Everyone was buoyant. Everyone—Lila, Jake, me, and even Max, who sensed the energy in the room and was going with it, speeding around and skidding, snitching kitchen towels and running off.
We ate take-out Indian food. Jake popped open Riley’s bottle of champagne. There seemed to be a little sparring and smoothing between Jake and Lila, as if there’d been a disagreement. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but then I did. Jake wanted to be a producer on the project, but she said no. He was still kind of pissed about it, but she was joking and kissing and tickling him, all the stuff you do with a guy who gets angry.
We were putting the dishes away when Jake said, “You know what we should do tonight? For good luck! We oughta watch it.”
“What?” I asked.
“‘What?’ I can’t believe you just said that!” Jake threw his arms up in disbelief.
I suddenly knew what he meant. Nefarious. The film that made her so famous. The one where she plays a murderous seductress. “Nooooo,” I pleaded.
“That’s not going to boost my confidence,” Lila said. “It’s only going to make me feel old.” But she smiled a little. You could tell she wanted to.
“Aw, come on,” Jake said. He put his meaty hands on her hips.
“Ugh. For the absolutely last time, then,” she said.
I couldn’t do it, even if it was supposed to be some part of the celebration we were having. I didn’t want to sit there being the third wheel, plus a hundred other reasons.
In my room, I got a text from Nicco. I was surprised because he wasn’t supposed to use his phone at work. Tomorrow night, it said. I sent one back: Tomorrow night… I let the dot-dot-dot say the stuff I didn’t: how much I missed him. How badly I wanted to see him. And then I FaceTimed Meredith.
She was supposed to be coming to see me in about four weeks, but right then, she was getting ready to go on a camping trip with her family. They did stuff like that, camping trips, with aunts and uncles and cousins, fishing and boating and being together. It was like witnessing life on an alien planet, but a really nice planet.
She was in the kitchen, and there were big coolers on the counter, ready to be filled the next morning with stuff like the potato salad Ellen was making in the background. Meredith was trying to look at me and I was trying to look at her, which meant we weren’t looking in the camera and could see only each other’s eyelids.
“Smell that?” Meredith said. “Brownies.”
“You’re so mean. Chocolate cruel is the worst cruel.”
“Bo said he’s going to teach me to water-ski, and that I’m going to get up if it kills him.” Bo was her older cousin, who she worshipped. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing! You can totally do it.” On crew, Meredith was one of the bow pair, a position where you had to be technically perfect, and she was. But Meredith always made fun of herself in small ways, as if she weren’t a good athlete, or weren’t smart enough for all the AP classes she was already taking. She was really athletic and hugely smart, but she did those little subtractions to make other people comfortable.
“He said I should go off the dock at first, which sounds terrifying. Hey, my mom’s already worrying about getting to the airport on time when I come see you.”
“Never mind!” Ellen shouted from the back.
“She bought a box of travel-size hand sanitizer at Costco.”
“Hey, you won’t have to buy more until you’re eighty.”
“She thinks I’m going to fall off one of those cliffs you sent pictures of.”
“No way,” I said. “Tell her I’ll guard you with my life.”
“I hear you, Sydney, and I appreciate it!” Ellen yelled in the background.
Meredith told me that Hoodean broke his wrist playing beach volleyball, and then Ellen reminded Meredith about the brownies. Meredith said, “Oh, shit,” and then Ellen told her not to say “Oh, shit,” and then Meredith had to say, “You just said it yourself,” which resulted in some playful shoving. It was like the mother-daughter dream life that maybe 10 percent of the population really had but that you always saw on TV.
“Syd, I better go. I still have to pack for tomorrow.”
We said good-bye. I didn’t tell her about Nicco or the paintings or the car parked in front of the house. I didn’t tell her about the construction guy or Lila’s new film deal or about trying to be friendly with Jake even though he sometimes made me feel weird. I didn’t tell her that every night when I shut my eyes, I could still feel the anxiety and the icy breath of those ghost whispers. What would she think if she knew?
