I finally got that side fastened to Dannika’s satisfaction and moved to the other end. This one was even harder to work with because the weight of the hammock kept pulling down the rope. Allison did her best to hold it up, but it was still a pain to get it tied right. Dannika’s laughter spurred me on, though, and with my jaw firmly set I pushed through and finished it off.
When I stepped back to look at the results, it seemed okay. That was basically how it had looked at the old house, anyway.
“Is that it?” Allison asked.
“I think so.”
“Sweet!”
The hammock stretched a little as she hopped into it. I stepped around the tree just in time to see the far rope spring loose to dump my friend onto the ground.
“Hey!”
Dannika exploded in laughter, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to join her or go jump up and down in frustration on the loose rope.
“Oh, Allison,” Dannika gasped. “You should see your face right now.”
I helped Allison to her feet and dusted her off. “Maybe I should wait until Dad can do it.”
A deeper voice came from behind me. “You look like you could use some help.”
Allison gasped, and with a startled squeak I spun around. Walker was watching us from over the fence, his eyes dancing while an amused smirk played on his lips.
“Hang on,” he drawled. “I’ll be right there.”
Chapter Six
Before I could say anything, Walker had disappeared. The three of us traded glances, unsure of what to do, but only a few seconds later our gate opened and Walker stepped into my yard. At the sight of him my heart jerked and sputtered like Dad’s old lawnmower. He wore cutoff denim shorts with a faded concert t-shirt, and his dark hair was mussed and spiky on top. It should have been against the law for him to look so hot without even trying.
“I wasn’t spying on you or anything,” he said, shooting me a sidelong look from under his sooty eyelashes that made me wonder if maybe he’d seen me watching him, “but I couldn’t help overhearing. So what’s the problem, Delaney?”
I went all fluttery inside when he said my name, and my vocal cords stopped working. Weakly I waved a hand towards the end of the hammock which had come untied.
“Ah, okay,” he said. “That’s something I can work with.”
I glanced down at my ratty old pajamas and wished the earth would open up and swallow me before I died of embarrassment. Fortunately Allison and Dannika were too busy staring in stunned surprise at my neighbor to notice my blush.
Walker fiddled around with the ropes on both sides, gave the hammock a couple of experimental yanks, then turned back to me with a shrug.
“Only one way to be sure.”
He swung nimbly into the netting and stretched out, letting his arms dangle over the sides. The nylon creaked under his weight, but this time the ropes held fast.
“I think that will do it,” he announced with satisfaction. “We just need one final test.”
He crooked a finger at me, and the whole world seemed to shrink in on the two of us. My mouth went dry as dust, and I could feel my heart pounding harder and harder until I thought it was going to re-enact that chest-burster scene from Alien. I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow my feet moved on their own until I was standing right by the hammock.
Walker didn’t give me any chance to react. He reached out and caught my waist in his hands then effortlessly lifted me up. The world swung about and suddenly I was lying on top of him looking down into his eyes, falling forever into those bottomless wells of blue. It felt—perfect. Like everything in my life had been leading up to that one moment. Like I was home.
“See?” he whispered. “I think it’s safe.”
Oh, no. That was the one thing that it definitely was not. I would never be safe around Walker, because my heart would betray me every time. Panic squeezed at my chest, making it hard to catch my breath. I couldn’t fall for him. I couldn’t.
My expression must have mirrored my thoughts, because he gave a soft huff of laughter before gently lifting me out of the hammock and setting me back on my feet. My knees were so wobbly when I landed that I’m not sure how I managed to stay upright.
Walker rolled out of the hammock and beamed a cocky, satisfied grin at the three of us. “If you need any more help, just let me know.”
Before any of us could say a word in response, he vanished back through the gate.
The moment he was gone my friends turned in unison to stare at me, their eyes wide in disbelief. Dannika drummed her fingernails on the plastic arm of her chair as she inspected me, her lips drawn up in a pouty frown.
“I think someone has been holding out on us.”
Allison agreed with a sharp nod. “I think you’re right.”
I held up my hands. “I swear to you, this is only the second time I’ve ever had anything to do with him. When he came over to drop off Kiki we talked for about ten seconds on my porch. Now this.”
Dannika’s frown deepened. “Why do I find that hard to believe?”
It was hard to think straight, because my brain was still a jumbled mess from being in such close proximity to Walker. After what had just happened, though, even I couldn’t maintain that there was nothing going on with him. I had no idea what it was that he was up to, but that he was up to something was no longer up for debate.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I insisted. “Maybe he’s just messing with my head because he can. Or maybe he’s got some scheme to use me to make London jealous. I don’t know.”
“That could make sense,” Allison admitted. “If Walker convinces London that he and Delaney have something going on, Laney living right next door to him would have to drive London crazy.”
Dannika still looked skeptical. “Maybe. He didn’t look like he was acting, though.” Her eyes bored into mine. “We’re going to be out of town for the next two weeks. You’re not going to accidentally forget to tell us if anything happens while we’re gone, are you?”
