Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  Audra led the group up the gentle incline away from the beach and through a band of trees to Montlake Road. Everyone piled into the house, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, she felt at peace. Shadow addressed the visitors with happy yelps and the ceaseless wagging of his tail. It was reminiscent of Christmas Eve—excitement and expectation rolled into one. When Clover and Gypsy ducked through the front door, she welcomed them with a wordless smile. She was still too unsure of herself to approach them on her own, but Deacon was quick to remedy the situation. Catching Audra by the hand, he led her to the two girls she had yet to meet.

  “This is Audra,” he told them. Clover was the blonde. Gypsy was the brunette, taller than any of the other girls in the group.

  “Nice to meet you,” Audra told them, ducking her head in greeting. The two girls looked at her thoughtfully, but before they could offer their own hellos, Jeffrey paused just inside the open door. The energy of the group shifted in a way Audra hadn’t experienced before. Their easy talk and light laughter was silenced. All eyes, including her own, were glued on the man in the doorway. She held her breath, watching him the way one would view an exotic bird, afraid to move in fear of frightening him away. Eventually, he stepped inside the house. His bare feet took him down the brick steps that led into the living room. He made a beeline for the hostess, and Audra swallowed against the sudden dryness of her throat. She took a single backward step, unsure whether he expected her to stand still or step aside. When he reached out to draw her hair between his fingers—as if studying its texture—she drew in air that tasted of leather and cloves.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice a soft purr.

  “Hi,” she replied, her greeting but a whisper.

  “Audra, right?” He canted his head to the side, his brown eyes meeting her blues. She nodded, her heart thumping hard against her chest. “You look more like an Avis,” he told her. “It means bird, perfect for a girl who’s ready to learn how to fly.”

  He sidestepped her then, leaving her in the living room while joining his friends. Audra was left to stare at the front door, still wide-open, as if inviting her to stay or leave. Was this what people meant when they talked about love at first sight? Was this what it felt like to be swept off her feet? She moved up the steps to the door. Should I stay or should I go? When she turned to look back at her guests, the girls had gathered around Jeff like lambs. Sunnie was correct—he was perfect. Maybe she was right about Jeff being able to fix things, too. After a moment of hesitation, Audra closed the door.

  Kenzie and Noah dug through Audra’s crate of records and selected a Doors album. Audra invited everyone to join her at the dining room table. The girls chatted among themselves, seemingly oblivious to their dinners, while the boys ate their food in silence. It was only after the boys finished eating that the girls dug into their now-cold plates. Audra peered at her chicken, wondering whether to offer reheating their food, but nobody seemed to mind the temperature. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she picked at her meal. Her gaze dared to drift to the man at the head of the table, the one that demanded undivided attention without breathing a word.

  After dinner, Deacon was the last one left at the table. He remained seated while everyone else thanked Audra for her hospitality and drifted out the door. The two of them finally alone, Deacon gave her a thoughtful smile and rose as well. But rather than making an exit, he began to pluck plates up off the table, carefully placing used knives and forks into an empty drinking glass as he made the rounds.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she protested.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Audra paused behind the chair Jeff had occupied only minutes before, her fingers gripping its top. Her gaze fixed on the crumpled napkin he’d used. She imagined the group rambling through the trees and back onto the beach, heading toward the duo of tents she pictured were a lot like Mary Poppins’s magic carpet bag. Bigger on the inside. Persian rugs and giant beds. Dozens of silk pillows tucked into impossibly deep corners of those tiny nylon wigwams. And there, in the center of the lush purples and reds of her imagination, was Jeff the Angel. Jeff the Protector. Jeff the All Powerful. The fixer of all things broken.

  A familiar, nagging doubt held her motionless where she stood. What would she do if, a day or two from now, she took Shadow onto the beach and those tents were gone? What if she lost them to the ocean? What if she couldn’t find them again through the rain?

  “How long do you think you’re staying?” she asked, casting her gaze up to Deacon’s face.