When I hung up, my chest ached. Hiding makes you so lonely. My throat got tight, and tears welled up, and one dropped off my nose, but I hate to cry, so I forced myself to stop.
Lately, I felt like the part of the cliff that had broken off from the large, solid land. Separate. Sliding, and maybe the waters would be deliciously cold, but wow, they were deep and far down. I’d never really been part of large, solid land, but still.
Max abandoned me to trot downstairs, because we smelled popcorn. He loved popcorn. He could catch it in his mouth if you aimed well. I was double lonely then. Full-on 9-1-1 lonely. I wanted the Mom-and-me moment Meredith was having. I wanted the dad loading the camping cooler into the back of the car. I followed Max to the media room.
“Popcorn!” I yelled to warn Jake and Lila that I was coming so I didn’t catch them doing anything I didn’t want to see.
Too late. Jake’s hand was up the hem of Lila’s robe. He moved it quickly when I came in. A half-empty glass of brown liquid and ice sat next to the bowl of popcorn.
“Baby!” Lila said. “Sit down. Come watch.”
I looked at the enormous screen. A younger Lila/Alexa was getting ready in the tiny bathroom of her apartment. Putting on lipstick, pulling up stockings. Wiggling into a skirt with nothing underneath. In a minute, she’d be driving over to Brandon Searing/Leo Garfield’s house, where she’d climb that ladder in his library.
“We’re almost at the best part,” Jake said.
What was I thinking? Loneliness was way better than that. Way. Stick me out on an ice floe for a hundred years. “Never mind,” I said.
“Baby! Where’re you going? You can stay! Come back.”
“Never mind!” I yelled.
“Push pause, would you?” Lila said to Jake. “Syd-Syd!” she called.
“Leave me alone.” I was halfway up the stairs, but I could still hear it.
“Leave her alone,” Jake said.
Jesus, that house. You could hear everything. Including Lila and Jake going at it that night. Having sex, not fighting. Ugh! I don’t even want to think about it. I mean, come on! I just wanted out of there. I felt like I was in one of Lila’s movies, the trapped daughter of a seductress mother. This was another premonition, only I didn’t know it yet.
I pulled on the shorts and tank top that I’d worn that morning, plus a hoodie. It would be cold out there in the dark, up high without any walls for shelter.
No one was parked outside that night. The street was empty, except for a neighbor’s cat, who scurried off to hide under a car when he saw me. It was creepy. Shivery, eerie. But, strangely, I wanted that right then—the nervous thrill you feel in the pit of your stomach. Danger could seem like an answer to loneliness and boredom and restlessness. It could maybe fill hungers that didn’t have names.
Every day, new fragments had been added to the house next door. More skeleton bones; additional rooms growing skyward. The streetlamp cast freaky shadows in there. I walked around in the empty spaces. Here was the living room; here was the kitchen; this was a guest room, probably. On the third floor, up that staircase with no rails, I sat at the edge of what was likely the master bedroom. I hung my legs over, a story higher than last time.
That view was killer. Oh, shit—pardon the word. But the point is, I looked at all of the twinkly lights. I pulled my sweatshirt over my arms against the cold and the darkness. And I wanted IT, IT, IT again—everything, the safety of those rooms, the danger of that exposed height. Like Lila, I wanted to feel protected, but also like Lila, I wanted danger, too. I wanted that as I stood with my toes at the edge of that high-up place and let the sea air swallow me. I wanted to feel alive. To be dangerous. To do dangerous things. Couldn’t I have that?
I sat down. I stared at the moon.
And it sucked, you know. I was angry.
Because only a guy like Shane, with his physical power, knew he could have both. I didn’t have arms like his, and arms like that could be used against me, so I had to be careful. I couldn’t be dangerous whenever I wanted. I would never feel as safe as Shane, or Jake, or even my father likely did. And I understood it then, why we sometimes pick guys like that—to have a set of ruthless arms, even if they aren’t our own.
Sometimes, it seems like your whole world is made for someone else.