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The house was dark—all of the shades were pulled down. And the smell of cigarettes, beer, and rotting food hung heavily in the air.
I took a shaky breath and forced myself to speak. “I’m really sorry about Lydia.”
That got her attention—kind of. But her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on me.
“I was wondering if…” Even though I’d made up this story and rehearsed it a dozen times, I could hardly spit out the words. “She borrowed something from me and I wanted to get it back…to remember her by.”
It sounded weird and false to me, but Lydia’s mother just pointed at the stairs.
“Thank you,” I said, leaving her behind.
There were three doors at the top of the stairs, all closed. I went through the one with the Dead Ke
Lydia’s bedroom was much cleaner than the rest of the house. Her closet door was open, revealing a perfect line of shoes and rows of neat skirts, shirts, and dresses. No sign of the ripped jeans or baggy black Goth clothes she wore during the brief period when we’d been friends freshman year. Naturally, she would have thrown them all away. They were useless to a Sunshine Club girl.
Her jewelry was laid out in a grid on the dresser, and a hook on the wall held three purses—black, brown, and red.
Two hangers were tossed sloppily on the bed, and I realized that they must have been the hangers from which her mother pulled the clothes Lydia was buried in—a gray silk skirt and black angora turtleneck.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
No matter how awful Lydia had been at the end (very, by the way—let’s be clear on that), I couldn’t forget what Carter said at the funeral: She was just sad.
Thing is, she wasn’t “just sad” anymore—or she wouldn’t be trying to kill people.
I began to inspect the room, though I was having a hard time figuring out what might be her power center. I had absolutely no idea where to start. What would I do, destroy every last thing in the room?
I was on the verge of utter hopelessness when the door opened behind me and Mrs. Small came in, looking around in bewilderment. It was like someone had dropped her off outside and she’d wandered in to ask for directions.
Until last year, she’d owned one of those hair salons where they valet park your car and give you champagne while they do your hair, but it had gone out of business when people stopped paying two hundred dollars for a haircut. Now she was a faded version of her former self. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in about a week, and the gray roots crept over the top of her head like a river overflowing its banks.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“It’s, um, a shirt,” I said. “But I don’t see it, so I’ll—”
“She got rid of a lot of things before she died.” Mrs. Small’s voice sounded strained. “She might have let someone else have it, or…I don’t mean to say she would throw something of yours away—”
“No, I understand,” I said. “Now that I think about it, I probably told her it was okay to lend it to someone else. It’s all right. I should get going.”
It felt like my lungs were compressed, and no breath I could take was deep enough to fill them.
No matter how determined I was to get rid of Lydia’s ghost, bursting into this place, which was filled with sadness that was a direct consequence of my own actions, was too much for me. This whole thing had been a serious strategic misfire. I was treading behind enemy lines without a single weapon. It was time to retreat.
But Mrs. Small sat on the edge of the mattress and looked up at me. “Are you one of the girls from her little club?”
I didn’t know whether to confirm or deny. I gave up and nodded.
“I was glad she found so many nice friends.” Mrs. Small’s fingers toyed with the hem of her robe. “I’d been worried about her. But she started hanging out with all those girls—all you girls—and she got so…pretty. She looked happy. So I stayed out of her way. But now I wonder if I should have…I don’t know.”
I started to feel like I was suffocating. I almost excused myself, but now that Mrs. Small had begun talking, the words poured out of her mouth.
“The doctors said there was no way we could have known. You can’t predict an aneurysm. But don’t you think a mother should be able to tell there’s something wrong with her baby?” She reached out, grabbed one of the hangers, and brought it down hard against her leg. “I wasn’t paying attention. I can’t even remember the last time I told her I loved her. If I could just go back and have one more minute—”
So she didn’t blame me.…
She blamed herself.
Tears bit at the edges of my eyes. “I should really get going.”
“They remember her, don’t they?” she asked. “The other girls? They think about her?”
“I do.” At last I could speak the truth. “I think about her all the time.”
To be honest, I didn’t know if the Sunshine Club girls thought about Lydia or not. You certainly never heard her name mentioned in casual conversation. Maybe I was the only person who ever thought about her. How depressing would that be?
“I just like to think people aren’t forgetting.” Mrs. Small refused to stop staring up at me, her tired eyes wide and pleading.
“I’m sure they’re pla
There was the tiniest glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Yes, they might be…that would mean so much to her.”
“Yes,” I choked. As if Lydia cared in the least about the yearbook. “I’m sure.”
“Could you—” She looked afraid to speak, but steeled herself and kept talking. “Could you ask and see if they are? Could you tell them how much it would mean?”
What? As in, actually go to the yearbook office and make an official request to memorialize the girl who was actively trying to destroy my life?
No freaking way.
But then I saw how Mrs. Small looked like an actual living human being for the first time since I’d come into the house, and I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’d offer to pay for something, but money’s a little scarce.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s free.”
“Thank you,” she said, getting up and going to the dresser. “I’m so grateful that she had such nice friends…at the end.”
She turned to me, her fingers lightly petting some tiny object. When she saw me looking at it, she held out her hand and dropped something small and cool into my palm: a delicate gold chain with a little glass bird charm, black with a red head.
“It was her favorite piece,” her mother said. “A gift from my mother for Lydia’s ninth birthday. It’s a woodpecker. It means you have a guardian.”
Her favorite piece.
Her power center. The key to getting rid of her once and for all.
Mrs. Small’s fingers hovered in the air near mine, like she was eager to grab the necklace back.
“You know…” I said, “I could take a photo of this and…put it in the yearbook.”
I pictured myself taking it into the garage and smashing it to bits with a hammer.
Her hand trembled.
“It would be really nice, I think,” I said. “I think Lydia would have liked it.”
Welcome aboard, Alexis. This train goes straight to hell.
Mrs. Small’s mouth was open, and she looked at the bird one last time before reaching over and closing my fingers around it. “All right. Just…please…be careful with it. Promise me.”
I felt the cool glass on my skin, and I thought of what Lydia had done to Kendra. And to me.
“I promise,” I lied.
I really did intend to take pictures of it before I destroyed it.
But I didn’t get the chance.
When I got home and retreated to my room, after sneaking the hammer from the toolbox in the garage and setting a protective layer of cardboard on my desk, I dug down into my bag for the charm. But it wasn’t there.