The kind of dream you don’t wake up from.
Suddenly I didn’t even feel the cold. “Paige saw the script,” I said. “Somehow she knew that line.”
“It makes sense, in a way,” Wyatt said. “We know she was a fan of Diana Del Mar.”
“But that line,” I said. “What are the odds?”
“The odds of any of this happening are astronomically slim,” he said. “I don’t think we should worry about odds anymore.”
I turned to him. “You said you found that. How is that possible? I want the truth about where you get your information.”
“Right. That’s why I brought you out here.” He cleared his throat nervously. “My dad’s a crime-scene consultant for the LAPD. Sometimes I take his security pass and access evidence storage. And occasionally I look at investigation information online.”
“You … what? Is that even legal?”
Wyatt sat back uncomfortably. “Not by the remotest stretch of the imagination.”
“Does your dad know about this?”
Wyatt shook his head, his lips pursed.
“How do you get in?” I asked.
He took a second to answer. “I know the guy who controls the access.”
“You know the guy who controls the access …?” I said. “Wait, do you mean you bribe the guy who controls the access?”
Wyatt sighed deeply. “He knows I’m not going to abuse the information I find. Listen, it’s not immoral — I’m not even sure it’s unethical. It’s just illegal. Don’t judge me, I don’t want to hear it.”
I shook my head, shocked. Perfect, precise, by-the-book Wyatt, breaking into the police archives and accessing information illegally.
Okay, it was pretty scandalous, but it was also kind of … audacious and cool.
Imagine that.
“That’s why you have to write everything down in your book,” I said.
He nodded. “When I go there, I leave my phone at the desk, and I can’t photocopy anything because it would show up on my dad’s records. So I copy it all out by hand.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to picture it. “And your dad has no idea?”
“None.” Now Wyatt looked extremely unhappy. “If he found out, he’d … I don’t even know what he’d do. Can we go back to talking about Paige, please?”
“Sure,” I said. “She obviously knew about the movie, right? Is it so hard to believe that she would use the line in her suicide note? If she liked Diana Del Mar enough …”
“She must have liked her a whole lot,” Wyatt said. “Diana Del Mar was found dead after taking sleeping pills and falling asleep in a full bathtub. Paige Pollan died the exact same way.”
“Like … in tribute?” I shivered, not because of the cold.
Wyatt frowned and didn’t answer.
“It’s not right,” I said. “I know there’s something we’re not connecting.”
“But we’ll keep working on it.” He looked at me, his expression somber. “Remember when you asked me when I’d be done, and I told you I felt like a piece was missing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”
“Well … I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like we found the missing piece. We just need to figure out how it fits into the puzzle.”
Mom spent the afternoon rushing around the house, packing for Palm Springs as if they were going on a three-month trek to Siberia and not a three-day trip to a city two hours away from home.
I racked my brain for a way to tell her that I’d been uninvited from Marnie’s house, but the right moment never seemed to arrive.
So instead, I came up with a foolproof plan, which was: Don’t tell her.
After all, I was seventeen years old, practically an adult. Plenty of people my age stay home alone all the time. And I wouldn’t even be truly alone — I had the ghost, right?
I was in my room trying to catch up on English Lit reading when there was a light knock on my door.
“Willa?” Mom said.
“Yeah, come in.”
She carried in a small empty suitcase. “Did you pack yet? I thought you might want to use this.”
Oh, right. As far as she knew, I was going somewhere. “Thanks,” I said, taking it and setting it on the floor next to the bed. “Are you excited?”
She smiled, shrugging. “I guess. I feel bad for leaving you. Maybe we should have done a familymoon.”
“First of all,” I said, “familymoon is a totally disturbing word, and an even more disturbing concept. Second of all, go have fun. Relax. Stop worrying about me for a couple of days.”
“I’m a mother,” she said. “I know it’s a cliché, but I’ll never stop worrying about you.”
I made a face. “Do I seem that helpless?”
“Oh, Willa, of course not.” Mom reached over and rubbed my back, like she used to when I was a little girl. “You’re the opposite of helpless. You’ve been growing so much lately. But … they say when you become a mother, part of your heart walks around outside your body.”
“That would be me, huh?” I asked. “The mobile segment of one of your bodily organs?”
She shrugged. “I’m not going to apologize for loving you more than anything else in the world.”
I leaned my head on her shoulder. “You really think I’m growing?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t you feel it? Since we got here, you’ve developed this … I don’t know, this aura of confidence.”
“That’s totally ironic,” I said, “because the stuff that’s happened to me here is so non-confidence-aura-making.”
“You’ve had a hard time at school?” Mom asked, sounding slightly heartbroken.
I didn’t answer.
“But, honey, don’t you see? Even if it’s tough now, those are the things that are making you stronger. Facing difficult circumstances. Getting through them. And look, you have Marnie — and you’re friendly with Reed — and you’re coming out of your shell a little.”
I was incredibly glad that we were sitting next to each other so she couldn’t see how red my face turned when she mentioned Reed.
She sat up and gave her hair a little shake. “I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your father would be, too.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Stop. You’re going to make me cry.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a drama queen.”
“We’re both drama queens,” I said. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
She stared out the window. “I guess you’re right. Poor Jonathan, having to live with us.”
“Poor Jonathan? What about poor you? And poor me? Why is Jonathan the only one whose suffering is considered legitimate?”
Mom sighed. “That’s not what I meant —”
“I’m tired of feeling bad about everything,” I said. “And you should be tired of it, too.”
Mom shrugged. “I feel selfish. I wanted to marry Jonathan — you didn’t get a say in that. And then you got dragged out here, also without a say. And now that I’m here, honestly, I don’t even know what to do with myself all day.”
I looked at Mom, who was staring at the floor. “Really?” I asked her softly.
“Yeah,” she said. “And I know I should go back to work, but what if I can’t get a job? What if I’m not good enough?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “Of course you’re good enough. You think the people here are so special? They’re normal people. You’re probably smarter than ninety-nine percent of them.”
Her left cheek dimpled, the way it always did when she was trying not to smile.
“Start applying,” I said. “You’ll get something right away. Or you can have Jonathan call in some favors.”
She laughed. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Mom,” I said. “He married you. He puts up with your nutso daughter. You think he won’t make a few phone calls, if it would make you happy?”
She sighed. “I just wish I knew how long it would take for me to feel like myself again.” Suddenly, she grabbed her head with both hands. “Like this! I mean, how did I end up blond? I swear, Willa, sometimes I look in the mirror and it’s like I don’t even recognize the person looking back at me.”