“Yeah.” I looked at his collar. “Some other time.”
He backed toward the door. “I’ll see you Monday, right?”
“Yes, you will. Thanks for the script.”
In the doorway, Pierce paused. “Hey. I’m really, really glad you’re all right.”
I still couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Or speak. I just nodded, shaping my lips into an almost-smile, staring at the button on his collar.
Pierce turned away. His steps thumped along the hall, down the stairs. I heard the murmur of Mom’s voice intersecting with his again, the creak of a hinge, and then the front door thudding shut.
I dropped the folder onto the carpet.
My chest felt tight. The ache in my head pounded from side to side like clothes in an unbalanced washing machine.
I’d been so close to falling apart. In front of Pierce Caplan. If there was anyone I didn’t want to see me crumble into a pathetic, messy pile, it would be Pierce. In all the years I’d known him—basically my entire life—I’d never seen him fail at anything. He didn’t spill things. He didn’t trip on bumpy pathways. He never said or wore or did anything that was less than exactly right. Pierce was golden.
There was another footstep in the doorway.
Mom breezed into my room. She leaned back against the wall, smiling almost coyly. “So,” she said, pointing the smile at me. “That’s what Pierce Caplan looks like these days.”
I made sure there was nothing coy in my voice. “Yes, it is.”
Mom shook her head, still smiling, her gaze wandering past me toward the darkened window. “It’s so funny to go from seeing him every day to maybe once or twice a year. He practically lived here when you were little.”
“I know, Mom. I remember.”
“He had his own toothbrush and towel and everything. It’s like he’s aged in fast-motion. He’s gotten so tall and handsome, hasn’t he?”
I looked at the tops of my socks. “Hmm.”
Mom was quiet for so long that I thought she must have gone away. But when I glanced up, she was still standing there, leaning against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes were shiny with tears.
I hated it when Mom cried. She didn’t do it often. That she did it ever was bad enough. It made me feel like my spine had been split in half and pulled out through the soles of my feet.
“What?” I said. I sounded irritated. Angrier than I meant to.
“It’s just nice to see you two together again,” Mom whispered. “Lots of good memories.” She pulled herself away from the wall. “Dinner will be out of the oven in twenty minutes.”
I knew how I’d missed Pierce for the past two years. It was sharp at first, like a smaller, cleaner version of the wound Dad left, and then it grew increasingly dull, until what I felt wasn’t missing him anymore, but resenting him for making me miss him in the first place. I hadn’t thought much about what Mom might feel. We’d certainly never talked about it. Once that hideous winter was over, we’d never talked about any of it. The Caplans had been our best friends, and when they’d disappeared along with Dad, Mom had lost four people at once. I’d assumed it was the ugliness that distanced us. Everyone wanting to avoid the reminders, the conversations. But the way Mom looked now, smiling and teary, just because Pierce had spent a few minutes in our house again . . .
“Hey, Mom?”
She halted in the doorway.
“You didn’t, like . . .” I slowed myself. Watch your words. Neutral tone. “Did something happen between us and the Caplans?”
Mom blinked. Her tone was neutral too. “What do you mean?”
“Like—maybe—when you were dividing up the business afterward?”
“They bought us out. Which was just what we wanted.”
“So there wasn’t—with what happened—” I groped for the words. “We weren’t going to sue them or something?”
Mom’s eyebrows twitched, but she barely looked surprised. “Of course not,” she said softly. “It was an accident. Everyone knew that.” She tapped one fingertip on the doorframe. “Twenty minutes.” Then she turned and glided out of view, revealing Sadie lurking in the hall behind her.
I sighed. “Well, you might as well come in. Eavesdropper.”
Sadie sauntered across the room and flopped down onto the bed beside me. “I thought you loved an audience.”
“Not right now. I didn’t want anybody to see me right now. And they already have.”
We both stared into the dressing table’s wide mirror.
“We could get you a wig,” Sadie suggested, after a second. “Or a cute hat.”
“I’m not really a hat person.”
“How about a helmet? We could paint ‘I shouldn’t have gone skiing without this’ on the sides.”
“How about just ‘I shouldn’t have gone skiing’? Of course, then I wouldn’t have needed the helmet in the first place.”
In the reflection, Sadie’s face tightened.
“What?”
“Do you think Mom and I don’t feel bad enough for making you go with us?” she demanded. “Do you think I don’t feel terrible for even suggesting it in the first place?”
“No.” I made my tone milder. “I know you feel bad.”
For a beat, we studied our reflections. My tanned, shiny-haired sister. Softer, paler, shorter me, now with a giant zipper of scar tissue on my forehead.
Sadie shook her head. “I really thought you would have gotten over it by now.”
“Over what?”
“The little-kid, drama-queen stuff. The way you’d pitch a fit any time we did something you didn’t want to do.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Camping. Waterskiing. Hiking. Ski trips—”
I pulled away from her so that our arms no longer touched. “I was genuinely scared.”
Sadie gave a skeptical head tilt.
