A grin spreads. The other kids at school.
No one will be calling me Payback. Not after today.
I hurry upstairs and decide on a sage corduroy skirt and my black, knee-high combat boots. I wish I had something cuter. But I rub on some deodorant, run a brush through my hair, then decide to pull it into a ponytail so it doesn’t get in the way of my face at all.
The doorbell rings with a long drone.
“Piper!” Joel calls. “Todd’s here. I’m out!” The door slams shut, and my feet root into the floor. I didn’t think Todd would be picking me up today. Not after our fight.
I thunder down the stairs and fling open the door. My heart ticks like it’s made of cogs instead of flesh. I don’t know what to expect after I left him hanging yesterday.
Todd’s shaggy curls give him this careless look. He wears a gray jacket over a shirt that looks like someone let a four-year-old loose with a pen on it. “Hey, Pipes, ready?”
That’s it. No mention of last night. No reaction or exclamations. That chunk of depression unruffles itself from where it’s been lodged.
His presence is a reminder of the shoddy day I had yesterday. Of my gigantic failure. The envelope I pictured coming in the mail, announcing my win and my acceptance, will never come now. It’s not Todd’s fault, but he sure picked a crappy time to chew me out about Sierra.
I haven’t bothered to check Facebook at all, either. Not since I deleted my account. I did get an email about the profile, an apology saying they’d taken care of it. That’s that.
I want to ask if he meant what he said, and if he really doesn’t like her anymore. As an alternative, I step onto the porch, and the house shuts the door for me.
Todd doesn’t notice me. Maybe the no-zit thing is in my head and I’m imagining it because I want to be beautiful so badly. I climb into his red pickup. It smells like Cheetos. I lodge my backpack beside my feet and resist the urge to punch the dashboard.
“Chili Peppers are so classic, but my mom just doesn’t get it. They’re not even that old or anything but…” Todd rambles all the way to school, but I tune him out. He didn’t even notice, and he’s not acting like we fought at all. Maybe even without zits I’m still not pretty enough to be noticed.
“You okay, Piper?”
“Huh?”
“I just made a joke about you being a Red Hot Chili Piper. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” Todd pulls into the school parking lot, but all I want is for him to turn around and take me home again.
I’ve seen what I think is a vision into the past, and I can’t tell him. Not after his whole need-to-process speech from last night. And red hot. He can’t think that—he hasn’t even looked at me. I hold my binder to my face, though I’m tempted to smack him with it.
“Hey.”
Two fingers pull the binder away. His brow pinches in concern.
“Look at my face,” I say.
His warm eyes roam. And widen. There’s the look I was expecting back at my house.
“What happened?” he asks, his expression animating the longer he looks. His mouth gradually lifts, and his glance crawls all over me, bringing heat to my cheeks. “You look amazing!”
I tuck my lips between my teeth. “I just woke up and it was all—you know—gone.”
His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat. Our gazes lock, and I’m more aware of myself than ever; everything in me aches to hold him. My hands because I want to feel his skin, his warmth. My chest, to be near his; my back, to have his hands on it, pinning me closer. The pit of my stomach coils, and I distinctly catch him staring at my mouth.
Todd clears his throat and climbs out of the car. I sit there on the gray seat, ridiculously awake to the passage of blood chugging and trembling along my body. Stomach slightly queasy, I climb out, too.
I feel like I’ve grown in size. I stand out, and not in the bad way I’m used to. The people who do notice just stop and stare. Todd keeps regarding everyone but me. He must be looking for Sierra.
“See you at lunch,” he says in his usual way, leaving me at my locker before I can say anything. I slump against the cold metal lockers, surrounded by students but not really seeing them.
There’s never been anything between Todd and me but our friendship and an insane obsession with Pez dispensers and pawn shops until recently—and only on my end. But my pulse rushes, and my head whirrs, bursting with thoughts of him.
