B00B9FX0MA EBOK (11 page)

I pulled away a third time.

“We need to stop.”

A cloud of confusion crossed Matt’s face.

“Why?”

“It’s getting late. I need to go to bed. You can sleep over. I mean, not
sleep
sleep over, but stay over. If that makes sense?” I stood up and hurried into the cluttered living room. He could sleep on our enormous purple couch.

Matt trailed behind me.

“You can sleep there. It’s comfortable,” I chattered.

Matt plopped onto the lumpy cushion, his eyes glazed. He pulled one shoe off, then another, and swung his long legs onto the couch.

“This feels good. Come join me?”

“Okay.” My heart pounding, I slipped onto the couch next to him. He gently threw his arm over my waist. I expected to have to explain to him why we couldn’t kiss anymore, but he
didn’t try. Instead, his breathing got deeper and deeper until I realized that he’d fallen asleep.

And soon, I did, too, realizing just before I lost consciousness that I hadn’t thought once about the profile, the weird comments from the party, or the now-I-saw-it-now-I-didn’t photo.

I woke up to a raging headache, a cramp in my shoulder, and a realization that I was entirely dressed — and the elastic from the pantyhose I’d selected to wear to the Ainsworth over twenty-four hours ago were
still
digging uncomfortably into my hip.

And, of course, Matt Hartnett was snoring next to me.

I wiggled out of his arms, causing him to stir. His eyes opened, and a sleepy smile crossed his face. He stretched, revealing an irresistible sliver of skin at his waist, and smiled up at me.

“Westin.” He blinked his eyes at me and I took a step backward.

“How did you sleep?” I perched back on the edge of the lumpy couch, but that felt too oddly intimate. I slipped onto the floor and hugged my knees to my chest. Much safer.

“Oh man.” He blearily rubbed his eyes. “That couch is my friend. Seriously, I slept awesome.”

“We call it the Purple People Seater. My mom named it.” I glanced around our tiny living room and imagined what it looked like to him: the lumpy, mismatched furniture. The haphazard stacks of used books. The tumbleweed-like tangle of dog fur under one of the blond wood shelves. Last night, he’d made me feel like
I’d
been the one he was missing out on, the
one he’d do anything to kiss. Today, I wondered if he felt like he’d settled. I was the girl who’d freaked out twice in front of him, who’d only offered him flat soda, who’d pulled away from a kiss. I wasn’t giggly and energetic like Erin Carlson. I was nervous and weird. And if he hadn’t noticed last night, there was no way he wouldn’t notice now.

“Cool. Purple People Seater, you’ve done well.” He caressed the couch with his hand and blinked sleepily up at me. “So, is anyone else here?”

I shook my head. “We came here after Alyssa’s….”
Remember?
I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Because what if it hadn’t happened? What if this was another weird half-waking
thing
and he was only here because I’d fainted or dragged him or who even
knows
what.

“Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Fun times.” He swung his legs off the couch, stood up, and stretched. “Well, I guess I should go, huh? Don’t want to get in your way. I’m sure you’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”

“I don’t. Not really.” I was surprised by how much I wanted him to stay.

“Oh. Well, I mean, I have to go. Soccer practice.” He leaned down to grab his shoes.

“Right!” I stood up so quickly that the top of my head collided into his chin.

“Ouch!” I yelped, more for show than anything. I hoped he’d remember how we’d had a similar collision the first time I went to Alyssa’s barn. I wanted him to make a joke about how we had to stop bumping into each other like this, anything that would bring back the quirky guy who’d been in my kitchen the night before. But he didn’t.

Instead, he leaned toward me. “You okay?” His eyes widened, and for a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he gently brushed my cheek with his index finger and held up an eyelash.

“You know how you’re supposed to make a wish on these?” Matt asked.

“You want me to?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I closed my eyes and blew, but there were too many thoughts circling my mind to focus. I opened my eyes, noticing the eyelash still sitting on his finger.

“Better luck next time, right?” I shook my head and walked toward the kitchen to let him out. As I opened the door, I noticed the pancakes on the table, a sign that at least
that
hadn’t been a dream.

I opened the door to the back porch.

“Bye,” I said.

“See you around, Westin.”

I
didn’t go inside after Matt left. Instead, I sat on the porch steps, hugging my knees to my chest and staring out toward the pastures in the distance. The rain had stopped, but the air still felt heavy with dampness. Usually, rain made me feel refreshed, like everything bad had been washed away, but now I felt empty and sad and exhausted, as if every all-nighter, every early morning spent studying, every stressed-out Saturday night had piled on top of me.

I grabbed a rock and threw it as hard as I could into a bush, imagining I was aiming at Matt’s head. But that didn’t make me feel any better. I was angry with myself. I’d driven myself to an almost nervous breakdown. I’d stayed out and partied and
for what
? I was still alone. I was still the ex–
Spectrum
editor. And I still had to deal with this ghost or my subconscious or whatever was haunting me. If anything, I’d given it even more ammo than it had before.

