Phobic (37 page)

“Careful,” I say, fighting the urge to bite my fingernails.

Still on the small hill of rotted wood, I support myself against the moldy concrete wall directly below the door. Jordan peers down with his stupid blue eyes and good looks. He offers me his hand.

No way. No freaking way.

“Come on,” he says.

A few blocks of wood clunk together—Todd’s readjusting his footing so he can make a support with his hands. Jordan lowers himself, and I won’t look at him. Any minute he’ll try to spit in my mouth. Or I’ll give him my hand and halfway up he’ll drop me, leave me in here to rot.

“Would I have come here just to mess with you?” Jordan asks.

“Lemme check,” I say, folding my arms. There’s got to be another way out. A larger window, maybe. We haven’t checked the other back rooms. But in my gut I know this is it.

“I’m really sorry, Piper,” Jordan says. Against my will, I blink up at him. He’s crouching down toward me now, holding onto the doorframe. “I was a total douche. I never meant for you to get hurt like that.”

Todd steps forward and rests a hand on my back. “You’ll be okay,” he whispers.

With a resolute breath, I slip my hand into Jordan’s as Todd makes a boost with his hands for my foot. “You better watch it,” I say to Jordan while he and Kody lug me up. “Or I’m axing you next time.”

The two of them, to my surprise, bust with laughter. Jordan’s face holds a smirk. “Fair enough,” he says. A few other kids peer around the decrepit scene, but I don’t care. Let them look.

“I’m not kidding,” I go on, dusting the grime from my hands onto my jeans. The need to be insistent, to switch to offense, drowns every other concern for this one moment. I’m different now, and I’ll make sure he knows it. “After what I’ve just been through, it will be nothing for me to smack you down.”

Still grinning, Jordan nods his head. Kody pulls Todd up, and before I know it, a girl slams into me, giving me a skintight hug. Her hair reeks of starchy hair spray and other products. From the dark curls trailing down her back, I know it’s Cassie.

“Glad you’re okay, Piper,” she says.

I pat her back a couple times, hoping she gets the hint. So not in the mood for hugging.

Sierra stands behind her, chewing her lip. Her silky hair is fried, frizzing out as if she’s spent the afternoon rubbing a balloon against her head or sticking forks in electric sockets. She watches me with obvious apprehension as Cassie releases me, and there’s this awkward elephant between us.

“Zits suck,” she blurts, though her face is clear once more. “And for the record, I only made a face at you your first day of school here because you wouldn’t stop staring at me and it was weird.”

My mouth drops. Of all the things she could have said, where did that come from? I’m pretty sure I’ve never told that to anyone, let alone mentioned it, least of all to her. I’m tempted to argue—she totally made the face at me first! But I decide to let it go. And despite it all, a smile creeps up on my face. “At least you’re washing your face again,” I say.

For the smallest second her brows crinkle, nostrils flare. She pouts her mouth like her teeth are grinding for all they’re worth, and she points a manicured finger at me. “You little—do you have any idea what I…what you…”

She’s interrupted by Todd’s tall presence and his arm around her shoulder. “Hey,” he says, giving her shoulders a squeeze that displays their full ability to move up and down, “you doing okay? Back to normal?”

I notice two major things. First, that Todd is being completely serious. And second, that Sierra looks, of all things, embarrassed. She nods as her fingertips brush her now-clear skin, gives me a final stare, and says, “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time,” before turning heel and walking off.

“Um…” is all I can manage.

“I’ll explain later,” Todd says, pulling me to him.

“So it was really haunted?” Kody asks, glancing up to the kitchen. I wait for the lights to flicker, the walls to creak. But Ada is gone. And so is Garrett.

“Pretty sure,” I say, ready to phone the paramedics.

“Sweet,” Kody says, rotating around.

On my way out, Todd and I exchange a look. “Glad you think so,” I say.

T
he mellow tones fade out as I hold back my air supply and taste the woody reed on the mouthpiece. I stare at the music on the table in front of me and catch my breath. The few inmates in the open room clap, along with the guards positioned along the doors. Several women boom out a few cheers. But as I lower my clarinet, I only have eyes for my mother.

Her brownish-blonde hair, the smile stretched on her pretty face, the tears welling in her eyes—

My. Mother.

“That was your audition piece?” Mom asks when I make my way back to her table. I sit across from her and perch the instrument on my thigh. “That was beautiful, hon.”

Mr. Garrett had one thing right, at least. My mom
did
kill Hunter Morgan. And she was proven guilty and has to serve out her life sentence. The good thing is that she’s sane again. After she betrayed Dad and Garrett, Garrett used the house to mess with her mind, I guess.

I asked her when we first got here if she had been present in that floating door room. If she’d known I was there.

“Yes,” she said. “But my body was here, so I couldn’t respond at all.”

“That cage thingy, around your head?”

She smiled. “I’m free.”

“And Dad?” If her mind is free, then he must be too.

“They’ve all moved on,” she said with a trace of sadness in her voice. “Like we’re all meant to.”

Joel and I sit with her now in the open room where convicts visit with their family members. The other convicts, each clad in blue, sit along their tables, chatting under their breaths. A thick white bandage hugs his head like a bandana. The doctors said no skin grafts would be needed, and thankfully, his hearing isn’t damaged either. Joel’s considering surgical replacements, since he doesn’t want to go around, you know, earless.

