Famous Last Words

Wyatt gave me an understanding look.

I sat back in my chair. Then I looked at Wyatt and took a huge breath. “And … also … you were right,” I said, studying my sandwich on the lunch tray. “About my dad. I talked to his doctor. He had a genetic heart condition.”

“Genetic?” Wyatt looked alarmed. “Then you should probably be screened for it.”

“It turns out I have been. Thanks for your concern, though.” Then I tried to smile apologetically, but I’m pretty sure it came out as a pained grimace. “And I’m sorry for what I said at your house.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. You were wrong about a lot of things, but you were right that I had no business looking into your personal affairs.”

“We were both wrong,” I said. “Do two wrongs make a right?”

“Maybe in Marnie’s world.” He gave me an ironic smile. “So … anything to update?”

“Um, yeah,” I said. There was a pretty major update. I told Wyatt how I’d discovered Paige’s death online.

“Hold on.” Wyatt stared at me with his eyebrows raised. “You sat down and led with Marnie, rather than this huge revelation?”

“Because I knew that once I told you about Paige, we wouldn’t be talking about anything else,” I replied.

“Good point.” He nodded. “So did you look up the details of her death?”

“No,” I said. “I just … ran out of energy. I mean, I’ve been begging the ghost of Diana Del Mar to throw me a bone — not literally — and she’s gone. I mean, what’s the point?”

“The point?” Wyatt looked genuinely confused. “The point is to find out the truth.”

I’d forgotten how comforting it was to have someone around who believed you. Who was willing to help. I felt a grateful smile fighting its way to my lips.

But as my eyes met Wyatt’s, the cafeteria and everything in it faded to a white oblivion.

I can’t stop staring at the rectangle of light. For the first couple of days, it represented so many things — hope, my chance of escape. Now there’s only the abject terror that courses through my veins when he lifts the door and walks down the steps.

He’s here, demanding that we go back over the scene, over and over, even though I know my lines by heart. Right up to the part where the script cuts off, without telling how it ends.

But I know how it ends — I’ve seen the movie. It ends with me plunging backward through a glass coffee table. Dead.

He approaches me, and I try not to flinch — one of my strategies is to make him think of me like a friend, not a victim. Like we have a rapport. To humanize myself.

It might even be working.

“Brought you something, Lor,” he says. “Can you lean forward? Like that, thanks.”

He reaches around my neck and fastens a thin gold chain, then looks down at it, frowning.

“What is it?” I ask, trying to see. “Thank you.”

I smile, giving him as trusting a gaze as I can summon, but the look in his eyes chills the warmth from my smile.

“It’s nothing,” he says coldly. “A cheap imitation. It’s totally disposable.”

Then he walks away.

Hey,” Wyatt said. “Look at me. Take a breath. You’re here. You’re okay.”

I blinked, hearing his voice and obeying his words without questioning them.

“You had another episode,” he said.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “No kidding. He … he called her Lor.”

“Lorelei.” Wyatt’s mouth was set in a grim line as he automatically flipped open the notebook and started making notes. “Any new information?”

I shook my head. “No, no … But … there was something weird about the necklace. I think it might have been different this time.”

After school, Mom had to run to the mall, so I made her drop me off at home first. As I opened the front door, I heard a low rumbling sound. I didn’t think anything of it — for a second at least. There was always construction going on in the neighborhood, people pulling down old houses to build new ones, or replacing parts of their houses so they wouldn’t slide down the hillside in an earthquake.

But this particular rumbling was coming from inside the house.

I set my backpack on the entry table and turned around.

The rumbling became a roar, and I looked up the stairs just as a wall of water came rushing down toward me. It was like someone had taken the contents of the pool and dumped them from the second floor.

Everything went into slow motion.

I had just enough time to scream before the wave smashed into me, knocking me down. For a second, I had that feeling you get at the beach when a big wave unexpectedly pulls you under, and you can’t tell which way is up.

Reed came racing out of Jonathan’s office and down the stairs.

“Willa!” he cried. “What happened? Did you fall? Why are you wet?”

I couldn’t speak. I looked around and saw that, aside from me — as wet as a drowned rat — and the wet patch of rug I had landed on, the foyer looked completely ordinary.

“Um,” I said, as he reached down to help me up, “it’s kind of hard to explain.”

He watched me patiently, and I realized that the way I’d phrased that implied I was still going to try to explain. Which I wasn’t.

Time to retreat.

“I have some stuff going on right now,” I said, looking up at him, trying to make my face apologetic. “My life has a lot of different … aspects. I don’t quite know how to say it, actually. It’s probably better if I don’t.”

“Yeah,” he said. His shoulders drooped slightly. “I know what you’re trying to say.”

“You do?” I asked.

He nodded, then reached out and took my hand. “What happened between us … now’s not the right time. Maybe in a year or two. But there are too many factors in play at the moment.”

He thought I was breaking things off between us? Or was he breaking things off with me? I expected to feel a pang of heartache, but I felt strangely okay. Maybe the fact that a ghost had just sent a tidal wave of water over me distracted me from the memory of Reed’s kiss.

Reed frowned. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re wet. Or why you screamed.”

Well, now that I didn’t have to worry about impressing him, I was free to come up with an explanation that made me sound like a lunatic.

“I fell in the fountain,” I said.

His eyebrows went up.

“And then I screamed because … sometimes it feels good to scream, you know? I didn’t know you were here. Sorry if I alarmed you.”

My words probably confused him even more, rather than clearing things up, but he nodded slowly.

“Do you need a towel?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll go change.”

I gave him the world’s awkwardest smile, took my bag from the table, and sailed up the stairs with my head held high, like this was all part of a typical Monday afternoon.

As I stood in my bathroom, combing out my wet hair, I ran back through what had just happened. I was surprised to realize that I felt not the least bit sad. In fact, I felt strangely relieved.

Was it possible that I didn’t like Reed as much as I assumed I should? Getting the attention of a guy who could easily be cast as the dashing romantic hero in a movie wasn’t the kind of thing you could throw off lightly.

And yet, here I was, throwing it off pretty lightly.