“You were sleeping,” Eliza says.
“Yeah, and we weren’t about to wake the beast,” Gianni jokes.
There’s some rustling around and then, a moment later, the speaker phone is clicked off and the storm door closes.
“Okay, it’s just me now,” she says.
“Hey.” I smile. “How are things?”
“Shitty,” Bella answers with all the unfiltered angst that only a teenager can muster. “I broke up with my boyfriend.”
“Oh?” I ask. “What happened?”
“He was an idiot. He asked me to homecoming.”
“Oh. What a… terrible guy,” I say.
“Homecoming was on the same night as the Trash Pandas concert in Missoula! He took me out to dinner, well, pizza anyways. And I thought he was going to tell me he got concert tickets because heknewhow hard I was trying to get those tickets. And then he got all weird and choked up and nasty and asked me to prom instead. Can you believe that?”
“God, no. Nothing nastier than a romantic man.”
“I know, right? So cringey.”
A giggle escapes my throat. “So how is everything else? Eliza said you haven’t been sleeping well?”
“I’m sleeping fine,” she snaps. “I just… keep waking up and have a hard time falling back asleep sometimes, that’s all.”
“I understand that.” I sigh. “Any reason why? For me, if I’m overthinking?—”
“I’m not overthinking,” she cuts me off. “It’s more…” Bella stops and I wait. I’m not going to press her. Despite our age gap, Bella and I have always been able to talk to each other, even if it does take some patience on my part. “I keep seeing things, you know?”
“What kind of things?” I ask.
“Like… shadows. People? I don’t know.”
My stomach drops a little and I sit up straight. “Where?”
“Outside my window. Like, I woke up the other night because I was thirsty, so I went and got a glass of water. And when I came back, I could have sworn I saw a man outside. Standing in the backyard. It was creepy as fuck.”
My heart is racing in my chest. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. It was dark, obviously. So it was more like a silhouette. But when I looked again, he was gone.”
“Maybe just a tree or something,” I reassure her. “Did you tell G or Eliza?”
“Nah,” she brushes it off as Bella often does. “They’ll think I’m being a baby. For all I know, it’s them trying to scare me.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. And yet, I doubt it.
After we get off the phone, I stay on the couch for a while just staring at the window of the estate. I wanted to ask her more questions. I want to know what the man looked like. I want to know how often it happens. When the last time was that it happened. But I also didn’t want to press. She’s under a lot of stress and the mind does funny things when it’s stressed.
Still. The idea of her seeing shadows—seeingmen—outside her window at night, like someone’s watching her, following her… I don’t care for that.
I don’t care for that at all.
29
AMARA
