Deception (8 page)

Besides, how could I trust them, when I couldn’t even trust myself?

*
Your skirt is short.

**
I hadn’t noticed.

*
I am crazy.

11

I couldn’t face the empty museum, so after school I just opened the front gate to drop my backpack inside. Then I stopped short. The little boy with the marbles and slingshot was loitering inside, whittling a stick.

He saw me and froze, like I’d caught him playing hooky, then shot me a cheeky grin.

I laughed. “You hang out here a lot?”

This apparently struck him as the height of humor, and he erupted in silent laughter.

“Toss my backpack at the front door, would you?”

He nodded, so I handed over my backpack and watched him trot toward the house. I don’t know why I trusted him, but I did.

I closed the gate behind me and walked into town. The village was tightly packed with Colonial houses and reminded me of neighborhoods in San Francisco with Victorians snug up against each other like they were huddled for warmth.

The houses in Echo Point were less ornate, but still cozy and colorful, in yellows and blues and greens. Piles of leaves stood beside swing sets and kitchen gardens, and half the houses had plaques dating them to the 1700s, built by men with names like Elbridge and Jeremiah and Abner. Antiques were everywhere. Maybe that’s why I felt so at home, winding through cobblestone lanes toward the harbor.

Or maybe it was more than that.

I passed an upscale toy store, an Italian restaurant, and a corner grocery before my feet stopped outside the Black Sheep Bakery. I don’t know why I paused; maybe I identified with the name.

The door swung open with a jingle, and a wave of nostalgia hit me as I stepped inside. Before I could stop it, my body began to tingle, my vision blurred, and I felt the whooshing.

Then the bakery spun around me, and I found myself standing in the center of the store, but not in the present time. I didn’t panic
—
maybe because I was still in my school-slut uniform instead of a corset
—
but I did examine the room carefully. A wooden counter had replaced the glass case, the floor was covered in sawdust, and the walls were white instead of the lavender they’d been when I walked in. And there was a different woman behind the counter than the girl I’d seen before. She had rosy cheeks and a flour-covered apron, and smiled brightly before offering her help.

But I was too panicked to answer her. I backpedaled, overwhelmed by sensations. I shut my eyes, willing away the memories, willing myself back to the present. When I opened them again, the girl frowned at me from behind the glass case of pastries.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

I glanced around the shop. The walls were again lavender, the floor polished pumpkin pine. “Was this always a bakery?”

She pointed to a plaque on the wall. “Two hundred and fifty years. We’ve still got the brick oven in back. What can I get you?”

“Nothing,” I croaked. “I don’t want any of this.”

I shoved through the front door and stumbled down the steps, racing blindly along the crooked narrow streets. I didn’t stop until I reached a pretty little pond not far from the harbor, with ducks paddling near a spindly sculpture. I flopped onto a bench and stared at the rippling water. This had to stop. I couldn’t keep running. Something was seriously wrong inside of me, something deeply broken. Whatever I’d survived as a child, whatever I’d overcome, had returned with a vengeance.

And this time, I didn’t have anyone to protect me. Not my father. Not my mother. Nobody.

After a while, I wandered over to inspect the sculpture. It wasn’t a sculpture at all, but a heavy wooden chair latched to a beam that pivoted over the water, to rise and fall into the pond. A plaque underneath read:

Welcome to Redd’s Pond, named for Echo Point resident Elizabeth Redd, accused in 1682 of “detestable acts of Witchcraft and Sorceries wickedly, mallitiously and felloniously used, practiced & exercised.” Redd and four other women were executed on this spot, 1682–1697.

The whole thing was chained shut for safety
—
but just looking, I felt a charge in the air. Had they used this chair to torture those women? Drown them? I shivered and walked on, trying to shake the feeling of death. I walked for hours through the old winding streets of Echo Point, until the sun dipped toward the rooftops, and the shadows turned to an inky black.

And in the growing darkness, the world suddenly changed. My body tingled with fear as black shadows crept toward me from every corner.

I pushed on, pretending the shadows didn’t remind me of the smoke creeping toward me from my father’s urns in the hallway back home. The wind rose from the harbor and tossed a mass of leaves against a garage door. The rustling sounded like a strange hiss.
Eossss
.

A squeaking weather vane spun on a rooftop:
Eossss
.

The shadows followed me from street to street with disembodied moans: not
Eos
, but
Neos, Neos, Neos.

I
shoved
the shadows away with my mind as I began to run. I sprinted for half a mile, up a hill through the village, looking for signs, until I realized that the darkness was just darkness, the shadows, only shadows.

I slowed to a walk and caught my breath. I realized I was only a block from the museum, so I sped up again until I stepped through the front gates and felt an encompassing sense of safety. I exhaled, then breathed in the scent of maple leaves and fresh-cut grass. The windows of the museum glowed with welcoming light.

