Lily looked around, wondering who Carla was. Moments later, Rachel reappeared and put a cold can of soda into Lily’s hand. Lily gulped the soda and coughed when the bubbles hit home. Rachel was right—her throat was dry, her tongue swollen. How long had she been out there? The sun was just starting to dip down behind the trees around the lake, strips of red and purple and orange reflected in the clear water. Was that the same lake that she lived on? And where were Rachel’s parents?
“So you got lost,” Rachel prompted, curling up and tucking her feet under her on the other side of the couch.
“Yeah. We just moved here a few days ago. I was exploring the swamp behind my house, and…”
Lily paused. Thanks to her parents, there was now a block in her head, this little voice urging her to just be normal, cut the theatrics, don’t make everything such a big deal.
But they weren’t here, and Lily was still Lily, so she launched into a full description of what had happened, with hand gestures, tiptoeing like Puck, leaping back from the snake. She didn’t say the pitcher plants were full of blood, she said they looked like they were full of blood, but otherwise, the story didn’t change. Sure, she might’ve pumped it up just a little bit for effect, but in her defense, Rachel was as rapt as a kid in the front row of their favorite play.
“Ohmygod,” Rachel said, all in a rush, her eyes lit up. “That was amazing! You’re so good. Are you an actor? Is all that true? Because wow.”
Lily felt a gooey loosening in her chest, that warm glow that suffused her anytime someone praised her performance. “Yeah, acting is kind of my thing. And it’s mostly true. But seriously, I have no idea where I am.”
“The lake is huge,” Rachel agreed. “Lake Silence. It’s part swamp, part lake, and super deep in the middle. They can’t even measure how deep. Like, it used to be one of those crazy sinkholes.”
“Sinkholes? Wait, I read about those. They’re one of the many ways to die here.”
Instead of drawing back like that was an odd thing to say, Rachel leaned forward. “I know, right? Did you know this part of Florida is the sinkhole capital of the world? Something about ancient limestone and the water table, blah blah blah science, and sometimes the ground just opens up and swallows stuff. Even cars and houses and people. It’s crazy.”
Lily felt cold down to her toes and wished she could ask for a towel. But any towels at this house would probably be solid white and very expensive. She recovered quickly, hoping Rachel wouldn’t pick up on her weirdness.
“That’s pretty crazy,” she echoed. “So…where are we? Like, what’s your address? My house is on Old Oak Grove.”
Rachel nodded excitedly, but then, everything seemed to excite her. “Yeah, our neighborhood is just off that. I can get you home, no problem. Wanna take the boat?”
Lily looked out at the water. It was still as glass, reflecting the sunset and a patch of tall cattails and water lilies.
“If we hurry. I mean, it’s about to get dark. Or Carla could drive you,” Rachel added. She frowned. “She’s getting old, though, and her eyes are bad at night.”
“Who’s Carla?”
Rachel’s frown deepened. “She’s kinda like a housekeeper and nanny? She’s supposed to watch us when both of my parents are at work or out of town, which is always, but she mostly just watches reality TV and eats cookies these days.”
Lily did not want to explain herself to an adult right now, or have Rachel see the mess around the dumpster and make snap judgments.
“Oh, then the boat sounds good.”
Rachel hopped up, hurried inside, and returned clutching a key ring attached to a foam alligator. “No problem. I love taking the boat out. Kyle’s bored to death of it, but I never have anyone to hang with. You okay now?”
Lily looked down. She’d slurped up the entire soda and snarfed down several cookies, and she did feel a lot better. “Yeah, I’m good. I look like a drowned rat, though.”
Rachel shrugged. “Florida hair, don’t care—right?”
Lily did care, but she wasn’t about to mention that part. She followed Rachel past the trampoline, where Kyle was lying on his back, playing a game on his phone.
“Come back soon, Swamp Thing,” he called out.
“Ignore him,” Rachel told her. “He’s really not that bad. And she was quoting Shrek, you jerk.”
