My mother, whose plans for the day consisted of making some crazy-elaborate dinner, was in the kitchen when we went inside. Mom seemed to like Marnie, but she also seemed a little thrown by her cynical vibe. Mostly, my mother seemed relieved I’d made a friend — that I wasn’t doomed to life as a shut-in chasing around imaginary dripping sounds in the night.
Jonathan, thankfully, was off scouting a location for a movie, so I didn’t have to deal with that potentially awkward interaction. I gave Marnie a quick tour of the house — she didn’t seem impressed, though she did say that the pool was “decent, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
I actually found it comforting, the way Marnie scoffed at things. It was like she knew the world was messed up, so what was the use of trying to pretend it wasn’t?
We hung out in my room for a while and Marnie filled me in on all the major Langhorn gossip, starting back in eighth grade. She was happy just to have an audience, and I was happy just to listen. She didn’t ask any hard questions about my life in Connecticut or how I was adjusting to California. It was so much easier than having to conceal what I was really thinking.
For a moment, I actually considered confiding in her. I could start by casually mentioning that the house was a little spooky, and I heard strange-ish sounds sometimes — I even thought I’d seen something in the pool. But where could I go from there? Would I really tell her about the visions and voices? It was such a small, slippery slope from strange-ish to crazy. And Marnie was my only friend.
So I kept my mouth shut.
After examining the nautical-themed paintings on my walls and proclaiming them “droll,” Marnie suggested we go for a drive, on the condition that I change out of the overalls, which I happily did. When we presented the plan to Mom, she was pretty reluctant — especially as the car in question was a convertible, and therefore not reinforced with giant bars of steel and airbags popping out from every angle. But eventually she must have remembered that it had literally been years since any of my peers had invited me to do anything at all, and she agreed to let me go.
Marnie cranked up the radio, and I swallowed the urge to ask her to ease off the accelerator as we zoomed through the neighborhood. When we made it out to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the traffic forced her to slow down, and I relaxed a little, tilting my head back to stare at the ribbon of sky above us.
“Laurel,” as Marnie called it, was a narrow road that curved through the hills between Hollywood and the Valley, which I knew nothing about except that Jonathan seemed to resent ever having to drive there.
The canyon felt like its own little world, a stripe of coziness tucked away from the sprawling city. Houses clustered tightly together, their front doors only a few feet from the road. Their backyards were steep hillsides covered in pale green grass and thickly flowering desert shrubs. In some places there was nothing but exposed rock, washed bare by mudslides.
Power, telephone, and cable lines crisscrossed overhead like party streamers, dripping with tendrils of ivy. In some places, the trees and shrubs grew so close to the road that I could have reached out and grabbed them. On every corner was a sign that read NO SMOKING IN THE CANYON. A hawk circled lazily overhead.
You could totally see why the hippies flocked here in the ’60s and ’70s. With its sharp turns and slabs of uneven concrete, it was a little dangerous feeling. And dirty.
Basically magical.
We drove all the way to the Valley, which, contrary to my expectations, looked like a pretty regular place. We stopped at an old-school diner called Du-par’s for coffee and doughnuts with sprinkles, like two normal teenagers. Normal. It was a beautiful word … a beautiful feeling. Spending time with a friend, talking about school and TV shows. There were no voices in my head, no hallucinations. I felt an intense, almost wistful gratitude….
Probably because I knew it would never last.
It was closing in on dinnertime, so we got in the car and made our way back into the hills. Marnie sang along to a country song about a guy who’d been waiting for his wife to come home from the grocery store for ten years. The breeze was cool, and the air smelled clean, like pine trees.
When we reached the house, Marnie parked in the driveway, then turned to me. “Watch out, Willa,” she said, an impish little grin on her face. “You’re starting to lose your deer-in-the-headlights look. Are you actually enjoying yourself?”
I laughed. “Maybe miracles do happen.”
“Want to come over?” she asked. “I was thinking about watching Kiss of Death. Apparently it’s super twisted.”
I tried to think of a gracious way to say no way on earth, but before I could speak, the world went white.
The light comes on suddenly, blinding me. I close my eyes and turn my head away. I don’t need to look. I know he’s there.
Then I hear his footsteps. He walks toward me and stops with an abruptness that makes me flinch.
“You smudged your makeup.” His voice is edged with jagged steel.
I would apologize — I would say anything to keep him from being angry with me — but there’s a piece of tape over my mouth.
“You promised me,” he says, kneeling down. He wipes my cheeks with a paper towel so roughly that I start to cry again. “You promised you would try your best.”
I feel like I’ve been punched. I am trying. I’m trying so hard. Can’t he see that? For days I’ve been trying to do as he says, to be good enough.
“Faith, when we started rehearsals, I told you that if you got the scene right, I would let you go.”
I nod. I try to plead without words. I try to convey how frightened I am. Maybe he’ll take pity on me. Maybe he’ll give me more time.
He takes my hand in his. His voice is soft with compassion. “I’m so sorry. It’s just not working out.”