  He lifted a single shoulder in a shrug as though, to them, time was irrelevant. They could live on the beach forever, or maybe they’d pack up and leave that night. “The weather has been pretty bad,” he said. “The boys don’t mind it too much, but the girls are getting restless. We may need to find somewhere calmer.”

  Audra held her tongue, bided her time, took a moment to consider, then reconsider. If she made the offer, she was making a commitment. Her sanctuary of silence and solitude would be gone, erased from her life for the foreseeable future. Could she handle that?

  “Why?” Deacon asked. “You want to come with us?”

  She shook her head. Something told her that those tents weren’t quite as big on the inside as she pictured them to be.

  “No?” The clinking of plates. The jingle of silverware.

  “Maybe you should stay here,” she said. It was a crazy proposition, but it was also an empty house. There were three bedrooms with only one person to fill them while nine people battled the wind and rain a quarter mile away. “I mean, if you all want to stay in Pier Pointe longer.” She lifted her shoulders, dismissing the enormity of her suggestion. Did Deacon understand how big of a step this was for her? Could he possibly fathom how much courage it took? She’d been a loner for her entire life; to have him accept for the group was to change everything.

  When Deacon didn’t respond, she pulled her attention from Jeffrey’s napkin and dared to peek up at him. She found him standing just as still as she was. He balanced a stack of dirty plates in his right hand, a glass of silverware in his left. A moment later, he was placing the dishes back on the table. He stepped around it, paused to look her in the eyes, and then drew her into a tight embrace.

  “Thank you,” he murmured against the top of her head.

  “Thank you,” she whispered in return. Because the promise of a new life was far bigger than the solitude she’d miss.

  10

  * * *

  VEE STOOD DEEP in the orchard, her phone held aloft and the camera app focusing in on a straight column of trees. It was a great shot, one that would get her at least a few likes and comments on Facebook and Instagram. She texted the shot to Heidi.

  Cherry orchard behind the house.

  At least it’s pretty here. But boring! What’s up?

  She considered cutting to the chase and asking about Tim, but she didn’t want to be obvious about it. Vee was pretty sure her best friend knew she had it bad for her brother, but to Vee’s relief, Heidi hadn’t ever brought it up. Then again, it would have been nice to have someone keep an eye on Tim for the next two months, keep her in the loop, let her know if anything weird was going on. It wasn’t as though Vee and Tim were a thing, but she had her hopes. He was the first boy she daydreamed about. She’d even practiced kissing her pillow, though she’d take that little detail with her to the grave.

  Her phone blipped in her hand.

  Cool, but looks like the boonies! LOL

  Not much. Going 2 the movies 2nite.

  Vee frowned at the text. She bet Heidi was going with Clara and Laurie. Maybe, since Vee was missing, they even invited Jenn along even though Jenn was a total drag. Jenn was the type of kid to rat on her friends if her parents so much as suspected she’d been doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. It was why the girls tend
ed not to invite her to hang out. Clara liked to curse and Laurie loved dirty jokes, and both Vee and Heidi were “weird” with their dark clothes and choice of music. It wouldn’t have taken much for Jenn to blab to her mother after hanging out with a motley crew like them.

  What movie? With Tim?

  She bit her bottom lip and busied herself with Instagram while waiting for a reply. So what if Heidi knew Vee liked Tim? Wasn’t that what friends were for? If she and Tim ended up going out, it would just be an excuse for Vee to spend even more time at Heidi’s place. Heck, if she and Tim ended up getting married, she and Heidi would kind of be like sisters, and that would be pretty cool.

  Don’t know yet LOL

  Vee glowered at the screen. Don’t know what? she wanted to know. Don’t know what movie you’re going to see, or don’t know if Tim is going? Didn’t Heidi get that this was important? Vee was an entire country away, nothing but her and her dad—a father that, sooner rather than later, would forget all about her, lost in his work—and all Heidi could do was reply with her stupid LOLs. Vee squeezed the phone tight in her hand, attempting to subdue her mounting frustration, then began to type up a response:

  Don’t know what?

  Delete.

  Don’t be a jerk.