I examine Mom, not just eager to find bits of myself in her, but to know her face the way I know my own. The sun spots on her high cheeks and lines tracing her mouth, her eyes. Still smiling, she wipes a tear away. The insanity is drained from her eyes, and now they’re bright and blue and full of hope.

“You knew about Ada, didn’t you?” I ask her. “How?”

Her hand reaches out and squeezes mine for the tiniest second before she pulls back. She glances back at the guard, and I know it’s because she’s not supposed to touch anyone while we’re in here.

The motherly gesture nearly
over
-exhilarates me, and I open my mouth as if I can breathe better through it than just through my nose. She looks to Joel, apology dripping from her expression. I’m startled at the resemblance between them. The long face shape and their thin lips.

“I knew your father was up to something, but it wasn’t until I stumbled across Hunter in the basement that I really became suspicious. I was hauling some bags of your baby clothes down there. Ada appeared, warning me. And I threatened your father I’d divorce him if he didn’t tell me what was going on.”

“You did?” Joel asks with humor.

“Dad must have really loved you,” I add.

Mom nods, her lips a straight line. “Once I learned the truth, I wanted to divorce him. But divorce wasn’t as common back then as it is now. Ada showed me the journal and newspaper articles—she just pulled them out of the wall like a magic act.” Mom flares her hands as if doing a trick. “I knew what I had to do.”

“So you did kill him, then,” I say. Even though I know it’s true, my heart is at a lower spot than usual in my chest. There had to be something else she could have done than
murder
. Too late now.

Mom stares at her fingers on the table. I grip my clarinet tighter.

“I went to sneak Hunter Morgan out, but by the time I got down there again he was dangling from hooks in the basement. So while Garrett’s back was turned, I stabbed Hunter. If he couldn’t use Hunter’s living parts, his elixir wouldn’t work and it would end.

“I dragged Hunter up, and Ada did her thing and covered the blood. I was going to dispose of him that night, but Garrett attacked my mind. And then you found him a few days later, Piper.”

I fight away the images of
my mother
stabbing someone in cold blood, for whatever reason. I’m itching to ask the question that’s been on my mind since I was trapped in the walls. I tilt in and speak softly.

“How did you know, Mom? How did you know the trap door was immune or whatever?”

Mom’s brows crinkle. She looks to Joel first, who shrugs, then back to me. “It—it wasn’t immune. It was just a place to hide him.”

Joel seems to be just as confused as I am. His brows crease and create wrinkles on his forehead. He leans back in his chair and rests his arm on the back of it, evaluating me.

“But Ada cleans everything up—” I shake my head. “It was the only place with a bloodstain.”

Mom examines the table as if thinking it over. “Ada left things alone that were under the surface of the walls.”

“Like the cobwebs.”

“She only cleaned up what people could see, and she knew no one ever opened that trap door.”

“The bloodstain!” I say as if I’m struck with inspiration. Joel and Mom watch, clearly stunned at my exclamation, and wait for me to go on. A few of the other people in the large room glance over at us, and I lower my voice. Probably not a good thing to be talking openly about in a prison.

“It has to be. Garrett prepped his victims, right? Ada never cleaned up that guy’s blood in the trap door. It must have sealed that spot or something, right?” It’s the only explanation I can think of.

That must be how Todd was able to come through the Friend Space too. He said Sierra saw the murder. She saw Mom
do it
, then panic, blood on her hands, trying to dash out through the old servants’ entrance to wash it off because she didn’t want to get any on the doorknob. Ada must have not gotten it all from there either.

Ada must have given Sierra more than she meant to, too. That’s the only plausible answer Todd or I could come up with. I’m just glad she didn’t pass that memory on to me in the process. I’ve got enough in my head—I didn’t need that one.

I look up at Mom now, relieved again to find sanity in her blue eyes. The memory of her madness is bad enough, let alone seeing her here now. Yeah, Sierra can keep it, although who knows how many of
my
memories she got a glimpse of before we switched back. I wonder why I never got any of Sierra’s. Not that I’m complaining, because yuck, who wants those?

Mom analyzes me. Then she wraps one hand over the other, giving an answer to the question I forgot I’d posed.

“I guess we’ll never know for sure, will we?” she says.

Joel and I stand on Hemlock Avenue, staring up at the sad remains of the house we’ve known our whole lives. The axe mark hacks in the floating door, right where it should have landed. Part of the roof beside the tower on the left is caved in. The porch has collapsed, and patches of lath peek through the siding. And with the shattered windows, the place looks pathetic, especially in the gleaming sunlight.

A miserable sort of emptiness chisels through me, seeing it this way. Pity coils from my stomach and into my chest, now that I know its sad history. The people it’s seen, the lives it contained, the horrors it hid. I grew up in this house. And even though it was weird, it was
my
weird, alive house.

The screen door from the two-story brick house next door slams. Todd trots down his front steps, hands in his pockets. He’s got on a maroon shirt with rock, paper, and scissors each holding the other at gunpoint.

“Has it started yet?” he asks, giving me a grin that fizzles in my belly.

“Any minute now,” Joel says, a fresh bandage snug around his head.

He and I emptied the few belongings we wanted to keep. My clarinet. Joel’s papers. Clothes. I would have wanted the dollhouse too, but its damage was irreparable. Joel and I made arrangements to auction off the antiques in the house. The furniture, the beds, the china; even the rugs, despite the decaying state of the house, remained in pretty good condition.