Turcott heads toward me. Puke my guts out. I turn away, nearly hitting my nose on my open locker door, desperate to find something to hold my attention other than my books. I’ll just wait for him to pass. Any minute now.
To my alarm, he stops and backs up until he stands right in front of me, stabbing me with those coal black eyes of his. I groan. Of course. I shouldn’t expect him of all people not to notice.
“Hey,” he says. I stare at the industrial brown carpet and hug my binder.
“Need help finding your first class?”
Uhh… If I respond he’ll just use it to tease me. Just like always.
He leans an arm against my locker door. “My name is Shane. What’s yours?”
My head darts up. Is he for real? “Piper, you idiot.”
Recognition settles in his eyes and they widen larger than bottle caps. He looks me up and down, his mouth gaping.
“Whoa, Piper Crenshaw?” Then he repeats it, his tongue between his lips. “Piper freaking Crenshaw.”
I storm past, springing inside with a little jubilation. Not only did Turcott not recognize me, but he thought I was appealing enough to hit on. Sure as the sky is blue, he wouldn’t have given a new girl the time of day unless he had a thing for her.
In greenhouse Coach Morris passes along the handout, and Amy turns to pass it to me. But she does an obvious double take and rips the papers back before I can take them from her hand.
“Oh, Piper.” She slaps a hand to her chest. “You’re like, pretty!”
My cheeks burn as the attention of everyone in the room spotlights on me. I sink lower into my chair.
“Um—”
“No, I mean it,” she says louder. “Your skin is like, clear.”
“You didn’t get the homework done, did you?” I say, just as loud. A few people laugh, including Coach Morris.
The door creaks open, and the unanimous gasp across the room is so thick you can swallow it. Perfect Sierra, runway model Sierra, has red blotches all over her face peeking through a poorly done foundation job. Some spots are caked so thick it makes every bump look like a mountain on her face, and it’s the wrong color. My vision blanks.
“Miss Thompson,” Morris says, ruffling his mustache. “I don’t accept tardies. Feel free to spend the hour in detention.”
Sierra barely lifts her head. Her silky brown hair hangs in sheets on either side of her cheeks. “I have a note,” she tells Morris. Kody Gold peeks back at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m really a human or some otherworldly imposter.
“Geez, Sierra,” says Turcott. “Who hit you with the ugly stick?”
A few kids laugh, and Sierra’s face blotches redder than ever.
I try to concentrate on the handout, but the black print smudges and blurs. One question that’s definitely not on the worksheet in front of me echoes over and over again. It stomps away all the other thoughts.
How?
I wished it—I even dreamed it! Me walking up to Sierra, saying some witchy magic words and touching my face and then hers, transferring my horrification of acne onto her perfect, beautiful façade. But I’m lacking in the witchy magic department, despite what people think because of my house.
Oh gosh.
I cling to the desk to stay upright. My house. Foam fills my brain, and my pulse thrashes at my throat like it’s trying to dislodge my head from the rest of my body. Joel said it only takes care of itself, but I wonder if the house had been behind this. If it could read my mind.
Psycho, that’s what this all is. Psy-cho. I want to break for th
e door. To hide in the bathroom or text Joel and get him to come pick me up. But it would incriminate me on the spot. I’m pretty sure Kody has already figured it out. And if Sierra has enough guts to show her face—my face—I can stick this out, too.
I suck in a deep inhalation through the nose. Calm down. Calm. Down.
Sierra doesn’t look at me. I expect her to whip out a blowgun and start pelting darts at me. But she keeps her head down, doodling on her hundred-dollar capris with manicured fingernails. A vast scratch gapes the front of her left shin. A scratch that looks like…
Trembling, I lift my arm as nonchalantly as possible and unzip the boot on my left leg.
My day-old scratch from the night I collided with Cassie is gone.
“Let me get this straight,” Todd says after I jerk him under the bleachers during P.E. Sound is muted under here, though Mrs. Miller’s whistle blows. “You think you switched skin with Sierra?”
