The Haunted

by Danielle Vega

“Thanks,” he murmured, drinking.

  “I don’t get what this town has against you,” she said, after a moment. “I mean, I know that your brother . . . that he’s supposedly a . . .”

  She let her words trail off so that she didn’t have to say that word. Murderer.

  “I don’t think it’s about Kyle,” Eddie said. “I mean, that’s a good excuse, but it’s not the reason people around here hate my family.”

  Hendricks dropped her head back against the wall. “Then why?”

  “They just always have.” He shrugged. “My mom was bullied like crazy in high school, and my dad used to get in tons of fights.” Eddie hesitated, mouth working like he was going to say something else, then decided against it. “Kyle and me mostly just hung out with each other,” he finished.

  “Kyle and Eddie,” Hendricks mused.

  “Short for Eduardo,” Eddie explained.

  “That’s kind of odd, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just that people usually name their kids things that go together. Like me and my little brother, we’re Hendricks and Brady. They sound right together.”

  “Hendricks and Brady sounds like the name of an Etsy store that sells macramé plant holders and cross-stitched pillowcases.”

  Hendricks smacked him on the arm, and he released a soft snicker.

  “You know what I mean,” she continued. “Kyle and Eduardo don’t go together.”

  Eddie was quiet for a beat. Hendricks noticed that he did that before saying anything real about himself, like he was weighing whether it was worth the potential backlash. After a minute he released a heavy breath.

  “We’re named for our grandfathers,” he admitted. “My mom’s dad was Kyle Becker, from Connecticut. My dad’s dad was Eduardo Ruiz, from Argentina. My folks were really into the whole family name thing.”

  “What about your little sister?”

  “Maribeth, after my mom’s mom. You know, they used to talk about having another kid so they could round things out. Valentina, after my dad’s mom. It was this ongoing joke when we were little. My mom would always say things like ‘When Valentina gets here, you boys will have to share a room,’ or if Maribeth grew out of a dress or something, she’d set it aside ‘for Valentina.’ She stopped mentioning Valentina after what happened, though.”

  Hendricks wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to ask about this stuff. She’d never known someone who’d experienced such a loss before. But Eddie seemed okay to talk about it, so in a quiet voice, she asked, “Do you miss her?”

  He nodded. “You want to know what’s weird? I miss both of them. Maribeth and Valentina, even though Valentina was never real. It was like, for a while we had this big family, and then Maribeth died and Kyle committed suicide, and everyone stopped talking about Valentina. Now it’s just me and my parents.”

  “What was she like? Maribeth, I mean.”

  Even in the darkness, Hendricks saw Eddie’s face change. It was as if all the tension fell out of it, making him look younger. “Maribeth was different from the rest of us. She used to charm all the little old ladies at church group. She used to pronounce words wrong. Like, she’d say smagetti instead of spaghetti? And wadder instead of water. I swear she did it on purpose, because it made her seem younger, and then people would give her whatever she wanted.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Little con artist.”

  The smile faded so quickly, Hendricks almost thought she’d imagined it. “I’m sorry,” she rushed to say. “I probably shouldn’t have brought any of that stuff up.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Eddie said. “I’ve never actually talked to anyone about it before. It’s kind of nice to say it out loud.”

  His dark eyes met hers as he added, “I don’t know. That might sound messed up to you.”

  He swallowed, hard, and she had the sudden impulse to touch his shoulder or squeeze his hand. And she might’ve tried it, too, if she hadn’t thought of her school counselor back in Philly, how she’d tilted her head and pursed her lips after Hendricks told her what was happening, like she thought that might make her look sympathetic. Honestly, it always made Hendricks feel a little sick. She hated fake sympathy.

  She was still thinking of that therapist when she said, “It doesn’t sound messed up to me. I sort of know how that feels.”

  Eddie cocked an eyebrow.

  “Not what happened with your brother and sister, of course,” Hendricks said, her cheeks coloring. “But the other stuff. I know what it feels like to deal with something that you don’t feel like you can talk to anyone about.”

  “So you really are hiding some dark and tragic secret?”

  He sounded so much like Portia just then that Hendricks actually laughed out loud. “Where did you hear that?”

  “You came here in the middle of the school year, and you aren’t on social media, and you never talk about your old school, or your old friends . . .” Eddie shrugged. “People around here talk.”

  She fidgeted. Talking about Grayson felt dangerous for reasons that were tricky to explain. It reminded her of being a little kid and playing Bloody Mary at sleepovers. They’d all take turns going into a dark bathroom and saying the name “Bloody Mary” into the mirror. Rumor had it that saying the name three times caused Bloody Mary herself to appear.

  It was silly, childish, but Hendricks felt like that now. Say Grayson’s name out loud too many times, and it might call him here.

  She glanced over at Eddie and saw that he was watching her, waiting for her to fill the silence with a story of her own. It was only fair, after all. He’d already told her his sad story.

  “Okay,” she said after a beat. “I was dating this guy back in Philadelphia. Grayson Meyers.”

  The name seemed to echo through the cellar. Hendricks hugged her arms close to her chest.