“I was terrible at those things,” I lunged on. “I thought I would get tangled in the tow rope and drown, or fall off a mountain, or crash into something . . .” I gestured to my head, my voice rising in false surprise. “And look!”
“Oh my god.” Sadie leaned away from me. “Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
The pain in my head was thumping like a giant drum now, but I wasn’t going to back down. “It’s proof that I wasn’t just being dramatic. I knew, and you all still pushed me. That’s why I hated it. And Dad—”
There. The word was out, dangling between us.
Keep going.
“Dad was so mean about it.” My throat filled. My voice started to wobble. “I still remember all the . . .”
“Jaye.” Sadie whirled toward me. “He was trying to encourage you. He was pushing you to try harder. To do your best. That’s what he did to everybody.”
I swallowed. “This was different.”
“Jaye . . .” She let out a long, irritated sigh. A second later, she threw both arms around me, jostling my skull. I fought back a wince. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should be humoring you. You’re supposed to stay super-quiet and calm, not have a meltdown an hour after getting home.”
“I’m not having a meltdown.” I snuffled. I glanced at the mirror again. Now the paler, smaller, injured one of us also had watery red eyes. “God. I look horrible.”
Sadie squeezed my shoulder. “Remember what the nurses said about not looking at yourself until you feel back to normal.”
“The nurses said that?”
“Several times.”
I touched the ridge of the scar again. It felt rubbery and dead, almost like it had been made of putty and stage makeup. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to go back to school and rehearsal, and then everybody else will look at me, and then Mr. Hall will replace me—”
“Replace you?”
/> “Have you ever seen a fairy queen with staples in her head?”
Sadie shrugged. “I’ve never seen a fairy queen. Maybe they all have staples in their heads.” I snorted, but Sadie squeezed me tighter. “You’ll heal. You already look much better.”
“You mean I looked worse?”
“Well, in the hospital, when they first let us in to see you . . . Yeah, you looked worse.” Sadie’s voice was suddenly small. “Head wounds bleed a lot, you know.”
“I know.”
I could practically feel Sadie’s thoughts seeping through her shoulder into mine. Our constantly-in-motion father lying so still in that narrow white bed. His bruised eyelids. The tube wedging his lips apart. The bandages wrapped around his head, where the blood from flying shards of glass seeped through, forming tiny pink blossoms in the white gauze.
“God,” I whispered. “Mom must have been . . .”
“Yeah,” said Sadie, when I didn’t go on. “It was bad. At first.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” Sadie pushed a hank of my hair into place. “Once you woke up, she got a lot better. It was just at first that it was really hard.”
“I don’t want her to have to feel like that again. Ever.”
“Well—hopefully she won’t,” Sadie said. “You look so much better. Really.” She gave my shoulders another squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”
She hauled me to my feet. Then she led me out of the room and down the stairs without letting go of my hand.
CHAPTER 6
If you sit by yourself in a dark room for long enough, you’ll see ghosts.
We used to play this game at slumber parties: Find some dark closet or basement pantry and take turns hunched inside, waiting for the total blackness to form itself into impossible shapes. Then we’d lunge out, screaming.
It was a lot like brain rest.
For the next four days, I lay in my room, without music, with my velvet curtains shut, until morning blended into night and back into morning again. If I kept my eyes open, strange things started to appear on the ceiling. Cracks wriggled. Glow-in-the-dark stars moved. Shadows waved at me from the corner of my eye and disappeared when I turned to catch them. If I kept my eyes closed, the inside of my eyelids became the screen for movies played in fast-forward. Clips of school, classes, stupid things I’d said. A silly argument with Nikki over who’d heard of a certain band first. Pierce Caplan at one end of a half-empty hall, not even noticing me watching him from the other end.
But what my brain really wanted was to run lines for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Staring at the bumps on my ceiling was a ridiculous waste of time, and even my subconscious knew it. I’d wake up with Titania’s words in my head, or the fairies’ lullaby playing over and over, and have to try to push them out again.
I needed to run my lines. I wasn’t even sure how many of them had been left intact in my memory. If I didn’t catch them soon, they would dissolve and seep away. And then there was the folder of notes from Mr. Hall. The folder I hadn’t even opened.
The folder that Pierce had delivered.
Which, of course, brought me back to Pierce Caplan, Pierce and the tornado of questions and memories and stomach butterflies that came with him, and—
Empty stage. Empty stage.
Sometimes I hung on for a long time. I’d focus on the red velvet curtains and breathe in the dust and paint, and there would be no sound but the hum of anticipation coming from inside of me.
And then the voices behind the curtain would begin.
Michaela Dorfmann and the show choir girls whispering, my name sprinkled now and then into the hiss. Ayesha, the stage manager, calling for places. Titania giving her Come sing me now to sleep speech, and Hamlet’s voice interrupting, But in that sleep of death what dreams may come . . . Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet rambling about the fairy queen Mab who brings dreams in her nutshell chariot. Macbeth muttering, Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain’d sleep . . .
