After she figured out what or who was haunting her.
CHAPTER
14
Hendricks headed straight home after the final bell, but instead of turning up her front walkway, she continued on and cut through the thick row of trees that separated her back yard from Eddie’s.
Eddie’s house didn’t look like hers. The paint had long ago faded, showing weathered gray siding and rusted gutters. Old plastic toys littered the yard, and a car without wheels sat on cinder blocks beside the back shed. A few of the upstairs windows had cardboard taped over the glass.
Hendricks hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Her house and all the other houses on her street were so nice. She’d sort of figured that all the homes in Drearford were like that.
She felt a little embarrassed as she picked her way through the yard. The porch had collapsed on one side, so she had to be careful about where she put her feet as she climbed the stairs and knocked on the front door.
The door swung open almost as soon as she moved her hand away, and Eddie appeared behind the screen. Hendricks jerked backward, her heartbeat jump-starting. She had a feeling he’d been watching her walk across his backyard.
“Can I help you?” Eddie crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the doorframe. He didn’t bother opening the screen door that separated them.
Hendricks’s chest felt suddenly tight. She didn’t know how to start. How do you bring up ghosts with someone you barely know?
She wetted her lips. “Hey, Eddie.”
Eddie studied Hendricks’s face, suddenly wary. “Nice going, Veronica Mars. You figured out my name.”
He seemed annoyed. Great.
No longer worried about how it might sound, Hendricks blurted, “I wanted to ask you about my house, not your name, Eddie.”
Eddie waited an uncomfortably long time to reply. Then, exhaling through his teeth, he said, “Any specific reason you want to know, Hendricks?”
Something about the way he said her name caused her to frown slightly. But of course he knew her name—everyone at Drearford seemed to know her name. Eddie had just never said it out loud before.
She shrugged, trying for casual. “I’m just curious.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s my house.” She shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets and forced herself to say the thing she’d come here the say. “The other day, when we were talking before school, it sounded like you might . . . I don’t know. Know something about it.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. This had all sounded perfectly rational in her head, but now she realized she was coming across as vague, bizarre even.
Eddie cocked his head. For a moment it looked like he might say something deep and profound. But then the moment passed and the two of them just stood there, not speaking.
Hendricks had forgotten why she’d thought it would be a good idea to come here.
“This was a mistake.” She turned and started to pick her way back down the porch steps.
The screen door screeched open and closed, and then Eddie was beside her. It was the first time Hendricks had seen him without his leather jacket. His black T-shirt was thin and worn, the neckband gaping wide enough to show the sharp edge of his collarbone just beneath. It looked like it had been washed and worn hundreds of times.
The expression on his face was still guarded, but there was something else going on below, something he was trying to hide. He started to reach for her arm, apparently decided against it, shoved his hands into his jeans pockets instead. “Did you . . . see something?”
“No,” Hendricks blurted. But why did she come here if she was just going to lie? Swearing quietly, she shook her head and added, “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe.”
Eddie’s eyes bore into hers. “What did you see?”
“What did you see?” Hendricks shot back. She wasn’t going to say it first.
Eddie swallowed and shifted his eyes to his feet. He was barefoot, Hendricks realized, his toes curling into the porch like he was cold.
It was the shivering toes that softened her. Hadn’t Raven said that the rest of the town thought of Eddie as a Boo Radley type? That meant he was an outcast, and so it made sense that he didn’t want to trust her, that he was wary of telling her anything that could get him laughed at.
If she wanted his help, she was going to have to give something up first. “Things have been sort of . . . weird at that house.”
“Weird how?”
Hendricks cringed. “Please don’t make me say it out loud.”
Eddie searched her face. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Did he think she was making fun of him? Did he trust her?
“Okay,” he said finally, and the timbre of his voice was lower than it had been a moment ago. “So I visited my brother Kyle, once, before he got out on bail.” He paused, like he expected Hendricks to ask him what Kyle had been arrested for. When she didn’t, he shook his head angrily and muttered, “This fucking town.”
“I’m sorry,” Hendricks said.
She didn’t know what she was apologizing for, but Eddie seemed to appreciate it. He scrubbed a hand back through his dark hair, leaving it mussed.
“Yeah, well, Kyle insisted that he didn’t see anyone else around that house. It was sort of a sticking point with the prosecutor. He kept saying that Kyle couldn’t expect people to believe he was innocent if he couldn’t give them another explanation. Kyle always said he didn’t have one, but the day I went to the jail, he told me something different.”
Hendricks felt the skin on her arms creep. “Different how?”
“He told me he felt something in the basement with him.”
Cold flooded through her. Hendricks said, “Something?”
“Something like . . .” Eddie leaned closer and Hendricks noticed that he smelled like clove cigarettes and sandalwood. Nothing like Grayson’s overpowering cologne. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. “Something like a ghost.”
Ghost.