Stupid
. I stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of my jeans, then walked into the house.

And then, I screamed.

On the table, in between the two jam jars we’d used for our drinks, was one single, tiny, pink baby shoe, sitting there as though it had been there all night.

Underneath it was a Sound and the Story Post-it, placed carefully on top of a yellowing envelope.

I screamed.

Then, the doorbell rang. I screamed again.

“Hayley? Hayley!” It was a male voice.

“Go away!” I yelled. My heart thumped in my chest as I grabbed a fork and the envelope from the table.

“Hayley, it’s Adam!”

Adam?

I edged toward the back door, holding the fork in front of me like a weapon, and peered through the window.

It was Adam, shuffling from one foot to another, a book in his hand.

“What are you doing?” I opened the door a crack.

“I came to talk. I saw you on the porch, I tried to call for you, then you went inside and started screaming. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just … a bug. What are you doing here?” I croaked.

“I was worried about you,” he continued. “I wanted to see if everything was all right. You weren’t answering your phone, and then I thought, with that e-mail we got … that you might be freaked out,” Adam said finally.

“About the girl dying?” I asked, opening the door and standing in front of him on the porch. The envelope crackled between my fingers.
He’d called?
I tried to remember the last time I’d checked my phone.

“Yeah, because it pushes the Ainsworth date back a week, and I know you’ve got this whole schedule. I don’t know, you just
seemed really on edge yesterday. So I feel like that news could have pushed you over the edge. And no offense, but I feel like it kind of did. I thought you were going to kill me with that fork.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have scared me,” I said.

“Right. So … do you want to go talk? Or get breakfast?” Adam asked.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t. I just need to … do stuff by myself.” The envelope crackled in my hand.

It’s just a prank. Just a dumb Keely prank
, I reminded myself. Maybe she’d put Matt up to it. I wouldn’t put it past her. It would be embarrassing and humiliating but I’d survive, just like I’d survived before. I’d be fine. And this time, I wouldn’t ask Adam for help. I wouldn’t ask anyone. Help equaled weakness. Help was drama-fueled and overrated.

“I need to be
alone
,” I said to Adam.

Hurt flickered in his eyes, then he nodded. He jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Seriously, I’m fine. Thanks for coming, but everything’s cool.” I said it loudly, in case Matt or Keely or anyone was hiding in the woods, watching and ready to laugh. Well, they could watch all they wanted. They wouldn’t see me break down.

“Okay,” Adam said after a pause. He turned and headed down the steps. And finally, when I was alone, I headed back inside, opened the envelope, and saw my mother’s handwriting looping and slanting in front of me.

What was this?

I’d expected some lame journal entry Keely had salvaged from her bedroom from back when we used to do sleepovers.
Another old HIKE list. Maybe even an old draft of my Ainsworth essay she’d fished out from Klish’s office. But how would she have access to my
mother’s
stuff?

Smoothing the paper on my knee, I began to read.

It was a letter, written in my mother’s bubbly, slanted script.

The letter trailed off. It was obviously just one page of many, but it didn’t matter. The proof was in the page.

Children.

I thought of the picture on the refrigerator. The girl smiling, eyes wide. Me, except not. Was that …
her
? Was she my
sister
?

The bell above the door at The Sound and the Story rang, and the fifteen or so members of the Sunday afternoon book club looked up at me. I waved, trying to seem casual.

“Your mom isn’t on the schedule today, love,” Joanna Fenton, the store owner, said. She was English and a retired philosophy professor and normally I loved talking with her.

“I know. I had to grab something from downstairs,” I said shortly.

“All right, love,” she said. Thankfully, she turned back to the group.

“I think Jane Eyre only
thinks
she hears things. She’s being haunted by her own psyche. The voice in the attic is a metaphor for the voice in her own head,” I heard one woman say knowingly as the rest of the group murmured in agreement.

If only she knew.

Downstairs was the so-called rare book section, although it was usually more of a repository for the water-stained, ink-marked, paged-through volumes that were periodically discarded by the U. With each step, the air smelled mustier, although there was the scent of lingering lavender — the scent of my mother — as well.

Downstairs was her domain, where she cataloged the books, shipped orders, and spent hours reading and daydreaming. Walking into her office felt like stepping into her private sanctuary, even if it was open and owned by Ms. Fenton.

I gently stepped over the black-and-white cat named Cow and picked up the book on top of a messy stack.
Growing Up and Moving On: A Guide for Almost Empty Nesters.
Underneath it:
Debt U: How to Save for College Without Losing Your Savings.
My heart twisted when I read the title. My mother used to read dense philosophy books and oversized anthologies. Now, all she seemed to read were self-help books geared toward dealing with me.

And then, I found a book at the bottom of the stack, the one that had caught my eye the last time I came down. My mother had tried to push it away without me noticing, although at the time, I hadn’t thought much about it.
Chaucer and Philosophy
, by James Thomson-Thurm.

