If that’s even where they were planning on moving.
I closed Grace’s MacBook to shut off the Percy Jackson audiobook. The narrator’s portrayal of Annabeth was pretty annoying, the voice too tinny. I also turned down her fan a bit (for future reference, Gracie: full-blast is overkill). The whitenoise softened enough for me to hear myself think, so I pulled on my invisible investigative FBI gloves and began fiddling with my sister’s things to see if she’d left any clues about where she, Isa, and Everett had gone.
Nightstand: nothing.
Under the bed: nothing. (I mean, a shit-ton of stuff, but not anything relevant.)
Desk: laptop, but I didn’t know her password and couldn’t waste time making educated guesses. I had to be back at school in twenty minutes.
Closet: an absolutelyranksmell. I slid the door open to find a bucket of red-brown muck congealing on the floor.
I bent over and gagged, nearly adding to the pot.
But there we have it, folks: Grace Alexandra Barbour had taken a cue from yours truly and faked her own illness. Why else hide last night’s leftovers in your bedroom?
A blender?I studied the sludge.Did she use a blender to simulate—
My lab work went unfinished, cut off by a faintclick.
And then a distinctbingthat signaled a door opening. “Hello, Mr.Rooney!” I heard my mom coo from the foyer as the hair on the back of my neck rose. “Have you been taking good care of our Grace?”
The dog woofed affectionately.
Honestly, I was the only person Rooney didn’t like. Well, me and Everett. “Dogs are usually eager to please,” he’d commented once. “But it’s likeweneed to pleasehim….”
“Yes, don’t worry,” my mom said now. “I’ll go up and check on her.”
My body lurched.
Fuck.
Heart banging around in my chest, I started to close the closet door but then second-guessed myself and grabbed the bucket and staged it by my bedside. And when I say “my” bedside, I mean I shoved a loading dock’s worth of pillows off Grace’s bed and scrambled into it, yanking her comforter up and over my head—mostly. Tufts of light brown hair still saw daylight, fortunately the same color as my sister’s hair. Shout-out to genetics…
If only I weren’t wet from the pool.
And the door,I suddenly remembered.I didn’t shut the bedroom door!
But it was too late. My mother had reached the top of the stairs; I could hear her footsteps treading toward me. “Grace?” she called softly. “Sweetheart?”
My back to her, I pretended to be asleep—a subtle combination of restless shifting and dreamy gibberish. “Mmm-gmm-bmm?” I murmured, nestling into Grace’s mattress.
It was way more comfortable than mine.
My mom didn’t say anything…at least not to me. “Hi, honey, I just got home,” she said, now on the phone with my dad. “She’s asleep right now, and I don’t want to wake her, but it doesn’t seem like she’s feeling any better.” She paused, and my spine straightened—I could feel her leaning closer, smellher perfume. “The bucket next to her bed is almost halfway full. If she’s eaten anything today, she hasn’t been able to keep it down.”
Silence.
Leave,I prayed.Please leave.
“Really?” She backed away from the bed. “You think I should go back to work?”
Yes!
“Well, that’s true,” she said to my dad. “There are a few meetings this afternoon, and missing those certainly wouldn’t be ideal….”
Come on, Dad,I thought, easing into a content snore to help tip the scale in my favor.Use your attorney art of persuasion!
She laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. The best thing to do is let her sleep. She’ll call or text if she needs us.” She sighed. “She could use a day off, too. She works so hard.”
