“Sorry, Dad,” I say, trying to sound natural. I’m not quite sure I pull it off.
I step inside the door, and my father pushes it closed.
Lydia smiles at me. “So what were you up to while we were gone? You know, my parents would have killed me if I had a boy over while they were out.”
I scowl at her.
My father turns to me. “You know, your aunt has a point. It didn’t bother me so much when you and Rollins were just friends, but it’s clear that you guys have gotten, um, closer in the past week and I’m just not that comfortable with—”
I raise my hand to stop him. I don’t feel like getting into a fight over this right now. “It’s fine, Dad. I won’t have Rollins over when you’re gone. Okay?”
My father looks surprised, like he wasn’t expecting me to give in so easily. “All right, then. Good. Do you want me to make you some lunch?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Okay. Well, ladies, I’m beat. I think I’m going to catch a few winks.” My father heads up the stairs.
I clear my throat. “Actually, Dad, I need to talk to you. Both of you.” I throw a glance at Lydia, who eyes me nervously. It occurs to me that she probably hasn’t filled my father in yet and thinks I’m going to spill her little secret, that she has a fiancé back in California.
My father rubs his eyes wearily. “Okay.”
Lydia and my father follow me into the living room and sit down on the couch. I remain standing and cross my arms over my chest before saying, “You know, Rollins’s uncle works at the hospital. That’s why he was over here this morning.”
My father exhales loudly. “I’m sorry, Vee. I was going to tell you. I was just trying to think of the right way to do it.”
Lydia looks from my father to me, confused. “What happened?” I try to figure out whether she’s acting or if she really doesn’t know about Scotch’s death.
“Scott Becker is dead,” my father tells Lydia. “It seems he was murdered last night.” He turns to me. “I’m sorry you had to hear that from Rollins.”
Lydia’s mouth turns into an O of shock. “He was murdered? How terrible!”
I turn to her. “You were at the hospital last night, weren’t you?”
“Sylvia,” my father says, a warning in his voice.
Lydia’s eyebrow twitches. “Are you insinuating something?”
“Why? Did you do something wrong?”
Lydia flinches as if I slapped her. “Vee, how could you ever think I would kill someone?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Why would you show up on our doorstep after twenty years? Why would you leave behind a fiancé without telling him where you were? Why would you use a fake name in California? Face it: I know almost nothing about you. How am I supposed to believe anything you say?” My words get louder and louder until they turn into a shout.
Lydia’s nostrils flare. “Sylvia Bell, I admit I’m no saint. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m not proud of, but I can’t believe you could ever think I’d kill a teenage boy.”
Without another word, she turns and runs up the steps. Moments later, I hear Mattie’s door slam shut.
My father’s mouth is hanging open, like he’s not sure what just happened. “Lydia . . . has a fiancé?”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “In California. They were supposed to be married last week. Are you . . . are you okay?”
He shakes his head. “Of course. I’m just surprised. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Because you still love her?”
“Oh, Vee. I don’t love Lydia. We only dated for a couple of weeks. Until I met your mom. Come here.” He motions for me to sit next to him on the couch. When I sink into the seat beside him, he wraps his arm around me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought it would be weird.”
“It is weird,” I say. “So you really don’t have feelings for her anymore? You’ve been spending a lot of time together.”
“Well, she is family. I want her to have a good life and everything. That’s why I’ve been letting her stay here. But I have no interest in her romantically.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “That’s good to know.” My thoughts turn back to Scotch’s death. I realize that my father was at the hospital last night when Scotch died. Maybe he knows whether that weird lady, Diane, was working last night.
“Dad . . .” I venture. “Do you know a nurse named Diane? She wears a bun all the time?”
“That’s a huge change in topic. Why do you ask?”
I search my brain for a reason I’d know that she worked at the hospital. “Well, remember the lady who gave me a ride home after my car accident? I ran into her at the mall last night, and I was chatting with her. It turns out that she works at the hospital. So . . . do you know her?”
“Sure I do,” my father says, arranging a pillow behind him. “Diane Acton? She works in the intensive care unit. Has for a long time, ever since I’ve worked there. In fact, she was friends with your mother.”
“What?” I say, pulling away from him. I’m not sure what to make of this new information.
“Yeah, your mom didn’t have many friends, but she sure liked Diane. I’m not sure what they had in common. Every time I’ve ever talked to Diane, she’s seemed pretty eccentric to me. But I thought it was nice that your mother had someone to confide in.”
At that moment, the front door opens.
Chapter Thirty
I jump off the couch and run into the front entryway. Mattie walks in, looking pale. Rollins follows close behind, holding her elbow to steady her. From the looks on both their faces, I’m pretty sure Rollins already broke the news about Scotch’s death.
“We’ll be up in my room,” I call to my father.
The three of us climb the stairs and shuffle wordlessly into my bedroom. I lock the door behind us and then turn to face Mattie, who sinks onto my bed. Rollins sits in the rocking chair, looking nervous.
“What did Regina have to say?” I ask.
