Tighter (Page 26)

“You’re nothing …” my whisper catching sound as we absorbed each other with full knowledge of who the other was, but this wasn’t really happening because I was sleepwalking and all I needed to do to end the nightmare was to wake up, wakeupwakeup Jamie. Backing out, stumbling, my mind urging me wakeupwakeup, as the edges of my conscious mind went curling, burning up in the fire, and then everything went black.

SIXTEEN

“Jamie.”

I opened my eyes. Bright, blue and gold day. Hard shark eyes and hair like frizzed gray rope. Connie was peering down on me. My head throbbed. My neck, my back, ouch. Where was I?

“Look at the time. Look!” She tapped her wristwatch. I blinked. Almost eleven. “I thought you were lollygagging in your room. Then Itha went to check up on you. Thee thaw your bed made up. But I’d heard thome type of motorthycle in the drive latht night. The Brookth boy, I figured.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I looked around the box butheth and hydrangea, in the drive, under the portth … thecking if you might not have made it all the way in. But the cat dragged you all the way up here, it theemth. Get up, now. The party ith over. Itha went off with her friend Hannah for the day. Hannah’th mother left you a note. It’th downthtairth.”

The slow roll of my livening mind began piecing together that I was on the third floor. Connie must have thought I’d passed out drunk here.

I rolled up, blinking, into a thin patch of sun. I was still in my sundress. Last night flooded back. My eyes darted to the empty hearth, the bed. Which was stacked with blankets and quilts.

Dear Lord. Was that what I’d seen? A pile of blankets?

Connie followed my glance. “I’m thorting the winter clothet,” she said. “Little project I began yethterday. Get up.”

Faltering onto my feet, crossing the room, I held the wall briefly as the floor swayed and tipped. Connie tsked. But I had to know. I reached the fireplace and put my hand flat to the hearth. It was cold. “There’s fresh ashes in the fireplace.”

Connie looked annoyed. “No. I thwept them all when I took out the thquirrel.”

“But look.” I pointed. “Fresh ashes.”

Connie crossed to see. Stooped and traced her finger in the ash. “Itha went through a time when she burned candy wrapperth—getting rid of the evidenth. Lookth like thee might have thneaked back to her old bad habith. It’th only half her fault, in my opinion, what with all that candy they thell over at the Mud Hut. But you thould keep a better eye on her, Jamie—thee’th got a real thweet tooth.”

“Right, sure.” Everything ached, and I couldn’t deal with Connie and her easy explanations right now. I scrambled up and brushed past her, down to my room. I was starving and bleary. The hot shower did some good, and I decided to go cold turkey on the pills today; I wasn’t feeling nearly stable enough to risk taking an extra-wrong one, with all of its freaky consequences.

I bypassed the hair dryer to get breakfast: two full bowls of cereal plus the fruit smoothie that Connie had placed in the fridge. I stepped out onto the porch to drink it.

The light of day made order of last night’s chaos.

What had I done? Okay, run through it, Jamie. I’d taken a sleeping pill. I’d mixed it with a tiny bit of alcohol. I’d hallucinated and become disoriented. I’d told Sebastian a lot of loony, wild stuff—but I could have told him worse, and I didn’t. Then I’d gone to sleep and I’d had a nightmare, which caused me to go wandering around the house in a semi-sleepwalking fit of temporary madness in which I’d seen what I thought was Jessie and Peter, but which had turned out to be a stack of laundry.

As for those ashes, Isa easily could have burned some candy wrappers. I’d had to monitor some of her candy-buying sprees at the Mud Hut before; it was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Milo was on the front lawn, bare-chested and juggling an assortment of objects. I knew where he’d gotten them. They usually lived on a silver bar trolley in the parlor.

A letter opener, a china dog, and a glass paperweight. Milo’s movements were supple and assured.

“I’ll hand it to you,” I admitted. “You’re not bad.”

“Pete taught me last summer.” As the knickknacks spun weightless. “Pete taught me everything. Everything I am, I owe him. To the point where sometimes I feel like I am him.” He smirked. “Come to think of it, maybe I inherited his soul.”

My heart raced. “Don’t say that. Don’t even joke. I thought we’d buried the hatchet on all that stuff.”

“Too late. Everything is officially unburied, Jamie. You of all people should know that.” One by one, Milo caught them; dog, paperweight, letter opener, all safe, and then he bowed. “You look like death served cold,” he remarked. “Is that how Jersey Girls like to wear their hair?”

“Really, Milo?” I swallowed. “That’s the best you can do?”

His gaze flicked off me. He stuck the objects in his pockets, pivoted and then began a series of studied hand movements that looked like martial arts; it reminded me of Teddy’s brief junior-year romance with tae kwon do. “Your negativity is sucking the chi out of the atmosphere,” he informed. “Stop watching me.”

I did. Back in the kitchen, I found the note from Hannah Smart’s mom, explaining that she’d picked up Isa to pal along with Hannah, who was enrolled in some crafts workshop in town. “We’ll be back later in the afternoon, probably close to three o’clock.”

I crunched the note into the trash. So now the whole island’s worth of moms would be buzzing like bumblebees that the McRae au pair was so irresponsible that she partied all night and slept all morning.

Ah, yes. That was just great.

Alone, with the whole day on my hands and too many details of last night like a packed jack-in-the-box that I wasn’t quite ready to pop out, I stole into the den. Miles’s computer was there, and I checked Facebook to retrieve mail from Mags, Tess and Teddy.

When I typed SEBASTIAN BROOKS, I got a cute if ridiculous profile picture of Sebastian from a few years back, dressed as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, and I laughed out loud. Must have been a school play. This guy had no fear. There was the standard message that I had to be friends with Sebastian Brooks before he shared any information. To request his friendship at this stage was way too eagersville; I got off, and then, on impulse, I typed SEAN RYAN.