“Sure,” I say quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because whatever Noah Fraser said, it seemed to shake you.”
“No shaking,” I lie. “Nothing bad was said.” Just past the VHS section, on the far wall, is a doorway with a red curtain. “What’s through there?” I ask, trying to change the subject.
“Used to be dirty movies,” says Chase, wandering over, “but the family who bought the store a few years ago is really uptight, so now it’s just a staff room.”
“Shut up,” says Joey.
“What?” Chase spreads his hands, holding them palms out. “You complain about your family being uptight all the time.”
“One of the perks of being friends with Joey,” says Aidan, “is unlimited free rentals.”
His words are still hanging in the air when the curtain swishes, and a small, dark figure emerges.
The clothes are different—a short, black dress that looks like something Wednesday Addams would wear—and the pigtails are in braids with strands of red ribbon woven through, but the girl from the movie theater is unmistakable.
“Dammit, Joey. Tell your girlfriend to stay out of the staff room.”
I glance at the woman behind the counter. I didn’t notice it when I came in, but she bears a distinct resemblance to Joey. Enough that they have to be siblings.
“I dropped something and it rolled under the curtain.” The girl—Skylar—holds up a container of lip gloss as proof before tossing it into a voluminous black bag. “You know, you really should think about getting another kind of coffee machine. Those little gourmet pods you like? Totally bad for the environment. And if you’re going to switch, maybe think about fair-trade coffee. Be a responsible consumer. You know?”
The woman’s scowl deepens, but Skylar just cruises past her, shooting me a curious glance before launching herself forward and throwing her arms around Joey. The movement is so exuberant that when he puts his arms around her, I’m not sure if it’s to return the hug or to keep them both from tumbling to the floor.
“This,” says Aidan, “is the only girl without enough sense to realize she can do better than Joey.”
“We’ve met.” Skylar manages to twist in Joey’s arms without breaking the embrace, though she knocks his glasses askew in the process. “I caught her tearing down some of the posters around the theater. She’s totally my hero.”
Given that I was ripping them down in broad daylight, in plain sight, “catching” might not be the most accurate characterization, but I have the odd, slightly inexplicable suspicion that correcting her would feel like kicking a puppy. A weird, gothy puppy who hangs out in curtained-off rooms in video stores and crusades for globally responsible coffee consumption, but a puppy nonetheless.
“Cat is staying at Montgomery House,” supplies Chase. “Aidan invited her to movie night.”
A cartoon-wide grin spreads across Skylar’s face. “Finally! Another girl in the Monster Squad.” She detaches herself from Joey and makes a grab for me. For a nerve-wracking second, I think she’s going for my hand, but then she latches on to the corner of my shirt. “We’ll get snacks,” she says, tugging me toward the door. “You guys get a movie—NOT Carrie.
“They always lose it over the stupid locker-room scene,” she confesses, continuing to pull me forward. “Boys are so basic.”
Part of me wants to stay with Aidan, but the way he keeps looking at me makes me think he knows I’m lying about being okay. Going with Skylar provides a temporary escape from more questions.
She doesn’t let go until we’re outside and have reached the drugstore. My broken bracelet is still on the sidewalk; the lone rescued bead feels heavy in my pocket. I glance around for Noah, but he’s long gone.
“Monster Squad?” I ask, struggling to get my bearings as I follow this tiny hurricane inside.
“Joey found this old movie from the eighties. A bunch of kids team up to hunt monsters. Frankenstein and Dracula and stuff. They call themselves the ‘Monster Squad.’ Turns out the movie itself is filled with the kind of jokes that make me think eighties nostalgia might be overrated. Still, I like the name. I figured we could adopt it and rehabilitate it. It’s better than what everyone at school calls us. Our little group, I mean.” She talks the way she moves: sentences that are small, quick steps, each split into three when one would do.
“What do they call you?” I ask, unable to keep from thinking of all of the things I’ve been called recently back in New York.
“Nothing good,” says Skylar. She grabs two wire shopping baskets, hands one to me, and then steers us toward the snack aisle. “Well, they don’t really give Chase and Aidan a hard time,” she amends. “Mostly Joey and me. But I still like the name.” She tosses a bag of chips into each basket and then holds up two packages of licorice—one red, one black. “What flavor do you like?”
The question takes me aback. For a while, eating in front of Lacey had felt . . . complicated. Eat too much and I would get slightly worried looks and hints that I was loved just the way I am but that I’d better not get any bigger because there are limits to how large someone’s heart can stretch. Eat too little and it would be just as bad. It didn’t used to be that way—at least I don’t think so. In my darker moments, I wondered if Lacey had some new ideal weight for me. Fat enough that I wasn’t a threat, not so fat that I drew the wrong kind of attention. A magic number where I faded into the background just enough while still being sufficiently present to be her best friend.
“I’m more of a Whoppers girl,” I say experimentally.
I wait to see if she’ll react the way Lacey would, but Skylar grins, drops the licorice, and adds two boxes of Whoppers—the big kind like you get at the movies—to her basket.
