Welcome to the Dark House (11 page)

“I
FREAKED AGAIN
.”

Back in my room, I sit on my bed, nursing a fresh cup of chamomile tea with an extra
shot of lemon balm. Parker sits beside me.

“And just so you know,” I continue, “I’ll probably freak at least a hundred more times
on this trip. But I’m hoping that each instance of freakishness will feel progressively
less intense.”

“Do you mind if we rewind a bit?” he asks. “You never told me why you entered the
contest,” he says. “Since you’re not a Blake fan, I mean.”

I bite my lip and gaze into his face. A lock of hair has fallen over his eye. I’d
give anything to touch it.

“Trick question?” he asks.

Part of me wants to tell him the truth about my past. But I’m also afraid of what
he’ll think after I do. What will he think of someone who fears everyday that her
parents’ killer is going to come back for her?

“I thought it might look good on my college application,” I lie.

“And where
are
you going to college?”

“Le Cordon Bleu. It’s a culinary school in Paris.”

“And the people at Le Cordon Bleu really give a crap about winning a contest to go
see a horror flick?”

I feel my face turn red.

“Makes complete sense.” He nods when I don’t say anything. “I mean, I can totally
see how that would rank right up there with participating in the French club or feeding
the hungry at a soup kitchen. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember a special
‘Contests Entered’ section on my college applications—only with all the turkey-coloring
contests I entered as a kid, and the Fourth of July toasted marshmallow–eating contests,
I couldn’t fit them all.”

“Okay.” I smirk. “You got me.”

“Have I?” He bumps his shoulder against mine. The gesture sends a wave of tea over
the rim of my mug, spilling into my lap. “Crap, I’m so sorry.” He gets up to fetch
a rag, just as Shayla taps on the door and comes in.

“More fat and sugar?” she asks, holding a plateful of desserts from downstairs.

Parker looks back at me, straight-faced, as if less than jazzed about Shayla’s impromptu
visit.

“Does Natalie want to join us?” I ask, both relieved and disappointed that she’s interrupted
my moment with Parker.

“Natalie’s holed up in our bathroom right now,” Shayla says.

“Because she isn’t feeling well?” I ask.

“Who knows.” Shayla inserts herself between Parker and me on the bed—the Fluffernutter
to our two pieces of bread. “I tried to bribe her with treats, but she says she wants
to be alone. She even took her pillow and a blanket in there.”

I’m pretty sure that Natalie pulls out her own hair. I almost caught her doing it
earlier, but then she moved her hand away before I could fully see. I was never into
hair pulling, but after the incident with my parents I started pinching—the skin on
my kneecap, mostly, until it was purple, and black, and blue, and yellow.

A rainbow of dysfunction.

My way of trying to cope.

According to Dr. Donna, pinching was my way of transferring my pain and anxiety. If
that theory holds true, the method never worked. Because as hard as I may’ve tried
to transfer my pain, I always ended up with more colors, rather than less stress.

“I can go talk to her.” I get up and head down the hallway to Shayla and Natalie’s
room. The door is open and I walk inside, past Natalie’s bed. There’s stationery sprawled
out over her coverlet—envelopes, cards, and letterhead. There’s also a fancy feather
pen.

“Natalie,” I call, knocking on the closed bathroom door.

“I’m fine in here.” Her voice sounds all nasal-like; I’m guessing that she’s been
crying.

“Will you come out…even for a little bit? We’re all just hanging out in my room, feasting
on spider brownies and brain cake.”

There’s a loud thud against the door. It sounds like she might’ve kicked it. I picture
her big black boots. I peer over my shoulder at the stationery, wondering what it’s
all about, especially since we’re only here for the weekend.

I turn away and move over to her bed. Lying on the pillow is an envelope marked with
her brother Harris’s name. I pick it up and look back at the bathroom door, still
closed.

The envelope hasn’t yet been sealed.

I open it up, trying to be quiet, my eyes darting to the bathroom door. Thankfully,
it remains closed. Finally, I get the envelope open and take out the card. It’s a
note to Harris from Natalie.

Dear Harris,

I know you’re angry at me. Ever since I won this contest, something that was supposed
to make me happy, it’s been nothing but misery—misery for you, for Mom, for Dad. And
so it’s also been miserable for
me.

I know you didn’t want me to come here. You made that clear from the start. But it’s
too late to change things now. If I could I would, because nothing is worth anything
if I don’t have you in my corner.

I keep trying to talk to you. I’m not sure if you’re listening. But I don’t think
I can make it through this weekend without your voice.

Love,

Natalie

I return the letter to the envelope. She must’ve tried calling home again. Her brother
obviously doesn’t want to talk to her. Still, I go downstairs to use the phone, hoping
that she was the one who made the last call.

I pass the dining area—still a mess from dessert—and move into the living room. The
lights are off. I flick them on, noticing a sudden chill in the air. The window over
the sofa is open. The sheers blow in the breeze.

I go over to shut and lock the window, suddenly feeling like I’m being watched. I
peer over my shoulder. “Natalie?” I call, wondering if she might be lurking.

No one answers. The stairway looks empty.

