Your thoughts are all tangled up,he said.You should speak to your mother.
“Not going to happen,” I said aloud. Quoth shook his head sadly.
“Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity,” Morrie said from the couch.
“I know. Conversing with fictional characters is sign number two, and having a time-traveling dad is number three, so I might as well have myself committed right now.”
“The post’s arrived.” Heathcliff wandered in from the other room and dumped a stack of envelopes on the desk. “There’s a letter for Lord Moriarty. Since when do you get mail?”
“Give me that!” Morrie leaped to his feet, knocking over a stack of makeup bags as he grabbed the envelope from Heathcliff’s hands.
“Expecting to be drafted?” Heathcliff shot back.
Morrie didn’t seem to hear. He tore open the envelope and scanned the letter. “But that’s… that’s impossible,” he muttered.
“What’s impossible?” I tried to peer over his shoulder.
Morrie shoved the envelope into his pocket, keeping his hand on top so I couldn’t pull it out. “Oh, nothing, nothing. My bank manager messed up one of my Cayman Island transfers, is all. Excuse me.”
“Morrie—” But he’d already disappeared upstairs. I glanced at Heathcliff, but he shrugged.
“Don’t bother with him. He likes his secrets. You and he are alike in that respect.” Heathcliff dropped a book on his desk, picked up the next one from his stack, and left the room again, no doubt to return to whatever foxhole he was hiding in.
What did he mean by that?
“I guess I’m minding the shop, then!” I yelled over Lydia’s music. “That’s good. It’ll give me time to finish this Jane Austen display!”
As I arranged books and festival flyers around the stuffed armadillo, I thought back to the time a week ago, when Morrie had handcuffed me to his ceiling and he and Quoth had done amazing things to my body. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life, and from the way Morrie’s voice had wavered, I’d thought that maybe it meant something to him, too. Afterward, he ran away, leaving me and Quoth snuggling together in his bed. The panicked look in Morrie’s eyes before he fled… that was the same look he wore when he’d read that letter.
What’s up with Morrie?
Chapter Eight
“You haven’t been home for two nights.” Mum pounced as soon as I walked through the door.
“Let me get inside before we have it out. It’s freezing.” I slammed the door, kicking off my wet boots and peeling off my gloves.
“Don’t speak to me like that. I didn’t know where you were. You could be lying raped and murdered in the street!”
“You’re overreacting. You know I don’t walk around here alone. The guys are walking me home, or I take a rideshare, or Jo drops me off. If it’s such an issue for you, I could just move into Heathcliff’s shop – that way I’d never be out on the mean streets of Argleton.”
As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. My mother recoiled as if I’d slapped her.
“If that’s how you feel,” she said in a chipped tone, backing into the kitchenette.
I sighed, sliding my rucksack off my shoulder and following her into the kitchenette. “It’s not. You can always ring the shop if you need me—”
I stopped in my tracks, my jaw dropping as I surveyed the carnage in our kitchen. Every pot, pan, bowl, and plate we owned was stacked on the counter or scattered across the floor. Pink and purple goop dripped down the cabinets and splattered the walls. It looked like a My Little Pony had exploded in the microwave.
“I did ring the shop!” Mum stood in the middle of the mess with her hands on her hips. A smudge of purple glitter extended across her cheek, like some kind of tribal marking. “I asked for you and that rude gypsy said, ‘We don’t have any titles with that name’, and hung up on me!”
Thank you, Heathcliff. “He probably misunderstood you. Mum, what happened here?”
“I told you I need your help! Sylvia made up these craft kits to make bath bombs and soaps and face creams. She wanted me to test them to make sure the instructions were easy to follow. But everything keeps going wrong and it’s all because you weren’t here.”
“I don’t see why my presence would help – I don’t know about any of this stuff, either. If you were having trouble, you should have called Sylvia.” I picked up a jar of peanut butter on the counter. Glittery pink goo had dried over the lid, forming a seal. I banged it against the counter to loosen the crud. “Aren’t some of these chemicals hazardous? Should you really be doing this in our kitchen?”
“These are exactly the questions I needed you to ask!” Mum swept a bunch of dishes into the sink, leaving a rainbow smudge of unicorn poop across the counter. “But you didn’t even call—”