“I can’t believe you’re staying at Montgomery House,” she says with a small, wistful sigh. “I love that place. The woman who owns it is awesome. Joey and I teamed up on this local history project ages ago, and she let us take pictures inside. Aidan helped. He and Joey are in the school photography club. It was so great. Joey borrowed this old camera—a thirty-five millimeter or something—because he wanted to try shooting real film. The film was more expensive than I thought it would be, but totally worth it because Joey had so much fun. That’s when we started really hanging out. Me and the guys. That project—and the house—totally brought us together.”
“The woman’s my aunt.”
“So you’re a Montgomery? Very cool.”
She may be the first person I’ve ever met who thinks being a Montgomery is a good thing. Heck, according to Joey, even the ghosts are mad at us.
Skylar reaches the end of the aisle and spins, practically doing a pirouette. “Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“We should have told the guys to get something set there. I bet Joey could list ten horror movies set in New York. Just off the top of his head. He’s like a walking IMDb.” She says this like it’s a huge selling point in his favor.
I feel like I’m falling behind as I try to keep up with the jump and skip of her words. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not really a horror fan.”
Skylar’s eyes go wide, and she actually stumbles back a step, as though my words are literally too much for her to handle. “Don’t worry. We can fix it.”
“Fix what? Me not liking horror movies?”
“Yup. It’s fixable. One hundred percent. We just have to find the right movie. Or movies.”
“I figured horror fans were born, not made.”
“Not always. I didn’t start getting into them until a year ago. I found this old book at a yard sale. The Dual Self in Horror. It was all about how a lot of really old horror movies have all this interesting stuff to say about the human psyche. That’s when I started talking to Joey. I wanted to watch all of the movies from the book, but some of them were hard to track down.” She tilts her head to the side and stares at me thoughtfully. “If you were a character in a story, what kind of story would you want it to be?”<
br />
The question seems vaguely ridiculous, but the expression on her face is so earnest that I think about it seriously before answering. “The kind where the girl slays dragons and fights monsters, I guess.”
She nods like this makes perfect sense. “Why?”
“Because I like the idea of not being afraid.”
As the words leave my mouth, I know that’s not exactly it. It isn’t that the girls in those stories are unafraid—it’s that they push past their fear. They push past their fear and they somehow manage to turn their weaknesses into strengths.
I envy that.
I wait for Skylar to laugh. She doesn’t.
“I like the idea of not being afraid, too,” she admits, and there’s something deep and serious in her brown eyes. She gives her head a small shake and smiles. “People think horror movies are just about gore—and some of them are—but that’s not all they have to be about.” She skips backward, spins again, and disappears around the corner of the aisle.
I follow. I’m thinking about her words and not really paying attention to where I’m going, and so I walk right into her when she comes to an unexpected stop.
I don’t hit her very hard, but I still manage to knock the bag from her shoulder. It falls to the ground and her lip gloss—the same lip gloss she had chased into the staff room of the video store—rolls under a nearby display rack.
Skylar doesn’t make any move to retrieve it. In fact, for the first time since I’ve met her, she stands completely still.
Her attention is focused on two girls at the very end of the aisle. Neither is paying any attention to us. One is on her phone, the other is talking to the pharmacist at the counter.
“Skylar?” I nudge her gently with the corner of my wire basket. The contact seems to spur her into motion. Abandoning her lip gloss, she turns and retreats the way we came, walking so quickly that she’s almost running.
The girl at the counter—a blonde with tortoiseshell glasses—glances up, but Skylar is already out of sight. The girl shoots me a small, curious glance as I set my basket on the floor and crouch down to retrieve the lip gloss, but quickly turns back to her conversation.
My fingers skim dust bunnies and grit before finally closing on the small container. I stand and examine the label: Raspberry S’more. I tuck it into my pocket, next to the bead from my bracelet, grab my basket, and head for the front of the store. Skylar’s basket, still full, sits abandoned by the checkout.
After a few seconds’ hesitation, I empty out the contents of both baskets and fish a Canadian twenty out of my back pocket as the cashier rings everything up.
Skylar is waiting for me outside. When she sees the bags in my hands, a blush darkens her cheeks. “I’ll pay you back,” she says softly.
“Don’t worry about it.” Given that both Jet and Dad are having money problems, I should probably accept the offer, but I feel weird taking Skylar’s money when she looks so miserable.
I almost ask her if she wants to talk about it—the reason she bolted from the store—but then catch myself. The more personal questions you ask people, the more questions they feel like they can ask you in return. And the closer you let yourself get, the harder it is to remember how dangerous friends can be.
I learned a long time ago that it’s better not to let people get too close.
Riley taught me that. I let myself forget, with Lacey, but I’m not going to forget again.
Seven
“EARTH TO CAT.” AIDAN PAUSES ON THE TOP PORCH STEP TO look back at me.
The difference in our heights is accentuated by the fact that I’m two steps down, and as I stare up at him, I realize that I have no idea what he had just been saying, that I can’t, in fact, recall anything he said during the walk home. There had been some story about a kayaking trip, I think. Or strip poker. Or strip poker while stranded on an island during a kayaking trip.
