thick shadows just beyond the plastic. There was nothing there, just insulation and raw wooden beams and wiring and stuff.
But she imagined someone hiding in the narrow space between the insulation and the plastic.
Her stomach warped. She dug her fingernails into her palms and tried hard not to blink.
It’s not Grayson, she told herself. Grayson’s in Philly.
Quickly, before she could talk herself out of it, she crossed the hall and ripped the plastic back.
No one there.
Her heartbeat began to slow.
Then, out of nowhere, a raspy girl’s voice said, “Don’t hurt him. Please.”
“What are you going to do about it?” said a boy’s voice, deep and cruel, and seeming to come from just behind her. Hendricks clenched her jaw as her spine crept. She whirled around, but the hallway was still empty.
She turned in place, eyes moving over the shadows blanketing the floors. Was it a trick of the acoustics, like her dad had said? Was she hearing the television from downstairs, and the house was only making it seem like the voices were coming from behind her?
She wanted to believe that. But she couldn’t make herself go back to her bedroom. The hallway was narrow and short. A linen closet cut into the wall about halfway down, but the doors hadn’t been put up yet, so Hendricks could see clearly that there was nothing—or no one—hiding in there.
She clenched her hands into fists, holding her breath as she listened for any other sound or movement.
“Fine, I’ll let him go,” said the boy’s voice.
She heard the sound of something thudding into the wall—a wall that wasn’t actually there—and she flinched so violently that she lost her footing and tripped over her feet.
She landed hard on her back, head smacking into the floor. For a moment, she saw stars.
The plastic hanging from the wall above her rustled, slightly.
“Hendricks?” called her dad from downstairs. “Is something wrong?”
Hendricks’s breathing had gone jagged. She wanted to call back down to him, to tell him that something seriously messed up was going on, but she felt frozen.
Hot breath misted her cheek. She could smell something sweet in the air around her—cologne—and for a moment the scent was so heavy it clogged her throat. She began to choke.
And then her mind skipped—
She wasn’t in Drearford anymore. She was at Katie Mulligan’s after-prom party back in Philly, and she was heading for the front door, reaching for the latch.
And then Grayson was behind her, one hand braced against the door so she couldn’t open it. With his other hand, he moved the hair away from the back of her neck, and whispered in her ear:
Don’t you dare embarrass me here.
Hendricks could still smell the stink of his cologne, the lingering, sour scent of beer on his breath. She could feel his hands, cold and strong, around her wrist—
Her eyes opened, and she was back in Drearford, lying on the floor of her new house. She felt powerless, frozen. In the air above her, a heavy weight was pinning her down. She felt like she was drowning.
No, she thought. Not again. Not here.
And then it—whatever it was—was gone. She was grasping at nothing.
“Hendricks?” Her dad now stood at the foot of the stairs. “Did you drop something?”
“I’m okay,” Hendricks called back. She pushed herself up to her elbows and looked around the empty h
allway, her heart beating in her ears. Whatever she’d heard, whatever she’d felt, it wasn’t there anymore.
She made her way back to her room and crawled into bed, pulling the covers all the way up to her chin. And that’s when she noticed that the screen of her cell phone was lit up. She had a missed call.
Fingers trembling, she picked up the phone. She knew, before she ever saw his name on the screen, who the call was from.
Grayson.
CHAPTER
13
Hendricks lay in bed for a long time, unable to fall asleep. Whenever her eyes started to droop, she’d jerk back awake, certain she felt that same pressure on her chest, that she heard Grayson’s voice in her ear:
Don’t you dare embarrass me here.
She touched a hand to her neck, swallowing back a sob. She hated how even the memory of his voice had the ability to humiliate her, to turn her quiet and small. She used to think that it was because she cared about him so much, that his opinion of her meant more than anyone else’s did. She didn’t think that anymore.
But all of that was a long time ago, she reminded herself. She had left Grayson behind. She was moving on.
Only . . . she was sure someone had been here. A shiver went through her again. Not Grayson, maybe, but someone else.
Or something.
* * *
• • •
“Hey, girl! You took off Friday night,” Raven said, jabbing her milk carton with a straw. “I thought we were going to party.”
Her straw bent in half and Raven moaned, tossing it aside. “Dumb straw,” she grumbled.
Hendricks blinked blearily, paying more attention to the straw than to what Raven was saying. She hadn’t slept well over the weekend, and it was catching up with her. Half the day was already gone and she’d spent it in a haze. Grayson hadn’t called her again, but she still flinched every time her phone buzzed, certain she was going to see his name flash across her screen.
It was like he knew about the kiss. Like he knew she was moving on.
She picked up Raven’s abandoned straw and began weaving it between her fingers. After a moment of silence, she looked up and realized Raven and Portia were waiting for her to respond. “What?”
Portia and Raven exchanged a look. “Friday night? Your disappearing act?” Raven prompted.
“Keeping secrets already, new girl?” Portia asked, eyebrows lifting.
Right. Friday. Without really meaning to, Hendricks glanced at Connor at the other end of the table. He was in the middle of a conversation with Blake and Finn, but he caught her eye. She noticed the blush creeping up his neck, and the corner of her lips twitched. That, at least, was a happy memory.
“Yeah,” she said, pressing the straw into the pad of her thumb.
“You guys could not be more obvious,” Portia said.
Raven leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Did anything happen?”
“Sort of . . .” Hendricks kept her eyes aimed at the table, her cheeks flushing with heat. “We kissed.”
Raven and Portia responded perfectly, both of them squeezing her hands, their mouths shaped like Os, eyes wide and excited. Portia even squealed a little bit—but she did it quietly, so Connor wouldn’t look over and guess what they were talking about.