James. Like my father. I picked up the book, fingers trembling, and turned it over. On the back was an author picture of a handsome man with a trim beard. He was sitting in what seemed to be an office, his gaze off in the distance.

He was my father. He
had
to be. There was something about his half smile, the way he pushed his lower jaw out slightly, that reminded me of me. My mother always said that I smiled like a Lhasa apso puppy. And in this picture, I could see it.

I had my father’s smile.

I shoved the book in my bag and began looking more fervently, sure there were more clues. I yanked open the bottom drawer of my mom’s desk. It was scattered with old bills and programs from previous bookstore events. I shuffled through them until I found a single lockbox.

I picked it up. Shook it. I heard a soft thud.

The box had been locked at one point, but years had caused the metal to rust, and the lock practically crumbled in my hands.

Inside was just one picture: a sonogram photo. I squinted, held it to the light. It looked like a photograph of the universe.
But then, I saw the writing.
Baby Girl A
with a hand-drawn white arrow.

And then,
Baby Girl B
.

Baby Girl B was underneath Baby Girl A, stacked as though they were sleeping on bunk beds.

Upstairs, applause broke out, abrupt as last night’s surprise storm.

I slid the photo into my pocket and raced up the stairs two at a time.

“Hayley, darling, did you find what you were looking for?” Ms. Fenton called. “And would you like to join the discussion? A young person like you would provide a great counterpoint.”

“Nope!” I said too loudly. My voice was strained and sweat was collecting at the back of my T-shirt. “I’m fine.”

“Would you like to stay for coffee?” she pressed.

“I really can’t,” I said. I headed off in the rain toward the car.

I had a sister.

I had a sister.

I couldn’t. I didn’t. I was Hayley Kathryn Westin, an only child and part of a team with my mother. She’d told me everything: Five years ago, she’d found out her father had died, from one of the periodic Google searches. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, flicking between her horoscope and the search engine, when her face had crumpled and she’d begun crying slow, long moans that filled the house and caused Sadie to growl. I’d held her tightly, patting her back and telling her it would be okay, even though I’d only been twelve and couldn’t understand why the news affected her so profoundly. Shouldn’t she have been happy he was dead? He was the one who’d shunned her.

Another snapshot: six months ago, my bedroom, when she’d woken me up to whisper urgently that Geofferson had said
I love you.
That she hadn’t heard the words since …
since who
? Had she said the name? Had it been James? I had too many details swirling through my mind, making it impossible to pick which ones were essential. Why had my sister been kept a secret? It wasn’t fair. For years, I’d felt all alone. I wondered if she’d felt the same way. And then, another thought: What if my sister had been at the Ainsworth because she’d been a semifinalist? Or because she was friends with one of the other candidates? Leah had said that she and “I” had spoken before….

My phone beeped.

OXO.
It was the way we’d always signed off on texts, ever since the sixth grade when I’d realized the combination of letters looked similar to the symbol for infinity.

Ordinarily, I’d type it back.

Now, I didn’t.

I pulled up the Ainsworth e-mail detailing the memorial viewing for Leah. Kennilworth was about an hour away. I didn’t have to go. After all, I hadn’t known her at all.
But maybe my sister had.
It was a long shot, but it was something I hadn’t had before.

My heart surged as I started the car. The rain started again, a heavy downpour that required me to turn my windshield wipers up high. My hands were clammy on the steering wheel. This was crazy. I knew that. But so was everything.

The funeral home was on the outskirts of what looked like an industrial mill town. The rain hadn’t let up and was streaming on the windshield as I slowed the car to a ten-mile-an-hour crawl.

I parked down the block and walked into the funeral home, aware that my jeans and T-shirt weren’t exactly appropriate.

The inside of the building smelled like dead roses and too much air freshener and I felt claustrophobic as soon as I entered. Mourners, clad in black, were clustered in tight circles. A group of teenagers, about my age, were standing near the entrance. Their hands were in their pockets, and they were shuffling from one foot to the other. No one was talking.

In the center of the room was a casket. It was polished oak, and looked almost like a grand piano, the way the lid was standing open on one end. I hesitantly walked toward it, taking halting steps as I moved between different guests. I wondered where Leah’s parents were. Whether she’d had a boyfriend. Whether anyone would look at me and know that I shouldn’t be here, not really.

Ten steps. Nine steps. And all of a sudden, I felt someone tug on the crook of my arm.

I whirled around. It was an elderly woman, gazing up at me. She was almost a foot shorter than me, and probably weighed fewer than ninety pounds, but her fingers dug into my skin.

“You,” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“I — I don’t know,” I stammered. “Leah and I were up for the same scholarship. I met her once. I just wanted to pay my respects.”

“You’ve done enough,” she said.

“I … don’t understand,” I squeaked.

“You were the last one with her.”

“I … don’t understand,” I said again.

“You were in the hospital. I saw you.”

People turned to stare, and I shook my head.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Just then, a blond woman with dark shadows under her eyes walked over to us and clamped her hand on the woman’s bony shoulder. “That’s enough, Mother. You’re upset. You should lie down.”