Beyond Summer (24 page)

My heart did a groggy barrel roll, fanning the sleep fog from my thoughts. I peered across the street again. “I’m coming over there, all right? Turn on your porch light and open your front door for me.”

The porch light lit up, and I realized Shasta had wanted me to come over all along. “Hang on.” I slipped my feet into my sandals, grabbed my house key, and checked the street once more. The stray dog was still sniffing around the bridge. If anyone was out there, he’d be barking, wouldn’t he?

Turning on our porch light, I slipped out the door and whispered into the phone, “Here I come.”

Shasta blinked her light. “I see you.”

A rapid pulse fluttered in my neck as I ran across the yard. The night air was cool and damp, heavy with a coming storm. Dashing across the street, I smelled flowers, pavement, the fishy scent of the water in the creek. On the bridge, the dog started, turned my way, then tucked its tail and trotted off. Lightning flashed far away on the horizon, illuminating a distant line of thunderheads that would be moving in sometime later in the morning.

“Come on.” Shasta’s greeting quavered in a whisper as I crossed her porch, and the boards groaned underfoot. “Ssshhh,” she breathed, then added an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. I feel like an idiot who’s been watching too many horror movies. Like this is Elm Street, and Freddy Krueger’s out in the shed.”

“I’m not sure this is the best time to bring up
Nightmare on Elm Street
.”

We shared a tense laugh that made me think of all the times I’d sneaked across the street to Emity’s house when I was supposed to be studying in my room.

Shasta and I stood in her living room, the situation suddenly awkward. It felt strange to be here, visiting her house for the first time in the middle of the night.

“You probably think I’m an idiot, bugging you so late.” Threading her arms over her stomach, she shivered, tugging the front of an old T-shirt she must have been sleeping in. “I couldn’t think who else to call.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind.” Oddly enough, that was true. It felt good to know that across the street, what had been just another house was now the house of a friend.

“I just didn’t want to leave the boys alone in here, in case . . . well, you know, in case there really is someone out there.”

Trepidation prickled over my skin and caused my shoulders to do an unintentional shimmy as we crossed the dimly lit living room, then slipped through a doorway into a parlor area furnished with a desk and bookshelves of the kind that come in a box from a discount store and start leaning the first time they’re moved. Shasta snagged something from the shadows beside the bookshelf, and when we entered the kitchen, she was carrying a baseball bat.

“I really think we should call the police,” I whispered. My heart was pounding like the raven tapping at Poe’s chamber door.

Shaking her head, Shasta proceeded through the kitchen, her steps growing lighter, more careful, as if she were afraid someone might be right outside. “If I hear anyone in there, I’ll come back, and we’ll call nine-one-one.”

“All right,” I whispered, but this felt like one of those idiotic plans Emity was known for conjuring up. Typically, those plans landed us in trouble.

Shasta tiptoed closer to the door, and I found myself creeping behind her. I leaned over her shoulder as she inched the back curtain aside.

“There’s probably no one in . . . Holy mackerel, the door’s wide open!” Sweeping the curtain over, she jerked upward so suddenly that we collided. I staggered backward, tripped over a laundry basket, and landed against the washing machine.

Before I could regain my footing or argue, Shasta had opened the door, turned the lock on the burglar bars, flipped on the floodlight, and was headed outside. I followed without giving adequate consideration to whether or not it was a good idea, and by the time I reached the garden shed, Shasta was standing in the triangle of light, staring at the interior, the baseball bat slowly lowering until the barrel rested on the ground beside her.

“There’s another one,” she whispered, pointing into the shed and taking a stiff sidestep so that I could see. Among the gardening tools, rolled-up hoses, and workbenches that looked like they’d been there forever, a single lightbulb swung just slightly, as if someone had brushed by the pull chain. The shed smelled moist and earthy. Safe scents. Nothing dangerous.

