Heathan looked like he was going to say no, but then his shoulders dropped and he nodded. Smiling, I moved until my head rested on his leg. I heard Heathan breathing weird, but I didn’t say anything. I looked up, and he was looking down at me.
He was very handsome.
“My mummy read this to me every night when she was alive. Since then, no one has read to me . . . until now.”
Heathan swallowed, and then started at the first page. I smiled as he read. And he read well. He must be really smart, I thought. Quiet and smart.
I studied Heathan as he read. I listened to his voice, his strong Texan accent . . . just like mine when I wasn’t using my English one. “Why didn’t your mummy want you, Rabbit?”
Heathan stopped reading and looked down at me. His silver eyes seemed to darken. “No one ever wants me,” was all he said.
“Your papa? Mr. James doesn’t?”
Heathan shook his head once. “He doesn’t want me either. But I’ve got nowhere else to go. He told me to stay away from him while I was here. So I do.”
I felt my heart grow heavy with sadness. “Then I’ll want you,” I said quietly, and Heathan’s eyes grew so wide they looked like two bright moons shining in the midnight sky. I put my hand in his and squeezed gently. “I’ll be your friend, and you will be mine. Dolly and Rabbit. Friends of the Earnshaw estate . . . your first friend in the whole wide world.”
I rolled to the boombox beside me and pressed the play button. As Mummy’s tape played, I rested my head back on Heathan’s leg and gave him a huge smile. Heathan’s hand left the book, then, really slowly, he lowered his fingers to my face and over to my hair. He straightened my headband. I thought he might smile at me, but he didn’t. He looked back at the book. I closed my eyes as he read to me again. And all the time he did, I imagined I could hear the tick-tock of his pocket watch in his vest.
I knew I would like the sound very much.
Tick tock.
Heathan James.
My new friend.
Tick tock.
Chapter 2
Heathan
Two years later . . .
They all expected me to feel something. They all stared at me as we stood at the side of the grave. My papa was lowered into the ground, and I watched, detached, as his coffin was placed in the grave. The pastor said something, but I didn’t bother listening. I was too busy wondering what was happening to his body as it wasted away in the wooden box. Wondering what his blood looked like after five days of being dead. Was it thick and red? Congealed, like Jell-O? Had it changed color? Had his skin turned dry, cracked, gray? Did he stink? Had he started to decay, lips losing flesh, pulling back from his yellowing teeth?
A hand slid into mine. I didn’t need to look to know it was Dolly. She was the only person who dared touch me. She was the only person who ever spoke to me. Just the way I liked it.
I lifted my eyes and saw Eddie Smith glaring at me from across the grave, that stupid hat on his head. He watched Dolly’s head fall against my arm and hug it close. When he met my eyes, I smirked at him, eyes burning. She was mine. He had her once, but from the minute I came along, he no longer existed in her world. There was me, the only one in her life now. I’d told her that to be my friend, she’d have to cut Eddie loose. I didn’t share. Especially not with straightlaced jerks like him. She chose me. In a heartbeat. The decision between me and Eddie had never been a choice. She belonged to me . . . and she knew it.
Eddie hated it, of course. I read it in his face every time he stared at her like she was a favorite toy he’d lost. Every time he looked at me with his ex-best friend on my arm, he radiated with hatred.
He should hate me.
I was never giving her back.
I was keeping her . . . forever.
Over the past couple of years, Eddie had come to the estate less and less. He was once a staple, but since I arrived, his presence was no longer needed. I saw him watching through the fence most days, but I’d made sure she’d told him he wasn’t welcome.
He was now redundant in Dolly’s life.
I was all she would ever need.
I would make sure of it.
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice pulled me away from Eddie and his shit-scared face. When I looked down at her sad blue eyes, she pointed to her papa beside her. Mr. Earnshaw was holding out a bucket of dirt.