“She’s been messing with my phone, trying to scare the shit out of me!”
“What? What are you talking about?” Mom says.
Alec, shoving Piper behind him, towers over me, a finger in my face. “If you lay one hand on my daughter again, I’ll . . .”
“You’ll do nothing!” Mom roars, slapping his hand away. “Because we don’t TOUCH our children. Right?”
Alec is enraged. “Raquel, you can’t possibly let this stand. She assaulted Piper!”
“Because she was in my room,” I snap. “Leaving strange creepy messages on my phone!”
Mom stands in front of me, using her body as a shield. “Messages? This is all over some messages, Mari?”
“It wasn’t me,” Piper shouts. “I swear! Ms. Suga did it!”
Alec and Mom whip around to Piper.
“What?” they say in unison.
Piper’s mouth drops before she snaps it shut and quickly tries to throw the focus back on me.
“You’re always on that phone,” she shouts, then tugs on Alec’s shirt. “She tells her daddy that she hates it here and hates you and sends dirty messages to that boy she likes!”
Mom frowns at me.
“Are you kidding me? NONE of that is true! Ask Dad if you don’t believe me, because I know you don’t. But let’s not lose sight of the real problem here, and that’s that she’s fucking with my shit! She’s creeping around with no respect for people’s things, going through my phone, and is now blaming it on her stupid imaginary friend she’s too damn old to have in the first place. It’s a total invasion of privacy! So what are you going to do about it?”
Alec and Mom exchange a tired glance before Mom crosses her arms and cocks her head at Alec, as if to say, “Well?”
Alec’s face softens, staring down at Piper.
“Well, it’s not nice to talk behind people’s backs,” he says mildly.
Mom’s mouth drops as Sammy’s eyebrows hit his hairline.
“Unbelievable!” I scream, and storm off.
Fifteen
STARING UP AT the ceiling is how I do my best thinking. The vast blankness helps me sort out all kinds of stuff. Like how to chuck my little stepsister into a nearby dumpster without anyone knowing.
Piper refused to apologize for the phone fiasco, and Alec “doesn’t feel he should force his daughter to do anything she’s not ready to do” or some bullshit like that.
But if I’m honest, there’s a small piece of me that wonders if it really was her. Unless she snuck in here like some super ninja while I was sleeping for those measly two hours, I can’t see how she pulled it off. And I had my phone with me the entire night.
Except . . . when I went downstairs and the lights turned off. It was just lying on the bedroom floor so perfectly, as if placed there.
Ice prickles around my neck and I pull up my hoodie. So much happened in the last twenty-four hours. But none of it would bother me if I was high. I’d gladly give Piper all my passwords to any device she wanted just to have some numbness. Which reminds me, I need to go check on the secret garden.
Mom opens the door just as I change into my run gear. “Yep?” she asks, full of eagerness.
I tilt my head, pulling my shirt down. “Yep what?”
She frowns. “You didn’t just call me?”
“No.”
“Huh? I guess I must be hearing things.”
“Ugh, don’t go losing it, Mom. You can’t leave us alone with Alec.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind. Her smirk turns serious. “You feeling okay? Anything you want to tell me?”
I can tell this morning’s fight with Piper has Mom on red alert. I plaster on a fake smile.
“I’m fine. Totally in control.”
“Hm. Well, where are you off to?”
“A run.”
Mom nods, impressed. “You’ve been really on top of your game here.”
“Have to be,” I say, doing a quick stretch.
“So why won’t you try out for the track team again?”
Immediately, I want to run in the opposite direction of this conversation.
“It’s just not my thing anymore,” I say, keeping my voice light, hoping she’ll drop it.
“Mari, what happened with David and school . . . don’t let it railroad your whole life. It’s okay to let go. It was an . . . accident.”
“Yeah. But I was the only one punished for it,” I snap. Unintentionally, but I couldn’t help it. Just the mention of his name makes me want to break the floorboard with my heel.
Mom twists her lips. “You’re right. It’s not fair. Life is not fair. But we keep moving forward. We moved to this new town so you could have a fresh start. And a fresh start also means doing the things you used to love. Like track.”
She’s right. We only moved here because of what I did. If it wasn’t for me, we would still be where I loved and was once loved.
She kisses the side of my head. “Just . . . think about it, okay?”
“Sure,” I mumble, and head out the door.
“If I haven’t said it, I’m very proud of you, Marigold. You have made some significant improvements while we’ve been here. I just want you to start thinking about your future. Don’t be so stuck in the past. There’s nothing back there for you.”
Guilt pinches at my side like a cramp. I paste on a fake smile.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She smiles, giving me a hug. “Oh, by the way, have you seen the broom? I can’t find it anywhere!”
The plants are starting to flower. Much faster than I anticipated. Meaning my one-room secret garden smells like a two-acre weed farm. The blooming sweet fragrance hits me as soon as I open the door.
This is both good and bad. Good, as I’ll probably be able to harvest before Halloween. Bad, in that anyone could catch a whiff of this place from a mile away through the cracks in the windows. If I spent more than five minutes in the house, the essence would bake into my clothes and hair. Might as well wear a sign on my forehead that says what I’m up to (and thank God I keep a pair of clothes to change into). A quick Google search and I learned a carbon filter would minimize the scent . . . if I had read that far.
The janitor’s closet at school was surprisingly helpful. It had plenty of the supplies I needed to build a makeshift filter system—charcoal air filters, duct tape, tinfoil, and clear plastic sheets.
The duct tape I stuck on the back door as a poor man’s security system is still in place, but the moment I step inside, something feels . . . off. The house seems smaller, air putrid and dusty. Windows still closed, I glance at the duct tape. No signs of someone messing with it. A few cautious steps in and I stop short. The dining room is now crowded, as if every piece of moldy furniture in the house had been moved, rearranged, and shifted. Acid rises to my throat.
“H-hello?” I call out, and listen close. No movement.
Slowly, I backpedal into the kitchen, gripping the bags tighter. The plants sit, seemingly undisturbed. But on the floor surrounding them . . . red muddy footprints circle the table. I can count the toes from their bare feet. . . .
Someone was in the house.