Chardonnay is the first one out the door in a bolt of white. She doesn’t even pay any attention to me before running into the yard and peeing. Then sniffing along the ground.
Miles gives her a quick glance as he walks over to me.
“Hi! No, I really mean that. Hi. I’m Miles, I live next door, remember?”
Even with all the horror over the past twenty-four hours, he manages to make me smile. Something I didn’t think was possible right now. But that only serves to create more dread in my gut. Because I need to distance myself from him.
I really don’t want to do that.
“So why have you been ignoring me?” he asks, crossing his arms. “Or are we going to pretend I’m being needy when you don’t respond to me in nineteen hours even though I know you’re over here.” He’s making a joke, but there’s something in his voice that betrays his hurt.
“I wasn’t ignoring you.” That’s a lie so I try again. “I mean, not on purpose.”
“But you were ignoring me.”
“I take it back. You’re needy.”
He grins but shakes his head like he’s calling me on my bullshit. “What’s going on, Nate?”
Hearing him call me Nate makes my stomach roll. I should have told him my real name. I’d like him to know my real name. He knows the real me, obviously. Because he can tell something is wrong.
But I can’t tell him. Even though I want to ask him what to do. I want to know how to outsmart someone like Easton, who has always thought so far ahead. How do we find the mistakes he made and tell the police?
This is dangerous enough as it is. If Easton is lurking around here—only pretending to have gone to some memorial for JT—he might think I’m telling Miles about him. I glance around the yard. Across the street.
In the corner of Miles’s yard, Chardonnay has her nose to the ground, sniffing something.
Miles follows my gaze and yells over at her. “Chardonnay! Whatever it is, leave it!” He turns his attention back to me. “Seriously, what’s up? Are you sick or something?”
“No.”
“’Cause you look sick. No offense.”
“I’m starting to think you don’t know what ‘no offense’ means.”
“I don’t. No offense?” He says it like he really doesn’t know what it means but he’s trying to make it work. It makes me laugh and he grinsback at me. And I get that warm, buzzy feeling in my gut again. The one that whispers how I wish Miles and I had gotten to meet in other circumstances. In an alternate universe where I don’t have heartless parents who try to send me away to be tortured and brainwashed, one where I’m not an imposter with a psychopathic brother. Where instead of investigating a murder, we’d get to go to a school dance. A universe where we kiss.
But alternate universes are a sci-fi trope, and I’m stuck in a horror movie.
So I push the warm fuzzies away and steel myself. “We should stop the investigation. After Gramma Sharon I realized it’s not worth it.”
“Wait, what?”
“It’s too dangerous. I’m going to be gone soon, so let’s stop all this shit and move on.”
“Hold on. Go back—howis it not worth it? Chardonnay!” He shouts at her this time, as she’s still farther down by the corner of the fence, either licking or chewing grass there. She still ignores him.
“Because we can’t prove what really happened to Nate.”
“If you’re freaking out because Gramma Sharon ate glass, you know someoneput it there. Which means someone in that house knows what really happened to him.”
Yeah, I do. And so does Nate’s brother. And possibly one of his parents who helped him cover it up.
“Maybe I don’t want to end up like him, too.”
Miles nods as if he understands where I’m coming from. “Okay, yes, this is scarier than it was before, but don’t you realize that means we’re onto something? I’m not asking you to put yourself in harm’sway. Did Grant say something after I left? If he knows about you, why don’t we tell him the truth? Maybe he can help protect you.”
He might be able to protect me, but I’m not sure how he could protect Miles and his family. Again I feel eyes on the back of my head, but I don’t look this time.