  “Let me guess,” Eddie said. “Quarterback? Homecoming king?”

  “Close. He was actually the captain of our school soccer team. He was good, too. Scouts used to come and watch him play. We were pretty sure he was going to get a scholarship.

  “We started dating freshman year,” she continued, “and we just . . . clicked. We liked all the same shows on Netflix, and we were both obsessed with Halloween. We were going to try every burger place in Philly and, like, rate them so we knew where to get the best burgers no matter which neighborhood we were in. People would talk about us like we were one person. HendricksandGrayson. I used to think we’d go to the same college, maybe even get an apartment together after school.”

  “So what changed?” Eddie asked.

  Hendricks hesitated. She’d never tried to explain this part before, and now she realized she didn’t know how to start. It felt like there was something lodged in her throat. “It was little stuff at first. Tiny stuff. Like, he hated it that I sometimes forgot to text him before I went to bed. We used to fight about it all the time. And then he’d start showing up places I was supposed to be, without telling me. Like, I’d see him at volleyball practice, or he’d stop by this diner where I used to work. It was like he was checking up on me. Like he didn’t believe me when I said I was going to be somewhere.”

  There were other things, too. He’d get jealous when he saw her talking to another guy, even if it was just the checkout guy at the grocery store or someone she had to do a project with for class. He didn’t like it when she wore revealing clothes, but he didn’t like it when she looked “frumpy,” either. He hated it when she drew too much attention to herself or contradicted him in public.

  “Jesus,” Eddie murmured. “So he was controlling?”

  Hendricks pressed her lips together. Controlling, yes, she thought. But there was more to it than that. He had a way of making it seem like it was all her fault. If she forgot to text him, she was hateful and thoughtless. If she hung out with a guy friend without hi
m, she was being too forward. Such a tease. When she told him it made her uncomfortable that he sometimes showed up places unannounced, he acted all suspicious. Like he thought she was hiding things from him.

  She felt a rush of shame now, remembering.

  “I was starting to think about breaking up with him,” she went on. “But prom was coming up, so I figured I could wait until after. We used to have this joke about how all the cool kids lose their virginity on prom night, so we should just save ourselves for the after-party. It was so dumb, and I swear it didn’t even mean anything, but I could tell Grayson sort of expected it to happen like that. It was like he thought that because we’d been joking about it for so long that I . . . owed it to him.” Hendricks felt her cheeks grow warm. She’d never said that out loud before, not even to her parents, and it felt weird to be talking about it with Eddie. But the rest of the story wouldn’t make sense unless she explained this part, and so she swallowed and forced herself to keep going. “So junior prom night came, and we went to the after-party and he . . . tried to make something happen, but I told him I didn’t want to.”

  “I’m guessing he didn’t take it well?”

  Hendricks pressed her lips together, remembering Grayson’s hand crushing her wrist, the way he’d blocked the door so she couldn’t leave.

  Don’t you dare embarrass me here.

  “He grabbed me,” she told Eddie, speaking slowly, carefully. “He grabbed me really hard. He’d never done anything like that before, and it really freaked me out, so I—I screamed.

  “I swear, every single person at that party came running. The next thing I knew there were all these guys pulling Grayson away from me, and my friends were forming this protective circle around me, like a barrier to keep him away.” A puff of breath escaped her lips, not quite a laugh. “Someone even threatened to call the cops.”

  Eddie looked grudgingly impressed. “But that’s a good thing, right? They stopped him. They stood up for you.”

  “Yeah, well, Grayson can get sort of obsessive about what other people think about him. He got a little scary after that.”

  Scary was an understatement. Hendricks had twenty-three text messages from Grayson by the time she got home after the party, each of them increasingly nasty.

  You totally overreacted. You know that, right?

  Now everyone at school thinks I’m some sort of fucking rapist.

  And the worst of them all, the one that still sent shivers down Hendricks’s spine:

  You’ll pay for what you did.

  She’d written back only once: We’re over. Don’t text me again. And then she’d blocked his number.

  So he’d started following her. He’d wait for her in the parking lot outside of school, or around the corner from her house, so he could catch her on the way to the bus. It got to the point where she didn’t want to go anywhere without a friend, just in case he suddenly appeared. After he figured out she’d blocked his number, he’d text and call from other people’s phones. It got so bad that she stopped answering calls or reading texts. Eventually, she’d had to change her number. But then he got the new number from a friend. She couldn’t escape.

  Hendricks didn’t even think he wanted to get back together. He just hated that she’d been the one to break it off. That she’d done something without his permission.

  And then, once, she’d gotten home from school and found Grayson in her bedroom. Waiting for her. To this day, she had never figured out how he’d gotten inside.

  She’d called 911. It felt like a monumental decision at the time, but Hendricks couldn’t think of anything else to do. She’d never been so afraid of anything in her life.

  That’s when her parents decided it was time for a change. Clean slate.

  Hendricks breathed in deep, willing the memories away. “The most messed-up part is that I still miss him. Not him, I guess, but the way he was before all this happened. I’ll drive past a burger place and think Grayson and I haven’t tried that one yet. And then I remember and it’s like it’s happening all over again.” She shook her head, her cheeks burning, and added, in a low voice, “I still have one of his old soccer jerseys in my closet. I can’t bring myself to throw it out.”