I’m paralyzed by the words. He makes a regretful clucking sound and reaches forward. I flinch until I realize that he’s not trying to touch me — he’s playing with the necklace that hangs around my neck, moving the rose charm back and forth on the chain. “I understand if this is upsetting. I’m sorry I was short with you earlier. I know that’s not the way to bring out your best work. You might as well go ahead and cry. I’m going to have to fix your makeup anyway.”
The tears break free in a flood.
He walks back to the door, pausing to move a wheelchair out of his way, and turns to look at me. “We’ll do the final performance tonight. I have a few things to take care of first.”
Then he shuts off the light and leaves me alone with the echoes of his footsteps climbing the stairs.
I drew in a huge gasping breath, like I’d been released from an airless room.
I stared at Marnie for a moment, then looked around, trying to make sense of my surroundings. We were still in her car, parked in the driveway in front of the house. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the late-afternoon light was turning soft and pink.
Not a single indication that it was anything other than a normal March afternoon.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Is there a spider on me?” Marnie swiped at her hair. “I had a spider fall on me once from a tree. It was huge. Horrible things. I hate them.”
Even if I could have found my voice, I wouldn’t have known what to say.
Her smile disappeared. “Are you okay, Willa? Seriously?”
“Um … yeah … I’m okay.” Except for being totally not okay. “I should get inside, though.”
She groaned. “Sorry. I’m a terrible driver. I should have asked you if you get carsick.”
“It’s all right,” I said, trying not to wince from the headache that pounded on the inside of my skull.
The thought fell through me with a thud:
It happened again.
Any hope I’d held on to that my first vision-dream-episode thing — I didn’t even know what to call it — had been a fluke … was now gone. This time it had been Faith, the second murder victim, whose thoughts had filled my head a
s if they were my own.
What is happening to me?
Marnie bit her lip and started to turn off the car. “Do you want me to go get your mom?”
The very idea gave me a shot of strength, enough to unbuckle my seat belt. “No. My mom is crazy overprotective. She’d freak.”
Marnie stared out the windshield. “Must be nice. My parents are too busy managing their social media presences to overprotect me.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Marnie said, but she could tell it was time to drop the subject. “Text me later, all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, managing to smile as I got out of the car. After she drove off, I stumbled up to the front door. I was vaguely touched by her concern, but all I could concentrate on was the … dream? — No, not a dream, it wasn’t a dream — it was more of a … waking dream.
But in the moment, it all seemed so horribly real.
As I opened the door, I was surprised to feel a rush of relief — the feeling of coming home.
“Willa?” Mom called. She met me in the foyer, looking a little harried.
“Mom,” I said, still dazed. “Do you have a minute?”
She didn’t hear me. “You left your phone!”
“Oh … Did you try to call?”
“Yes.” Her smile was odd, and she spoke more deliberately than usual, enunciating like an actor in a play. “You have a visitor.”
A visitor? I rounded the corner and came in view of the den.
Then I realized what was off about my mother’s voice. It was the tone she’d used two and a half years ago, back when Aiden first started calling the house to ask for me. It was her oho! there’s a boy somewhere in a hundred-foot radius voice.
Wyatt Sheppard was sitting on the couch. He got to his feet when I came in.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Mom said. “My pork chops need me.”
I turned to flash her a no please don’t look, but she was already headed for the kitchen.
I had no choice but to face Wyatt. It was a bit of a shock to see him out of his school uniform, in jeans, boat shoes, and a moss-green sweater. He looked way preppier than a standoffish, murder-obsessed jerk had any right to look.
And way cuter, I thought, and then I mentally smacked myself for thinking it.
“Sorry to just show up.” He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look sorry. “I didn’t have your phone number.”
And yet he somehow knew my address?
“I live three blocks away,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “And I knew where Jonathan Walters’s house was because my mom memorizes all the celebrities in the neighborhood to impress our out-of-town guests. Trust me, great-aunts love to hear about Diana Del Mar.”
I nodded, circling around the back of the couch, to put something solid between us.
Did he know about the notebook? He couldn’t. He had to be here to discuss chemistry or something. Maybe even to apologize for being so rude all week.
“I’m here because I can’t find a notebook that’s really important to me,” he said. “It’s been missing since Monday. I’m extremely concerned about it. I’ve looked everywhere and asked everyone, with zero luck. The last time I definitely remember seeing it was in chemistry class. I just wondered if maybe you noticed it at some point.”
I blinked, paralyzed.
He cleared his throat. “So … did you?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry. What does it look like? I mean, I guess I might have seen it. What color is it?”
“Red,” he said.
“Oh. Then no.”
“Did you see a notebook that wasn’t red?” He tilted his head questioningly, his eyes never leaving my face.
I shook my head. “Nope. No, no notebooks. Except my own. Which is green.”
I was totally kicking myself for not just saying I’d found it on the floor and picked it up to give back to him later. Now I was caught in a web of lies.
I cleared my throat and tried to act normal. “So … what was in it?” A normal person would ask that, right?
