“Okay, Zen,” I said with a laugh. I looked her in the eye. She looked back with an intrigued expression.
Lauren, on the other hand, was starting to look bored. “Let’s get going, Olive,” she said impatiently, rolling forward on her bike. “I’m starved.”
Olive hopped back on her seat, lifted her kickstand with her heel, then turned to me once more. “Oh!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “You should come to the party tonight.”
“Party?” I asked warily. I detested parties. Avoided them as much as possible. I’d always been okay with friends one-on-one, but crowds were not my thing. In fact, one of the ways I comforted myself over never having gotten together with Christopher was by telling myself that he would have dragged me to at least one party a weekend.
Of course, now that seemed like a silly rationalization. My heart squeezed just thinking about it. I should have said yes to him. I would have gladly gone to ten million parties if it meant being with him.
“We’re having a bonfire on the beach,” Lauren explained, fiddling with her woven bracelet. “We always invite all the vacationers,” she added, as if wanting to make sure I didn’t think I was special somehow.
“It starts around nine and we’ll be out there till whenever,” Olive said. “Just look out your window. You’ll see us.”
“Um…okay. Maybe,” I said, even though I had no intention of going. Of course, it was totally Darcy’s kind of thing, but if I told her, she would want to go, my father would say no, she would sneak out, and World War III would erupt inside our temporary home.
“Cool. See you later, then. Maybe,” Olive said with a wry smile. Then the two of them rode off.
As soon as they were gone, the front door opened and my dad stormed out wearing Adidas shorts and an ancient Harvard T-shirt. He bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, his stomach moving up and down like a heavy ball.
“I’m going for a run,” he said tensely. “You want to come?”
I blinked. My dad hadn’t invited me on a run since before my mom died. He hadn’t invited me to do anything since before my mom died. The very thought of going with him made my shoulders curl, like he expected me to forget five years of his ignoring my existence.
“Um…I still need to eat breakfast,” I said awkwardly.
“Okay. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Then he opened the gate and jogged away. I was still standing there, gaping after him, when from the corner of my eye, I saw another flutter in one of the windows of the gray house. Heart in my throat, I turned and sprinted inside, locking both locks behind me. Then I moved over to the parlor window and hid behind the heavy, flowered curtain, angling myself so that I could just see outside.
All of a sudden the front door of the gray house opened with a creak. A guy with blond hair, a killer tan, and piercing blue eyes jogged down the steps, glanced over at our house almost furtively, and then speed-walked up the block with his head down. I recognized him instantly. It was the guy from outside the general store. The one who had looked at me like he knew me.
My breath caught in my throat. Blond hair. Piercing eyes. Had he been the one watching me from the window? And if he lived there, wouldn’t Lauren have said so? They’d been hanging out yesterday. It seemed as if they were friends.
I watched until he made it to the end of the street and disappeared around the corner that led to the town. Then I double-checked the locks, retreated to my room, and locked that door behind me as well. If there was one thing Steven Nell had taught me, it was to trust no one—especially people who seemed to have a thing for watching me.
I was just finishing a chapter in a biography of Marie Curie when I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs creak open. My heart all but stopped, and my eyes darted to the plain gray-and-white clock hanging on the opposite wall. It was past midnight.
“Hello?” I said, my voice breaking as I sat up straight.
Rapid footsteps sounded up the stairs, and I curled against the headboard, clutching my iPad to my chest. I was just wondering how badly I would damage it if I had to use it as a weapon when Darcy appeared. She was fully dressed in skinny jeans and a sparkly tank top, and was wearing complete makeup.
“You scared the crap out of me!” I said.
“Check it out!” she said, ignoring me as she gestured at the north-facing window. “Bonfire on the beach!”
Damn. I should’ve known she could smell a party in the air. I sighed, put my iPad/potential ninja star down, and padded to the window. Sure enough, there was a raging bonfire maybe three houses up the beach, with at least twenty kids milling around it. From this distance, all I could make out was their shadows. It looked vaguely like the cover of that Lord of the Flies novel I’d been forced to read in English class last year. Fiction had never really been my thing.
“I bet that guy from the general store is there,” Darcy whispered excitedly, raising her eyebrows. She turned and started rummaging through the armoire across from the foot of the bed, sliding the hangers aside one by one.
“What’re you doing?” I asked warily.
“Finding you something to wear,” she replied in her favorite condescending voice. “Go do something with your hair. It looks like birds are nesting in there.”
“Darcy, I don’t want to go to a party,” I protested, running my hands over my braid nonetheless.
“Well, I do, and I don’t want to show up by myself.” Her hands flopped to her sides and she groaned. “Don’t you own anything that’s not a zip sweatshirt?”
“Oh, well. I have nothing to wear, so I guess we’d better stay home,” I tried, dreading the idea of standing around, trying to make small talk with strangers.