Phobic (19 page)

Jordan’s arm smashes my cheek, and he pushes himself up. “Damn, Piper, you
are
a freak.”

I grovel on the floor, desperate to get to my feet. “Don’t leave me alone here.”

Jordan whirls back, his forehead stern. “This is your
house
, Piper. Why do you live someplace you’re terrified of?”

“I’m not afraid of all of it,” I say, bustling out before the door can shut on me of its own accord. “Just parts of it.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Joel says, coming back in just as I slam the door. “You know not to open that!”

I stare at my brother, barely seeing him. My thoughts are a jumbled muddle, and my breathing can hardly keep up. He boarded her in. Alive.

Joel slams the file of papers at Jordan’s chest. “Get out of here, Warren.”

Jordan raises an eyebrow, and his glance jumps from Joel to me, and back again. “Geez, your whole family is screwed up,” he mutters on his way out.

“That door was open when you guys first walked in here,” I hurry to tell Joel before he can jump down my throat. Ew, I wonder if her bones are still hidden under those stairs.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Joel paces between the leather chairs. “You should have shut it.”

“Yeah, in front of Jordan Warren? The kid already gives me enough flak at school.”

“There’s more to life than school, Piper,” Joel says, tapping a hand to his forehead.

“What do you know about that? All you care about is your stupid job!”

“The only reason we make it by is because of my
stupid job
! I have to work so we can have money for food. For clothes. Don’t you dare start in on—”

“Why didn’t we move, Joel?” I ask, cutting him off. I want answers to my questions. “When it first happened. Why?”

“Family house,” Joel says, starting to pace again. “People who aren’t family just don’t understand.”

“I’m family,” I say, “and I don’t understand. Why didn’t we leave it in Shady Heights? Why didn’t we just sell it? Or better yet, why don’t we sell it now?”

The house gives a torrent of creaks like huge chunks of metal being bent, and both Joel and I look up. The color leaves his face. A few seconds of eerie silence beat by before he mumbles, “Because Dad would roll over in his grave. He said he had a responsibility to the previous owners.”

“What responsibility?” And what previous owners? I thought our family had been in this house for like, ever.

“And Mom needs to know she still has somewhere she can call home.”

Is he insane? “She committed murder, Joel! She’s never coming home!”

“You think you have it bad?” Joel yells. “I was in high school, Piper. People stopped talking to me. They spray painted my locker and put superglue in my jockey shorts. At least we moved so people don’t even associate it with you anymore.”

Duly chastised, I let his words sink in. “Everyone at school does now,” I say eventually.

“I guess we couldn’t hide forever.”

“You don’t even care, do you?” I shudder, remembering the feel of Jordan’s boots sinking into me with every step he took up those stairs. Maybe I should tell Joel about seeing Ada. He probably wouldn’t believe me either, though. “You don’t care that I’m going through all this crap right now.”

“I’ve got my own problems to deal with,” he says, marching off. I catch him before he leaves the room.

“Joel, I opened the door yesterday.”

He pauses. Thumbs the doorframe’s edge.

“And I think I released something from it.”

Joel’s complete silence is unnerving. Especially because the news doesn’t seem to faze him. He doesn’t give the slightest reaction.

A loud honk comes from outside, slicing right through the tension between us. Joel stalks to the front window and draws back the curtains. Todd’s red pickup idles at the curb.

“I’m sorry,” Joel says with a sigh. “I’m just so swamped with this case at work. I never thought you were struggling. You have no idea how hard it was for me. I had to go to school for six months before Dad found a company who could move the house. Six months, Pipey. Six months of ridicule, of pranks and near deaths. Did you know someone tried to run me over?”

I have no words. He was my age when Mom had…well, when this had happened. My age. Fifteen. Here I was thinking he and I were so different. Maybe he understands me better than I thought.

“I’m going with Todd for a while,” I tell Joel, the fire in my chest dousing. “I’ll see you later.”

For some reason I feel emptier than ever inside. Especially when he leaves the room. Joel’s apology doesn’t take away from the fact that my house is alive, I’ve apparently switched skin with The Girl I Hate Most in the Whole World, and now I’m seeing visions of dead people. Not to mention my dead father’s voice coming from the TV.

Joel has got to know more than he’s letting on, but I’m running out of time before something else unexpected happens. I have to know what’s going on. And since no one else can tell me, I have to visit her.

“S
hady Heights, here we come,” Todd says when I climb into his truck. The Cure plays, relaxing me somewhat. Everything about Todd is relaxing. His love for eighties music, his long, lanky legs and fingers, his crooked smile and rock star eyes.

“This was a great idea, Pipes. Once we visit your mom, there’s this sweet pawn shop I want to check out.”

I soak into the conversation, more than eager to forget what I just saw. To forget Jordan and his dumb nosiness.
Why do you live someplace you’re terrified of?
I need to redirect my thoughts.

“Looking for more Pez?” I ask, scooting to the middle seat so I can rest my head on his shoulder. My veins jitter and race. I try to erase it, but the open terror in Ada’s face troubles my mind.

“You can never have too many Pez.”

“You can when they take up shoebox after shoebox in your closet,” I argue. Without thinking, I wrap my hand around Todd’s arm. After what I just saw, I need the closeness.