My backpack lay on the table in the museum’s foyer, and the sight of it made me feel like a high-school kid again. Books and homework assignments and all the boring, stable, comforting routines of normal life.

Grabbing the pack, I called, “Bennett?”

No answer.

“Bennett? Martha? Anyone?”

Still nothing, as I crossed into the kitchen. A pot of stew bubbled on the Wolf range. A plate of shortbread cookies sat on the counter.

“I don’t want food,” I said under my breath. “I want
company
.” I raised my voice: “Bennett! Bennett, are you here?”

Silence as I crossed into the dining room. The table was set beautifully, with fancy china, candles, and polished silver.

Set for one again. For me. Alone.

I screamed in frustration. “How can he not be here?!”

I stomped upstairs and found my bed made and my pajamas laid neatly on top, like some maid had snuck in while I was gone. Could that be it? But wouldn’t the mysterious Martha at least leave a note?

I peeled off my wretched uniform and picked up my flannels, an unbecoming but completely comfortable red plaid. I wouldn’t be caught dead in them in front of Bennett, but since that seemed completely out of the question, I cozied into them.

Still cold. “Wish I could have a
hot
bath,” I muttered.

Back downstairs, I served myself the stew and sat at the head of the long formal table, pretending I was normal. Just your average girl, eating stew from Limoges china and monogrammed silver.

After dinner, I grabbed a couple of cookies and went into the ballroom to do my homework. The walls were a warm shade of yellow, the parquetry floor was polished to a high gleam, and the tall windows were perfectly proportioned. I pulled the pale blue silk curtains shut against the night shadows that I worried still hovered outside the gates. The museum wasn’t quite so comforting now that it had grown completely dark outside.

I crossed the floor to the grand piano and played a few notes. The sound tumbled around the room, rich and resonant. It was the perfect place for a wedding
—
a string quartet playing, the French doors open to the rose garden …

I shook myself, worried I’d feel a sudden whoosh and find myself in some dead person’s wedding. So I grabbed a silk feather pillow from a settee and tossed it to the floor. Then I emptied my backpack and lounged on the pillow as I finished my assignments.

The clock struck nine but I wasn’t ready to sleep. Despite all the antiques and history, I’d discovered the house had wireless, so I fired up my laptop. Every time I checked my e-mail I hoped there’d be a message from Max or my parents, or that Abby was done with the silent treatment. But I found nothing but school reminders and spam.

When I got bored with celebrity blogs, I flipped my computer shut and paced the room. I was dying for music, but the speakers on my laptop sounded ridiculously tinny in this ginormous ballroom. I riffled through the built-in cabinets along one wall and found a stereo almost intimidating in its high-techness. There was a Bose iPod dock as well, but my parents refused to get me an iPod, saying, “You already have a computer.” I know that makes no sense, but they’d refused to budge. Don’t even get me started on my cell, which might as well have been purple and green. And called Barney.

Elton John was the only thing other than classical music in the entire cabinet, so at random, I chose Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons
. I put on Concerto No. 3 (“Autumn”) and listened to the violins reverberate through the room. I felt a strange sensation on my face, and realized I was smiling. This music, in this ballroom, just made me happy. The dread that had colored everything lately began to wash away.

I glided over the parquetry floor, daydreaming about flowing silk gowns and fancy balls, a time when guys didn’t just sway back and forth while trying to grope you. I curtsied to a make-believe suitor, fluttering my fan as he took me in his arms and spun me around the room, twirling and breathless.

Right into the arms of Bennett.

“How long were you standing there?” I spluttered. “It’s not what you think. I was …”
Of course
he’d finally return to find me dancing like an idiot by myself, dressed in my red plaid pajamas with cookie crumbs down the front.

Maybe he’d just think I was elfin and childlike.

Maybe that was worse.

He grinned and touched my mouth with his forefinger.

I shut up.

We were standing maybe six inches apart, and I felt the warmth of his body through the space separating us. My lips pulsed where he touched them. So did my body as he laid one of his hands on my hip and pulled me closer.

He clasped my right hand in his left while his other palm slid along my hip to my waist to my back. I shivered, breathing in his scent, like cold fresh air. I couldn’t look away from his blue eyes and I wanted nothing more than to kiss him and press myself further into him.

The music rolled around us, and at a cue I didn’t hear, Bennett moved and pulled me with him. He spun me around the room in a European waltz.

My free hand rested on his shoulder and I felt his heat and muscle through the thin cotton of his shirt. We’d never touched before. Not like this, not like we were the only two people in the world. Spinning and spinning and spinning.

Then the music stopped, and a moment later, so did we.

We stood there in the silence. I’m not sure for how long. I didn’t want the moment to end
—
not ever. In that ballroom, in his arms, everything felt right.

Well, until Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” started blaring. So maybe I’d slipped that in the CD changer. Sue me.

We stepped apart and I said, “That was …”

“Unexpected,” he finished.