“Well,nowI do. Christ, I don’t even know how you came up with that.”
“I came up with that because there aren’t any other options.”
He nodded, like he was satisfied with his answer. Though she had no idea why. There were a million things he could have said. And now she was going to stick him with all of them. “You could have gone with pissing on her grave.”
“That’s almost as bad as what I suggested.”
“Or insulting her ghost.”
“Ghosts aren’t even real.”
“That is not an excuse for poking your soggy finger into my dead grandmother’s ear,” she said, and oh, his outraged expression was a peach. In fact, it almost made all her anxious sweating worth it. Until he started arguing with her again.
“Oh my god, don’t say it like I’ve already done it. Or would actually do it. It was just an example, because you said that thing about tormenting her,” he blew out. Likeshewas the bad one here.
“Yeah, and now you’re tormenting me.”
“I’m just asking you a question.”
“While trying to ram your way into my house.”
She knew she was exaggerating wildly, even as she said it. He wasn’t trying to ram his way into her house at all. In fact, that hand he’d put on the door had begun to slide down ever since she’d first started tearing into him. And she was pretty sure one good shove would have put paid to it entirely. But here was the weird thing: he didn’t act like that was the case. Instead, he seemed to jerk when he registered what he was doing. As if the body parts responsible didn’t actually belong to him. Someone had attached them in the night, while he was sleeping. Now they were roaming around, randomly holding open doors and making him seem really tall.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t realize I was doing that. I just. I thought,” he said, as if he’d forgotten how to finish sentences properly. He kept putting periods where they weren’t supposed to be, and trailing off in the strangest places.
She had to prompt him. “You thought what?”
Though in response he just shook his head, like a dog trying to get dry.
“That I gotta go,” he answered.
Then he suddenly started backing away. He stepped off her grandmother’s front porch. Or more accurately, he stumbled off it. He almost went flat on his ass, and probably would have done if he hadn’t managed to grab the railing that lined the steps down.
And even after he’d righted himself, he didn’t seem steady. He kind of staggered away, drunkenly. Lost his footing again, and regained it.
None of which should have been that shocking. But it was, because Seth Brubaker was the one doing it. Seth Brubaker, who had grown into the kind of guy who never put a single foot wrong. Who had started walking down hallways as if his feet were made of wheels, with hair that was never out of place and swimsuits that didn’t disappear into the crack of his ass, and the kind of cool life that she could never have hoped to follow him into.
He’d left her behind, utterly and completely.
Yet here he was, practically making a disaster of his exit. In fact, he was making so much of a disaster of it she came close to asking him something very strange. Something she could never have imagined saying to him in a million years.Are you okay?she thought.Are you okay, mortal enemy of mine?
And was grateful that he was gone before she could.
CHAPTER TWO
She tried not to think too much about Seth Brubaker. After all, she had plenty of other things to contend with. Like all the junk her grandmother had accrued over the years, which turned up in the most ridiculous places.
There were coins in the toilet cistern. Weird coins, from countries that no longer existed. Or maybe hadn’t ever existed, if Google was any indication.
And that wasn’t even the strangest thing she found.
There were also boxes full of dolls—and not the good kind. No, these were the kind that she’d screamed over when watching a movie about them with Seth. The kind with glassy eyes that followed you around the room, and too little hair on their weird shiny heads, and bodies made out of sacks someone had discovered on a haunted farm.
She honestly found herself wondering if they might eat her in the night.
Which was ridiculous, she knew it was ridiculous. Yet if she was being honest, it kind of fit with the theme of this place.
Because it wasn’t just all the weird objects and spooky crevices that she was almost constantly stumbling across. There were other unsettling things about her grandmother’s old home. Like the fact that the whole house made a ridiculous amount of noise. Pipes knocked even when no water was flowing through them. Floorboards creaked despite the fact that not a single person had stepped on them in hours. And the less said about the staircase, the better. The night before, she’d been pretty sure that she’d heard somethingthumping up them to the bedroom she’d been sleeping in. She’d wound up shoving her grandmother’s ancient dresser in front of the door.
