It was so strange to try to remember how I felt about Reed back before I learned what he really was.
I could recall the slow gentleness of his manner, his soft smile, his placid eyes. It was like he’d been two people. Himself, and not himself. And what would have happened if I’d never found out the truth? We might have gone on taking walks and having casual, flirtatious encounters in the kitchen. Sneaking kisses … Part of me even wondered if, without the Bernadette Middleton debacle, he never would have looked at me as a potential victim.
When you thought about it that way, I guess you could say Marnie kind of did me a favor.
I’d have to face Reed again at the trial. I can’t say I was in love with the idea, but I wasn’t scared.
It takes a lot to scare me, I’ve discovered.
When I went back to school two weeks later, everyone on campus seemed to regard me like a stolen relic from some ancient tomb — worth catching a glimpse of, but not worth venturing too near.
Marnie practically glowed from all the attention, though from time to time I caught phantomlike flashes of fear in her eyes. She and I were bound by something deep, something I could read in her expression whenever she looked at me. I had saved her life. But I could tell that she didn’t want to talk to me, or be near me, or generally have anything at all to do with me.
Which was fine — I was done judging Marnie. Everyone copes in their own way. Not just with almost being murdered, but with being alive. With having parents who die, or ignore you. Maybe someday she’d learn that the truth, however uncomfortable it may be, is worth looking for.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
Wyatt stayed by my side every possible moment — before school, during lunch, and after school, when he was allowed to drop me off at the hotel before heading back to another evening of being grounded.
At the end of my first week back, the police finally gave us the all clear to pack up our things. Jonathan hired a professional moving service to take care of it all. By Sunday afternoon, there would be no trace of us left in the grand old mansion.
When I climbed into Wyatt’s car on Friday afternoon, I turned to him. “Can you be late getting home?”
“Not a chance,” he said, then thought for a second and added, “How late?”
“Like twenty minutes?”
He shrugged. “What are they going to do — ground me until I graduate from college?”
“Great,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “Take me to Sunbird Lane, please.”
I have to admit, I kind of loved making that Spluh! expression appear on his face.
Before he could protest, I repeated myself. “Twenty-one-twenty-one Sunbird Lane? Do you need directions?”
He frowned, pulling out onto Crescent Heights and turning right toward the canyon. “Does your mother know you’re going back there?”
The skin on my palms began to prickle. “If I say no, will you still take me?”
“Of course,” he said.
A happy tremor went through me, which was a nice distraction from the anxiety starting to build in my stomach at the thought of being back on the property. Sentimental journal ramblings aside, this was the house where I was tormented and almost psycho-killed by a psycho killer.
I laughed nervously, twisting a lock of hair around my finger.
“What?” Wyatt asked.
“I was just thinking … like, the least creepy thing about this house is that it’s haunted.”
He slowed the car. “Willa, are you sure —”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Please keep driving.”
When we got to the house, there were a few photographers lingering around. But they kept their distance as Wyatt punched the gate code and drove inside.
One of them shouted, “Are you Willa?”
And Wyatt yelled back, “No, she’s Kate Middleton’s cousin Bernadette!”
Stepping into the foyer wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. All the blood was gone, of course. The dining room had been neatly put back together, as if nothing had ever happened in there. There were no huge sheets of plastic or toolboxes full of makeup. No props from the scene that was supposed to end with my death.
I took a long, shuddering breath and stared up at the second floor.
“You all right?” Wyatt asked softly.
“It feels so sad,” I said. “The house feels so lonely.”
“Don’t be lonely,” he said. “I’m here.”
But that wasn’t quite what I meant. I meant that the house herself — of course it was a she — was lonely. Melancholy, like she’d been abandoned.
Don’t worry, I told her in my head. Some weird person is going to buy you and move in and invite tons of people over so they can show off that they live in a house where a serial killer carried out his psycho schemes. Honestly, the person will probably be a jerk, but you won’t know any better. You’re just a house.
You’ll be fine.
We walked in silence up to my room, and my pulse picked up at the sight of my open bathroom door — now there was a room I never needed to set foot into again.
“What exactly are we doing here?” Wyatt asked. He spoke in hushed library tones.
“I’ll explain in a minute,” I said, going into my closet. I reached down, behind the half-empty laundry basket, and pulled out the pink shoe box. I looked at Wyatt. “Fancy a trip to the backyard?”
He shrugged.