I glance over at the kitchen—also empty. And then I look toward the main door, assuming
that it’s locked. I check anyway, wrapping my hand around the knob. It turns and my
heart sinks.

What if someone broke in?

I lock the door and turn to face the room again. “Midge,” I attempt to call out, but
my voice is far too soft.

I take a few more steps, before coming to a sudden halt, feeling my whole body tense.

Someone’s there. In the closet. The door is partially open.

I can see eyes through the door crack, watching me, locked on mine.

My chest instantly tightens. I hurry into the kitchen and grab a knife from the chopping
block. I begin moving toward the closet. My fingers trembling, I hold the knife down
by my side. My heart hammers. I can feel the sweat at my brow.

I whisk the door open with a thwack.

No one’s there.

The closet is empty.

There’s just an umbrella and a pair of binoculars.

I let out a breath and rest my head against the wall, feeling a giant wave of relief.
I move over to the desk, grab the phone, and press redial. The phone rings and rings,
but then someone finally picks up.

“Hello?” I ask, when no one says anything. “Is someone there?”

“Who’s this?” A woman’s voice.

“Is this Natalie’s mother?” I ask.

“Who’s this?” she repeats.

“I’m a friend of Natalie’s and she’s here with me now…in Minnesota…on the trip to
see one of Justin Blake’s films….”

The woman doesn’t respond.

“Anyway,” I continue, winding the coil cord around my fingers, “she feels really bad
about coming here. She knows that you don’t approve.”

“Well, she’s right. Her father and I
don’t
approve.”

“Okay, well she feels really bad,” I say, knowing I’m repeating myself. “And I know
that if she could do it again—go back in time, I mean—she’d make a different choice.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Ivy Jensen.”

“And she’s talked to you about things?”

“Well, I know how she feels about her decision to go on this trip…and how she feels
about Harris.”

“She told you about Harris?”

“Actually,” I say, noticing that my fingers are completely entangled in the cord now,
“I think she’d like to speak to him. Did they have a fight?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, maybe their falling out is something you’re unaware of, a recent argument,
something about this whole contest trip perhaps…”

“Harris is dead.”

Wait.
“What?”

“My son was stillborn,” she continues. “Natalie was his twin.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, thinking how stupid the question is—not to mention how insensitive.

“I think I’d know if my own son had died. A word of advice: I’d be very careful around
my daughter if I were you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

I
VY FINALLY COMES BACK INTO
the room, her face just as pale as it was after finding the message in Taylor’s closet.

“I take it that things didn’t go so well with Project Natalie?” Shayla asks, searching
through Taylor’s shoe rack.

“I think that maybe we should get her some help,” Ivy says.

“Help, as in calling the fire department to break down the door?” Shayla asks. “Because
if that’s the case, you have my vote. I’m all for getting a few more hotties in the
house.”

“Her brother is dead,” Ivy says.

“Hold up,” Shayla says, trying to squeeze her foot into a ballet slipper. “Not the
brother that she’s been talking about…not her twin…”

“Harris.” Ivy nods. “He died at birth.” She proceeds to tell us about the letter she
found in Natalie’s room. “I know I shouldn’t have read it, but it was just lying there,
and I had so many questions. And, anyway, in the letter, Natalie was apologizing to
Harris for coming on this trip.”

I raise my eyebrow in suspicion. “She apologized to a dead guy?”

“Hold on,” Shayla says. “How do you know that he’s dead?”

“I called her parents.” Ivy brings her bottle pendant up to her lips. “I pushed redial
after she’d called them, hoping that her brother might pick up. But her mother answered.
And when I mentioned Harris’s name, she told me that he was dead.”

“Why would Natalie write letters to a dead person?” Shayla asks.

“Maybe it’s because she’s deranged,” I say, stating the obvious.

“It’s not just letters,” Ivy says. “She talks to him too. I’m thinking that Harris
is the one she’s been mumbling to.”

“Okay, well, I’ll second Parker’s notion: the girl is totally deranged…and I am totally
depressed.” Shayla tosses the ballet slipper back at the rack. “I need to go find
me some big-girl shoes.”

Finally, she leaves, but now there’s an awkward silence between Ivy and me. I want
to pick up where we left off pre–Shayla’s dessert invasion, but I also don’t know
how to get there. After a couple more beats of silence, I pick up my mental camera,
trying to imagine this as a shot.

INT. BEDROOM
—
NIGHT

Ivy sits down beside me on the bed. There’s a plate of desserts between us.

ME

That was really cool of you to want to help Natalie.

IVY

Believe it or not, it feels good trying to help her. Somehow she seems even more messed
up than me.

ME

How so?

Ivy takes a spider brownie from the plate and chews it down, bite after bite, making
it difficult to answer.

I eat too. But after six cream-filled finger rolls, I get up and call cut inside my
head, frustrated that it seems Ivy no longer wants to talk.

“Don’t be angry,” she says. There’s a smear of chocolate in the corner of her mouth.
If this were a movie, I’d lean in close and kiss it away. “I really like you,” she
continues. “And I really appreciate how sweet you’ve been to me. But I don’t want
to ruin your time here with my drama.”

