I don't know if Aaron noticed the glaring, or just got sick of reaching to catch pitches that should have floated into his glove. Either way, he called a break, and went inside for some water.
I sat down next to Haylee on the front steps.
"Not going well?" she asked.
"Brilliant deduction," I said.
"I can't tell the difference in the pitches," she said. "Just on your face."
"Well, if I pitch like that at the tournament, I won't get left in for an inning."
"You guys are going to be gone all weekend?" Haylee asked. That's what the sighs were about. She already knew that we would—the tournament was up in Redwood City, so all the girls were staying in a hotel.
"Yeah," I said.
"Figures."
"Why don't you come?" I asked. But Haylee shook her head. She'd come to a tournament once last year, but she hadn't wanted to hang out with any of the other girls, only me. She ended up watching movies with her dad all night instead, and didn't speak to me for two weeks after.
She gave another laborious sigh. "Everyone knows what's going on, you know."
"What do you mean?" I asked. I braced for nastiness. When Haylee felt left out of things, she got mean. But nothing prepared me for what she was going to say.
"It's obvious to everyone the way he's coming on to you."
I wrinkled my eyebrows. "Who?"
She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. "My dad. Why do you think he pays for all this?"
I should have told her it was a sick thing to say. But I just sat there, my skin growing cold. It wasn't true, was it? Aaron might as well have been my dad, just like Haylee was practically my sister.
She sat there, waiting for my reaction.
"It's not like that," I said finally.
Haylee jumped to her feet. "Fine," she said. "Don't believe me. You'll see." She ran into the house and slammed the door.
I sat on her porch, shivering. When Aaron came back out, I shook my head.
"I'm not feeling so great," I said. "I'm going home."
He said something about hoping I'd be well enough for the tournament, but I was already on my way down the driveway.
The next time I saw Haylee, she was smiling again. She didn't mention the things she'd said, and I could almost believe that conversation had never happened.
But at the tournament, I made sure to stay with at least one of the other girls at all times, unless I was out on the field. It couldn't be true, what Haylee said.
But if it was, I sure didn't want to find out.
Chapter Ten
When I returned from the garage, Hazel was in the kitchen, washing her hands. She looked up at me hopefully. "How did it go?" she asked.
"All right, I guess," I said. "How long has he been like that?"
Hazel's eyes dropped to her hands. "He's having a hard time."
No kidding. "We're going to practice in a few days. At least that'll get him out."
Hazel smiled. "Good. That's exactly what he needs. A nice reminder of what normal looks like."
I wanted to tell her that things would never look normal again, but that couldn't be true. Of course we'd all find normal. A new one, without Haylee. A normal in which she might never have existed at all.
That reality was worse than the funeral.
"Well," Hazel said, stepping toward the door that led to the living room. "I'd better see if they need anything."
"I'm going to use the bathroom," I said, moving toward the door to the hall. Hazel disappeared toward her guests, and I slipped off to find the journal.
I listened at the door to the hall, and heard nothing but the chatter coming from the living room. I moved down the hall and up the stairs as quietly as I could.
When I reached the second floor landing I stopped again, listening. The lights upstairs were all out. That was a good sign. I left the lights off as I headed down the hallway, feeling my way along with my hand until I reached the first door on my left—Haylee's door.
The light flicked on over my head and I jumped about a mile. Nick stood at the top of the stairs, tilting his head at me.
"Hey," he said. "I wondered where you went."
I'd been in the garage long enough for everyone to miss me. I should have made a reappearance before slipping away. "Um, I needed to use the bathroom," I said.
"In the dark?" he asked.
Crap. It was more suspicious that I hadn't turned on a light, not less. "I guess I missed the switch."
My excuses sounded guilty, even to me. My eyes fell on the numbers running down his shirt in tight rows. There was a good distraction. "Hey, what's that?" I asked, pointing at it.
He smiled. "It's pi."