He shrugged. “A project I’ve been working on. It wasn’t for school. It was … personal.”
Personal how? Personal like, “I’m a serial killer and that’s my personal notebook about serial killing”?
“Sorry,” I said. “Sounds important. I hope you find it.”
He shook his head. “I’m such an idiot. I should have backed it all up.”
I was afraid to speak, afraid anything I said would give me away.
“I’ll go.” He turned and walked with rounded shoulders toward the hallway, looking so dejected that I racked my brain for a way to spring it on him — Hang on, did you say a RED notebook? Wait, yes. I do have a red notebook. Maybe his relief at getting it back would be so great that he would forget to ask me why I’d lied about it.
But the moment passed, and he was all the way to the foyer.
Just the thought of his leaving calmed my nerves a little. Except, after he opened the door, he swung back and stared at me.
“You’re positive,” he said. “Totally positive you didn’t see it anywhere?”
“Nope.” His eyes brightened, and for a moment, I was almost overcome by panic. “I mean, yes. I’m positive. I didn’t.”
As he stared at me, I realized what it was about him that was so strange — he was so incredibly honest. You could tell just by having a short conversation with him that everything he said was the complete truth.
Which is why the next words out of his mouth almost made me pass out.
“I think you’re lying,” he said calmly.
It was like being blasted by a stun gun. My voice caught in my throat. “What?”
“You’re lying.” He didn’t sound angry, which just made it worse. “I think you know where it is. You might even have it. You can’t even look me in the eye.”
I raised my hand and combed it through my hair.
“And that — touching your hair. Fidgeting. That’s a sign, too.”
I couldn’t stand to look into his wide brown eyes, so I angled my body away from him. “I’d like you to leave, please.”
To my dismay, he moved even closer. “If you have it, just give it to me. It’s nothing to you. Why would you need to keep it? Or did you —” Fear flickered in his eyes. “Do you not have it? Did you do something to it?”
“No!” I said, turning away. “Please leave me alone!”
“I’ve watched you at school,” he said. “It’s not just this. You lie about everything. You’re always lying.”
For a beat, we stared at each other. He was infuriatingly placid. I was petrified.
“Hey, Willa?”
Wyatt and I both turned to see Reed walking toward the house from the garage.
My burning-hot cheeks grew one shade warmer. “Um … hi,” I said to Reed, folding my arms in front of me. “What’s up?”
“Just took Jonathan’s Porsche out to get it washed.” Reed’s hand lightly touched my sleeve as he looked from me to Wyatt, and I thanked God that Marnie had made me change out of the overalls. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted to check with you about something.”
“Great timing,” I said. “Wyatt was just leaving.”
Wyatt gave me a meaningful stare and then walked away. I waited until I heard the clunk of the lock catching on the gate, then sighed and looked at Reed. “What do you need?”
He shook his head, his eyes wide and serious. “Nothing, actually. You looked uncomfortable. I thought I’d give you an out.”
I could have hugged him, but I managed to restrain myself. “Solid,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Who was that? Was he bothering you?”
“Just a guy from school.” I tried to downplay my uneasiness.
Reed glanced toward the gate. “He seemed a little intense.”
“A lot intense,” I said.
A lock of dark hair had fallen down over his forehead. Without
thinking, I reached up and swept it back into place. Then we stood in silence for a second. My heart was pounding, for an entirely different reason than it had pounded when I was talking to Wyatt.
“I should go,” Reed said, giving me a quick smile and heading back to the garage.
As soon as I was alone again, the glow of talking to Reed faded, and the horror of Wyatt’s words returned.
If I could have been sucked into a hole in the ground, I would have. Crushed by a falling boulder? Fine. Awesome. Anything but having to go to school Monday with my secrets exposed. On display. The shell I’d spent two years building up around me completely obliterated.
I don’t know why Wyatt thought it would be okay to strip a broken person of her last defenses.
I don’t know how he knew that everything about me was a lie.
But I did know he was right.
For the rest of the weekend, I couldn’t get Wyatt’s accusations out of my mind. I was hurt and insulted and so … so …
Sad, I told myself.
You know, the kind of sad that makes you want to punch someone in the stomach.
I couldn’t even manage to get worked up about the vision I’d had in Marnie’s car. What was the point? My life was a surreal sham anyway. Might as well throw in some trippy delusions, too. Keep things interesting.
Sunday evening, Mom roasted a chicken, and I helped her set the table with cloth napkins and fancy silverware from the sideboard in the dining room. (But first I had to ask her what a sideboard was and be told that it was the low cabinet-thingy. So, to be less pretentious about it: I set the table with cloth napkins and fancy silverware from the low cabinet-thingy.)
We sat down to eat, with Jonathan at the head of the table.
“Could you get me a carving knife, Willa?” he asked. “They’re in the sideboard, in a long, flat box.”
Mom gave me a secret smile, like we’d accomplished something great by learning the names of all the furniture in time to anticipate my stepfather’s whims. In the middle drawer, I found a long, flat box containing a narrow, curved knife and an oversize two-pronged fork.
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