  Delete.

  Why can’t you just answer?

  Delete.

  Stop being such a bitch!

  No.

  She closed her eyes and counted to five.

  It’s going to be fine. Just write him an email in a few days. Take some creepy pictures and post them on Tumblr. Give him a reason to remember you. Give him a reason to miss you, Vee. Maybe the fastest way to most men’s hearts was through their stomachs, but the fastest way to Tim’s heart was through mystery. For all he knew, she was having a blast in Washington. Heck, for all he knew, Pier Pointe was full of guys twice as cool as him. Tim who? Oh, Tim Steinway? He was okay, she guessed, but the Washington boys were better. Darker. Way more dangerous.

  The sky rumbled overhead and she sighed, tipping her face up to stare at the dark clouds above. If it kept raining, she’d be stuck in the house all summer. She’d never meet anyone, let alone any boys. Not that her dad would mind. Rain was a convenient excuse for staying in rather than going out. Except that when Vee tipped her chin away from the sky, she came face-to-face with a wide-eyed kid standing at the edge of the trees. She blinked at him, startled by his sudden appearance, perplexed by where he had come from. He looked older than Tim by at least a few years—probably still a teen, but definitely out of high school. Vee peered at him, waiting for him to speak. But rather than talking, his mouth curled up into a grin that gave her the creeps. It was a crazed sort of smile, the kind only a serial killer wore. Disturbed enough to take a single backward step, with her movement she seemed to shake him from his otherwise static state. And yet, despite the chill he’d sent down the backs of her arms, when he turned and bolted out of view, she yelled out after him.

  “Hey!” She was too curious not to follow. Rather than turning back to the house, she dashed to the end of the orchard’s row. Someone whooped in the distance. Had it been the creepy wide-eyed boy, or someone else? She could hear girls laughing. No, there was more than just the boy. There was a whole group of them, people out in the forest beyond the house who she could only assume shouldn’t have been there.

  “Hello?” She waited for someone to respond, for someone to surface. There was another round of laughter. Then, a scream.

  Vee froze. Blanched. The cry sounded terrified, a yell she imagined emanated from the throat of someone who had stumbled onto a dead body in the heart of the woods. She hovered at the edge of the trees, wondering whether she should investigate or go get her dad. Forget it, she thought. You don’t need him. For a guy who had once pretended to be a vampire in his spare time, her dad could be really lame. He tried to come off as hip with his music and cool because he didn’t have some boring office job, but in the end he was just like every other adult: Dull. Ordinary. Totally boring. If Vee told him she heard screaming in the woods, she doubted he’d jump up and announce they were going to investigate. He’d just say it wasn’t any of their business and call the cops.

  But Vee wanted it to be her business. This was her home, no matter how temporary, and that weird-looking guy had stared right into her eyes before taking off into the trees. What if he knew Vee had overheard that scream? What if that guy had been a lookout, and now Vee was a witness to some sort of crime? True, she hadn’t seen anything, but maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe just hearing the cry made her a target.

  The mere idea of it should have scared her, but it ignited a flame of exhilaration inside her chest instead. Wait until Tim finds out, she thought. No girl would be able to touch her, not if she could lay claim to hearing a murder take place. Not if, perhaps, she had seen the killer before he’d plunged a knife into his victim in the thick of the forest behind her summer home.

  She cast a quick glance over her shoulder toward the house, then looked back to the wooded area a dozen yards away. She wouldn’t go far, just a few feet in. But before she could duck into the pines, the sky cracked open overhead.

  The rain came fast and Vee yelped as the cold deluge soaked through her pajama top. “Crap!” Cradling her phone against her chest, she did an about-face and ran for the house, desperate to keep her tether to the outside world dry. By the time she bounded into the kitchen, the rain had soaked her through.

