Текст книги "Famous Last Words"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Saturday afternoon, my phone buzzed with a text from Marnie: Hey Connecticut. Hangsies today? 2ish? Your house?

I’d spent the morning hiding out in my room, avoiding Mom and Jonathan. In spite of my resolution to swear off, um, hangsies and live a miserable, isolated existence for the good of everyone around me, the boredom was already getting old.

So I replied, Sure.

A half hour later, Marnie steered a pale blue convertible BMW into the driveway. The top was automatically closing itself over her head as I came out to meet her.

I was curious to see what she’d wear outside of school. Based on what little I knew of her, I’d imagined her to be an all-black-and-combat-boots type. But she was wearing skinny jeans and a ruffly white tank top with flip-flops. Her sunglasses were sparkly blue. I was a little disappointed, to be honest – I’d expected something more dramatic.

She checked out my outfit, too, which had to be a huge bummer for her. I had on an olive-green long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of overalls my mom had owned since the early ’90s. My hair was in a low, sloppy bun. My feet were bare, but during my time alone that morning, I’d painted my toenails bubble-gum pink.

So I had that going for me, I guess.

Marnie hugged me, then stood back. “You look like a boy,” she said. “Not in a bad way. A cute boy.”

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 as 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.

“Joanna, this is gorgeous,” Jonathan told Mom, carving away. “And so was last night’s dinner. But, honey, we can hire a cook. Or have Rosa come in more often and handle the kitchen cleanup.”

Mom blushed. “I don’t mind. I like cooking. I even enjoy doing the dishes.”

I hadn’t thought anything could distract me from my self-pity party, but Mom’s words hit me like a freight train.

Until my mother had somehow captivated Jonathan with her suburban-mom wiles the previous summer, she’d been the Media Relations Coordinator for Joffrey, Connecticut. She got to interact with film crews who wanted to shoot in our town (hence aforementioned captivation of Hollywood director). She even had a weekly radio show, chatting with cantankerous Joffreyites about their grievances – Talk of the Town with Joanna Cresky. She was good at her job. She loved it.

Now she loved doing the dishes?

Since the wedding, all she seemed to care about was making sure things were convenient for Jonathan – that we weren’t too intrusive; that we were on our best behavior, always.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Jonathan said.

My mother smiled a non-smile. And my stepfather, who had apparently married her without knowing any of the important things about her, smiled back.

I studied my fork for a few seconds, then looked up at Mom, who was carefully spooning roasted carrots onto Jonathan’s plate.

On the wall behind her, in jagged letters about a foot tall, were the words:

THIS IS THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM, HENRY

The letters were black and gooey-looking, like fresh paint or tar or oil. And as I stared, more writing appeared, underneath the sentence:

818

I blinked and closed my eyes and shook my head.

“Would you like carrots, Willa?” Mom asked. Her voice buzzed in my head. “There are also dinner rolls.”

I tried not to look at the letters and numbers, but I couldn’t stop myself. The words were still there, circling all four walls of the room. And then the numbers began appearing again and again – 818 818 818 818 818 818 – in fast, reckless strokes.

It’s a hallucination, I told myself. Just another stupid hallucination.

“Willa?” Mom leaned across the table and reached out as if to touch my arm.

I dropped my fork with a clatter and jumped away from her. I don’t know why. I suppose part of me was afraid that if she touched me, she would be able to tell that something was wrong.

“Honey, what’s going on?” Mom asked.

I waited for her to add, Where did those numbers come from?

But instead, she said, “Why are you acting so … so frightened?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I guess when something seems so incredibly real, no matter how improbable, your brain fights to believe you’re not crazy. That it’s really happening.

But Mom and Jonathan didn’t see the writing.

So I was crazy.

“I’m fine,” I said. I forced a cough. “I swallowed something wrong, that’s all. Had to wait for it to go down.”

“Goodness, you scared me,” Mom said.

“Jo, she’s fine,” Jonathan said. “Let’s all eat.”

So we ate. I mindlessly chewed and swallowed carrots and chicken and a dinner roll while trying to ignore the fact that the walls were covered in words and numbers that only I could see.

By the time the meal was over, the writing had faded to a few pale gray streaks.

I started to carry my dishes to the kitchen, but my mother took them from me. “You go upstairs and rest,” she said. “You don’t look like you feel well.”

I had a headache like a bass drum. “Mom, I’m totally fine.”

But she sent me upstairs anyway, so I went.

“Feel better,” Jonathan called after me.

Wyatt was right. I was a huge liar. But what was I going to do – tell them the truth?

The body in the pool. The force that held me down. The waking dreams. The voices. The overflowing tub.

How long was I going to ignore the writing on the wall?

Especially now that there was literally writing on the wall?

I guess you could call me a fool for taking so long to connect the various incidents to each other. Although, in fact, nothing actually did connect them. What could a dead body in the pool have to do with the name “Henry”? How did the number 818 fit together with an overflowing bathtub?

I had a list of unexplainable events. What I didn’t have was the tiniest hint of a suspicion about their origins.

Well … I might have had the tiniest hint.

Jonathan had said that the movie star Diana Del Mar died in this house.

No, Willa. Don’t even go there.

The food I’d forced myself to eat was churning in my stomach, and my headache was making my vision fuzzy. I stumbled and knocked into the corner of my desk, sending a stack of papers and binders to the floor.

Kneeling to clean up the mess, I noticed that one of the notebooks had fallen open. Wyatt’s notebook.

I glanced at the page just before I closed it, and in that millisecond, the words burned into my eyes. I gasped and then pawed through the pages, looking for what I’d seen – not even totally sure I’d really seen anything. Maybe I was hallucinating again. Maybe I misread.

But then I found the list, written in Wyatt’s impeccable, unmistakable print:

WATER (BATHTUB/POOL)

ROSES

NECKLACE (ALSO ROSE)

HENRY