We walked past the pool, which was beginning to look a little green from the weeks of neglect — it almost seemed to me like the pool was the house’s face, and she felt sick about what had happened.
I walked over to where the shovel still stood leaning against the trunk of a lemon tree, a few feet from my initial unsuccessful digging efforts.
It dawned on Wyatt, then, why we were there — to finally follow Leyta Fitzgeorge’s instructions and bury the shoe box.
“I have to do this before we leave,” I said. “This stuff belongs here.”
“What if somebody digs it up?” he asked.
“They won’t,” I said, picking up the shovel and starting to dig. In the shady afternoon, it was much easier. And when I started to get winded, Wyatt took the shovel and dug the rest.
We knelt on the ground next to the hole and gently lowered in the box. It felt like burying more than a book and a couple pieces of jewelry (and a bag of salt). It felt weirdly like we were burying Paige, too. And maybe all the other restless spirits who’d swarmed around me for years. And the rest of the Hollywood Killer’s victims.
I wished I could bury the rose necklace, too. But I had to content myself with the idea that, after the trial, it would be as good as buried in the police evidence storage. It didn’t really matter.
I knew in my heart that Paige was at peace.
Maybe she was hanging out with my dad and they were talking about how aggravating I could be.
Wyatt cleared his throat, and our eyes met.
“Are you going to say something?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It sort of feels like I shouldn’t, actually.”
He nodded, then stood up and got the shovel. I sat and watched the dirt cover the pink surface of the cardboard until it was gone. Then, when the hole was level with the ground again, Wyatt patted the sandy soil smooth and tossed the extra into the ravine.
“And that’s that,” he said, helping me to my feet.
I carried the shovel back up to the patio but didn’t bother taking it into the garage — I left it leaning against the back wall of the guesthouse, next to the overturned bucket that had helped save my life. I didn’t want the movers packing it and taking it with us.
I glanced at my phone. I’d texted Mom to say Wyatt and I were stopping for a quick coffee, but somehow we’d been at the house for almost an hour. Wyatt was way later than I’d told him he would be.
“Ready to go?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’ll get you in trouble.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he sai
d. “Honestly, if you asked me to rob a bank with you, my dad would probably be cool with it. He’s a little in awe of you.”
“And of you, too, right?”
He looked taken aback. “What did I do?”
“You did … a lot.”
“Name something specific,” he scoffed.
“Things don’t have to be specific to be important,” I said. “You were part of everything.”
We were standing by the back rail, a few yards away from the pool, looking down at the ravine and the city beyond it.
I felt a chill of loss. I’d found a piece of myself in this house, and now, leaving it, I felt as if I was leaving a piece of myself behind. This would be my last chance to be there. To say good-bye.
“Want to sit for a couple of minutes?” Wyatt asked.
I nodded, my eyes suddenly full of tears.
I sat on one of the wicker love seats and waited for Wyatt to sit in the chair across from me.
But he didn’t.
He sat down right next to me and reached for my hand.
“Willa …” he said softly.
“What?” I asked.
“You almost died,” he said, and on the last word, his voice collapsed into itself.
“That’s what people keep telling me.”
He shook his head in frustration. “Before everything happened, I’d been planning to tell you something. And now I don’t know when I should tell you. Or if I should. Ever.”
I looked up and watched a pinprick of an airplane making its way over the city, toward the airport. “You should,” I said.
As I waited for him to speak, I felt like different parts of me had turned into delicate silk kites that were all floating off in different directions. Weightless.
But instead of answering, Wyatt leaned forward, took my face in his hands, and kissed me softly.
All the pieces of me came back together in a warm, happy rush.
My heart raced, and my skin felt awake under his touch.
Proof that I’m still alive, I thought.
Then we looked at each other. I could have stared into his soft, wry brown eyes for a hundred years.
“I just didn’t know there were people like you,” he whispered.
The weird thing is, I didn’t know there were people like me, either.
I’d thought I was a girl who didn’t belong anywhere. And now, even though I was the same person, I wasn’t that girl anymore. I felt like I belonged — like I had the right to belong — anywhere I went.
“Wyatt,” I whispered back. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” he said, without so much as a millisecond of hesitation.
“The only thing is” — I pulled back — “I’m kind of broken.”
Wyatt’s hand tightened around mine. “I don’t think you’re broken. I like you just the way you are.”
My face flushed, and I leaned into his chest.