"Ah." Now that I looked closer, I could see the first few numbers were 3.14.
"Look closer," he said.
I spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at Nick's pecs. Again.
"Can you see it?" he asked.
"See what?"
"The symbol."
And then I saw it. Some of the numbers were slightly darker than others, forming the outline of the pi symbol in the block. "Nice. You're not one of those freaks who has it memorized to the thousandth digit, are you?"
Nick shook his head. "I only know twenty-eight. And that's just because I was really, really bored in algebra."
"Right," I said.
"So," Nick said. He glanced at Haylee's door. "Going to visit?"
"Yeah," I said, seizing on the excuse. "I didn't want to ask in the room with all those people . . ."
"Cool," Nick said. "Can I join you?"
Alone in Haylee's room. Again. I nodded, and Nick reached for Haylee's door. The handle clicked beneath his hand. Locked.
I let out a breath from the bottom of my gut. If I had to live in a house with Haylee's ghost, I'd lock the door, too.
Nick looked down at me. "Oh, well," he said. "It might be empty. I know Hazel was packing her things."
My hands shook. She'd probably gone through the room, piece by piece. Had she noticed the ceiling hatch? "I wonder where the key is," I said.
Nick gave me a strange look. "You want to get in there that much?"
Whoops. "No," I said. "I mean, yes, but—"
Nick moved into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He came back with a bobby pin, which he bent open and jammed into the lock.
I stepped aside. "You're really going to pick it?"
"It's not hard." He jiggled it in and out a few times, and the lock dinged. "Voila."
"Very impressive. Do you break and enter a lot?"
"My brothers lock each other out of their room all the time." He turned the knob and the door swung open. Nick held out his arm, letting me go first.
I stepped in and switched on the light. It wasn't empty. Quite the opposite—every drawer was opened, the contents spread over the mattress, the rug, the desk, the floor. The contents of the closet had been spread into piles, but only the clothes had been stuffed haphazardly into boxes.
A door closed downstairs, and I jumped.
Nick put a hand on my shoulder, steadying me. I held my breath, my arm tingling under his touch.
I counted the seconds. Two. Three. Four. No footsteps came up the stairs. And Nick's hand remained on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.
When I turned toward him, he'd bent down so his face was mere inches from mine. "Kira," he said. "Tell me what's going on."
My mouth might as well have been filled with cotton. I stared up at him, into his dark eyes. The room seemed to tilt, and if it weren't for his hand steadying me, I would have tipped right into his arms.
I was hopeless. That's what was going on.
Nick ran his hand down my arm, sending chills across my body. He took my hands in his and pulled them apart, running his fingers over my thumbnail, where I'd been picking at the cuticle so hard that it bled.
He held onto my hands. "You're nervous about something," he said. "Just like you were the day of th
e funeral."
My mouth fell open, but no words came out. My hands tingled every place where Nick's skin touched mine. And out of my daze came this thought: if I rocked up onto my tiptoes, I could kiss him. I could pretend I'd lured him up here on purpose, so we could be alone.
My head spun. Do it, I told myself. Just do it.
But my feet were glued to the floor. We stood there, suspended in time, looking at each other. And my heart fluttered for a frantic moment as I thought that he might kiss me, but he didn't.
"Is this about the journal?" he asked.
Cold air washed over me. I stepped back, and Nick let go of my hands. The space between us might as well have been miles. Before I could help myself, I was picking at my thumb again. "Why do you ask?"
Nick looked down at my hands. "Because you get twitchy every time I mention it."
I put my hands behind my back, but my fingers gnawed at each other there, too.
"Seriously," Nick said. "You don't wear secrets well."
He was right about that. I would have flopped myself on the bed, but with the mess scattered over it I had to settle for perching on one corner. "Okay," I said. "So I'm looking for the journal."
"Why?" Nick asked.
"Because," I said. "I'm worried about what Haylee wrote in there."
Nick raised his eyebrows at me.