“No!”
“You’ll text us every single day, and if anything else happens at all between you and Mr. Sexy Pants, you’ll let us know. Right?”
I nodded eagerly, hiding my crossed fingers behind my back. “Absolutely.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go see if there’s any of that pizza left.”
Dannika’s mom came by to pick them up around lunchtime so they would have time to finish packing before they got on the road. Two weeks without them was going to bite, but at the same time I was kind of glad they were going. I didn’t know what this thing with Walker was all about, but I knew that I didn’t want to dig into it while the two of them had me under a microscope.
Most likely he was just playing me, teasing for the fun of it to see what kind of reaction he’d get. If that was the case, I wanted to be able to figure it out and get past it without my friends’ well-meaning interference and nagging advice making things harder. And if that wasn’t it…
Well, what else could it be? I shied away from thinking about the look in his eyes, the closeness of his lips as he’d held me in the hammock. Being so close to him had left me on the verge of melting into a puddle of Walker-worshipping goopiness, and that worried me. I couldn’t trust myself to be objective about anything where he was concerned. I needed to talk to someone else who might be able to offer some real insight into what was going on.
Molly had said that she talked to him sometimes. That sounded like a good lead to follow up on. I’d take her up on her invitation to go by later and watch some Walking Dead, and try to pry a little information out of her while I was there.
I waited until after dinner then went across the street, my nerves jittery from wondering if Walker was watching me from his house—as if he would want to spy on me! Even though I knew better, it made me scurry up onto Molly’s porch so I could get out of sight faster.
Her doorbell rang with a deep, pleasant chime like an old grandfather clock. It was warm a
nd welcoming and about as far as you could get from the expiring duck noise ours made. A pretty, blonde woman who looked like an older version of Molly opened the door and smiled down at me.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Mrs. Powers. I’m Delaney—we just moved in across the street. Is Molly home?”
“Yes, come in. She’s in the game room.” She pointed towards a hallway that led into the heart of the house. “Just go down the hall, and when you get to the end it’s on your left.”
“Thanks. Nice to meet you.”
She beamed at me like I’d handed her a winning lottery ticket or something. “It’s nice to meet you, Delaney.”
It was baffling until I remembered that Molly didn’t have many—any?—friends at school. Had she had one single friend come by her house since they’d moved in a year ago? Just thinking about that made me sad, and I decided right then that if Molly wasn’t going to have a lot of friends, she was going to have at least one good one.
As I walked down the narrow hallway, I couldn’t help but notice how much nicer Molly’s house was. It was every bit as old as ours, but it hadn’t been neglected and left to decay for years. Even better, it didn’t give off that creepy vibe that I got every time I set foot in our house. It was almost enough to give me hope that by the time Dad and Mom got done with their renovations our place might just be livable.
When I got to the end of the hallway I heard voices. Molly’s mom hadn’t said anything about her having company, so I stopped to listen.
“He’s up on the second floor. Can you see him? No. He’s shooting out of the left window. You can just barely see him, but he’s there.”
It was Molly’s voice, but harder and with a strange edge to it. Curious, I tiptoed around the corner and peered into a darkened room that had a big television mounted on the wall facing towards me. The scenes on it looked almost like the news shows Dad watched sometimes about the Middle East, with people in camouflage outfits moving warily down a deserted street with bombed out buildings on either side.
Molly’s voice rose sharply. “Quinn, he’s going to shoot you. Get back to cover now.”
A moment later, one of the figures on the screen jerked and fell backwards.
“Idiot,” she muttered. “Oh, well. I warned him. Jason, you and Trent pin that guy down. I don’t care how much ammo you have to burn through, just make him keep his head down. I’m going to work over to that dumpster and see if I can line up a shot.”
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw Molly sitting in a stuffed chair with her back to me. She wore a headset over her blonde curls and had some kind of controller in her hands.
“Okay guys, keep pouring it on. I just need a couple more seconds…”
She leaned to one side in her chair, almost as though she was peering around a corner or something.
“There,” she whispered. “Almost… Almost… Boom. Headshot.”
A man I could barely see tumbled back into the shadowy recesses of the upstairs room where he’d been hiding. I wasn’t sure what game Molly was playing, but it was hardcore and apparently she was good at it.
I stepped inside the room. “Molly?”
With the headset on she didn’t hear me. “Let’s clear the building. Jason, you take point and we’ll cover you. Dan, watch the streets behind us. I don’t want to get flanked by these guys again.”
When she shook her head and stretched, I tried again more loudly. “Hey.”
Her head swiveled towards the doorway, and her face lit up with a smile when she saw that it was me. “Oh, hi! What’s up?”
“I came over to see if you wanted to watch some Walking Dead, but it looks like you’re busy. I can come back some other time.”
“No, it’s fine. Hang on for just a few minutes and let me finish this up. It won’t be long, I promise.”
Interested despite knowing nothing about gaming, I sat down in one of the other chairs and watched her play. There were four of them on her team, not counting the guy who had gotten killed already. All of the others followed Molly’s orders as she guided them through the wrecked town.