Hendricks opened her mouth, and then closed it, her heart crashing in her ears. She wanted to be excited along with them, but the memory of Grayson’s call and everything else that had happened Friday night was still fresh in her mind, dragging her down like a weight.
She felt like a fraud. She was trapped between two realities. In one, she got to be a normal teenage girl who gossiped with her friends over lunch and kissed boys in cars after parties in the woods. But in the other reality, she was barely holding it together. She couldn’t stop obsessing about her manipulative ex-boyfriend. Even worse, she saw things that weren’t there.
Hendricks’s jaw clenched at that thought. No. Whatever she saw Friday night had been there. She might still be messed up about Grayson, but she wasn’t crazy. Something was going on with her house. Something not normal.
She was grateful when Portia looked around the table and said, “Did anyone else notice that Viviane I’m-too-cool-to-show-up-at-a-party-or-even-text Thompson decided not to come to school today?”
“I think she’s just going by Vi now,” Raven said.
“Whatever,” Portia muttered, and Raven laughed, snorting milk out through her nose. Portia looked scandalized, which just made Raven laugh harder.
While they were distracted, Hendricks slipped her phone out of her pocket and settled it in her lap. No new calls, thank God. After a pause, she typed “haunted Drearford” into her search engine.
She steeled herself as the results loaded, eyes flicking around the table to make sure no one could see what she was doing. She couldn’t believe she was searching this, but she’d been thinking about it all morning. She couldn’t wait another minute to see if there was any information out there.
Ghosts made sense. Portia said that no one had lived at Steele House for a while, and there was Maribeth’s murder, and . . .
Well, the place was just strange.
“I’m going to hire a clown,” Portia was saying. “One with a big, frizzy wig.”
“Oh God, please don’t,” Connor moaned.
“What do you think, Hendricks?” asked Raven.
Hendricks blinked, but she hadn’t been following the conversation closely enough to know exactly what they were talking about. She shrugged, murmuring, “Sounds like a good idea.”
Her eyes shifted back down to her phone as she scrolled through her search results with her thumb. Useless, she thought, frowning. All that came up were cutesy rumors of ghosts wandering through old hotel rooms or appearing on certain streets at midnight on Halloween. Dumb tourist stuff. Nothing like what she’d seen Friday night.
“Okay, I got it.” Connor’s voice cut through her thoughts. He shifted in his seat, his foot brushing up against Hendricks’s. “How about drag racing? Out behind Cooper’s farm.”
“God no,” Portia said.
“Yeah, no one actually likes drag racing except for you,” Raven pointed out.
“I like drag racing,” Finn cut in.
“Yeah, and it’s my birthday!” Connor tapped Hendricks with his arm. “What do you think, Hendricks?”
She looked up from her phone, suddenly aware that everyone was staring at her. She blinked. “I’m sorry, what do I think about what?”
“Drag racing.” Connor grinned. “Yay or nay?”
“Uh, nay,” Hendricks said, sliding a hand over her phone screen to hide her search results. “I’m not really a NASCAR fan.”
Raven snickered, and Portia flashed him an I-told-you-so smile, saying, “Three against one.”
“Uh, two,” Finn said, nudging Blake with his elbow. “Dude, get in on this.”
Blake just shook his head. “As long as there’s beer, I don’t care what we do.”
Hendricks chewed on her thumbnail, eyes back on her phone. There was nothing there. Frustrated now, she squeezed the phone in her hand, and her gaze drifted across the cafeteria.
Eddie Ruiz appeared on the far side of the room. He tossed a crumpled paper bag into the trash and then beelined for the door, shoulders hunched up around his ears, as if he might be able to turn himself invisible if he huddled far enough into that leather jacket.
A group of kids Hendricks didn’t recognize said something as Eddie walked past. The kids laughed. Hendricks’s muscles tensed, but Eddie didn’t react. He just kept walking.
Hendricks watched him, frowning slightly. Eddie had seemed curious about her scream the other night. Almost as though he’d been expecting something weird to happen at Steele House. Was it just lingering hatred of the place, because of what happened to his brother and sister there?
>
Or . . . could he know something?
The thought gave her chills.
“Well?” Portia snapped, and Hendricks jerked her gaze away from Eddie. “Do you want to come or don’t you?”
“Um, where?” Hendricks asked. She noticed that Connor, Finn, and Blake were no longer sitting at the table with them.
Crap. She hadn’t even seen them leave.
“Connor’s birthday.” Portia spoke with exaggerated patience, like Hendricks was a toddler. “It’s only the thing we’ve all been talking about through lunch.”
“Oh yeah.” Hendricks could feel her cheeks coloring.
“Anyway, Raven and I are leaving right after school so we can check out a venue.” Portia popped her gum. “Want to come?”
“We’re getting shakes after,” Raven added, lazily winding a long lock of bleached hair around her finger. “You haven’t been to the Fremont Diner yet, have you? They have the best chocolate shakes.”
“If you like drinking two thousand calories in less than twenty minutes,” Portia added.
Raven rolled her eyes at her. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Hendricks chewed on her lip. She did want to go. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do right now than inject herself with more chocolate and sugar than the human body should physically be able to handle. She could picture squeezing into a booth with Raven and Portia, telling them all the details about what went down with her and Connor last Friday.
It sounded so normal. For a split second Hendricks considered going with them, pretending that the night had ended when Connor dropped her off at her front door.
But then she thought of that weight on her bed, that deep, raspy voice. Her skin crawled.
“I—I’ll have to take a rain check,” she said, gathering her things. “You guys have fun, though.”
Portia flashed her an exaggerated pout. “You’re ditching us?”
Hendricks felt a pang in her chest. There will be time for normal later, she told herself.
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