Rachel’s dock was fresh and clean, and there was a tidy metal building attached to it. She used one of her keys to unlock the door, and inside was a small boat with an engine off the back. Soon they were zooming into the middle of the lake. Remembering what Rachel had said about how deep it was, Lily clutched her seat and looked around for a life jacket, but she didn’t see anything that looked remotely capable of saving her from drowning.
“Life jacket?” she asked.
“It’s Florida,” Rachel said. “Everybody has a pool. You can swim, right?”
“Not well.”
Rachel grimaced and slowed the boat down. “Sorry. I should’ve asked. So I guess you came from somewhere far away, then, huh?”
“Colorado.”
“Hey, mountains!”
“Yeah, we have those.”
“So why are you here?”
Normally, Lily would’ve launched into another monologue about her woes, but…well, the circumstances of her moving were too embarrassing, and most of what had happened at the new house would just scare Rachel away.
“My dad got a new job. Our stuff isn’t even here yet. And our house belonged to hoarders. It’s a whole thing.”
“That sucks.”
Just hearing it acknowledged flooded Lily’s heart with relief. “Yeah, it does.”
“Let me know when you see your house, by the way. Does anything look familiar?”
They were out in the middle of the lake now, and Lily could see all the houses ringing the shore. But these houses looked way more expensive than her own—they all looked like little castles. She spotted a wild tangle of woods that stood out from the manicured lawns. “Maybe over there? It’s not so fancy. Or pretty. It’s not in a neighborhood, and it’s kinda swampy and old by my house.”
Rachel steered the boat in the direction Lily had indicated. The water was less smooth here and more…well, not lumpy, exactly. But there were yellow reeds and carpets of green lilies clogging the way. Finally, Lily spotted the jagged angles of her brown house hidden under the trees.
“There it is. The…uh, weird brown one.”
Rachel sat forward a little. “Oh cool! I’ve never been over here before. Always kinda wondered what it was, you know? It gets creepy.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“I don’t mean in a bad way,” Rachel said, her eyes flying wide with embarrassment. “I mean it’s all…I don’t know. Over where we live, they keep everything so trimmed and maintained. But here, it’s like it’s haunted. Is that your dock?”
Lily could only nod. Rachel’s words had struck her like a spotlight. All the weird things that were happening, the strange things she was seeing…When she was alone and trapped inside, she wouldn’t let herself so much as think about that word, but with Rachel here, looking at her house from a distance, she had to consider it.
If it wasn’t Britney sneaking in, was Lily being haunted?
9.
Rachel dropped Lily off at the wobbly little dock, and Lily put every brain cell she had into not looking like a complete klutz. After seeing Rachel’s, well, mansion, she was feeling pretty self-conscious about her entire deal. Her clothes were old and dirty, she was currently a total mess, and her house was a disgusting wreck. But Rachel didn’t seem to care—she seemed weirdly curious about Lily’s house, staring at it with bright eyes like she was looking for something in particular. It seemed like she actually wanted to hang out, too. Of course Lily’s mom still had her phone, so she gave Rach
el her number for later.
“I don’t get a strong signal here,” Lily said. “Would you want to, I don’t know, set up a time to meet? Just in case?”
Rachel’s nose scrunched up. “You don’t get a signal here? This place is crawling with signal.” She pulled out the latest phone in a glitter case. “Yeah, see? I have full bars.”
“Maybe my phone still thinks it’s in Colorado,” Lily joked.
“Maybe,” Rachel agreed easily. “I have ice skating in the morning, but I can meet you here at three? We can explore the lake.”
That, at least, felt hopeful. “Sounds good,” Lily said.
Rachel didn’t pull away from the dock immediately, and Lily wasn’t sure if she was waiting to make sure Lily got inside safely or taking another moment to look around. Hopefully her prospective friend saw it as more magical and interesting than gross and weird.