She was like a completely different person here, calmly giving instructions and keeping track of everything going on at once. I couldn’t understand how she did it, because I was so confused that I could barely keep up. This was the girl that the whole school made all the dumb blonde jokes about? It didn’t make any sense.
True to her word, less than ten minutes passed before she told the other players goodbye and shut off the game. As she was signing off I caught her screen name—Valkyrie.
“So you’re a gamer, huh?”
“Yeah. When I’m not at school, this is usually what I’m doing.”
“I never would have guessed.”
Molly gave a sad little laugh. “You or anyone else.”
“Huh? They don’t know who you are?”
“No. They just know me as Valkyrie. See, I have really, really bad social anxiety,” she explained. “I can handle one-on-one with people I feel comfortable with or if I work really hard at it, but I can’t deal with groups or strangers. At school I mostly just shut down. It’s too much to cope with.”
I nodded, beginning to understand. “That sucks.”
“With this,” she said, waving a hand at her gaming system, “I don’t have to deal with people face to face, so it’s a lot easier. At least it’s better than being completely cut off from the rest of the world.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Molly shrugged. “Whenever I move to a new school it takes forever to get comfortable again. Since I’m quiet and never talk or answer questions in class, people tend to assume I’m stupid. It’s easier to just go along with them, because that way no one expects anything from me and they usually leave me alone. I like it that way.”
“But you came over to my house without knowing me.”
“Like I said, I can do one-on-one if I try really hard. You’ve always seemed nice at school, and having you right across the street was too much of a temptation. I wanted to talk to you.” She offered me a smile that was suddenly shy again. “So, how about watching some WD?”
She had the two newest episodes on her DVR, and while she skipped through the commercials I fished for information about my neighbor.
“So, Walker came by again today,” I said, attempting to sound casual.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh?”
“I was trying to put my hammock up in the backyard with Allison and Dannika, and we were having trouble. He heard us talking and came over to help.”
“Well, I told you he was nice.”
“You didn’t tell me he was some kind of super Boy Scout. That’s twice he’s been over in the two days since we moved in.”
“I don’t know that I’d exactly describe him as a Boy Scout.”
“Then maybe he’s trying to earn some good karma for all the girls whose hearts he’s broken.”
Molly snorted a laugh. “In that case he’s going to have to be over at your house to do a good deed three times a day every day.”
And wouldn’t that just be awful?
Together we watched both episodes, and I found myself liking Molly more all the time. She had a wicked sense of humor that kept us laughing the whole time I was there, but she was also a genuinely sweet person. It was a shame about her anxiety, but when Dannika and Allison got back I intended to try to ease her into our group. I knew that she and Dannika especially would hit it off—well, at least if Dannika backed off of her matchmaking crusade.
Afterwards I stuck around for a while longer while she played another online game. I was past being surprised at her, and when she turned out to be notorious in this game for her deadly skills and ruthlessness somehow it just made me more proud to think of her as a friend.
That night I traded a few texts with Allison and Dannika, but they were already all about their vacation and the cute boys they expected to meet, and so I kind of felt like an afterthought. I wished tha
t I’d gone with them so I could meet some of those boys, too. But then I remembered Walker, so close that I could practically reach out and touch him, and stopped wishing quite so hard.
While I’d been over at Molly’s the cable guy had finally gotten us hooked up, so I had internet again along with being able to watch television in the living room. I plunked down on the couch and channel surfed for a bit, then went to my room and browsed through my favorite sites and my friends’ social media pages. Nothing would hold my interest, though, and my attention kept wandering. Again and again I found myself wondering what Walker was doing, just a couple of thin walls and a few feet away.
As though in response to my curiosity, the murmur of low voices penetrated into my room. It scared me at first, because it was almost midnight and my parents and Shelly were all asleep. The sounds were faint, but when I craned my ears they were definitely voices and seemed to be coming from Walker’s yard.
I’d been fighting the urge ever since I got home from Molly’s. I’d sworn that I was going to stop the whole Peeping Tom routine, but even as I berated myself I set my laptop down and went to my window.
As my fingers gripped the edge of my curtains, I realized that I ought to turn off the lights so no one could look up and see me standing there. The thought of being alone in the dark in my creepy new room at midnight took that idea right off the table, though. Maybe there weren’t really any ghosts in the house, but I wasn’t quite ready to risk it. If there were, I didn’t intend to give them a chance to grab me as soon as the lights went out. The worst Walker could do if he saw me was humiliate me. I figured ghosts could probably do a bit worse than that.
When I moved closer to the window frame and peered cautiously out, the voices got a little louder. It wasn’t possible for me to see much of anything, though, because the fence cut off my view from where I was standing. Slowly I inched my way over until I could make out two figures reclining on the deck chairs by Walker’s pool. In the dim light I couldn’t tell who they were, although I strained my eyes trying. Was it Walker and London? Or maybe his parents?
A Little Bit Haunted Page 4