I peer behind me to make sure no one can hear us and quiver in the shade. Sierra and Jordan glare in our direction across the field. Jordan tosses his hands into the air as if upset about something.
“She’s all zitty today. And I’m, well, not.”
Todd kicks the gravel. “I don’t know what’s with you, Pipes, but I don’t believe in all this supernatural garbage. Houses don’t heal themselves. And people don’t switch skin. It’s not possible.”
“You think I’m making this up?” For sure I thought he’d believe this. The evidence is right in front of him. Not to mention what happened with him in my house. I don’t see how he can disregard it. Maybe denial is easier than belief.
“Then what do you think happened, Todd? With my face? At my house?”
“I know you’ve always wanted to be popular,” he says, ignoring me, “and I was trying to help you. But I told you to just be yourself, not to go to these—extremes just to get attention!”
“I’m not trying to get attention!”
“Whatever,” he says, heading back toward the sunlight. “Call me when you’re back to normal.”
“You mean when I’m ugly again?”
He groans and stops, but looks up to the bleachers above us instead of at me. It seems like hours pass before he says, “Piper, you’ve never been ugly.”
“How can you say that when we both know the first time you’ve ever actually looked at me was this morning!”
“You did not just say that.”
“Yeah, well, I did.” Great comeback.
He examines me for a few more seconds as if waiting for me to say something else. Then he scoffs and runs back out to the soccer field toward Sierra, Jordan and the others.
Even covered in zits, Sierra is still more popular than me. I knew he couldn’t just not like her. I knew it.
I should feel happy, but a horrible bulge gnaws inside me. On impulse, I lift my shirt to find the jagged scar near my belly button, left by a pit bull’s teeth when I was four years old. Gone. I shiver. I suppose Sierra has that one now, too.
My head nearly blanks out.
I was sure Todd would believe me about this. But it’s no wonder I’ve kept the house a secret from him for years. Todd thinks real equals provability. Murder is something that can be proven—and in my mom’s case, it was. But not something like this.
If he didn’t believe I switched skin with Sierra, then I know it’s no use to tell him about that Ada girl and her fabulous dress.
I need answers, and Joel said he didn’t know. Something is going on with my house. The basement, the library door. Now my skin and that vision.
“Todd, wait up!”
I stomp out, and nearly crash with a kid finishing a set of hurdles. He stumbles but catches himself before colliding with the turf. The sun shines and I have to squint to see anything after being under the bleachers.
“Sorry,” I mutter in passing.
The kid straightens his socks and grumbles something. I jog toward the grass, ignoring him. Sierra and the others head toward the school, but Todd hangs back, hands on his hips.
“People break out, Pipes,” he says without facing me. “It’s a fact of life.”
“I don’t want to talk about Sierra anymore. I need your help.”
I get the notion that it might not be just my house that has freaky power, but me. I wished this on her. I did this.
If I did it, I have no clue how to reverse it. Sure, I hate Sierra, and I imagined this happening, but I never actually wanted it. First I see Ada, now my skin changes. I scan the events, sorting through to figure out what else changed between then and today. To find what might connect all of this.
“The door. It has to be.”
“What are you talking about?” Todd pivots and squints down at me. Sweat beads around his face.
The sun scorches my neck. “Do you remember playing in the library? You know, before my dad died?”
He folds his arms and huffs, like he wants to get back to getting sweatier. But he doesn’t argue, so I go on.
“You were a pirate, climbing to the second level to save me, and Dad freaked when you used the doorknob as a foothold.”
“So?”
“My dad never let me—anyone!—near that door, and there has to be a reason. He knew! He knew something was up. He knew why we weren’t supposed to go in there. Yesterday when I ditched school, I opened it. And since then, things have gone all wonky. Joel won’t tell me anything. I have to find out for myself.”
“But who else can you ask?” Todd asks, and then shakes his head when he sees my face. “No way. No friggin’ way. You know your dad also forbade you to see her.”