As the boat finally burbled away and she reached the front door, Lily suddenly realized that she might be in trouble. Her dad would be home, and she’d been gone almost past dark without telling anyone where she was going. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have her phone, but her parents wouldn’t want to hear it. Not only that, but she was covered in mud and missing a flip-flop. She stood outside the door catching her breath, but when she turned the knob, it was locked. She knocked, suddenly feeling very alone. She didn’t dare look behind her at the darkness of the forest. Rachel’s boat was gone. Lily felt like the only person for miles, lost in a wild place.
Knocking at her own door was a peculiar sensation, but it was even stranger to have it swing open and see her father in a suit staring at her like she was a bad salesman interrupting dinner.
“Lily,” he said, as if surprised to recall that she existed. “Where have you been? Your mother was worried sick.”
“I got a little lost,” she started, trying to keep the drama low and sound reasonable and calm. “I was exploring in the backyard and I saw a snake and I ran away and then…I was somewhere else.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Mom took my phone.”
His frown suggested he knew why. “And did I hear a boat motor?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She looked down at her muddy feet. “Rachel drove me back. I ended up…” She wasn’t sure how to say it, really. “At her mansion?”
Her dad gave a little sigh-snort. “A mansion? Really?”
She huffed a sigh of her own. “Or a McMansion? I don’t know what you call it. They had a trampoline and a pool and soft grass and a housekeeper, and Rachel was really nice and drove me home—”
There was this trick her dad pulled—his own kind of drama, although he would never call it that—when he seemed to go from quiet and thoughtful to big and angry, almost like he had finally noticed her and had to expand himself just to deal with her. When he did that, when he took a deep breath and swelled up tall with anger and loomed over her like a bully, she knew she was in trouble. And he was doing it now.
“So you’re telling me you ran out into the swamp without even telling your mother you were leaving, and then you played on a trampoline and got in a boat with a stranger?”
His voice was rising, but he didn’t seem to know it.
Lily swallowed, her throat gone dry and scratchy. She shrunk down, suddenly aware of how dark it was outside, how prickly her skin felt, how the bits of gravel bruised her one bare foot.
“I guess she was a stranger, but she was my age,” Lily said, her voice tiny. “And I wasn’t trying to make Mom worry. I told you—she took my phone. I didn’t mean to wade into the swamp. There was a snake—a venomous snake—and when it tried to bite me, I just ran.”
Dad huffed a big, disappointed sigh. “You know it’s hard for me to believe you when I don’t know what’s true and what you’re making up; and your story gets bigger and more unbelievable with every telling.” He rubbed his eyes like it hurt to look at her. “Your mom told me about last night. Lily, we talked about this.”
“I’m not making up any of it, I swear.”
It was a line made for shrieking at full volume, arms waving in the sky, but she delivered it at almost a whisper, her head hanging.
“You keep screaming at every little thing, waking us up over nothing. You broke your phone. You wrecked your room. You left the house without telling anyone and came back with some stranger. What am I supposed to do? Ground you? Forbid you from doing drama this fall?”
Lily gasped. “Please. Anything but that. I’ll be good. Better. Please.” He could take away everything else, her life in Colorado and her friends and her phone, but she couldn’t deal with the possibility of losing the one thing she loved the most. “I promise.”
Her dad sighed and stepped back to let Lily inside. She skulked in, hoping he would just do what he always did and disappear so he wouldn’t have to deal with her. They stood there for a moment, saying nothing, and if it had been a play, Lily would’ve said, “Line?” because she honestly didn’t know what should happen next.
“Go get cleaned up,” her dad said. “I can’t deal with this right now. It’s been a long day.” He sounded resigned. Not just about the current conflict, but about their entire relationship, in which he just flat out didn’t like or approve of who Lily really was.
She started to hang her head again, but then she stuck out her chin stubbornly. She had done nothing wrong. Kids were supposed to explore and play outside, weren’t they? And being dramatic wasn’t the worst thing to be; it had worked out pretty well for everyone in Hollywood and on Broadway.
