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It didn’t work.
Forget this. You’re beyond tired. You’re completely lacking any sense of judgment.
I started to back out of the bathroom. I should never — never ever ever — have come in here. And I never ever ever pla
I pulled the office door open.
A shadow blocked the doorway.
I shrieked and stumbled backward, losing my balance and crashing to the floor, nearly taking a table lamp with me.
When I looked up, the shadow was directly over me, like a monster about to destroy its cornered victim.
“Willa?”
The voice did not belong to a monster. It belonged to Jonathan.
He flipped on the lamp and stood watching me, his expression wary. My mother hurried to his side. “Willa? What’s going on? We heard someone walking around.”
I shielded my eyes from the sudden brightness. “I heard something dripping.”
Jonathan had his arms crossed, waiting for me to get to the part about why I was in his office.
I sat up and dusted my hands off on my pajama pants. “I checked all of the other bathrooms first — but I could tell it had to be coming from in here.”
“How could you tell that?” Jonathan asked.
“With my ears.” I hadn’t meant it to sound disrespectful, but judging by the way Jonathan’s brow furrowed in a
“Did you find anything?” Mom asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s weird.”
I thought it would be easier if they just looked for themselves, so I pointed to the bathroom. They filed in, Jonathan first.
I got to my feet and listened for their exclamations of surprise.
But there was silence.
“Willa?” Mom asked. “What is it? What did you find?”
Some part of me knew, as I came around the corner and peered through the doorway, that something was wrong.
The bathtub was perfectly empty and dry.
Words probably needed to be said, but none presented themselves. I felt like I had a mouthful of dirt.
“Where’s the leak?” Jonathan’s dark eyes flashed. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he carried himself with so much authority that he seemed to loom above me like the monster I’d mistaken him for.
For the second time in a week, I found myself scrambling to cover my tracks.
“That’s it,” I said. “I found … nothing. And that’s weird, because I definitely heard something.”
“You heard something,” Jonathan said. “Here. In my office bathroom.”
I nodded.
“Behind the closed door,” he said. “From all the way across the house.”
“Yes,” I said. “I swear.”
My mother inhaled. I waited for the exhale, but it started to seem like she was going to hold her breath forever.
I decided to break the silence. “How was the movie?”
“Not bad,” Mom said.
“Terrible,” Jonathan said. “Painfully derivative.”
“Ah,” I said. “Well … I guess I’ll go back to bed.”
I led the way back to the hall, and they followed behind me, like my own private security detail.
“Good night,” I said, starting to duck into my room.
“Hold on,” Jonathan said. “Please.”
I turned around. They stood at the top of the stairs, shrouded in shadows.
“In the future,” he said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go in my office without permission. There are sensitive papers in there. Confidential.”
“Right.” My voice came out as a puff of air. “Sorry.”
“No harm done.” His voice sounded easy and relaxed, but his body language was rigid. “We’ll call a plumber tomorrow to check things out.”
I nodded and watched as he and Mom went downstairs together. Mom clutched his arm like she could hold on to him and keep him from bolting out of our lives.
I went into my room and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, for hours.
And the house was silent the whole time.
Saturday afternoon, my phone buzzed with a text from Marnie: Hey Co
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 ski
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 di
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 Co
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.