She’d been thinking it, but it felt different to actually hear it spoken out loud. She felt Eddie watching her, trying to gauge her reaction, and she wanted to tell him she was right there with him, that she’d been thinking the same thing.
Instead, she took a step backward. It was too hard to think when they were standing so close.
“What?” Her voice cracked.
Eddie’s face fell. “Hendricks—”
She lifted her hands, stopping him. She didn’t understand why she was reacting like this. She shouldn’t be reacting like this. Ghosts meant that she wasn’t crazy. They meant that Grayson wasn’t hiding in her linen closet.
But as soon as the word had left Eddie’s mouth, she’d felt something deep inside her bones start to tremble. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She’d never believed in supernatural stuff like that. The possibility of them being real made her want to laugh and scream at the same time.
She stumbled down the rickety porch steps. She heard a buzzing in her ears. When her feet hit the sidewalk, she started to run. Eddie called her name, but she didn’t turn back.
She dashed around the side of his house, through his backyard, and past the trees that separated his world from hers.
CHAPTER
15
Hendricks replayed her conversation with Eddie all through school the next day.
He felt something in the basement with him. Something like a ghost.
She tried to push the words out of her head as she doodled in the corner of her notebook, half-listening to the lecture on Alexander Hamilton in AP history. But she couldn’t help it. She felt like something in her chest was slowly winding tighter and tighter, making it hard for her to breathe. Could she really trust Eddie? Something deep down told her he was telling her the truth. Which meant—
Whatever she’d heard or felt had actually been there. It’d been real.
Ghosts were real.
At lunch, Hendricks squeezed between Raven and Portia and dropped her plastic lunch tray onto the table. “Anyone have any idea what this gray stuff is?” she asked, nodding at her plate.
“California loaf,” Raven said.
“Yeah, that’s what the sign said.” Hendricks pulled her chair out and plopped down. “But it didn’t explain exactly what California loaf was. Any guesses?”
“It’s like meat loaf, but they don’t include actual meat,” Connor explained.
Hendricks frowned at her non-meat meat loaf. “That’s horrifying. And what’s up with the sides? Aren’t they, like, required by law to include something that grows from the earth in our lunches?”
Portia blinked. “What?”
“Like a vegetable,” Hendricks clarified.
Raven poked at the swirl of red sauce on top of her California loaf. “Ketchup. Tomatoes. There’s your vegetable.”
“I think I’m fasting today,” Hendricks muttered, pushing her tray away.
“That’s too bad.” Connor rubbed the back of his neck. “I was going to say that you should join the rest of us at Tony’s after school.”
“Tony’s?”
“The pizza place on Main Street,” Raven informed her, pulling her hair into a complicated-looking bun on top of her head. “We all hang out there most days.”
“Most days?” Hendricks arched a brow. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Portia looked pleased with herself. “Well, we had to make sure you were cool first, obviously.”
Hendricks scoffed. “And the verdict?”
Connor shook his head at her. “You passed,” he said. “Obviously.”
Hendricks frowned down at her gray non-meat product. Her stomach growled. She supposed she could wait another couple of hours if it meant she could eat some real food instead of whatever “California loaf” consisted of.
“Count me in,” she said.
* * *
• • •
Tony’s was a traditional, old-school Italian spot: plastic red-and-white-checked tablecloths, candles wedged into Chianti bottles, and massive framed posters of different shapes of pasta hanging on the brick walls.
But there were also old arcade games lining the back wall and a sign announcing karaoke in the basement.
“This place is cool,” Hendricks said, looking around appreciatively. The air was heavy with the smells of garlic and baking bread, and nineties hip-hop blared from the speakers—Hendricks only knew what it was because her dad was always blasting Notorious B.I.G. in the car.
She recognized a few people from her classes as she followed Raven, Portia, and Connor to a table near the back of the restaurant, a few feet away from where Blake and Finn were playing video games. Just like in the cafeteria, they seemed to have their own booth reserved solely for them. Heads swiveled to watch the four of them walk past, and Hendricks felt a little thrill of appreciation. It sort of felt like being a celebrity. She couldn’t help enjoying it.
Portia and Raven started fighting over a plastic menu the second they slid into the booth, voices overlapping as they argued about pizza toppings. Hendricks was about to scoot in across from them when Connor touched her arm.
“Don’t bother,” he said, nodding at the girls. “They don’t exactly take requests.”
Hendricks blinked. “They’re not going to let me order my own toppings?”
Connor shook his head. “We can’t be trusted to choose correctly. It’d be best if you just leave it to the professionals.” He jerked his head over to the arcade games. “Come on. I bet I can kick your ass at some vintage arcade games.”
“You wish. What do I get if I win?”
Connor pursed his lips. “Shiny quarter?”
“You’re on.”
They walked over to a big, boxy game called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
“This one’s my favorite,” Connor said, digging into his pocket for change. “It’s so cheesy. They couldn’t do 3-D yet, so whenever anything on the screen is on fire, you have to walk your turtles through the fire, but they don’t get burned or anything. It’s great.”