And no matter how hard I tried to keep it still, the stage’s red velvet curtain would start to twitch.
Terror prickled through me. Every time. I was frozen, imagining who was about to step through the seam: Shakespeare, or Romeo, or Hamlet, or someone else. Something else. Whatever gruesome image my brain decided to toss into the middle of my thoughts like a grenade. Something wicked this way comes.
Then the curtains would rip apart, and my eyes would fly open, and I’d jolt up in bed, feeling sloshy and sick, and I’d try to focus on a ticket stub or program taped to my wall—any little, insignificant thing that could drag my brain away.
On the third night home—at least I think it was the third—I closed my eyes with the stage peacefully empty in my mind. A few seconds passed before a voice startled me.
“Jaye?”
My eyes flicked open.
My bedroom ceiling still hung above me, scattered with burned-out plastic stars. Between me and the ceiling were two faces. Nikki’s and Tom’s.
I felt my whole body brighten. “Hey!” I hauled myself onto my elbows. “What are you two doing here? Did you sneak in?”
They didn’t smile back.
“It happened again tonight,” Tom whispered.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. A tiny twinge of worry started to worm in. “What happened?”
Nikki’s eyes were wide. Almost frightened. “We knew you wouldn’t believe us unless you saw it for yourself.”
“With the things I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, I’d believe pretty much anything.” I glanced from Nikki to Tom. “Seriously. I don’t know if it was the injury or the medication or just—”
“Shh,” hissed Tom. “Listen.”
We all froze.
The house was heavy with middle-of-the-night quiet. Even the street outside was still.
“I don’t hear anything,” I whispered back.
But both Nikki and Tom had stiffened. They backed silently away from the bed. For the first time, I could see that they were dressed in full suits of leather and chainmail. Nikki had a sword tucked into her belt. Tom held a long staff with a hooked blade at the end.
“Crazy costumes, you guys,” I whispered. “Why are you—”
This time Nikki cut me off. “Here it comes again!”
The two of them stared through my open bedroom door. I was sure the door had been shut when I’d lain down in bed, but now I could see straight into the hall, the walls silvery with moonlight from a distant window.
“It wants to speak to you,” Tom breathed.
They whipped my blankets back. Cold air rushed over me.
“Hey!” I reached for the quilt, but Tom had already grabbed my arm.
Nikki shoved my feet over the side of the bed. “Hurry! Before it leaves again!”
With all four hands, they pushed me through my bedroom door.
I staggered into the hallway. My baggy T-shirt and flannel pants suddenly felt as substantial as cobwebs. The air was ice-colored. Shivering, I glanced in both directions, from the dark holes of the other doorways to the black cliff of the staircase.
Something flickered there, in the darkness. Slowly, it turned toward me, and I could see its messy blond hair and haggard face.
“I saw him,” Hamlet murmured.
My skin cascaded with goose bumps. “Saw who?”
“He stood just there, as though he wanted to speak.” Hamlet gestured down the stairs without taking his eyes off me. “He wants you to follow him.”
I looked over my shoulder. Nikki and Tom were gone.
“Wait a second.” I turned back toward the staircase. “Is this . . . is this supposed to be the opening scene of Hamlet? Like, Nikki and Tom were the castle guards, and they’ve just seen the ghost of your father . . .”
The usually creaky steps were silent. I padded down into the living room, Hamlet gliding ahead of me like a shadow, my bare feet freezing against the floor. In the dimness, I could make out the two armchairs, the cluttered little tables, but everything had turned fuzzy, all the edges blurred by moonlight. When I looked up, I saw that the windows were dark.
Hamlet paused at the threshold of the dining room, listening to something I couldn’t hear. Then he streaked into the kitchen. I hurried after him. The air seemed to be growing colder. My skin shriveled against my ribs.
Hamlet stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, facing away from me. I followed his eyes. The door leading from the kitchen down into the garage hung open, letting in a gasp of icy, oily air. No wonder the house was freezing.
I reached out to close it, but Hamlet blocked me.
“The air bites shrewdly,” he murmured. “It is very cold.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m closing the door.”
He stopped me from reaching for the doorknob again. “It comes!” Hamlet’s cracked-ice eyes were stuck to something through that open doorway. “It wants to speak to you alone.”
I inched forward, across the threshold. There was nothing beyond that door but chilly darkness. Not as far as I could see. But as I set my toes on the first cement step, I caught something else. A sound. A soft, repeating, rasping sound.
Hamlet hung back as I crept down the steps.
The cement floor was frigid. The scents of rust and gasoline and dirt and of something else—something sharper—twisted in the air. Our garage had no windows, and still, everything was suddenly lit with that fuzzy silver moonlight. The dingy walls. The stained workbench. And, right in front of me, the hulk of a strange black car.
It wasn’t our car. It didn’t belong here. But I knew exactly what it was.
The rasping sound came from the car’s far side. It sounded almost like someone raking dry leaves. Like heavy, painful breathing.
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