  She dashed across the living room, sprinted up the stairs, and, shivering, veered into the room she had designated as her own. It was still Spartan; just a mattress pushed into the corner, the furniture her dad had bought for her still dismantled, and her boxes of stuff lined up against one of the walls. She’d been careful to mark all her moving boxes with a giant V across the top flaps, not needing her dad “accidentally” rifling through her stuff. Her ghost books were in there. She’d even managed to get ahold of an old copy of The Exorcist at the library. It was so tattered that she’d shoved it into her backpack and walked out with it, convincing herself that nobody would miss it. It was just a ratty old paperback, too worn-out to be of use to anyone. That book was her summer reading, perfect for stormy nights.

  The majority of her things were still in her room in New York. She hoped that her mom wouldn’t decide they had to leave the house in Briarwood—Heidi’s place was within walking distance and her school was only a couple of blocks away. But eight weeks in Washington was a long time, and she’d brought enough with her to turn her space into a livable bedroom. She didn’t want to think about the fact that this place may very well become her father’s permanent home. Yet if she was going to be bouncing back and forth between Briarwood and Pier Pointe, she had to make her bedroom comfortable. Her parents must have thought so, too, otherwise they would have argued that she had packed too many things for such a short trip.

  With her pajamas cold and wet against her skin, she tore open one of the suitcases that had made it out of the truck the night before. It housed the clothes her mother had deemed vacation-­appropriate. Suspiciously, most of those vacation-appropriate selections were the clothes her mother hated—black band T-shirts, tattered jeans. Vee imagined her closet back home was perfectly respectable now, not a shred of her dark period in sight. Pulling out a shirt and pants, she made her way to the bathroom next door.

  The bathroom was hideous—pastel blue as far as the eye could see. But Vee had been sharing a bathroom with her parents since she could count to three. This bathroom may have been super-ugly, but at least it was hers. Stepping into what she’d already dubbed in her mind as the “blue room,” she shut the door behind her and peeled off her soaked pj pants, dropping them into the sink with a plop.

  Uncle Mark yelled something downstairs—an exclamation of distress. Vee pictured him carrying a box that was either way too big or way too heavy. Her dad replied with a laugh, and she smiled to herself as
she pulled her wet sleep shirt over her head and replaced it with a dry one. But her smile was short-lived.

  She liked seeing her father happy, yet she couldn’t help but wonder just what he had to be happy about. Neither he nor her mom had said much about their separation, but she knew they were going to get a divorce. Bouncing between coasts would become the norm. She’d get to live in two separate houses—one where her dad would be lonely all by himself, and one where Kurt Murphy hung around like a plague. Unless her mom decided to move in with Kurt. Oh my God. She’d just about die if that happened. Living under Kurt’s roof would mean she had to respect him. How was she supposed to respect a guy who was responsible for tearing her parents’ relationship apart? For ruining her life?

  And then there was her social life. Would her dad expect her to spend every summer in Pier Pointe? What would that do to her relationships back in New York? Or, worse, what would happen if she met someone she liked here and couldn’t see them for nine months out of the year?

  She stared into the mirror of the medicine cabinet and narrowed her eyes. Maybe she was part of the problem. The brooding. The attitude that infuriated her mother. She had rebelled against her parents’ constant fighting by putting on a cold and callous disguise. She’d hidden herself away as a form of protection. But perhaps it was her very hiding that had brought Mr. and Mrs. Graham to this point. Now her mother loathed Vee’s dad so much that only an entire country separating them would do.

  Vee turned her eyes away while a familiar pang of shame scratched at her brain. Tugging on a dry pair of undies before pulling on her jeans, she stared at her sopping top and pants lying in the sink. She hadn’t seen a clothes dryer in the house, and even if there was one, she wasn’t about to crawl into a creepy old basement during a rainstorm just to get her pj’s up to spec. Especially not after seeing that guy outside. His weird smile was still lingering at the back of her mind. That scream was still a worry. What if she went down to the basement only to find him waiting there for her? He had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the orchard, so what was to keep him from appearing out of nowhere inside the house? Wringing her clothes out in the sink, she turned to the bare tension bar that ran across the top of the tub. If she hung them there, they’d be dry by bedtime. The basement, if there even was one in the house, would be altogether avoided.