Hendricks frowned at the name of the game. “Wasn’t this a movie?”
“Yeah, well, Michael Bay tried to do a movie but it was a total flop. The really old ones from the nineties are okay. But the cartoons are the best. My dad has a bunch saved on his computer, and he got us all into them when we were little.”
The game blared to life, and Connor scooted aside. “Come on, I’ll show you how to play,” he said.
Hendricks stood in front of the game, Connor at her shoulder. She grabbed the controller, and he wrapped an arm around her back, one hand hovering near her hand on the controller.
“Do you, um, want me to show you how?” His voice was a little throatier than it had been a second ago.
“Yes, please,” Hendricks said, and Connor curled his hand around hers.
He showed her how to navigate the funny turtle characters all over the screen with the joystick, and Hendricks snorted as he told her the whole mythology of the turtles, from the green ooze to the Shredder and intrepid reporter April O’Neil.
“That show sounds bananas,” Hendricks said when he’d finished. A ninja dude had just killed her turtle, and the screen showed a black game over. “How did it ever get on the air?”
“I have no idea. But you’re wrong, it was amazing.” Connor shook his head, grinning. “They don’t make cartoons like that anymore.”
Hendricks noticed that his arm was still around her, even though she was no longer playing the game. It felt sort of nice.
She twisted around, so that she was looking at him. Their faces were only inches apart.
“You mean they don’t make cartoons about turtles with superpowers?” she asked, faux-shocked. “What are they thinking?”
Connor swallowed. He was looking at her lips. “Exactly.”
Kiss me, Hendricks thought.
And then Connor was leaning closer, bringing a hand to the side of her face. His eyes started to close—
A fraction of a second before their lips touched, Hendricks pictured Grayson’s thick lips and long eyelashes. His breath always tasted of cinnamon because of the Big Red gum he chewed. She could practically feel his hand wrapped around the back of her neck, his voice in her ear . . .
Don’t you dare embarrass me here.
Without thinking, Hendricks jerked backward.
“I—I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I like you. It’s just that my last thing was . . . well, it was—”
“Complicated?” Connor offered.
Hendricks exhaled. “Yeah. I sort of want to take it slow for now. Is that . . . could that be okay?”
Connor took her hand and squeezed. “It’s cool. And hey, look, pizza’s here.”
Hendricks pressed her lips together, holding back a smile. “Yeah. We should go, um, eat that.”
Her face felt like it was on fire.
“Bacon, mushroom, and ricotta,” Raven announced when Hendricks and Connor returned to the booth. “Believe me, you’ll die.”
“No pepperoni?” Hendricks asked, trying to keep the disappointment from her voice.
“Do we look basic?” Portia asked, sliding a cheesy slice out of the pan. “Trust me, this is better.”
Hendricks opened her mouth, fully ready to argue that nothing was better than a traditional pepperoni pizza, when the restaurant’s front door swung open and Eddie walked in.
The argument died on her lips. She grabbed a slice of pizza to give herself something to do with her hands.
Portia smirked at him. “Think he wants some of the pizza grease to use in his hair?”
Hendricks stopped chewing. The pizza was a tasteless lump on her tongue. Eddie’s hair wasn’t even greasy. She had a sudden flash of how he’d looked the day before, when they’d been standing on the porch outside his house. His hair had been soft. It’d smelled like baby shampoo.
She started chewing again, saying nothing.
“Leave him alone,” Connor said, picking at a mushroom on his pizza slice. “He’s not bothering you, he’s just grabbing some food.”
“He’s probably looking for a job,” Raven said. “I bet his brother’s legal bills were expensive.”
Portia snorted. “Can you imagine paying someone to defend that freak?”
“They don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Raven added.
Hendricks swallowed her pizza, and it settled in her gut like a rock. She pretended to study the Tony’s logo on her napkin so she wouldn’t have to look at him. But as soon as she decided not to look at Eddie, it was the only thing she wanted to do.
Her eyes flicked up, largely against her will, at the exact moment that Eddie glanced over at her table. A jolt went through her as their eyes met.
And then, to her horror, he started making his way across the restaurant.
Hendricks could feel her friends watching him approach, mouths agape. Her skin flushed with heat.
Go away, she thought. Please just go away.
“Hey,” Eddie said, stopping in front of their booth. He cupped the back of his head with one hand, looking between Raven and Portia. “I, uh, just wanted to make sure you were okay. You left in kind of a hurry.”
“Excuse you,” Portia snapped.
Raven looked at Hendricks, frowning. “Why wouldn’t you be okay?”
“I—” Hendricks started, not sure what to say.
Portia swiveled around to face her. “Oh my God, did he do something to you?”
Raven’s eyes went wide, and now Connor was frowning and half-rising from his seat. “Is he bothering you, Hendricks?”
He’d squared his shoulders, and there was something forceful about his voice. Hendricks’s muscles tensed.
The Haunted Page 10