“No,” he said, and I could feel the thump-thump-thump of his heart under his crisp white school shirt. “No, I … I love you just the way you are.”
I nodded, even though he hadn’t asked me anything. “Me, too,” I said. “I love you the way you are, too.”
I thought about how hard it had been for me, in the beginning, to be around someone who wouldn’t settle for a thin veneer of lies — someone who wanted either the real me or nothing at all. And as my hand traced a line down his sleeve, I thought about how I could never again settle for anyone who didn’t push me to tell the truth. To face the truth. To live it.
Even when it hurt.
The breeze picked up, and Wyatt wrapped his arm around me. Our bodies fit together like we’d been designed to sit leaning into one another. Missing pieces of a puzzle, two halves of a clue in a mystery.
I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, and I felt the soft canyon wind weave through my hair.
With every Acknowledgments I write (and every annual soul-searching about how to actually spell “Acknowledgments”), I am again reminded that being an author is a journey, not a destination. And it’s a journey that one can’t take alone. So while the people in my life might be getting sick of being thanked by me, I’m just going to keep doing it. (At least until the megalomania sets in.)
Thank you to my husband and my daughter for being the absolute best and most important things that ever happened to me. To my little sister, Ali, for being wonderful. And much love to Dad, Mom, Helen, Juli, George, Duygu, Kevin, Jillian, Robert, Rebekah, Zack, Onur Ata, Jeff, Vicky, and Aunt B.
Thank you to Chelsea DeVincent and the rest of the Soapboxies, who are like a second family to me. And to our amazing extended circle of friends. And to those rowdy lads.
Thank you to Matthew Elblonk (working with you just gets weirder and funnier every year), and to everyone at DeFiore and Company, who I have to assume spend a lot of time and energy keeping Matt in line. And thank you to Holly Chen and Maddie Elblonk, because from what I have been hearing for years on end, you are both fantastic, and it’s time you got your names in a book.
Thank you to my editor, Aimee Friedman, for brutally offing, like, twelve invasive minor characters and otherwise providing such consistently awesome editorial support and input. And making it fun. AND pretending I don’t occasionally make one wish to bash one’s head against one’s desk.
Thank you to the team at Scholastic: David Levithan, Charisse Meloto, Stephanie Smith, Bess Braswell, Emily Morrow, Emily Heddleson, Antonio Gonzalez, Yaffa Jaskoll, Elizabeth Krych, Alix Inchausti, Jody Revenson, Jennifer Ung, Rachel Schwartz, and Larry Decker. You guys are amazing.
Thank you and thank you and thank you to the parents, booksellers, bloggers, teachers, administrators, librarians, and media specialists who make it possible for people to read my books.
And lastly, thank you to my incredible readers. You are, as individuals as well as collectively, the cat’s pajamas.
Katie Alender is the acclaimed author of several novels for young adults, including Bad Girls Don’t Die; From Bad to Cursed; and Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer. A graduate of the Florida State University Film School, Katie now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter. She enjoys reading, sewing, and watching movies. To find out more about Katie, visit katiealender.com.
Also by
KATIE ALENDER
Bad Girls Don’t Die
From Bad to Cursed
As Dead as It Gets
Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer
Copyright © 2014 by Katie Alender
All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alender, Katie, author.
Famous last words / Katie Alender. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: High-schooler Willa has just moved to California with her mother and film director stepfather, and she will be attending a private school — but her real problem is that she keeps seeing things that are not really there, like a dead body in the swimming pool, and her visions may be connected to a serial killer that is stalking young girls in Hollywood.
ISBN 978-0-545-63997-2 (jacketed hardcover) 1. Paranormal fiction. 2. Serial murderers — California — Los Angeles — Juvenile fiction. 3. Stepfamilies — Juvenile fiction. 4. High schools — California — Los Angeles — Juvenile fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories. 6. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) — Juvenile fiction. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Clairvoyance — Fiction. 3. Serial murderers — Fiction. 4. Stepfamilies — Fiction. 5. High schools — Fiction. 6. Schools — Fiction. 7. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A3747Fam 2014
813.6 — dc23
2014008920
First edition, October 2014
Author photo by Christopher Alender
Cover art © 2014
by Larry Rostant
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
Photo credits: PhotoHouse/Shutterstock (Natural red roses background), Henry Steadman/Getty Images (Blood Rose), and Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock (Rose Petals)
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63998-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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