“Do spinsters even wear bustiers?” Clara cocks her head in thought.
“Just ask Stacey,” he says, winking at me.
“Maybe you could come over later,” Clara says to me. “Right now, I think I’d just like to make sure everything is secure and in place.”
“You should probably call your parents, too,” I suggest.
“Maybe they’ll come back early.”
Clara looks away, like maybe she’s not so sure. Or maybe she doesn’t want to tell her parents yet.
I see them to the door—PJ, with his arm draped around Clara’s shoulders, and Clara, leaning into PJ just enough to show interest. The sight of them together like that reminds me that I should go and talk to Jacob. I turn toward his room, but then remember Amber coming in and how upset she seemed.
I knock on the door before going in. Amber is lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, the empty plate that formerly held the Mallomars sitting beside her, chocolate driblets at the corners of her mouth.
“Did you see them like that?” she gasps. “PJ and Miss Hula Girl . . .” She sits up in bed and folds her arms.
“I know,” I say, plunking down beside her.
“I thought she was supposed to be after that Casey guy,” she continues.
“Amber, I had no idea. I mean, maybe a little, but—”
“What?” Her cheeks puff up in anger. “About Casey?”
“No,” I say. “I had no idea that you were still interested in PJ. I mean, I know you guys flirt, but after all this time of him trying to get you back—”
“Are you dizzy?” she snaps. “I’m not interested in him.”
“Okay.”
“It just totally bugs me out when I hear about some hula girl breaking up relationships and then coming over here and hanging all over a friend of mine. I mean, I don’t have to be in freaking love with PJ to care about him. You of all people should understand that.”
Instead of telling her that she’s had ample opportunity with PJ—stomping on his heart every chance she gets—instead of pointing out that she doesn’t even know Casey (never mind the details of what happened between him and his girlfriend), and instead of reminding her that I do indeed know a thing or two about caring for a friend—sometimes caring so much that I nearly get myself killed in the process—I take the dirty Mallomar plate for an emergency refill.
“Stacey—wait.”
I turn around.
“Don’t go. I’m just PMSing big time.” She lets out a giant sigh. “I went next door, you know, to see if Sully wanted to go for a swim, and he totally dissed me. Can you believe that? He only asked me if I had my deposit money for the cruise Thursday night. By the way, are you going?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Well, then, can I borrow twenty bucks?”
I bite my tongue, taking an example from my grandmother’s silence, thinking to myself how with a self-absorbed, PMSish attitude like that, it’s no wonder she got dissed.
“Sully said he had some errands to do,” she continues.
“So maybe he did.”
“He had a freaking bodyboard in his hand, Stacey. What, am I not cute enough or something?”
“Of course you are.”
“Then what?” she whines.
There’s a knock on the door. Drea’s standing there. “Can I get in on this conversation?”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Amber falls back on her bed.
“Trouble in paradise?” Drea asks.
“My love life doesn’t have a paradise,” Amber moans. “On second thought, my love life doesn’t even have a life.”
“Hold that thought,” I say, remembering Jacob next door. I head to his room to try and salvage what’s left of my paradise. I knock on the door but there’s no response. “Jacob?” I eek the door open, but no one’s even in there.
Just boy-mess everywhere—pizza cartons stacked at the foot of PJ’s bed, dirty laundry littered about the floor, and half-drunken Gatorades lined up on Chad’s night table. Aside from the different taste in snacks—chocolate over pizza and Diet Cokes in place of Gatorades, their room is not unlike ours.
I go to Jacob’s bed, noticing the dream box on his pillow. It’s sort of like mine—smallish with chrome hinges, only instead of pine, his is made from a knotted hickory. I pick it up, wanting more than ever to know what he’s dreaming about, wondering why he won’t just tell me.
I close my eyes and do my best to concentrate on the box, feeling the knots of wood beneath my fingertips, hoping to gain the answer. But the only vibrations I feel in my fingers are the ones I got from Clara—that cold, tingling sensation.
