“I was worried about you,” Jessica replied.
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?” Jessica ran her fingers through her humidity-puffed hair and then motioned to the street. “Because of what happened.”
“Why would you be worried about me, Jessica?” Peter urged. His face was uncharacteristically stony, nearly eerie under the street lamps. “I’m just someone you work with.”
Jessica looked to the street, her eyes landing on what used to be a piece of white frosted cake. It was by the curb, smashed and covered with ants.
“I’m sorry.” It was the second time Jessica had said those words that night, but the first time she’d meant them.
Peter stepped closer, and Jessica lifted her gaze from the street just enough to see his hands hanging by his sides. There were bruises on them, across the ridges of the knuckles. Peter flexed his hand, and Jessica wondered how much those knuckle bones still stung, and if anyone had bent over them and cared for them, dabbed gently at them with a cotton ball.
Just inches from Peter’s bruised knuckles, a firefly flashed.
“For what?” Peter said. “Sorry for what?”
Jessica startled and looked up. Peter was angry, but he was giving her a chance. She knew that whatever she said next would ruin something. It would either ruin something for her and John, or for her and Peter. She had to make a choice. It wasn’t simple. Or, it was too simple.
“Do you want to come inside?” Jessica asked. “We can talk inside.”
She could go inside again, if he came with her.
Jessica half expected Peter to glance over his shoulder at Hector’s window, to check to see if his friends were watching, but he stayed focused on her.
Did his expression soften, or did Jessica just imagine it?
“Alright.” Peter nodded in the direction of the front door. “Sure. After you.”
Rafe had always had a rule against boys in the house, but Jessica didn’t care about rules right then. Besides, her dad wasn’t even home. He was probably out with Norma, spending the night at her not-haunted house. Jessica led Peter through the dimly lit living room, past the flashing television and a sleeping Iridian huddled under that stinky old blanket, and then up to the second floor. On the staircase, Peter slowed to look at the photos in frames that hung on the wall.
“Your mom.”
Peter pointed to a photo of Jessica’s mother. She was sitting in a lawn chair at a pool party, wearing a forest green bikini and large black sunglasses. Her long brown hair was parted down the middle and hung over her shoulders. Jessica was ready for Peter to ask about her, about how much Jessica remembered about her, and Jessica would have to shrug and say not much, which was the disappointing truth.
“She looks like Rosa,” Peter said.
“She does.”
Jessica unlocked and opened the door to her bedroom, realizing too late it was an embarrassing wreck of trash and clothes and dirty sheets. Her face turned hot as Peter did a quick scan, taking in the sorry sight of damp towels tossed into corners and empty tubes of lip gloss and mascara that littered the carpet. Nothing in his expression gave away what he might’ve been thinking until he went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked out into the night.
“This used to be Ana’s room,” Jessica said.
“I knew that.” Peter let the curtain drop and then turned toward Jessica. “We used to watch her from Hector’s.” He dropped his head and shook it. A blush spread across his cheeks. “That sounds creepy. It was creepy. We were creeps.”
“What did you see?” Jessica asked, genuinely curious.
Peter lifted his head and crinkled his brow.
“When you would watch her,” Jessica clarified. “What would she do?”
“She would sneak out,” Peter replied. “Climb down the tree. A couple hours later, she’d come back and climb up the tree. Most of the time, though, she would just stand here and look out. Not to the street, but to the sky.” He paused. “You don’t do that. Stand at the window and look out.”
Jessica should’ve been angry. Peter was giving her proof of his and the neighborhood’s prying eyes. She wasn’t angry, though. There was a difference, she realized, between being spied on and being noticed. She wanted to be noticed, and Peter had noticed her. It gave her a buzzy, soft-edged feeling her hard self wasn’t used to.
“Did you see her fall?” Jessica asked.
“No. We heard the glass break. And a car drive away.”
“It wasn’t John,” Jessica said automatically. “He said it wasn’t him.”
She winced and then scrubbed a hand across her face. It was like those terrible words had actually stung as they came out of her mouth. She’d always known John was there, even if he denied it. The boy who had tasted and touched every centimeter of Jessica’s skin had seen her sister die and had driven away.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I’m sorry I just said that.”
“You should stop apologizing,” Peter said.
Jessica snickered. “Well, I’ve got a lot to be sorry for, so . . .”
Peter cracked a smile. It was so small, but so perfect. “You weren’t the one who decided to fight me.”
“All I do is fight you.”
Peter opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a tapping at the window. The sound wasn’t a hollow ping made by thrown stones, but more like a softer thud.
A ripple of fear went all the way down Jessica’s right arm, from her shoulder and out through her fingers. She closed her eyes and waited for the hard cluck of Ana’s laughter.
“The tree?” Peter asked.
Jessica shook her head. “Too far away.”
The tapping continued. It was rhythmic and controlled—not like branches being tossed against glass by the unpredictable wind. Jessica opened her eyes and saw that Peter didn’t seem scared. He hadn’t blanched, and his eyes weren’t wide. He went over to the window and pulled back the curtain. The tapping stopped. Peter looked down, to the lawn and to the street, and then turned to face Jessica.
“Ana,” she said.
“What does she want?” Peter asked, in an echo of the question Iridian had asked the day before. When Iridian had asked it, Jessica hadn’t answered. She hadn’t answered because she didn’t have an answer. She still didn’t.
“I don’t know.” Jessica sat down on the edge of her unmade bed. “We don’t know. It started when I . . . I saw her hand. Then she wrote on the wall. Today, we heard her laughing. I don’t know what it means. All these little tricks. It’s like . . . why would she do this to us?”