“Yeah,” I said, managing to smile as I got out of the car. After she drove off, I stumbled up to the front door. I was vaguely touched by her concern, but all I could concentrate on was the … dream? — No, not a dream, it wasn’t a dream — it was more of a … waking dream.
But in the moment, it all seemed so horribly real.
As I opened the door, I was surprised to feel a rush of relief — the feeling of coming home.
“Willa?” Mom called. She met me in the foyer, looking a little harried.
“Mom,” I said, still dazed. “Do you have a minute?”
She didn’t hear me. “You left your phone!”
“Oh … Did you try to call?”
“Yes.” Her smile was odd, and she spoke more deliberately than usual, enunciating like an actor in a play. “You have a visitor.”
A visitor? I rounded the corner and came in view of the den.
Then I realized what was off about my mother’s voice. It was the tone she’d used two and a half years ago, back when Aiden first started calling the house to ask for me. It was her oho! there’s a boy somewhere in a hundred-foot radius voice.
Wyatt Sheppard was sitting on the couch. He got to his feet when I came in.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Mom said. “My pork chops need me.”
I turned to flash her a no please don’t look, but she was already headed for the kitchen.
I had no choice but to face Wyatt. It was a bit of a shock to see him out of his school uniform, in jeans, boat shoes, and a moss-green sweater. He looked way preppier than a standoffish, murder-obsessed jerk had any right to look.
And way cuter, I thought, and then I mentally smacked myself for thinking it.
“Sorry to just show up.” He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look sorry. “I didn’t have your phone number.”
And yet he somehow knew my address?
“I live three blocks away,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “And I knew where Jonathan Walters’s house was because my mom memorizes all the celebrities in the neighborhood to impress our out-of-town guests. Trust me, great-aunts love to hear about Diana Del Mar.”
I nodded, circling around the back of the couch, to put something solid between us.
Did he know about the notebook? He couldn’t. He had to be here to discuss chemistry or something. Maybe even to apologize for being so rude all week.
“I’m here because I can’t find a notebook that’s really important to me,” he said. “It’s been missing since Monday. I’m extremely concerned about it. I’ve looked everywhere and asked everyone, with zero luck. The last time I definitely remember seeing it was in chemistry class. I just wondered if maybe you noticed it at some point.”
I blinked, paralyzed.
He cleared his throat. “So … did you?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry. What does it look like? I mean, I guess I might have seen it. What color is it?”
“Red,” he said.
“Oh. Then no.”
“Did you see a notebook that wasn’t red?” He tilted his head questioningly, his eyes never leaving my face.
I shook my head. “Nope. No, no notebooks. Except my own. Which is green.”
I was totally kicking myself for not just saying I’d found it on the floor and picked it up to give back to him later. Now I was caught in a web of lies.
I cleared my throat and tried to act normal. “So … what was in it?” A normal person would ask that, right?
He shrugged. “A project I’ve been working on. It wasn’t for school. It was … personal.”
Personal how? Personal like, “I’m a serial killer and that’s my personal notebook about serial killing”?
“Sorry,” I said. “Sounds important. I hope you find it.”
He shook his head. “I’m such an idiot. I should have backed it all up.”
I was afraid to speak, afraid anything I said would give me away.
“I’ll go.” He turned and walked with rounded shoulders toward the hallway, looking so dejected that I racked my brain for a way to spring it on him — Hang on, did you say a RED notebook? Wait, yes. I do have a red notebook. Maybe his relief at getting it back would be so great that he would forget to ask me why I’d lied about it.
But the moment passed, and he was all the way to the foyer.
Just the thought of his leaving calmed my nerves a little. Except, after he opened the door, he swung back and stared at me.
“You’re positive,” he said. “Totally positive you didn’t see it anywhere?”
“Nope.” His eyes brightened, and for a moment, I was almost overcome by panic. “I mean, yes. I’m positive. I didn’t.”
As he stared at me, I realized what it was about him that was so strange — he was so incredibly honest. You could tell just by having a short conversation with him that everything he said was the complete truth.
Which is why the next words out of his mouth almost made me pass out.
“I think you’re lying,” he said calmly.
It was like being blasted by a stun gun. My voice caught in my throat. “What?”
“You’re lying.” He didn’t sound angry, which just made it worse. “I think you know where it is. You might even have it. You can’t even look me in the eye.”
I raised my hand and combed it through my hair.
“And that — touching your hair. Fidgeting. That’s a sign, too.”
I couldn’t stand to look into his wide brown eyes, so I angled my body away from him. “I’d like you to leave, please.”
To my dismay, he moved even closer. “If you have it, just give it to me. It’s nothing to you. Why would you need to keep it? Or did you —” Fear flickered in his eyes. “Do you not have it? Did you do something to it?”
“No!” I said, turning away. “Please leave me alone!”
“I’ve watched you at school,” he said. “It’s not just this. You lie about everything. You’re always lying.”
For a beat, we stared at each other. He was infuriatingly placid. I was petrified.
“Hey, Willa?”
Wyatt and I both turned to see Reed walking toward the house from the garage.
My burning-hot cheeks grew one shade warmer. “Um … hi,” I said to Reed, folding my arms in front of me. “What’s up?”
“Just took Jonathan’s Porsche out to get it washed.” Reed’s hand lightly touched my sleeve as he looked from me to Wyatt, and I thanked God that Marnie had made me change out of the overalls. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted to check with you about something.”
“Great timing,” I said. “Wyatt was just leaving.”
Wyatt gave me a meaningful stare and then walked away. I waited until I heard the clunk of the lock catching on the gate, then sighed and looked at Reed. “What do you need?”
He shook his head, his eyes wide and serious. “Nothing, actually. You looked uncomfortable. I thought I’d give you an out.”
I could have hugged him, but I managed to restrain myself. “Solid,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Who was that? Was he bothering you?”
“Just a guy from school.” I tried to downplay my uneasiness.
Reed glanced toward the gate. “He seemed a little intense.”
“A lot intense,” I said.
A lock of dark hair had fallen down over his forehead. Without thinking, I reached up and swept it back into place. Then we stood in silence for a second. My heart was pounding, for an entirely different reason than it had pounded when I was talking to Wyatt.
“I should go,” Reed said, giving me a quick smile and heading back to the garage.
As soon as I was alone again, the glow of talking to Reed faded, and the horror of Wyatt’s words returned.
If I could have been sucked into a hole in the ground, I would have. Crushed by a falling boulder? Fine. Awesome. Anything but having to go to school Monday with my secrets exposed. On display. The shell I’d spent two years building up around me completely obliterated.