“What are you doing in here?” Drea asks, completely startling me. The dream box tumbles from my grip.
“You scared me,” I say.
She’s standing in the doorway, arms folded like this is her room and not theirs. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” she says, “but what are you doing in here?”
“What does it look like?”
Amber peeks over Drea’s shoulder and pushes past her into the room. “It looks like you’re snooping through the guys’ stuff without letting us in on the action. Let’s see,” she continues, looking around, “if I were a piece of something scandalous—”
“You already are,” Drea interrupts.
“So true.” Amber smiles at the unintended compliment. She moves over to Jacob’s dresser and starts rummaging through the top drawer.
“I don’t think so.” I hop from the bed and jump in front of her, doing my best to keep her back.
“What’s with the schoolmarm attitude? Afraid of finding something interesting?” Amber reaches around me and snags a pair of boxers from the drawer—gray with thin black stripes. “On second thought,” she says, inspecting the merchandise, “looks like his stuff might be just as snoreful as yours.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Drea adds.
“You just don’t want me to start fishing through Chad’s stuff.”
“No,” Drea says, folding her arms in front. “I don’t.” She stands behind Amber, helping me to box her in before she does any real damage.
“Fine, be that way,” Amber squawks. “But don’t come crying to me when you both find out that your seemingly picture-perfect significant others are really closet exotic dancers at the Shaky Snake.”
“We’re hardly talking about your ex-beaus,” Drea says.
Amber ignores the comment and stuffs Jacob’s boxers back into an already crammed drawer. She goes to close it back up but it’s just too packed.
“Here,” I say, grabbing the drawer handles, “let me do it.”
Amber steps out of the way and I press both palms down on the heap of clothes. Still no go. I start rearranging his stuff, trying to get it as pancake-flat as possible, and that’s when I spot it. His journal.
“Jackpot,” Amber squeals.
“No,” I say. “This is Jacob’s; it’s private.”
“Are you freaking serious? Let ’er rip. Don’t you want to know what he says about you?”
I press the journal between both palms, almost tempted to have a peek, to see what he’s been hiding from me, what he’s been dreaming about. I look at Drea, now busying herself by glancing over Chad’s belongings.
“Did you even know he kept a journal?” Amber asks.
I want to tell her that I did know—that I know that he writes in it every morning upon waking up and that he sometimes reads me passages from it. But instead I opt for the truth and shake my head.
“See what I mean?” Amber says, tapping her teeth in thought. “A closet journal-keeper. Just when you think you know someone.”
“Oh-so-scandalous,” Drea mocks, her head buried in Chad’s sock drawer. “Be serious. It doesn’t mean anything. I keep a journal.”
“Does Chad know about it?” I ask.
“Well, yeah, but so what?”
“So why didn’t Jacob tell Stacey?” Amber asks.
&nb
sp; “Listen,” Drea says, “just because your love life is less than nonexistent these days doesn’t mean you have to try and cause rifts in everybody else’s. Stacey’s a little more secure than that.”
“Unlike you,” Amber says, eyeing Drea on her fishing expedition.
“I’m not snooping,” Drea says. “I’m just helping Chad reorganize.”
“Well, then can we start reorganizing under the mattress?” Amber asks. “Because I’m thinking that’s where the interesting stuff is going to be.”
“I give up,” I sigh, stuffing Jacob’s journal back inside the drawer beneath a heap of T-shirts to avoid further temptation.
“Don’t give it a second thought,” Drea says to me. “All you need to do is bring up the subject of journals with him. Then I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it. It probably just never came up.”
“You’re right,” I say. But maybe the journal is a secret, too.
Drea reaches for something at the back of Chad’s drawer and pulls out a box of some sort. Her face falls. She turns the box over, the front side facing Amber and me. There’s a picture of some hairy-faced guy, his thumb and index finger doing that chin-scratch thing like he’s in deep thought.