  Eddie was quiet for so long that Hendricks almost thought he’d fallen asleep.

  “After Maribeth died, I asked my dad if he believed in ghosts. He said he didn’t know, but he figured the ghosts we made up ourselves were more dangerous than any real ones, anyway.”

  Hendricks’s eyebrows drew together. “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I always figured it meant that we let the bad things that’ve happened to us have too much power. If we could just figure out how to move on, we wouldn’t be haunted anymore.”

  “So all I have to do is forget about Grayson, and the Steele House ghosts will leave me and my family alone?” Hendricks meant for this to sound like a joke, but there was an edge to her voice. “That makes it sound easy.”

  Eddie raised an eyebrow without looking at her. “You really think that would be easy?”

  She started to reply, and then merely pressed her lips together. She remembered the stench of Grayson’s cologne. His grip crushing her wrist.

  Eddie was right. Moving on was never easy.

  Hendricks wasn’t entirely sure when she drifted off. It happened gradually. At some point her head seemed heavier, and then her thoughts slowed down, growing soupy. She imagined that Eddie put his arm around her shoulder, letting her rest her head against his chest.

  But no, it wasn’t Eddie. It was Grayson. They were curled up in his basement, watching old horror movies like they used to. Grayson loved horror movies, but Hendricks hated them, so Grayson would put his arms around her and let her hide her face in his shoulder.

  “Shhh . . . ,” he whispered in her ear. “You’ll pay for what you did.”

  Hendricks opened her eyes, her heart hammering. She blinked for a few moments, her mind still groggy from her dream. She lifted a hand to her face and found that her cheeks were damp, and her eyes were sticky with tears. She wiped them away, angrily. When did she become such a crybaby? She never used to cry.

  She started to take stock of where she was, and that’s when she realized that her head really was resting on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie actually did have his arm wrapped tightly around her. When did that happen?

  She sat up, and Eddie jerked awake.

  “What time is it?” he moaned, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. He didn’t seem to have any intention of moving his arm off Hendricks’s shoulder. The warmth was pleasant. Comforting, even.

  “Early,” Hendricks murmured. She shifted to the side and Eddie stretched both arms over his head, yawning. She missed the weight of his arm now that it was gone.

  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “Any more ghostly visitors?”

  Hendricks shook her head. “Nope. None.”

  Eddie grabbed his jacket from the ground and threw it over one shoulder. “Seems like the ghosts have been busted.”

  “Are you leaving?” Hendricks didn’t know why she was surprised. Eddie didn’t live here.

  She thought, again, of how nice it had felt to have his arm wrapped around her shoulder. How safe. Heat spread through her cheeks.

  “Yeah.” Eddie was looking at her, frowning slightly. “Well, we’ve got school, you know?”

  School, Hendricks thought. Right.

  “You sure you don’t want breakfast or something?” she blurted. “Coffee, maybe?”

  Eddie hesitated. “I better not.”

  “Why not?” Hendricks asked.

  At the exact same time he explained, “You don’t want anyone to see me coming out of your house this early in the morning. People would talk.” He smiled, but this time it was tinged with something. Sadness, maybe. “It’s a sm
all town.”

  “Right,” Hendricks said. “Well. I guess I’ll see you at school, then.”

  Eddie just laughed, darkly. “Sure.”

  He said it like it was a joke. Hendricks wanted to argue, but the words died on her tongue.

  What was she going to say? That she’d be cool blowing off her new friends and being his cafeteria buddy during lunch? That she’d give up popularity and acceptance because he’d told her about his little sister?

  She slumped slightly, shifting her eyes down to her knees.

  Eddie made a sound at the back of his throat. A laugh, or a cough. “That’s what I thought,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  Hendricks couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “Thank you,” she said, hoping he knew she was sincere. “I mean it.”

  She finally looked up and saw Eddie hesitating near the stairs. For a moment, Hendricks thought he might say something else. But then she heard his boots on the stairs, and the cellar door creaked open and closed. And he was gone.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Portia was waiting at Hendricks’s locker when she got to school.

  “Are you stalking me now?” Hendricks asked, fumbling with her combination.

  Portia didn’t seem amused. “Where the hell were you last night? Connor was seriously pissed.”

  “Last night?” Hendricks pulled her French book out of her locker and shoved it into her book bag. “What are you talking about?”

  “What am I talking about? Have you been spacing out all week? Yesterday was Connor’s birthday. We were all coming to my place for his party, remember? Jesus, we’ve only been talking about it every single day at lunch.”

  A sinking feeling opened up in Hendricks’s gut. She vaguely remembered joking around about something that might have been a birthday party. And hadn’t she heard something about a clown?

  “Portia, I’m so sorry,” she sputtered, cheeks burning. “I had a family thing, an emergency, and—”

  “Really?” Portia snapped, cutting her off. “Because Raven saw you get into Eddie Ruiz’s car after school.”