Todd pauses, and The Cure sings on about being in love on Fridays. Slowly, deliberately, Todd moves the arm I’m clinging to so it rests on my leg. My heart beats harder than ever, but for different reasons this time. Is Todd
hitting
on me?

“You know Joel would crap a brick if he knew about this.”

If he knew about what, your hand on my leg
?

My stomach won’t stop fluttering. The sound of Todd’s voice sends shocks through me, and comprehension hits. My comfort-seeking gestures have transformed into something else entirely. And I like it.

The Cure saves us from saying anything for a while. Todd’s arm sits on my leg, his hand cupping my knee, while my palms on his skin grow clammier. Feelings stir in my chest, a skittish disbelief in this accident-turned-awesomeness. I wonder if Todd likes me, or if this is all still a friendship thing for him.

Visiting my murderous mother in prison isn’t exactly a prime dating opportunity. Especially since I’ve never been on an actual
date
.

Two hours pass in a blur of skin, touch, and meaningless conversation. My nerves snap when Todd slows and pulls off on the Shady Heights exit.

A gazillion thoughts crack through my brain so it’s impossible to focus. I haven’t been back here since it happened. I don’t recognize any of the scenery out the windows, except for the old Garber’s grocery store, and the only reason I remember it is Joel used to make fun of me because I could never say
Garber’s
correctly.

Todd’s gaze is directed out the windshield, but he slides me a look that corks my insides and shakes them up until I fizz like I’m ready to burst. I squeeze his arm, which still rests along the length of my thigh.

“I’ve sworn them off, you know,” he says matter-of-factly. His attention returns to the road, and his voice is so low I blink a few times to make sure I heard him.

“What?”

“Jordan and the others. After that profile. I can’t believe they did that. Why didn’t you tell me?”

So he did see it after all. I didn’t delete it in time. “I didn’t think it would make a difference. You really liked them.”

“You had it right when you called them all jerks,” he says. “Except I can think of a few other things to call them.” I give off a small laugh, but if anything, Todd looks like he’s ready to punch the gas and rear-end the car in front of us. “He was pretty pissed when I told them all to go to hell.”

“You did? When?”

“After your audition,” Todd says like it’s nothing. Just keeps his eyes on the road.

“Why?” I ask, sincerely interested. “I mean, you were trying so hard to get us to get along.”

“It shouldn’t be that much effort. Friendship. I mean, there is a point of trying to keep things going, but to force things like I was trying to do…I don’t know. I just realized it wasn’t as important as I thought it was. Not after how they kept acting like jerks to you after I’ve asked them not to. Jordan said he feels bad,” Todd goes on, “but he can slit his wrists and do pushups in salt water for all I care.”

I’m swelling inside like his words are inflating a huge balloon in my chest and my heart has to figure out how to keep beating. Despite his words, he hasn’t said a thing about one person in particular, and the question about her lingers between us like a five-hundred-pound, polka-dotted unicorn.

I can’t say it. Part of me doesn’t want to know what the answer will be. But I open my mouth and pull the words from my throat, the way I imagine a first-time bulimic makes herself vomit.

“And Sierra?”

Todd glances at the directions he printed off of Google Maps and turns the corner. “Nothing. Nothing has ever been going on with her.”

“But I thought you were crazy for her hot legs.”

“I tried to be,” he says with a shrug in his voice.

“What does that mean?”

He gives me an incredulous look, and for the first time during this whole trip, takes his hand off my leg. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?” My leg feels cool away from his touch. I want to pull his hand back, but he keeps both on the wheel. He slips me a look and his cheeks lift slightly.

“Does Sierra’s skin like, bother you at all?” I go on.

We pull up at a stoplight. “I don’t see why that’s such a big deal to you. I hardly noticed it on you. I hardly notice it on her.”

“That is
so
hard to believe.” Before, my acne was like having huge caverns on my face. It was impossible for anyone to not notice.

“I feel bad it happened to her,” I add. And I do, though I’m not sure why. No one else—not even snotty Sierra—should have to suffer through something like that.

The light turns green. “She’s still the same old Sierra,” Todd says. His words leave me stinging, like the residual pain of tearing off a Band-Aid. I should never have brought her up and ruined this.

“Great, that’s just what I want to hear.”

“Hey, I told you—I’m done with them.”

Around the next corner is a huge sign, but I don’t need to read the
Shady Heights Penitentiary
to know where we are. All my other thoughts scatter. The gray monstrosity just shouts PRISON. Doom and gloom are written all over every inch of the tan cinderblocks and the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the structure.

Todd slows to speak to the guard in the booth at the parking lot’s entrance and show him our IDs, and I sink lower into my seat. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t go in here. It’s been years since I’ve seen my mother. I have nothing to say to her.

Hi, Mom, I haven’t spoken to you in almost ten years, but do you mind telling me why you killed someone and what Dad was hiding in the staircase in the library? And while you’re at it, why did we have to move our house, shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

There is one other question I want the answer to more than anything, though. And it’s the one I’m most anxious and scared to ask:

Why did you do it? Why did you leave me?

This building holds thousands of cracked molesters and robbers and murderers and criminals.
Criminals
. Like my mother. My mouth parches. I should tell him to turn around, take me home. But the words don’t come.

“You don’t have to do this,” Todd says, and I sigh in relief when his hand rests on my forearm. The touch is like a salve. My pulse pounds, and I wonder if he can feel it as I squeeze his fingers.