Wyatt looked perplexed. “It would be better if she burned the house down next week?”
I nodded. “Much.”
“We don’t have to mess with the actual ghost at all,” he said. “I was thinking more along the lines of trying to talk to kids from Paige’s high school, or going back over the police report from her death….”
“Oh,” I said. “Then knock yourself out.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to help?”
“Sure I will,” I said. “I’ll be home with the fire extinguisher at the ready.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Listen,” I said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when Paige has something to say, she’s going to find a way to say it. At some point she’s going to let us know what the next steps are. I can’t afford to go looking for trouble this weekend.”
“We’re not looking for trouble,” he said, sounding a little defensive. “We’re looking for answers.”
“The answers we get are always troublesome,” I said. “Do whatever you want, but I can’t play until next week, okay?”
Wyatt pushed his laptop a couple of inches farther away from himself, which I took as a sign that he agreed with me, even if he didn’t like it.
We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Wyatt flipped his notebook open. “Why would Paige Pollan’s ghost be at your house? Yes, she was a fan of Diana Del Mar,” he mused. “But enough of one to be drawn to her house when she died?”
“That’s not even half of it,” I said. “I mean, the script, the lines she writes on the walls, ‘Henry’ … that all ties back to Leyta Fitzgeorge, and the murder investigation.”
“Only Paige wasn’t murdered,” Wyatt said. “She committed suicide.”
“Well, maybe she was the murderer,” I said, feeling a sudden chill of fear.
“But there have been two more murders since she died,” he said.
I relaxed.
“Although …” Wyatt thumbed back through the pages. “Maybe the ghost is murdering people now.”
I threw a sweet potato fry at him. “Do you mind?”
He looked up at me, shaking his head. “Don’t you want to figure out the truth?”
“Wyatt, I’m staying home alone this weekend,” I said. “If you put that kind of thought in my head, and then Paige gets excited and decides to give me a little haunted-house performance, I will die of fright. I promise that I’ll give it everything I have on Monday. But I can’t do this today.”
He made a face, but he shut the notebook and slipped it into his bag.
“Let’s try something else,” I said. “Like talking about something other than murders and ghosts and dead people.”
He folded his arms on the table and rested his chin on them. “I don’t know about anything else.”
“You don’t like music?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mostly listen to country —”
“No,” I said. “Stop. You do not.”
“What’s wrong with country music?” He sat up. “Marnie got me into it.”
“That’s awesome,” I said. “If I buy you a giant belt buckle, will you promise to wear it?”
He gave me a withering glare. “Never.”
“Wyatt the cowboy,” I said. “Like Wyatt Earp!”
“He wasn’t a cowboy,” Wyatt said. “He was a sheriff.”
“All right, so we’ll get you a big, shiny star.”
“Willa,” Wyatt said, a hint of warning in his voice. But there was a tiny smile on his lips. Then his eyes narrowed. “Why are you in such a good mood?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Because Marnie’s not here?”
I shook my head. It had never been about Marnie. It had never been about Wyatt, either. Or Mom. Or my dad. Or Reed, or any one thing, really. Not even the ghost. Those things were like individual curtains blocking back the light in a very dark room.
But suddenly I was pushing them all aside. And each situation was letting in a tiny bit of light.
“I just think things are looking up,” I said. “Is that insane? To expect that you’re going to be … like … okay?”
“That’s not insane at all,” Wyatt said. “That’s what we’re all aiming for, right?”
I nodded, smiling. “What about books? Do you like to read?”
“Of course I like to read,” he said.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Obscure Russian philosophers?”
“I’m more into Tom Clancy. Military stuff. Strategy, politics. What do you read, Us Weekly?”
I sniffed haughtily. “Not my taste.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You probably prefer the British tabloids, Bernadette Middleton.”
“Could you not?” I groaned. “That was all Marnie’s doing.”
“Yeah, it felt like Marnie. It had her stamp on it.” He looked down at his half-finished sandwich. “But … you, um, you did look like a movie star in that picture.”
“Stop mocking me,” I said, blushing.
“I’m serious. You were totally believable. You looked fresh faced and —”
“Fresh faced?” I repeated. “Weirdest compliment ever.”
He shot me an affectedly arrogant look. “Maybe I’m not trying to compliment you. Maybe it’s an observation.”
“All right, Sherlock Holmes. Thanks for your analysis.”
“Fine.” He sat up straight and looked at me. “You looked beautiful in that picture.”
Oh.
I blinked and glanced down at the table, collecting my thoughts and feelings, which were scattered all over the place.
“Hey,” I finally said, nudging him with the side of my shoulder.
When I looked back up, Wyatt was looking at me. Our eyes met, and I felt a zing! of energy move through me.
“Yes?” he said softly.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He looked back down at his lunch and picked up an apple slice. “Be careful. Your face might stick like that.”
Stick like what? I wondered.
And then I realized I was smiling.
Wyatt dropped me off after school. But first, we stopped at the grocery store, where I stocked up on the kind of food Mom never allowed in the house — frozen pizza bites and macaroni and fake cheese, a whole box of those little chocolate cupcakes with icing squigglies on top, and a two-liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch. I might be dead of malnutrition by Monday, but at least I’d spend my last weekend in carb-induced nirvana.
The house was blissfully calm and still, with no sign of Paige. I began to hope this might be the start of one of her quiet periods, leaving me with a week or two of semi-normalcy. Maybe all she’d wanted was for someone to know she was here.
After arming the alarm system, I curled up in front of the TV with a two-pack of cupcakes and found a marathon of Pageant Tots. Four hours later, feeling like I could use a good brain-scrubbing, I went to the library to look over Jonathan’s DVD collection.
It occupied about sixty linear feet of shelf space and contained basically every movie I’d ever heard of, organized in alphabetical order.
The arrangement was so perfect that it was totally obvious when a movie had been removed. There were a few spots where movies were missing — Vertical Limit leaned on Very Bad Things. Heat and Dust rested on Heaven.
I began to get a strange feeling in the deepest pit of my stomach.
I drifted to the B’s.
Birdman of Alcatraz. Then a space. Then Birdy. In the K’s, I found A Kiss Before Dying. Then it skipped to Kiss the Girls.
Okay, no.
No, no, no, no.