I sit back down and venture to take her hand. “You’re definitely not ruining my time.
Whatever the reason that you decided to enter Blake’s contest, I’m really glad that
you did.”

She clasps her fingers around my grip and then peeks up into my face. “Believe it
or not, I am too,” she says, causing my heart to stir.

“So, then, can I ask…eyes or bear?”

“Huh?” Her face scrunches.

“The wall etchings.”

“Oh.” She looks away. Her face falls. “How about you tell me about your snake, first,”
she says.

“It was actually an eel,” I say to clarify, as if the distinction even matters.

“Okay.” She smiles, looking back at me. “How about you tell me about your eel.”

“I’d love to tell you about my eel,” I smirk. “If I had an eel, that is.”

“
Excuse me
?”

“Wait…that came out all wrong.” I can feel my face changing colors. “I made the whole
thing up—my nightmare submission, I mean. It was a work of fiction, inspired by something
that happened when I was a kid at summer camp. I got caught in a riptide and almost
drowned.”

“And you had nightmares about it?”

“Not exactly, but it makes for good contest submission material, don’t you think?
Especially when you add in the getting-attacked-by-man-eating-eels part.”

“So, you
lied
?”

“I embellished…and tweaked…and altered the facts. I’m a storyteller,” I explain. “It’s
my job to alter the facts.”

“I’ll remember that,” Ivy says.

“Well then, remember this: I never embellish, tweak, or alter the facts when it comes
to the people I care about.”

Ivy looks downward—at our hands, still clasped together—and a tiny smile forms on
her face.

I look at the clock. It’s almost eleven. “Hey…” I begin, hating the idea of leaving
her alone. But before I can finish my thought, a scream comes from down the hall,
slicing our moment in two.

I go for the door and peer down the hall.

Shayla is there, dressed up like Eureka Dash from the Nightmare Elf movies. “He stabbed
me,” she says, stumbling forward, holding her gut.

Garth comes from around the corner, dressed like Sidney Scarcella from
Hotel 9
in a suit jacket with tails and a bloodstained apron. There’s a demented smile on
his face.

Shayla tries to grab the wall for support, but ends up collapsing to the floor.

“Holy shit!“ I shout, rushing into the hallway. I scoot down to assess her wound,
pulling up on the hem of her blouse.

“Not so fast!” she hollers, slapping my hand away. “You have to at least buy me dinner
first.”

Both she and Garth start laughing.

“Die, you lowly peasant,” Garth says, pretending to stab his plastic knife into her
back.

Shayla sits up and runs a finger over her blood-chocolate-smeared stomach. “You guys
totally have to check out the costume closet downstairs,” she says, licking said finger.

Frankie peeks out into the hall, a guitar strapped across his chest. “Can you guys
keep it down?”

“Good night,” I say, returning to the room and shutting the door. Shutting Ivy and
me off from the rest of them—for a little while at least.

We end up lying in bed—me on Taylor’s and Ivy on her own—facing one another, with
the lights kept dim. We spend the next couple hours talking about everything—about
favorite ice cream and famous couples. And best movie kisses (for her, that scene
in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
, when Holly and Paul share a kiss in the rain while “Moon River” plays in the background;
for me, the upside-down kiss between Spider-Man and Mary Jane).

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I ask, surprised to hear the words come out my mouth.

“No.” She bites back a smile. Her cheeks turn pink.

I wait for her to reciprocate the question, but she doesn’t. “I should probably let
you get some sleep,” I say, feeling a major blow to my ego.

“Don’t go,” she says. Her eyes widen. “Let’s talk some more.”

“About what?” I ask, hoping she’ll finally open up about her nightmares, but she asks
me about favorite comic book characters instead.

Finally, around three a.m., after we’ve explored just about every topic, except the
one she refuses to discuss—the one involving her contest submission—we decide to call
it a night.

She slips beneath the covers and closes her eyes. I close my eyes too. But there’s
no way I’m going to fall asleep. I toss and turn, flip and flop, finally resolving
to wait it out until morning and watch her sleep.

I could seriously watch her all night, admiring her inky-black lashes against her
pale ivory skin, the curves of her body beneath the coverlet, and those raspberry-colored
lips.

But then her eyes snap open and I’m totally caught.

“I can’t sleep,” she says.

“Me neither.”

“Are you feeling anxious too?”

“More like restless,” I tell her. “What are you feeling anxious about?”

“Would you mind holding me for a little while?” she asks, in lieu of an answer. “At
least until I fall asleep.”

My heart absolutely pounding, I move to her bed and lay down on top of the covers
while she remains beneath them. She rolls over and I hold her, savoring the warmth
of her back against my chest. She smells like chamomile and chocolate—like something
I want to bottle up and wash all over me.

In the movie version of my life, I’d have met her someplace else—while vacationing
somewhere tropical, maybe. We’d fall in love with both the island and each other,
unable to part at the end of our stay. My favorite scene would be the one where the
camera zoomed in as we kissed—in the ocean, while it rained—with the balmy beach air
crushing against our skin like velvet. A kiss that would top both Spidey’s and Holly’s
any day.