Mattie shakes her head. “No one was home.”
“Matt, I have to tell you something.”
“Rollins already told me about Scotch,” Mattie replies. Her eyes are slightly glazed.
“It’s something else,” I say gently. “Something about me. I’ve been keeping a secret from you,” I say.
Mattie’s forehead wrinkles. “What is it?”
Clearing my throat, I try to think of the best way to explain. Mattie was so young when all of this started. I don’t know if she even remembers those days when I first started passing out. Or the fight I had with my father when he wouldn’t believe what was really happening to me and he decided to send me to a shrink.
“Okay. I know you were young, but do you remember when I told Dad that something strange was happening to me when I passed out?”
Mattie shakes her head.
“I don’t have narcolepsy. When I pass out, I go somewhere else. It just depends on what I’m touching at the time. Say I’m touching Dad’s watch. That means I’ll slide into Dad and see through his eyes, whatever he’s doing. Only it can’t just be any item. It has to be something that’s important to the person. Something they’ve emotionally imprinted on.”
“I don’t understand,” she says. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true. And the weirdest part is that I’ve learned how to control it. I can take over a person’s brain and make them do things, say things. I can control them.”
“What are you talking about?”
Taking a deep breath, I tell myself it’s okay. I knew this was going to be hard. Mattie will have to see it to believe it.
I pull open the bottom drawer of my dresser and search through the things I’ve accumulated over the past few months, the things that allow me to slide. I grab the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt Rollins gave to me last fall. He left an emotional imprint on it that
allowed me to slide into him a few times. When I explained about my ability and that I saw his miserable home life through his eyes, he accused me of invading his privacy. Since then, I’ve never slid into Rollins again.
Not until now.
I hold the shirt up to Rollins, a question in my eyes. His face tightens, but then he nods. It’s the only way for me to convince Mattie. I have to demonstrate my power. With the T-shirt crumpled in my hands, I sit next to Mattie on the bed.
“I know it’s confusing. Just watch, though.”
I arrange myself so I’m lying on my bed, cradling the T-shirt against my chest. I think back to the day Rollins gave me the shirt, how happy I was. I’d wanted it for such a long time. I was confused the first time I slid into Rollins because I didn’t understand why he would be emotionally attached to a gift for me. He’d kept his feelings for me a secret. But now I know, and it feels strange to slide into him, almost intimate.
My perspective shifts. I am in the same room, but seeing through Rollins’s eyes. He is still sitting in the rocking chair, facing my bed. Mattie is gaping at my unconscious form, which is sprawled out with the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt.
“Mattie,” I whisper. “It’s me.”
Mattie looks at Rollins, confused, like she’s not sure what he’s talking about. I need to give her some evidence to prove that it’s really me.
“It’s me. Sylvia.” I rack my brain, trying to think of some obscure piece of trivia about Mattie that only I, her sister, would know. “All right, how about this? I know that you threw up in Matthew Baker’s hair in the second grade. You were so embarrassed because you had the biggest crush on him.”
Mattie’s face scrunches. “Why are you guys playing tricks on me at a time like this? It isn’t funny!”
“Shhhhhhhh,” I say, getting out of the chair and going over to her. “It’s not a trick. It’s really me.”
She glares. “You guys are sick.”
“Look. How about this? You ask me a question, something no one else could know. Something only I would know.”
“Something Vee would know?”
“Exactly.”
Mattie looks down. I see her face change. When she raises her head, I see a challenge in her eyes. “Before Mom died, what did she give me to remember her by?”
Yes. This is something I know. “She gave you that necklace,” I say, pointing. “You never take it off because you’re afraid that if you do, you’ll forget her completely.”
I can see the tears in Mattie’s eyes, threatening to spill. She comes close to me and studies my face intently. “Vee?”
My face breaks into a grin. “You got it!”
She throws her arms around me—well, Rollins, really. I can feel her breath, hot in my ear. “It’s true then. It’s really true.”
“Of course it’s true. Did you think I was lying?”
And then she really is crying, her whole body shaking against me. “It’s just that—I thought . . . I thought I was going crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“I didn’t know what was happening to me . . .” Mattie says, her voice breaking. “I was having such weird dreams. And then things were happening. My dreams were coming true.”
Now it’s my turn to be baffled.
“What are you talking about?” I say, pushing her back so I can see her face. She is crying freely now, and I can hardly make out her words.
“First there was that car accident. And I thought it was just a coincidence. But then I dreamed of Lookout Point, and I thought there was something really wrong with me.”
I grab hold of her face and make her look at me. “Slow down. Tell me everything.”
She gasps for air. I wait for her to catch her breath. Then she speaks. “Vee, I was there the night that Scotch fell.”
I take a step back, covering my mouth. “What?”
She starts to cry. “What do you call it, sliding? I can do it, too.”
My knees buckle, and I sink to the floor. She collapses next to me, and we sit there, clutching each other.
