My feet pounded against the pavement as I sprinted downhill toward town. If Tristan lived all the way up here, why the hell was he lurking in the house across the street from mine? Was he there just to watch me? Was he some kind of bizarre stalker keeping an eye on the new girl? And who the hell had been watching me from his actual house? I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.
I crossed through town, zipping past our favorite local musician in the park, who was jamming on his guitar with his eyes closed and a smile on. Near the far corner, I caught a couple of disturbed stares from an older couple chilling on a bench. Not that I was surprised. I must have looked like a crazed lunatic, sprinting for all I was worth and completely ignoring the sidewalk. I just hoped Olive hadn’t thought I was nuts when I’d blurted that I had to go and taken off, leaving her behind to stare after me.
I ran down the diagonal cut-through street, purposely averting my eyes from the rundown park, and took the corner onto our block, skidding so hard I almost hit the dirt. I was about to beeline it for the gray house, when I saw something hanging off the gate in front of our place across the way.
I stopped short and gasped for breath. It was a gray canvas messenger bag with a frayed strap. Exactly the same bag Steven Nell carried to school every day.
The air was cold and the ground wet against my back. Pine needles pierced my arms. The clouds parted overhead. A perfect half moon and Steven Nell’s sadistic smile, his watery eyes, his thin, dry, lips.
A bell trilled and sucked me back into the now. The warm sun tickled my flesh. I blinked as the middle-aged man with his surfboard rode by me with a smile. Aside from him, the street was deserted, but that bag was still there. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.
Part of me wanted to turn around and run straight to the police, but what was I going to tell them? That someone had left a bag on our gate? I was just going to have to deal with this myself. Maybe it was nothing.
Defiantly, I stormed across the road and over to the bag. The flap hung open, practically daring me to look inside. But what was I going to find if I did? A threatening note? A severed hand? What?
Holding my breath, I yanked the bag open. I blinked, surprised. It was filled to the brim with model lighthouses of various sizes. The smallest one was about two inches high, carved of stone and meticulously painted. The largest was about six inches tall, made of crappy plastic and topped by a tiny light that illuminated with the press of a button. There were dozens of them, each with a Juniper Landing swan stamped on its walls.
“Hey.”
I whirled around, dropping the bag back where it hung, letting it slam against the fence. Tristan stood right in front of me, looking perfect in a white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, his blond hair falling forward on his cheeks.
“What the hell?” I shouted, shoving him with both hands as hard as I could. He didn’t move an inch, but he did look down at me, surprised. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression sincere.
Over his shoulder, I saw the door of the gray house swinging slowly closed. Suddenly, I remembered why I’d sprinted home.
“Why are you always here?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest. My face was on fire, and I felt my throat trying to close—my body’s way of rejecting confrontation—but I pressed on. “Olive told me you live up on the bluff, so why are you spending so much time in that house?” I said, gesturing across the street. “Why are you always watching me?”
Tristan glanced over his shoulder. “I just…I know the person who lives there,” he said. Then he shoved his hands under his arms and looked at me squarely, as if that explained everything.
“Oh, yeah? Who? Who lives there?” I demanded.
He frowned slightly. “My nanna,” he said. “My grandmother. On my father’s side. She’s confined to a wheelchair so I…we…me and Krista try to come visit her whenever we can.”
“Oh.” Color me guilt-ridden. Here I was, jumping all over his case, and all he was doing was being the perfect grandson.
“She likes to sit and look out the window a lot, so if you see the curtains moving or whatever, it’s probably her,” he added with a shrug.
“So that was her I saw watching me that first morning?” I asked.
“Probably,” he replied. “Actually, I remember her mentioning it. The pretty blond girl moving in across the street.”
He stopped and cleared his throat, looking away. Like maybe he’d said too much. Like maybe he agreed with Nanna.
“Oh,” I said again, blushing. “Well, that’s nice of her.”
“Yeah.”
Tristan knocked his hands together, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he pressed his lips into a line. For a long moment, we just stood there, until just standing there felt completely awkward. I was about to make an excuse to go inside when Joaquin came around the corner and strode purposefully over to me, a line creased into his forehead.
“Rory. There you are,” he said, his breath slightly ragged. He walked right over to me and enveloped me in a big, warm hug, forcing Tristan to sidestep away from me.
I squirmed and ducked out of the circle of his arms, almost losing my balance. Tristan reached out and quickly steadied me. “Um, what was that for?”
“I just saw Olive in town. Are you okay?” Joaquin asked, holding my wrist. “She said you guys were hanging out when you all of a sudden bolted like you’d seen a ghost.”
I glanced at Tristan and blushed. “Oh, that. I’m fine,” I said, pulling my arm out of his grip. “I told her I had to get home. Is she mad?”