“What is it?” Amber asks.
But the answer is actually staring right at us in blue and gold lettering—“Nifty Over Fifty Moustache and Beard Darkener.”
“Maybe it isn’t his,” Drea says.
“Right,” Amber smirks. “I mean, just because it was in his drawer, with his stuff, on his side of the room . . .”
Drea opens the box and takes out the plastic applicator gloves. “I don’t think Chad can even grow a beard.”
“So maybe that’s why he needs it,” Amber says. “Maybe he plans to paint his face with it.” She grabs the box, kisses the picture of Grizzly Adams on the cover, and then reads the color code in the corner: “ ‘Dark Bravado Blonde, Number 143.’ The name alone makes my loins all aquiver.”
“Okay,” Drea says. “I think I’ve seen enough.” She snatches the box back, stuffs the gloves inside, and crams everything back in the drawer.
Meanwhile, my head is spinning. I peer back over at the dream box on Jacob’s bed and body-shove the dresser drawer closed. “Maybe we’ve all seen enough.”
“Are you okay?” Amber asks.
Instead of answering, I just exit the room, slamming the door behind me maybe a little too hard. The noise practically rattles through the house. I go back into our room and make an effort to close the door behind me, but Drea intercepts.
“Stacey,” she says, taking a seat beside me on the bed. “What is it?”
“I’m just feeling really stressed.”
“Well, yeah, that part’s pretty obvious. Is it about the journal?”
“It’s about everything.”
“Not everything,” Amber interrupts. She comes and butts herself (quite literally) into the middle of our conversation, plopping down between us on the bed. “It’s about the nightmares. I mean, obviously—waking up in a face full of blood is enough to stress anybody out. That and having to listen to a teary-eyed hula girl while she hangs all over PJ.”
“What did I miss?” Drea asks.
“Clara,” I say. “She was here earlier.”
“Is it me,” Drea asks, “or does anyone else think she’s absolute bargain-basement material?”
“Because she called Chad cute?” I smile.
“Because she’s an absolute skank,” Amber clarifies.
“She says someone’s been going through her stuff,” I say.
“Do you believe her?” Drea asks me.
I nod and tell them everything—everything that Clara said about her misplaced items and her self-proclaimed neatness.
“So what now?” Drea asks.
“I had another nightmare about her.”
“Did you actually see her this time?” Drea grabs a nail file from the top of her dresser.
“I saw her shadow—I know it was her. I heard her voice.”
“So what did she say in the dream?” Drea takes my hand and begins filing away at my stubby nails. “What did she do?”
“She said more of the same—that I’m not supposed to tell, that if I do, she’ll know and she’ll make me pay.”
“Anything else?” Amber tosses a bottle of nail polish to Drea.
I nod, noticing the neon-green color. “She said that if I tell, she’ll make me bleed.”
“Are you bleeding in the dream?” Drea asks.
“That’s just it. I don’t think I am. There’s blood, but I think it’s hers and that it’s dripping on me. It’s just weird, you know, to have someone’s blood on me—on my hands—like I’m responsible if something bad happens.”
“Don’t think like that,” Drea says.
“How can I not? I mean, I will be responsible. I’m the one who’s having premonitions about her. I’m the one who’s supposed to stop the danger.”
“You do the best you can,” Drea says. “You can’t save the world.”
“Easy for you to say now, seeing that Stacey saved your ass two years ago.” Amber turns toward me. “But she’s right, you know. You can’t save the world—no matter how hard you try.”
And I can’t bring Maura and Veronica back. I glance down at my hands, picturing the imaginary stains of blood.
“Are you okay?” Drea asks.
“I will be.”
“So obviously that’s why your nose has been bleeding,” Amber says. “Because of the blood in your dreams.”
“I guess, but I don’t know. That seems a little too obvious.”
“All I know is that it’s so freaking heinous,” Amber says. “I mean, what do you do if you’re making out and it slides down your throat and gets on your tongue and Jacob ends up with vampire-mouth?”
