Chapter Fourteen
I sit on the highway for half an hour before I finally work up the courage to turn down the driveway.
Dad let me borrow the pickup. It’s the first time. Ever. I’ve never driven alone, never wanted to or needed to before because no friends means nowhere to be. Until now. Until Edward. When I asked Dad for the keys this morning, he looked shocked enough to pass out in his reheated spaghetti.
“Where are you going?” he asked, sounding like there’s nowhere a girl like me would want to be other than right there in that kitchen with the spaghetti and the memories and the stifling father-daughter awkwardness. I shrugged. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Certainly not “There’s this creepy, cold, totally hot guy who has been hanging around for some reason, and he finally told me where he lives, so I want to go stalk him.’
I’m pretty sure that would go over like a lead balloon.
“Not out to the Rez, right?” Dad’s big bushy eyebrows smashed together like two caterpillars getting frisky, and I had to try so hard not to laugh out loud because that was totally mean, and he’d probably think I wasn’t taking this Rez thing seriously enough. Billy Black’s death was still unsolved, and even though the coroner thought it was an animal attack, some people are more animal than human, so who knows, really?
“No. Just. . . around, I guess.” I shrugged again. This was awkward. Really awkward. He kept frowning at me for what felt like forever before he shook his head and seemed to give in.
“Ok, but be easy on her.” He dropped the keys into my palm, still warm from his pocket. “She’s a hell of a lot older than you and twice as stubborn. Double pump the clutch, and remember that the left blinker doesn’t work. Use your arm signals. I don’t want to have to pull you over later.”
I fled before I had to ask him how to double pump anything.
The driveway is just how I imagined it: so overgrown that it’s barely a dent in the foliage. There aren’t any tire marks in the dirt ruts that cut through the grass, at least not that I can tell, and I wonder just how Edward gets to and from town without a car. He runs like a bullet, but that doesn’t mean he runs back and forth every day, right? I mean, he’s way too sick and wheezy for that. I still can’t shake the fact that he reminds me of a doctor who injected himself with some disease just to try out a new cure, still unsure if it’s going to work even as he’s sticking a needle into his arm.
I bump through the woods, fighting to keep the old truck’s wheels in the sunken tracks, wondering just what the fuck I’m doing. Part of me thinks I’m going to show up there and march right in the front door without even knocking, drag him to his couch to kiss him crazy for a while; go silly and stupid on not enough air and too much boy. Another part of me is pretty sure I’m going to turn around before I even get there, that I’m not brave enough or brash enough or even dumb enough to be doing this right now. There’s an even another part of me that hopes he’ll yell at me, chase me away, tell me to go home.
Then maybe I’ll never see him again because I’ve never been more confused about anything in my life before he showed up and threw the whole thing upside down.
Before I have a chance to get freaked out and eight-point turn the truck around, I’m breaking through the trees, and there it is.
The house is enormous. Giant like it should have been a hotel. A hostel. An orphanage. There have got to be fifty rooms, and there are windows everywhere. There’s a big wide porch and a big gabled roof. It would almost look elegant with those columns, the black shutters, and the red door, except that the paint is peeling, and the stairs are sagging, and a few of those shutters are hanging on by a thread. It looks fancy from far away and kind of shitty the closer I get. The truck crawls to a halt in the grassy driveway, and I stare up at the place, expecting crows on the roof and ghosts in the windows and something living underneath the porch. I can’t believe he lives here because no one should live here.
It’s definitely haunted.
“You’re here.”
I scream. Loudly. And almost faint. There are stars and black fuzz and everything warps wildly. I’m pretty sure my heart fled clear down to my feet. My stomach is in my mouth, and all of my blood in in my brain. Edward puts a hand on my back through my open window as I fight to regain my breath. I push him away, flapping my hands in the air like a drowned bird.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I pant, my vision stabilizing, and my heart slowly edging back into its proper place between my lungs.
“I’m sorry. I forget that hu-” His eyes go wide, and he lets out a sharp breath. “Girls,” he corrects himself. “I forget that girls startle so easily.”
“It’s not just girls,” I hiss, resisting the urge to call him a sexist jerk. Or worse. “I’m pretty sure anyone would freak out if you snuck up on them like that.”
“I think it’s fair to say that you snuck up on me, too. What are you doing here?”
“You’ve been to my house.” I say, and even though I don’t mean for it to, my voice sounds accusing anyway. I get out of the truck, the cool air on my flushed cheeks making my skin prickle sweaty and goosebumped.
“I like your house better.”
“Why?” I ask. My house could fit in the living room of his. My house has a rotting foundation and asbestos siding and the non-existent ghost of an eight-year-old. It might not be haunted the way his is, but it feels emptier somehow.
“Because you’re there.” His answer is absent, thoughtless, as though it came easy without a bunch of justification or convincing or even editing. Like he meant it. Like he didn’t even think for a moment about not saying it. I blush. Hard. Cheeks flaming and ears on fire and I shuffle in the overgrown grass beside him, fingering the frayed edges of my cut-off shorts and resisting the urge to cross my arms over my chest.
My scuffed up sneakers are just inches away from his shiny shoes.
There’s something about him that makes me feel clumsy and unpolished. Like I shouldn’t be here in my chucks and unbrushed hair. Like I should be dressed in some fancy black ball gown, reclining on a velvet fainting couch with pearls around my neck and a glass of something alcoholic in my hand. Like my hair should be in ringlets and my nails should be painted.
Like I should be elegantly anguished, but I’m not.
I’m just disheveled anxiety.
“You’re not going to invite me inside?” I rub the top of my sneaker against the back of my leg.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says, taking a sharp step back like he’s worried I might try to tarnish his virtue or take advantage of his virginal heart or something. He has his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his shoes, and I expect a blush, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he goes grey.
“Why not? I won’t try to kiss you or anything,” I tease, slapping on a forced grin because I’d actually thought about doing exactly that on the way here. The faint disappointment that I won’t get to do such a thing is stronger than I thought it would be.
“That’s a shame.” He stares at me so hard I swear he’s going to burn a hole right through me.
“Why isn’t it a good idea then? Me coming inside?”
He glances toward the house, the big dark windows and the heavy red door, his face puckered and his hands twitching nervously at his sides.
“Haunted, remember?”
I go home and spend the entire night wondering what he meant by “That’s a shame.”
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