I drew a deep, slow breath, and my mind began to clear. "About me," I said. "But it's nothing."
"You're this nervous over nothing?"
"Not nothing," I said. "Best friend stuff."
Nick scuffed his toe against the carpet. "Okay," Nick said. "So you came up here to look?"
"Yeah," I said. I swallowed. I didn't have to trust him. I could look in a drawer, or under the carpet again, or someplace else where I knew it wouldn't be, and then declare I'd been wrong. But my skin still tingled where he'd touched my hands. He wanted me to trust him. I wanted not to be alone in this. "But I don't have to look, exactly. I already know where it is."
Nick stepped farther away, leaning against the wall. "Don't let me stop you."
I looked at him in surprise. "You'd let me take it?"
He shrugged. "Whatever you're hiding, it must be pretty important to you."
"It is," I said. "I'll give Hazel the journal, just as soon as I pull out the stuff about me."
Nick just stood there, watching me.
"Promise you won't read it?" I asked.
Nick looked up at the ceiling, like he was weighing his options. He couldn't find it without me; if he could, Hazel would have by now. But I wouldn't show him where it was if he was going to betray me.
Finally, he nodded.
"Promise," I said.
"Okay, okay, I promise. Where is it?"
"Clear the floor," I said, pointing to the bottom of the closet. "There."
Nick moved aside a pile of clothing, and I extracted the chair from underneath a stack of books and dragged it over.
I stepped up to the chair, glad that this time I wasn't wearing a skirt. I planted one foot on it, and Nick immediately offered me his hand to help me up.
I took it, and our fingers clasped together. I practically floated onto the chair. When I let go of his hand to reach the hatch, I swayed, and Nick stood behind me with his hands on my waist to steady me.
I closed my eyes. I could turn around and step off the chair and into his arms.
But instead I pushed the hatch aside. Tiny filaments drifted down, and I ducked so they wouldn't fall in my eyes. I felt around inside the hole, but my fingers met only insulation.
"Let me try," Nick said. He stepped up on the chair behind me, one arm still around my waist, his entire body pressing against my back. My head leaned back against his chest instinctively, and his arm tightened around my waist.
I could feel his heart beating as fast as mine. The invisible barrier that always kept us inches apart had shattered. I couldn't move; I couldn't breathe. Nick put a hand on the closet shelf to keep us both steady.
His keys jingled as he pulled them out of his pocket. A tiny Maglite hung on his keychain, and he shone it up into the hole.
I stood on the very tip toes of my sneakers, using the shelf as a hand hold as I peered into the crawlspace. I dug my fingers through the layers of insulation. There was nothing here—only a rectangular indent in the insulation where I'd shoved the journal in.
My stomach sank. The hatch had been an obvious place to leave it. But if Hazel had found it and read it, she'd never be so friendly to me, and certainly not about Aaron. "It's not here," I said.
"Are you sure?" Nick asked.
He stood on his tiptoes, craning his neck as high as he could.
I looked back at his face. If touching affected him the way it did me, he didn't show it.
He planted a foot at the edge of the chair to boost himself up a little higher, and lifted the edge of the insulation, looking under it. "You're right," he said. "There's nothing here." Nick switched off his light.
The chair seemed to sink underneath me, dropping farther and farther away.
"Whoa," Nick said, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, holding me on the chair. "Careful."
I shrugged him off. Touching was worse than not touching, if it didn't mean to him what it did to me.
Nick stepped backward off the chair, and offered me a hand again to help me down.
I stepped down without it.
A toilet flushed downstairs.
"We need to go," I said. "They'll be looking for me." If Hazel found us standing there, she'd know I lied about the journal. I was about to move the chair back, hiding the evidence, but Nick beat me to it.
I blinked. He was covering our tracks, like he cared about getting caught. He wouldn't do that if he intended to turn me over to Hazel.
