Текст книги "Famous Last Words"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

When my mother got to the hospital, she came barreling into the room. But she wasn’t hysterical, as I had expected her to be. She was strangely calm as she spoke to the doctors and nurses and police. She seemed so strong.

She hugged me and kissed my forehead and cheeks about a thousand times, and then she took hold of my hand and didn’t let go.

I had a concussion and a cracked rib and we were waiting for the results of my blood tests, since nobody knew exactly what was in the little pills Reed gave me. But I was feeling okay – all things considered.

Hey, I wasn’t dead – that was something, right?

After the initial flurry of activity, the room was deserted, just me and Mom.

“Don’t you want to go see Jonathan?” I asked. “I’ll be okay for a few minutes.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “I talked to him before.”

“But maybe you should —”

“Willa,” she said softly. “He’s worried about you. He wants me to stay here. I’m not leaving you, sweetie. Not tonight.”

And she didn’t. When I woke up in the morning, she was curled up in the faux-leather visitor’s chair, her hand still wrapped around mine. She told me the doctor had been by to let her know the white pills Reed had given me were sedatives, designed to make me sleepy and weak. They would be completely out of my system within a few days.

And Reed was in police custody. He would live, but he might be paralyzed. I nodded, trying to take everything in.

I thought about the house, and wondered if Paige’s ghost was gone now. If she was at peace. I hoped she was.

I was sitting up and having some orange juice when a knock came on the door. Mom and I looked up and saw Wyatt Sheppard standing there.

“How did you get past security?” Mom asked, a little alarmed.

Wyatt turned bright red.

“It’s cool, Mom,” I said. “He has connections. This is my friend Wyatt.”

This explanation didn’t entirely satisfy my mother, but she nodded anyway and shook his hand. Then she stood up and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll go check on Jonathan.”

When she was gone, Wyatt took a step into the room. I sat up straighter, my pulse speeding up – a fact made embarrassingly obvious by the beeping monitor next to my hospital bed.

“I …” he said softly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a first.”

He didn’t even come close to laughing. His lips were turned down at the corners. Not a trace of his usual smirk. And his voice was low and strained. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not badly,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to go through it again, but I’ll live.”

“Willa,” he said. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

I looked at him in surprise. “What way?”

“Like this isn’t serious. I – I feel very serious about this. About you.” He took a deep breath. “When I heard what happened, I felt like … like I’d been ripped in half. I wanted to find that guy and tear his head off.”

“There’s no need for that now,” I said, managing a little smile in spite of the stinging tears in my eyes. “He’s going to jail. Forever.”

Suddenly, I remembered thinking of Wyatt in what I’d feared would be my last moments.

“What about you?” I asked as Wyatt took a step closer to my bed. “You got arrested, right? What happened?”

Sinking into Mom’s vacated chair, he breathed into his hands and shook his head, like he didn’t know where to begin. He told me the story of the police showing up at his house, how he’d been taken to the station and fingerprinted, and then how his dad had stepped in and called in a mess of favors to keep Wyatt from being charged with trespassing – or worse.

So Wyatt wasn’t going to jail. He was, however, grounded. He didn’t even ask his parents how long the grounding would last. He figured it would let up around graduation.

But given the circumstances, his parents had allowed him this one trip to the hospital.

“Given what circumstances?” I asked.

“Given that I … I begged,” he said. “I told them that my best friend was almost murdered by a serial killer, and if they didn’t let me come see you —” His voice broke, and he looked toward the bright window, blinking furiously.

“Stop,” I said. “It’s okay.”

My best friend, he’d said.

“I’m glad you came,” I said. “I wanted to see you.”

And Wyatt reached over carefully and put his warm hand on top of mine. I laced my fingers through his and we sat there like that until Mom came back.

I was discharged from the hospital two days later, but the house was still an active crime scene, so we couldn’t go back yet. Jonathan booked a suite in a hotel and started making plans to sell the house. As far as he and Mom were concerned, we couldn’t be rid of it fast enough.

My feelings were a little more complicated.

So much bad happened there, I wrote in my journal. But it wasn’t the house’s fault. In a way it seems like the house was a victim, too. Maybe it hated its own role. Maybe the house is what gave Paige the strength to resist. Maybe somehow the spirit of Diana Del Mar was fighting alongside me the whole time I was fighting back.

