Inside my bag I find allergy pills, a forgotten baggie of cereal I put together for Emma, and Ava’s book. I triple the dose of the pills, hoping a good hit of antihistamine will knock me out for the night. Once I’ve turned off the overhead light, the lamps on either side of the bed glow like stage lights, waiting for the curtain to rise.
I take Bloody Heart, Wild Woods and crawl back into bed, pulling the covers up around me. Glenn is fresh in my mind, the way he looked at me with hatred. The last book Ava wrote is the one that killed our relationship. I haven’t found myself in this one yet, and I don’t know which would be more painful: not to appear in it at all, or to find that she still knows everything about me, all the worst bits.
I hold the book in my hands for a moment. Maybe the opening quote about two sisters is the only part that’s for me. That fragment of a fairy tale reminds me of a different Ava. Not the one who eviscerated me in prose, laying out my every secret fear on the page, but the one from years ago, who crawled into bed with me during thunderstorms. The big sister who told me stories.
“We are in a boat,” she would whisper. “A boat that looks like a bed. All around us are waves, and underneath the waves is another world.”
As she spoke, the room around us seemed to melt away and the darkness became black water underneath a starry sky. Beneath the billows, I believed there was a city of coral and pearl, where mermaids swam and strange music rose in bubbles. Ava made it all seem real.
In my memory, I hear her say, “Hold on to the covers and take a deep breath. We’re going down.”
CHAPTER
12
ZOE
I DREAM THE POSTS of the bed elongate, stretching up and out, becoming trees. Between their spreading branches is a spider web where the canopy should be. Caught in the middle of it is a girl, Ava, the way she looked at eight when I was only five. Her hair is tangled with the filaments of the web and her eyes are huge, dark holes of panic. The bed shakes, and I know with certain dread that the massive spider is coming for me. I can hear its razor-fanged jaws clicking together.
I wake with a start and the sense that I really did hear something. My heart is racing, but my limbs are weighed down with the medication I took. I reach out for Andrew, but then I remember, and the pain of it snaps my eyes open.
I’m alone in this bed.
My parents’ house is quiet, and there’s no clock in the room. Without my phone, I have no idea what time it is. Then I hear it again, something pattering against my window, like a sudden gust of rain. Pebbles. The sound of pebbles on glass.
Silence.
I slide my legs out from under the covers. My head is full of cotton wool and my thoughts come slowly. There aren’t any trees near my window, and nobody knows I’m here.
No one except Andrew, my parents, and Glenn.
Somewhere deep inside me a smarter Zoe is telling me to get back in bed, go back to sleep. I don’t know what fresh hell tomorrow will bring, but I need to be rested and ready to fight. But what if it is Glenn?
All I can think about at this moment is how much Glenn hurt me today and how happy I used to be in his arms. Even if he doesn’t love me, he can’t hate me. If Glenn hates me, then Andrew could hate me. If Andrew hates me, there’s no happiness for me anywhere. I have to fix this.
If Glenn is throwing something against my window, if he wants to talk to me, I have to find him.
The bare floor is icy on the soles of my feet, and the cold seems to travel up my legs. The silver moonlight is tempered by the golden glow of a few errant porch lights. I cross the luminous grid on the floor and look out the window.
No moisture on the glass, nothing to indicate it was rain or freak hail. No one standing in the street, holding a boom box over his head, ready to declare his love. Not a single smoker on a porch or a stray dog or anything suspicious. Nothing.
I should go back to bed.
Instead I open the door of my room and hesitate, listening.
The world is so quiet, I could believe I imagined the sound. I take one cautious step into the hallway, but everything is still. There’s no light from under my parents’ closed door, and I know they wouldn’t have heard anything anyway. Not if they sleep the way they used to, with eye masks and ear plugs and a white-noise machine. In our house, if you had a bad dream, you were on your own.
Peering down the stairs into the front hallway, I see nothing, hear nothing.
The absence of sound echoes in my head like the roar in a seashell. Maybe this is still my dream and earth has been emptied of people. I am alone in the house, alone in the night, alone in the world.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Not pebbles this time, but something singular, rapping on the front door.
Ava would wake our parents, or call the police. She would make a smart choice and never get carried away by her curiosity.
I can’t stand playing it safe.
My bare feet are silent against the stairs, but the tapping stops, as though someone is listening for me. I speed up, unable to stand the suspense of creeping forward with painfully cold feet. On the mat inside the front door, I stop again. There’s no window, no security peephole, no way to know what’s on the other side.
It could be Glenn, come to apologize or accuse. It could be Andrew, to wrap me in his arms and make everything better.
It could be Ava, messing with my head. Showing up only after she’s blown my life apart.
Angry now, I wrench the door open. No one is there. The street is still empty, the row of townhouses on either side as devoid of life as empty sets on a sound stage. A breeze rises, warmer than the inside of my parents’ house, but nothing else moves. All I hear is a faint chirping from my parents’ security system.
Then, “Lizzie?” The familiar voice, a child’s voice, pierces me with longing. “Lizzie?”
I step out into the night, my heart pounding. “Emma?”
She can’t be here; I know she can’t. But I scan the darkness, squinting at the shadows between the houses, terrified that she is out there.
“Emma!” I shout, but I don’t know where she is, where the voice came from. I take the front steps too quickly, something crunches beneath my foot, I lose my purchase on the path and go sprawling.
My knee is skinned and the heels of my hands sting. Wincing, I push myself onto my butt and look around frantically. I can’t see anyone, and the voice doesn’t return. Am I going crazy?
No. I know I heard something.
This must have been a trick. Just like the text messages and the phone call. Emma is in Texas. Her school would never release her to anyone except me or Andrew. She isn’t here. She isn’t.
I keep telling myself that, but I am shaking. I press my hands against the pavement to stand, and something cuts into my palm. The stupid thing I tripped on in the first place. My fingers close around it and I glance down at a slim gold wristwatch. Someone’s lost treasure. The face is cracked, probably because I stepped on it and skidded, grinding it into the path as I fell.
Then the night fills with sound, the shrieking of the security alarm.
I leap to my feet as if the police are on their way. The sound cuts through me, and I would do anything to stop it.
Maybe I can figure out how to turn it off. I charge up the front steps, desperate to silence the alarm before God and the neighbors come to strike me down.