“Darcy, if this is about Fisher, there’s nothing going on,” I said.
She groaned again and walked farther into her room, tossing a book onto the bed. It flapped closed, and I saw the ancient silver writing, faded, on the cloth cover. Wuthering Heights. Impressive.
“Did you or did you not sneak out of the house to have breakfast with both the guys I like?” Darcy demanded.
I paled. She’d seen Joaquin, too? “It’s not like I—”
“Answer the question!” she fumed.
“Okay, yes,” I stated. “Yes. I did. But do you really think I’m going to go after Joaquin? Or Fisher?”
She flopped down on her window seat, turning her palms up atop her thighs.
“No, I don’t think you’re interested in either one of them. Not really,” she said. “But do you have any idea how this feels? It’s like you’re trying to hurt me. You. My own sister.”
She drew her legs up, facing away from me with forced casualness, as if she were fine and not vibrating with 5,000 megahertz of anger and sorrow. My chest heaved, desperate to just tell her the truth. Desperate to fix things between us however possible.
But I couldn’t. Because if I told her the truth, I would damn her to the Shadowlands. I so wished she’d just perform a selfless act already, so this would all be a done deal. What I wouldn’t give to slap a Lifer bracelet on her wrist and tell her everything. But all I could do was keep my mouth shut and hope that it would happen. And soon.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, quietly. “I guess I’ll just go.”
“Fine,” she spat. “Go!”
I turned on my heel but paused at the door, my fingers curling around the beveled trim.
“But, Darcy, there is one thing you should know,” I said, looking halfway over my shoulder.
She sighed. “What?”
“I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you,” I said. “Never.”
Then I slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
5 souls
I stared at the Scrabble board in the center of the kitchen table, but the letters might as well have been hieroglyphics. My vision blurred in and out. Nothing made sense. Darcy hated me. Joaquin, quite possibly, liked me. But worst of all was Nadia. Clearly, she was determined to turn the town, and especially the mayor, against me. And now she might even be working on Tristan. What if she convinced him? What if she and her angry mob stopped glowering from safe distances and came after me?
“Bam!” my father shouted suddenly, nearly knocking me off my chair. “Quixotic! Q on a triple-letter, X on a triple-word; that’s one hundred and eighty-eight points! Read it and weep.”
I stared at him, trying to pull myself into his present. A present where he was alive and well, devouring ice cream, playing Scrabble with his daughter, and kicking her sorry ass. He licked a drop of chocolate sauce off his lip and smiled.
“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “That was a tad over the top. But you gotta admit…”
He gestured at the board, waiting for me to give him his props.
“Yes, Dad. You are a genius,” I said in a jokingly toneless voice. “Get over yourself.”
I looked down at the makeshift score sheet he’d drawn out for us, two columns labeled R for Rory and D for Dad, and it reminded me of the tally I’d found down at the cave. I wondered what Pete had done with it, where it was now, whether the mayor had seen it.
“Do you want to take a break?” my father asked. “I’m not really sure your head is in this tonight.”
A survey of the board proved him right. My words were stellar little pieces of brilliance like dog, from, and mat. With one word he’d pretty much annihilated my score.
“I guess not,” I told him, leaning back in my chair, feeling impossibly heavy. Outside the window screens, the waves sloshed against the shore, the low tide marking a steady, low rhythm.
“Everything okay, Rory?” my dad asked, his brow creasing with concern. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Not the other world. Just this one, I thought. I gazed across the kitchen table at him, hesitating. Over the past few years I had barely spoken to my father, other than to inform him when I’d be home, that I had a doctor’s appointment, that I needed money for a haircut. It had been forever since my dad had offered to talk.
“Have you ever felt like you could trust someone one day and felt completely opposite the next?” I asked, toying with my tiles on their wooden rack.
He narrowed his brown eyes. “Is this about a boy?”
“Dad!” I said, blushing slightly. “Just answer the question.”
He leaned back as well, mimicking my pose, and thought. “Yes. Yes, I have,” he said at last.
“And? What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, Rory, things aren’t always exactly what they seem,” he said. “So I gave the person a chance to explain and then decided whether or not it was enough for me to trust them again.”
“And? Was it?” I asked hopefully.
He frowned and picked up his spoon, swirling it in the melted remains of his sundae.
“In my case, no,” he said, causing my heart to drop. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the same for you.”
“I know,” I replied.
I balled my hands into fists on the table, stacked them one on top of the other, and brought my chin down on top of them. The seven playable letters in front of me spelled out SPITBLA. My father sighed, gazing out the window to his right.
“Your mother was always so much better at these things,” he said wistfully.
“You’re doing fine, Dad,” I assured him, just as Darcy padded into the room on bare feet, her pajama pants sitting low on her hips. She dumped her own sundae dish into the sink without looking at us.
“Yeah?” my dad asked.
I gave him a small but genuine smile. “Yeah. You’re great.”
He sighed and nodded, as if pondering whether or not he could trust me. Then he sat up straight and dropped his spoon back into his dish.
“Fog’s coming in again.”
I stood up, knocking my chair back, my eyeballs suddenly throbbing. The thick gray mist already covered all the windows, blocking our view of the house next door, squelching all the light. I went to the back door to look out, but all I could see was the swirling cloud. It had moved in faster than I’d ever seen before. My mouth went dry as unadulterated panic seized my heart.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when we hadn’t told everyone yet—not when we hadn’t come up with a plan.
Darcy stepped up next to my dad, who was now on his feet. “Could it be any creepier?”
A sudden crash, like metal trash cans colliding, made all three of us jump. It was followed by a quick, but very real, shout of pain.
“What was that?” my father said, already reaching for the door.
I grabbed his arm and squeezed. “No, Dad! Don’t!”
He ignored me. He yanked open the door, and a few fingers of fog licked at his shoes. Darcy and I looked at each other, and I could tell she was as terrified as I was.
“Hello?” my dad called out. “Is someone out there? Are you all right?”
The reply was a soft, mewling whimper. Like a hurt kitten. Except I’d never seen a cat or kitten on this island.
“Girls, I’ll be right back,” my dad said, fumbling for a flashlight from the nearest drawer. “You stay here.”
“Dad, no. You’re not gonna be able to help. You can’t see anything,” I protested.