Or maybe I’m

I stopped and held the pen away from the paper before I could write the word crazy.

I didn’t think that anymore, so it was time to stop saying it.

Over the following week, we talked to the police endlessly. I explained in as much detail as I could without including any ghosty parts. Luckily, the story still made sense – how I’d started to get a weird feeling about Reed that day. How I found Diana’s workroom and recognized the name of the movie. How Reed and I fought our way to the top of the stairs, and then he slipped in a puddle of his own blood and fell. Everything checked out, and the police didn’t seem suspicious.

Besides, I was a pretty decent teller of half truths at this point in my life.

We were bombarded with requests for interviews and quotes. Some producer friend of Jonathan’s even wanted to buy the movie rights. But Mom took charge and deflected them all. She talked to the lawyers, the media, even Jonathan’s agents. She handled it all like it was second nature to her. Jonathan was pretty impressed.

I, personally, would never have expected anything less.

Reporters dug into Reed’s past and cobbled together a portrait of a serial killer – smooth, confident, charming, but alienated. Bad-tempered, with a record of lashing out in school. The victim of an inferiority complex made worse by the loss of his parents and his time with a grandfather who was described by their neighbors as “mean as a snake.”

It was so strange to try to remember how I felt about Reed back before I learned what he really was.

I could recall the slow gentleness of his manner, his soft smile, his placid eyes. It was like he’d been two people. Himself, and not himself. And what would have happened if I’d never found out the truth? We might have gone on taking walks and having casual, flirtatious encounters in the kitchen. Sneaking kisses … Part of me even wondered if, without the Bernadette Middleton debacle, he never would have looked at me as a potential victim.

When you thought about it that way, I guess you could say Marnie kind of did me a favor.

I’d have to face Reed again at the trial. I can’t say I was in love with the idea, but I wasn’t scared.

It takes a lot to scare me, I’ve discovered.

When I went back to school two weeks later, everyone on campus seemed to regard me like a stolen relic from some ancient tomb – worth catching a glimpse of, but not worth venturing too near.

Marnie practically glowed from all the attention, though from time to time I caught phantomlike flashes of fear in her eyes. She and I were bound by something deep, something I could read in her expression whenever she looked at me. I had saved her life. But I could tell that she didn’t want to talk to me, or be near me, or generally have anything at all to do with me.

Which was fine – I was done judging Marnie. Everyone copes in their own way. Not just with almost being murdered, but with being alive. With having parents who die, or ignore you. Maybe someday she’d learn that the truth, however uncomfortable it may be, is worth looking for.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.

Wyatt stayed by my side every possible moment – before school, during lunch, and after school, when he was allowed to drop me off at the hotel before heading back to another evening of being grounded.

At the end of my first week back, the police finally gave us the all clear to pack up our things. Jonathan hired a professional moving service to take care of it all. By Sunday afternoon, there would be no trace of us left in the grand old mansion.

When I climbed into Wyatt’s car on Friday afternoon, I turned to him. “Can you be late getting home?”

“Not a chance,” he said, then thought for a second and added, “How late?”

“Like twenty minutes?”

He shrugged. “What are they going to do – ground me until I graduate from college?”

“Great,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “Take me to Sunbird Lane, please.”

I have to admit, I kind of loved making that Spluh! expression appear on his face.

Before he could protest, I repeated myself. “Twenty-one-twenty-one Sunbird Lane? Do you need directions?”

He frowned, pulling out onto Crescent Heights and turning right toward the canyon. “Does your mother know you’re going back there?”

The skin on my palms began to prickle. “If I say no, will you still take me?”

“Of course,” he said.

A happy tremor went through me, which was a nice distraction from the anxiety starting to build in my stomach at the thought of being back on the property. Sentimental journal ramblings aside, this was the house where I was tormented and almost psycho-killed by a psycho killer.

I laughed nervously, twisting a lock of hair around my finger.

“What?” Wyatt asked.

“I was just thinking … like, the least creepy thing about this house is that it’s haunted.”

He slowed the car. “Willa, are you sure —”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Please keep driving.”

When we got to the house, there were a few photographers lingering around. But they kept their distance as Wyatt punched the gate code and drove inside.

One of them shouted, “Are you Willa?”

And Wyatt yelled back, “No, she’s Kate Middleton’s cousin Bernadette!”