Following the trajectory of Shasta’s finger, I took in a bag of potting soil on the shed floor. The center of the bag was dented inward, as if someone had been sitting on it, and in front of the indentation lay a carved bird small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

Shasta reached in and scooped it up. Her face paled, then hardened. “Someone keeps leaving these. Someone keeps coming here.” Her dark eyes narrowed with a mix of fear and anger, her hair swirling around her, blue-black in the moonlight, as she backed several steps into the yard, tossing the bird into the dirt and raising the bat. “Go away! Leave my house alone or I’ll call the police, do you hear me? Go away!”

Next door, a light came on.

“Let’s go back inside.” Touching Shasta’s arm, I shivered, my pulse jittery with the sense of someone watching us—someone closer than the woman peering through a gap in the curtain next door. “Come on, all right?”

Shasta yielded to the pressure finally, and we turned off the light and closed the shed, then started toward the house. Inside, with the doors locked, I leaned against the counter and caught my breath as Shasta returned the baseball bat to the front room, then stood looking around the kitchen, as if she were suddenly afraid, even inside the house.

“The sibs found some of those carvings at our house, too,” I said finally. “Maybe they’re just around here, you know. Maybe someone who lived here before left them, or maybe kids in the neighborhood got them in an Easter-egg hunt, or painted them in school, you know?” The explanations didn’t make a great deal of sense, but neither did the idea that inanimate objects could appear in strange places on their own. Anything was preferable to the thought that someone was sneaking around leaving behind little talismans where we would find them.

Shasta rubbed her forehead roughly, then combed her hair from her face, leaning against the refrigerator. “How did that
thing
show up on the floor of my shed?”

“It could have fallen from overhead. From the rafters. Maybe it was tucked up there, and you never noticed it before.”

“Did it turn on the lights, too?” It was more a plea for an explanation than a question. Both of us had the sense that someone had been there just before we entered the shed, but neither of us wanted to admit it.

“Maybe you left the lights on earlier today, or even yesterday, and you didn’t notice until you looked out there after dark.”

Shasta’s lips twisted to one side, and she let her arm fall, so that it slapped against her thigh, conveying frustration. “You sound like Cody. That’s what he’ll say if I bring it up.”

“Sorry. It’s the reporter in me—always looking for a logical explanation.”

“Reporter?” One eyebrow lifted and one descended. “So you’re, like, one of those disgustingly pretty girls who’s also disgustingly smart and will be showing up on the evening news someday, ridding the world of evil and that kind of thing?”

My throat tightened, and I looked away. I didn’t feel like one of those have-it-all girls anymore. I wasn’t one. The broadcasting degree and the got-connections job I’d always been so sure would fall right into my lap now seemed a million miles away. “Not so much. It’s just what I was going to major in—broadcast journalism.” Who knew what would happen to the college plan now that there was no one to pay the bills? Even if the money were there, I couldn’t leave the kids and Aunt Lute with Barbie—not the way things had been lately. With Uncle Boone making excuses to avoid us—everything from busy work schedules to out-of-town business trips—there was no one to look after things but me. I had no way of knowing when our situation would change, if ever.

The start of the fall semester was just a few weeks away. The truth, the reality, was that I wouldn’t be going to college, or Europe, or anywhere.

“Pppfff!” From the corner of my eye I saw Shasta’s hand flutter. “The boys think we’ve got Hannah Montana living across the street. Wait until they find out you’re a future TV star. You’ll be, like, their favorite celebrity.”

“I’m not a celebrity.” I didn’t want to be anyone’s celebrity. I just wanted to go back to life the way it had been.

Tears stung the back of my nose, the floor blurred, and I felt my mind and body coming in for a crash landing—vulnerable, out of alignment, none of the instruments reading correctly. I blinked hard, pretended to rub my eyes because they were tired. “I should go home.” My voice broke. The words trembled.

I heard Shasta cross the floor, felt her touch my shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. Sometimes you’ve just got to ignore me the way you’d ignore one of those pocket poodles that barks too much. I’ve got a big mouth. I’ve always had a big mouth. Stay for a cup of cocoa, all right? I won’t be able to sleep now, anyway. Cody’ll be home in less than an hour, and he can walk you back across the street.”