But she didn’t prolong the fight; she knew she’d already lost it months ago. She just muttered, “Yes, sir,” and went up the stairs to her room.
Everything was just the way she had left it. Lily hadn’t realized until then that she had been worried it would be messed up again, with her sheets and books dumped onto the floor and more creepy words written on things. It made her feel strangely powerless, and now, thanks to Rachel’s offhand comment about haunting, it also felt like maybe there was something even more terrifying under the surface, something that couldn’t be explained away by an angry kid playing pranks.
But Lily could only face one problem at a time, so she might as well do what her dad had told her to do and get cleaned up—which, for once, was what she wanted to do anyway, since she’d recently sat down in an actual swamp. After grabbing a pair of pajamas, she hurried downstairs to the bathroom. She turned on the sink faucet quickly to make sure the water was clear, which it was. The open toilet was clean, too. She wanted to close the bathroom door for privacy, but then again…she didn’t. Lily didn’t like feeling trapped. So she left it open, just a crack.
She turned on the shower and waited until the water was hot, then climbed in. The hot water felt good, but Lily still didn’t feel safe. She’d seen something in this bathroom, she’d felt something, some presence. And that word that kept popping up—MINE. Whose? Why?
On one hand, she wanted to run away forever and go back home to Colorado. But on the other hand, she was here, and their old house was already sold, and she had no choice. Although she kept hoping that good behavior might mean they could move back, she knew, deep down, that even if she became the perfect, quiet, untroublesome daughter her father craved, she was stuck here. This was where she had to live, this was where she had to shower. This was her bathroom, and this was her house, and this was her life. She wasn’t going to skulk around, afraid of angering some random sneaky kid or weird dumb ghost. As Miss Cora had always told the kids with stage fright, “It’s okay to be afraid. Everyone is. Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
That was one thing Lily could do: Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Even when “it” was something as seemingly simple as taking a shower.
When she was clean, she dried off quickly, got dressed, and went to the laundry room to deposit her dir
ty clothes. That room, too, was just as she’d left it—empty and as clean as possible, not a spider in sight. The den even looked better, with all the garbage gone except the huge stacks of Amazon boxes looming in the corners and against the walls.
In the kitchen, she found her parents trying to smile over a couple of boxes of still-hot pizza.
“Lots of delivery options around here,” her mom said, aiming for perky and falling short. “It’s not so uncivilized after all.”
“How’s work going?” Lily asked her dad as she helped herself to the pizza. The best way back into his good graces was to act cheerful, well-behaved, and interested in whatever he cared about.
“Good,” he answered. “Really good.” But he didn’t go into details. He never did. Lily wasn’t even totally sure what he did for a living. Something with data. Something boring he could never quite explain.
They mostly ate in silence after that. Her parents were clearly trying to avoid talking about her and the trouble they thought she’d caused, so Lily didn’t say anything, either.
She tried to focus on something positive instead. With the house slowly appearing from under all the looming junk, it seemed like the oppressive pall was lifting. It had been impossible to be happy when they were surrounded by so much trash, so much disorder, the moldering remains of someone else’s life that had not gone to plan. Now, for the first time, Lily looked around the kitchen and did not see rot and ruin. She saw clean counters, a nicely swept floor, and little touches that made it feel welcoming. Her mom had chosen bright tropical colors for the kitchen towels, spatulas, and other doodads, a cheerful reminder that maybe Florida wouldn’t be so bad after all.
And maybe, eventually, it wouldn’t be. They just had to keep making the house feel homey and alive again. Just had to keep clearing out all its tightly held secrets.
Had Lily been imagining all these strange things? After all, she hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep and the move was beyond stressful. She had only ever lived in one place, in that one house in Boulder. Now she was two thousand miles away, in a different time zone, in a different environment. And, well, she wasn’t at her best. Her imagination was definitely taking some detours, and the weird climate with its heavy, wet, non-mountainous oxygen wasn’t helping.
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