“Only you would think of that,” Drea says, rolling her eyes.
“There’s more.” I swallow hard, trying to relax, to focus on the nail file as Drea attempts to square off my nail stubs. “Donovan was in my dream.”
Drea stops filing to look up at me, her face completely frozen.
I nod. “At least I think it was him. I’m not sure. There was this guy coming toward me, and he was carrying a bouquet of lilies, just like in the nightmare I had about you.”
“Death lilies,” Drea says, covering her mouth.
“But you didn’t see for sure that it was him,” Amber says. “I mean, maybe it’s just the lilies that you need to concentrate on. Maybe it was some other guy.”
“Maybe,” I say, looking back at Drea, at the plum-purple haze that surrounds her head. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Donovan still has another few years in juvie,” Amber says.
“You’re right,” I say, nodding to reassure myself that he couldn’t possibly have gotten out early.
“And, plus,” she continues, “why would he ever come after Clara? That totally doesn’t make sense. If anything, he’d come after Drea again. Or you.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Drea drops the nail file and buries her head in her hands.
“It’ll be okay,” I tell her, shooting a nasty look at Amber.
“Totally,” Amber says, completely oblivious. She plucks the nail file from the bed and files away at her thumbnail.
“It’s not Donovan we need to focus on right now. It’s death.”
Right, I think to myself. Death. As though the revelation in itself is supposed to be a good thing.
fourteen
Amber and Drea agree to help me do a de-stressing spell. I’m just so completely frazzled lately that I can’t quite get a handle on things. I mean, yes, it goes without saying that the fact that Clara’s life is on the line has got me a bit on edge. But I feel like there’s something more. Something that’s been causing my palms to get all sweaty, my chest to tighten up with each breath, and my head to feel all spinny, like I need to sit down. Maybe it’s Jacob. Maybe it’s because there’s been this b
lock in our relationship—he won’t completely open up, and I can’t completely tell him how I feel.
Or maybe it’s just pure anger. I wanted this to be a normal summer—one last opportunity for all of us to be together before separating and going off to college. Instead I’m helping strangers. I tame my bitter mood with a fingerful of maple syrup, reminding myself that if it wasn’t for people helping strangers—for Jacob helping me last year—I might not even be here right now.
“Stacey,” Amber says, cracking a couple eggs into a ceramic bowl. “You look all fishy. Like you just swallowed a slimy one packed in oil.”
We’re standing around the kitchen island, whipping up a hefty serving of French toast, which in my opinion is the world’s most perfect food—sugar mixed with thick, syrup-sopping, buttery bread.
“Well, she does have a lot on her plate right now.” Drea pours a tablespoon of vanilla extract into the bowl.
“No pun intended,” Amber says, holding up a plateful of dunking bread—big fat slices from a bakery-bought loaf.
“So lame,” Drea says in response.
“I agree.” I sprinkle cinnamon into the bowl and top everything off with a cup of milk and a couple teaspoons of apple juice.
“Since when is French toast a spell?” Amber asks.
“Since we’re making it with the most important ingredient.” I stir the batter up, concentrating on the apple juice as it blends with the other ingredients, on the apple fruit’s ability to cleanse and heal.
“We’re spiking the batter?” Amber perks up.
“No,” I say. “We’re making it together—as friends.”
“Um, yeah,” Amber says, cutting a couple butter blocks from the stick and dropping them onto the hot skillet. “Are you sure you don’t want me to add in a little schnapps?”
“I’m serious,” I say, dunking a piece of bread into the milky batter. “I’m feeling really alone right now, and I’m kind of counting on your friendship.”
“Well, of course you have it,” Drea says. “Whatever we can do to help.”
“Just have some of this with me,” I say, setting a sopping chunk of bread onto the bubbling griddle. “My grandmother used to say that there’s something truly intimate about sharing food with the people you love.”