Guiltily, I pull my hand out of my pocket, away from the bead Noah had handed back to me outside the drugstore. “Were you making things up to see if I was paying attention?” I ask, suddenly suspicious.
The corner of Aidan’s mouth pulls up in that uneven grin. “Might have been.” He walks over to the porch swing and sits, sprawling his legs out in front of him.
Out of habit, I reach for my phone to check the time, only to remember I no longer have a phone.
“Don’t worry: we’ve still got thirty minutes before lock out.”
Slightly doubtful, I cast a glance at the door, but then cross to the swing and sit next to him. I’m careful to leave a few feet of space between us. The rusted chains groan in protest as Aidan tries to set the swing in motion. “You know,” he says, “calling this thing a ‘swing’ might be a little optimistic.”
“No kidding. I’m pretty sure it’s been hanging here since the thirties.” Unbidden, an image of Riley fills my head. Orange-and-blue-striped T-shirt. Messy hair. A scab on one knee. Sitting cross-legged on the swing with a checkerboard in front of him. The checkers were a compromise. Riley had tried to teach me chess, but I was a lousy player. I didn’t have the patience for drawn-out strategy, and I hated sacrificing my pawns.
“Hey . . .” Aidan twists a little and leans toward me, his gray eyes darkening. “Are you all right?”
I fully intend to lie to him again, but I must hesitate a little too long because the beautiful boy in front of me does something unexpected. He inches forward—not so much that we might accidentally touch, but enough that I can tell his next words are earnest—and says, “You can tell me if you’re not. I get that we don’t really know each other, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but I have a feeling that you’re the kind of person who’s used to pretending everything is fine.”
“And you think I’m not fine?”
“Name three things that happened in the movie.”
“There was a lot of blood. And screaming. And loud noises.”
“You do realize that just listing off horror movie tropes is cheating, right?”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Admit it, you’ve been somewhere else pretty much all night.”
I bite my lip.
“You really can talk to me, you know,” Aidan says.
“I’ve been thinking about Noah Fraser,” I admit. “Today was the first time I’ve seen him since I was a kid.”
Aidan leans back. “Noah’s a strange guy.”
I ponder this. Noah is only two years older than I am, but that difference seemed bigger when we were younger. He was always so dark and serious—a shadow at the edge of the Fraser house. I remember being a little intimidated by him, but I wouldn’t have called him strange. “What makes you say that?”
Aidan shrugs. “He dropped out of some university in Ontario after his brother went missing. He spends most of his time wandering around town, putting up posters. When he’s not doing that, he hangs out down at the Riverbend, drinking and getting into fights.”
There are three bars in Montgomery Falls. The Riverbend is the one people go to when they’ve been banned from the other two.
Fights would explain the marks on Noah’s knuckles. The rest—dropping out of school and putting up posters and drowning your sorrows—all sounds pretty normal to me . . . or at least it would if it hadn’t been for what he said outside the drugstore. Why keep putting up posters when you don’t want someone to be found? Still, I say, “None of that seems that weird, all things considered.”
“Small town. Lower threshold for weird.” Aidan shrugs again. “Tell me something: Why are you so interested?”
I pry up a flake of peeling paint with the edge of my thumbnail. How many hours did Riley and I spend out here, on this swing, red checking black and black checking red?
“I was friends with Riley.”
“Past tense?”
“Just for one summer. I haven’t spoken to him in years.” There’s something about Aidan that makes him easy to talk to, and so, as the minutes edge closer to midnight, I tell
him about Riley. About how Riley’s parents moved in next door the last summer I spent at Montgomery House. About how neither of us knew anyone, so we got to know each other.
I don’t tell Aidan everything, though. I don’t tell him how Riley and I helped each other or how he made me feel safe.
I don’t tell him about The Book of Lost Things or what happened after that day at the mill.
And I don’t tell him how what happened with Riley left me scared to let anyone else get too close, to let anyone else know about the things I can see and do.
Still, I tell him a lot. More than I normally would. It leaves me feeling off-balance and a little exposed and something else, something I can’t really put my finger on. It’s like talking about Riley opens this door that I’ve been trying to keep shut in my head for a really long time.
It hurts a little, opening that door. Enough that I remember why I spent so long keeping it shut.
“I hung around with Riley and his friends when I first moved here with my folks,” Aidan says, after I’ve finished, “but his mom decided I was a bad influence. She was not happy when I moved in next door.”
“Why?”
“Honestly?” He runs a hand back through his hair. “You can’t tell your aunt . . .”
I make an exaggerated show of crossing my heart. “Hope to die.”
He shoots a glance toward the front door. “A bunch of us were bored one day and hopped the fence at the mill. Someone saw us and called the cops. The others got away, but Riley and I weren’t fast enough. It was my idea, so I took the blame when we got caught. I had to do three months of community service.”
Montgomery Falls is a small town. That Aidan thinks there’s any way my aunt is renting him a room and is somehow unaware of this story is kind of baffling. “What happened to Riley?”
Aidan shrugs. “He’s rich, and I had already told the cops it was my idea. Nothing.”
“He just walked away?”
Aidan looks genuinely puzzled. “What else was he going to do?”
You Were Never Here Page 6