Stepping into the foyer wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. All the blood was gone, of course. The dining room had been neatly put back together, as if nothing had ever happened in there. There were no huge sheets of plastic or toolboxes full of makeup. No props from the scene that was supposed to end with my death.

I took a long, shuddering breath and stared up at the second floor.

“You all right?” Wyatt asked softly.

“It feels so sad,” I said. “The house feels so lonely.”

“Don’t be lonely,” he said. “I’m here.”

But that wasn’t quite what I meant. I meant that the house herself – of course it was a she – was lonely. Melancholy, like she’d been abandoned.

Don’t worry, I told her in my head. Some weird person is going to buy you and move in and invite tons of people over so they can show off that they live in a house where a serial killer carried out his psycho schemes. Honestly, the person will probably be a jerk, but you won’t know any better. You’re just a house.

You’ll be fine.

We walked in silence up to my room, and my pulse picked up at the sight of my open bathroom door – now there was a room I never needed to set foot into again.

“What exactly are we doing here?” Wyatt asked. He spoke in hushed library tones.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” I said, going into my closet. I reached down, behind the half-empty laundry basket, and pulled out the pink shoe box. I looked at Wyatt. “Fancy a trip to the backyard?”

He shrugged.

We walked past the pool, which was beginning to look a little green from the weeks of neglect – it almost seemed to me like the pool was the house’s face, and she felt sick about what had happened.

I walked over to where the shovel still stood leaning against the trunk of a lemon tree, a few feet from my initial unsuccessful digging efforts.

It dawned on Wyatt, then, why we were there – to finally follow Leyta Fitzgeorge’s instructions and bury the shoe box.

“I have to do this before we leave,” I said. “This stuff belongs here.”

“What if somebody digs it up?” he asked.

“They won’t,” I said, picking up the shovel and starting to dig. In the shady afternoon, it was much easier. And when I started to get winded, Wyatt took the shovel and dug the rest.

We knelt on the ground next to the hole and gently lowered in the box. It felt like burying more than a book and a couple pieces of jewelry (and a bag of salt). It felt weirdly like we were burying Paige, too. And maybe all the other restless spirits who’d swarmed around me for years. And the rest of the Hollywood Killer’s victims.

I wished I could bury the rose necklace, too. But I had to content myself with the idea that, after the trial, it would be as good as buried in the police evidence storage. It didn’t really matter.

I knew in my heart that Paige was at peace.

Maybe she was hanging out with my dad and they were talking about how aggravating I could be.

Wyatt cleared his throat, and our eyes met.

“Are you going to say something?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It sort of feels like I shouldn’t, actually.”

He nodded, then stood up and got the shovel. I sat and watched the dirt cover the pink surface of the cardboard until it was gone. Then, when the hole was level with the ground again, Wyatt patted the sandy soil smooth and tossed the extra into the ravine.

“And that’s that,” he said, helping me to my feet.

I carried the shovel back up to the patio but didn’t bother taking it into the garage – I left it leaning against the back wall of the guesthouse, next to the overturned bucket that had helped save my life. I didn’t want the movers packing it and taking it with us.

I glanced at my phone. I’d texted Mom to say Wyatt and I were stopping for a quick coffee, but somehow we’d been at the house for almost an hour. Wyatt was way later than I’d told him he would be.

“Ready to go?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’ll get you in trouble.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Honestly, if you asked me to rob a bank with you, my dad would probably be cool with it. He’s a little in awe of you.”

“And of you, too, right?”

He looked taken aback. “What did I do?”

“You did … a lot.”

“Name something specific,” he scoffed.

“Things don’t have to be specific to be important,” I said. “You were part of everything.”

We were standing by the back rail, a few yards away from the pool, looking down at the ravine and the city beyond it.

I felt a chill of loss. I’d found a piece of myself in this house, and now, leaving it, I felt as if I was leaving a piece of myself behind. This would be my last chance to be there. To say good-bye.

“Want to sit for a couple of minutes?” Wyatt asked.

I nodded, my eyes suddenly full of tears.

I sat on one of the wicker love seats and waited for Wyatt to sit in the chair across from me.

But he didn’t.

He sat down right next to me and reached for my hand.

“Willa …” he said softly.

“What?” I asked.

“You almost died,” he said, and on the last word, his voice collapsed into itself.

“That’s what people keep telling me.”