“What other choice do I have?”
The bell rings. “Right now, I suggest you choose going to English.”
I laugh, and he turns away from me. On impulse, I grab his arm. Something electric passes from his skin; it travels all the way up my arm and flurries in my stomach.
“Todd, will you…” I’m asking this. I’m really asking this. I glance across the empty field, to the cars in the lot between us and the school. “You’ll come with me, right? I mean, if I decide to…”
Go to prison.
He doesn’t even blink. “You know I will.”
My mother.
Today is the day I see her.
I avoid Joel as much as possible. I don’t want to risk him asking what I’m up to. I even stayed up in my room instead of joining him for lunch.
I take a slow tour through my parents’ room, sifting through drawers, lying on their bed and staring at the swirling designs in the wooden canopy above. Mom’s clothes still hang in the armoire, and I press my mind, trying to remember her in the pink sweater, the black and white striped dress, the button-up coral shirt with long sleeves. I run a hand down the fabric, dip into the lofty smell of oak now embedded in the material.
I dig through my mind for more memories of her. Something to help brace me for what I’m about to do. For some reason, the only one I can conjure is the fight she and Joel had. And I don’t even know what it was about.
“I’m not your little boy anymore, Mom. And I’m not stupid. I saw it—why won’t you believe me?”
“Just because you think you saw something—”
“Why are you covering for him?”
I wonder what it had been about. What had Joel seen so long ago, and who was Mom covering for? Dad? It had to have happened back when we lived in Shady Heights. And it kills me that she never gave him a straight answer.
“Just because I have answers doesn’t mean you need them on you.”
Whether she wants to or not, I will be getting answers out of her today. I have to.
By the time school ended yesterday, I’d talked myself out of going. Fortunately, Todd met me at my locker, and the sight of him sent my pulse into an unsteady rhythm and gave me courage all at the same time. He told me he had practice and that would have put us too late getting to Shady Heights. The prison probably would have been closed to visitors. So we decided to go this mo
rning.
Mom’s jewelry rests in its case by the dresser. I sieve through the glittering gems and necklaces, trying to imagine times when she would dress up enough to wear them. And I pass the wall of photographs. The same one that stole my attention in the parlor downstairs is also on their wall. The girl in it is Ada after all.
I recognize those almond eyes and her rosebud mouth. My stomach lurches with nausea at the thought of her being forced to go with that Garrett guy. I slam my eyes shut at the influx of images and take several shallow breaths before my phone buzzes.
Be there in 10 , Todd texts.
Here we go.
I slip into my shoes and snatch my purse before plodding downstairs. I make it to the bottom step, and Joel strides through the front door, surprising me. I didn’t know he’d gone anywhere. It’s rare to see him in jeans and a T-shirt, but the casual look suits him.
Only he’s not alone. Of all the people who could follow in behind him, it’s Jordan Warren.
“What’s he doing here?” I say before I can stop myself.
Joel scowls at me and closes the door behind Jordan.
“Cool it,” Joel says. “He’s just here to pick up something for his dad.”
Jordan, wearing a white shirt and jeans and a cocky sneer, struts behind my brother. My feet seem to be connected to a Lazy Susan, and I spin slowly, not stopping until Joel turns the squeaky knob of the library’s French doors. I can’t fathom what Jordan’s dad can possibly need from our library.
My toe catches the edge of the rug. Shivers creep up my back and into my hair.
The door is open.
I’ve been upstairs all morning, and Joel was gone. Neither of us could have opened it—I can’t think who did. The first few wooden steps within are visible across the room, making it all too easy to picture the rest of them climbing up only to be blocked off without leading anywhere.
Joel hasn’t noticed, and I’m too speechless for the moment to say anything. Plus, I don’t want to draw attention to it. The last time one of Jordan’s group was in my house, word leaked about my mom and they created a horrible profile about me. Who knows what a mess he’ll make this time.
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