Shasta didn’t wait for an answer, but opened a cabinet, took out two cups, and filled them with water. “Ummm . . . by the way. Cody doesn’t exactly know about the baby yet, so don’t say anything, all right? I’m kind of waiting for a good time to break the news.” Frowning, she smoothed her T-shirt. “There’s a lot of stress right now, with the house, and the police academy, and bills, and everything. It’s complicated, sort of.”

She slipped the cups into the microwave, and then stood drumming her fingers on the counter, watching the countdown on the microwave instead of looking at me.

After the cocoa was ready, we moved to the dining room and sat at an antique wooden table with climbing roses painted underneath a layer of varnish. When I complimented the artwork, Shasta ran a hand over it. “We picked the table up at a yard sale right before we moved in. I thought I could make it look a little better with a paint job—spruce it up before Cody’s mom comes to visit. Lord knows she’s never bought anything at a yard sale in her life.”

I took a sip of cocoa, letting it soothe the lump in my throat. “Nothing wrong with recycling. In the pre-Barbie days, my mom loved to bring home flea-market finds, polish them, and use them in the house. She got a thrill when people came for parties and asked who her decorator was.”

Shasta rested her chin on her hand. “Really? I never pictured y’all for the flea-market type.”

“Barbie’s a lot different from my mom.”

“I kinda figured.” Shasta poked at a marshmallow floating in her cocoa. “It’s weird, the whole blended-family thing, huh? My dad left when I was eleven. Took off with the girl from the bank. I’ve got half sisters I haven’t ever met. I don’t miss it, really. I just don’t, like, think of them as my sisters.”

Something in the words struck a chord in me. I’d never thought of the sibs as anything more than a nuisance—a middle-aged whim my father had inflicted upon my life. The chance to move away and leave them behind couldn’t come soon enough, as far as I was concerned. Until the past two weeks, I’d never felt a tie to them, never considered that they weren’t just Barbie’s little toys. They were my brothers and my sister, and they always would be. Whether I liked Barbie or not, I did love them, and if Barbie wouldn’t take care of them, I’d have to find a way to do it.

The possibility scared me to death.

Without intending to, I admitted that to Shasta, and we fell into a conversation about my life, her life, the reasons we’d moved to the neighborhood. Even though it felt good to finally open up and talk to someone, I knew better than to tell her too much. If she found out my father was the man on the Householders commercials, the one who was now frighteningly close to the center of the Rosburten financial scandal, our friendship would probably be over. I wondered if she’d even seen the reports about Rosburten, and if she knew that Householders was connected, but I wasn’t about to ask. I settled for explaining that my father had some business troubles, and we’d lost our house. The economy being what it was, that seemed enough of an explanation.

“That’s happening a lot of places.” Shasta cast a sympathetic look across the table. “So where’s your dad now?”

“Trying to work things out.” The answer was intentionally vague, emotionless. I didn’t know how to feel about my father. I hated him, and yet, I needed him. He’d left us twisting in the wind, but I wanted him to be our Superman again.

“Is he coming back?” Shasta seemed to have read my thoughts.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Pushing her empty cocoa cup aside, Shasta turned an ear to the sound of a car in the driveway. “That must be hard,” she said quietly, and we watched as the glow of headlights pressed through the doorway. I wondered what Shasta’s husband would think when he walked in, tired after working two jobs, and saw me sitting in his dining room in the wee hours of the morning.

Standing up, I took my cup, and we walked to the kitchen.

“This was fun.” Shasta smiled at me as we stood washing our cocoa cups. “So, we’re on for the bookstore, lunch, and story time tomorrow?”

I considered the question. It seemed strange to be making plans after so many days of drifting in limbo, waiting for the pattern of life to suddenly morph into something that made sense. Adopting a schedule here, in this place, seemed like an admission that we were moving to a new kind of normal. On the other hand, the alternative was to continue wandering in denial, and with Barbie in the house, we had enough denial already. “Sure. All right. Come over about eleven, and we’ll go to the bookstore first.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “What about the thing with the volunteer tutors—the info session tomorrow night? Volunteering might work out, if we did it together. I think I’m too chicken to go by myself.”