She explains how it started a few months ago. She was having strange dreams that she was other people, doing ordinary, mundane things. She dreamed of my father brushing his teeth. She dreamed of me, taking notes in English class. The dreams were strangely vivid, but she didn’t think anything of them until the night I got into a car accident.
That night, she dreamed she woke up in my room. The radio was on, so she turned it off. She went down to the kitchen and stared at the moon through the window for a long time. Then she had a crazy idea. The dream was so real, and she was able to control it. She decided to test it out. That’s when she went into the garage and started my father’s car. She took it for a long ride, and then the dream ended abruptly.
I shiver as she tells the story. So well I remember that night, waking up in a car that was racing down the road. I thought it was my nightmare about Zane, so I yanked the wheel. And realized it wasn’t a dream. Someone slid into me and made me steal my dad’s car.
It was my sister.
Mattie goes on. Next she describes sliding into my father. It was late, and he was in the living room, gazing at old pictures of our family from when our mother was still alive. Mattie felt a rage plow through her, a rage that my father refused to get past our mother’s death. He kept letting his grief get in the way of really being there for us. So she grabbed our parents’ wedding portrait and threw it on the floor. She kept grabbing pictures and smashing them everywhere. Then I appeared in the doorway, and all the anger fell away, and she slid back into her own body.
“And then there was Lookout Point.”
Mattie takes a deep breath and explains what happened the night of Scotch’s accident. She fell asleep while waiting for me, and then she found herself standing in the middle of the woods. She was confused, but she saw two beams of light shining through the trees. When she stumbled into the clearing, she saw such a beautiful vision. It was all sky, and the night was so clear that she could make out all the stars. She was filled with a deep happiness, a feeling that she was connected to everyone and everything.
“But then someone grabbed me. I turned around, and I saw that it was Scotch. I was so scared. I felt myself start to slip away. I was falling to the ground. But before I left, I heard Scotch yell, ‘Get off me!’”
I stare at Mattie.
“Someone else was there, Vee. Someone did push Scotch.”
What the hell?
“Who?” I ask.
Mattie shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
Frustrated, I stand up and start pacing around. I’m not used to Rollins’s body, though, and I stub my toe on the rocking chair. I decide it’s time to slide back into my own body.
Mattie sits on the bed and watches as I leave Rollins sitting in the rocking chair. When I am myself again, I open my eyes and see him stretching his arms over his head.
“That was weird,” he says. “It was like I was floating above you guys. But everything was black. I could kind of hear you, but not really.”
“Well, you missed a lot,” I say. As I explain that Mattie was the one who slid into me and caused me to crash my father’s car, Rollins’s eyes grow large.
“You’re effing kidding me.”
“And she was in my body the night that Scotch fell. I mean, the night he was pushed—”
Mattie interrupts me. “Someone else was there. I mean, physically there. Someone pushed him off that cliff. I just didn’t see who it was.”
I flip through the possible suspects in my mind. Could it have been Lydia? Maybe it was Diane . . . ? If it was either of them, they must have driven to Lookout Point. Maybe Samantha or Regina saw a car and forgot to mention it.
“Hey, Mattie, why don’t you try calling Regina again?” I suggest.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mattie taps the pink fingernails of one hand against her skirt as she holds the phone to her ear with the other. I hear a faint ringtone. Then there�
�s a clicking noise, and Mattie’s face lights up.
“Regina? Hello, Regina?”
Mattie squints and then puts the phone down. “It’s like she answered and then hung up.”
“Try again,” I say, irritated. We don’t have time for games.
Mattie dials Regina’s number again, and we all wait.
This time I hear a shriek on the other end of the line, and Mattie pulls the device away from her ear. Regina is yelling something, but I can’t make out the words. Cautiously, Mattie brings the phone closer. “Slow down, Regina. I don’t know what you’re saying. What’s wrong?”
Mattie listens for a moment.
Regina screams something else, and then there’s silence.
“Could you make out anything she said?” I ask.
Mattie shakes her head. “Something about Samantha, that we need to go to Samantha’s house. What do you think is going on?”
I yank my purple hoodie out of my closet and pull it on. “I don’t know. Rollins, can you drive?”
“Of course.”
I take a deep breath and zip up my jacket. “Let’s go.”
After I unlock my door, we move into the hallway. Mattie’s door is still closed. For a moment, I pause, listening to see if I can hear any movement in Mattie’s room, but there is nothing. I wonder if Lydia has gone to sleep, and start to feel relieved, but then I realize a closed door isn’t going to stop Lydia. If she can slide, all she needs is an item with an emotional imprint to get out of that room.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry,” I say under my breath. I move quickly down the stairs, with Mattie and Rollins right behind me.
My father is in his study with the door open. He’s reading some medical article online.
“Hey, Dad?” Mattie says, entering the room. “We’re going to Samantha’s house, okay?”
“Be home by dinnertime,” he replies.
“Will do.”
I pull open the front door. The three of us run across the lawn and jump into Rollins’s car. As soon as Mattie and I are buckled in, he backs out of the driveway. Mattie directs him toward Samantha’s new house.
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