I locked the door behind us as we moved into the hall. I heard footsteps from the bathroom downstairs and flipped off the hall light, so no one would suspect that we were upstairs.
In the dim light from the bathroom, Nick eyed me. "You have insulation in your hair," he said. "Do I?"
He ran his hands through his own hair, and left me to do the same. We stood close, but his arms didn't brush mine as he dusted off his arms and shoulders.
The invisible barrier was back.
"Are you sure the journal was there?" Nick asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm sure."
"Haylee might have moved it," Nick said. "Maybe she threw it out, so no one would read it."
I picked at my thumbnail again. It felt slick in the dark, and I wondered how much it was bleeding. "Maybe," I said. "You aren't going to tell anyone?"
"Why would I?" he said.
I smiled, and his eyes flicked down to my chin. Or my lips. Oh, heavens, Nick Harbourne was looking at my lips.
And over the hammering of my heart in my ears, I heard Nick's mom's voice from the hall below. "Nick?" she called.
Nick sighed, and maybe I imagined it, but he sounded a bit long-suffering. "I'm here," he said.
And he moved down the stairs, like nothing was wrong.
I leaned against the wall until I heard them go back into the living room. The image of Nick's eyes, lingering on my mouth, ran through my mind on repeat.
He had been thinking about kissing me, hadn't he?
When my pulse slowed and my hands stopped shaking, I moved silently down the stairs and back to the kitchen.
Four Days Before
It took Haylee forever to tell her mom about the Winter Fling. As a result, we didn't go shopping for the dress until the day before.
Hazel let Haylee use her credit card, and my mom drove us to the mall on Thursday evening. As we sat in the back of the car, Haylee said to me, "I wish you were coming to the dance."
I kind of wished I'd been asked, too, but only by Nick, and that clearly wasn't happening. "It's no big deal," I said. "I'm sure you'll have fun."
"Why aren't you going?" Mom asked from the front seat.
"Because I'm not allowed to date
yet," I said. "Duh."
"You don't need a date to go to a dance," Mom said. "You could go stag."
I was pretty sure that word hadn't ever been cool. "That's not how it works," I said. You didn't just show up to the Winter Fling without a date. That was a sure way to end up sitting by yourself all night.
"The school only sells tickets to couples?" I could hear the feminist rising in her voice.
"No," I said. "But I wouldn't have anyone to dance with. That's kind of the point."
"You can dance with other people who don't have dates."
I sighed. "I don't really want to go, anyway."
"Fine," Haylee said. "Abandon me."
I rolled my eyes. Pleasing the two of them was impossible. "You'll have fun. Really."
Mom dropped us off at the mall and we arranged a meeting place for a few hours later. Then Haylee and I set off on a rampage through every store in the mall, searching for the perfect dress.
We had the usual problem. Every dress that looked halfway decent was out of Haylee's price range, and everything in her price range was all wrong: too skanky, too frilly, too bright, or too boring. She couldn't go looking like a whore, but she couldn't go looking like a cupcake, either.
As she tried on dress after dress, Haylee was leaning toward whore. She put on a navy blue dress that was backless and had a slit up each leg, so the front of her skirt looked like a loincloth.
"No way," I said.
"Are you sure?" Haylee asked, spinning and looking at herself over her shoulder.
"I'm sure. That dress is made of regret." I didn't mention that the loincloth look would make Fiona's leg wrap maneuver a lot easier.
In the end, Haylee found a black dress covered in silver sparkles on clearance that looked classy while still showing off her shoulders.
"What do you think?" she asked, spinning around in it for me. "Is this it?"
I stared at her. "We're meeting my mom in 20 minutes," I said. "We've been through every store. The dance is tomorrow."
She squinted at herself. "I don't know. Who do you think I'd be in this dress?"
I smiled. "I think you'll still be Haylee."
"I mean, do you think Bradley will look at me?"
"Looking at you is pretty much required for dancing."
Everything's Fine Page 10