He shook his head in frustration. “Before everything happened, I’d been planning to tell you something. And now I don’t know when I should tell you. Or if I should. Ever.”

I looked up and watched a pinprick of an airplane making its way over the city, toward the airport. “You should,” I said.

As I waited for him to speak, I felt like different parts of me had turned into delicate silk kites that were all floating off in different directions. Weightless.

But instead of answering, Wyatt leaned forward, took my face in his hands, and kissed me softly.

All the pieces of me came back together in a warm, happy rush.

My heart raced, and my skin felt awake under his touch.

Proof that I’m still alive, I thought.

Then we looked at each other. I could have stared into his soft, wry brown eyes for a hundred years.

“I just didn’t know there were people like you,” he whispered.

The weird thing is, I didn’t know there were people like me, either.

I’d thought I was a girl who didn’t belong anywhere. And now, even though I was the same person, I wasn’t that girl anymore. I felt like I belonged – like I had the right to belong – anywhere I went.

“Wyatt,” I whispered back. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” he said, without so much as a millisecond of hesitation.

“The only thing is” – I pulled back – “I’m kind of broken.”

Wyatt’s hand tightened around mine. “I don’t think you’re broken. I like you just the way you are.”

My face flushed, and I leaned into his chest.

“No,” he said, and I could feel the thump-thump-thump of his heart under his crisp white school shirt. “No, I … I love you just the way you are.”

I nodded, even though he hadn’t asked me anything. “Me, too,” I said. “I love you the way you are, too.”

I thought about how hard it had been for me, in the beginning, to be around someone who wouldn’t settle for a thin veneer of lies – someone who wanted either the real me or nothing at all. And as my hand traced a line down his sleeve, I thought about how I could never again settle for anyone who didn’t push me to tell the truth. To face the truth. To live it.

Even when it hurt.

The breeze picked up, and Wyatt wrapped his arm around me. Our bodies fit together like we’d been designed to sit leaning into one another. Missing pieces of a puzzle, two halves of a clue in a mystery.

I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, and I felt the soft canyon wind weave through my hair.

With every Acknowledgments I write (and every annual soul-searching about how to actually spell “Acknowledgments”), I am again reminded that being an author is a journey, not a destination. And it’s a journey that one can’t take alone. So while the people in my life might be getting sick of being thanked by me, I’m just going to keep doing it. (At least until the megalomania sets in.)

Thank you to my husband and my daughter for being the absolute best and most important things that ever happened to me. To my little sister, Ali, for being wonderful. And much love to Dad, Mom, Helen, Juli, George, Duygu, Kevin, Jillian, Robert, Rebekah, Zack, Onur Ata, Jeff, Vicky, and Aunt B.

Thank you to Chelsea DeVincent and the rest of the Soapboxies, who are like a second family to me. And to our amazing extended circle of friends. And to those rowdy lads.

Thank you to Matthew Elblonk (working with you just gets weirder and funnier every year), and to everyone at DeFiore and Company, who I have to assume spend a lot of time and energy keeping Matt in line. And thank you to Holly Chen and Maddie Elblonk, because from what I have been hearing for years on end, you are both fantastic, and it’s time you got your names in a book.

Thank you to my editor, Aimee Friedman, for brutally offing, like, twelve invasive minor characters and otherwise providing such consistently awesome editorial support and input. And making it fun. AND pretending I don’t occasionally make one wish to bash one’s head against one’s desk.

Thank you to the team at Scholastic: David Levithan, Charisse Meloto, Stephanie Smith, Bess Braswell, Emily Morrow, Emily Heddleson, Antonio Gonzalez, Yaffa Jaskoll, Elizabeth Krych, Alix Inchausti, Jody Revenson, Jennifer Ung, Rachel Schwartz, and Larry Decker. You guys are amazing.

Thank you and thank you and thank you to the parents, booksellers, bloggers, teachers, administrators, librarians, and media specialists who make it possible for people to read my books.

And lastly, thank you to my incredible readers. You are, as individuals as well as collectively, the cat’s pajamas.

Katie Alender is the acclaimed author of several novels for young adults, including Bad Girls Don’t Die; From Bad to Cursed; and Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer. A graduate of the Florida State University Film School, Katie now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter. She enjoys reading, sewing, and watching movies. To find out more about Katie, visit katiealender.com.

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