It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know what was going on at the house, but I wasn’t sure there even was anything in Mrs. Freely’s office, and if we got caught . . .
Mrs. Freely had said there would be consequences for misbehaving at Camp Chrysalis. I didn’t bring that up to Ruby because she’d been there and heard it herself, and I didn’t want to feel like I was . . . I don’t know, nagging her or whatever. We’d gotten to be friends this summer, or at least close to it, and the last thing I wanted was for Ruby to roll her eyes at me or do that impatient sighing thing Em sometimes did. Ruby didn’t say anything to me in the van on the way back to the rec center, and I was almost thinking she’d forgotten the whole plan when we sat down with our Responsibility Journals.
I’d just started my second paragraph (a total ramble about how I needed to be more responsible at home, even though that wasn’t really true; I did plenty of work at home) when Ruby slid over from her place on the mat.
“This is the best chance we’re going to get,” she whispered. She was crouched next to me on the mat, almost in a runner’s stance, like at any moment she was going to dash off. I looked at the toe of her sneaker and the bright red diamond shape she’d doodled on the white canvas part. A ruby, duh.
“Liv. Why are you staring at my shoe?”
I raised my eyes to Ruby’s, not wanting to admit that I was stalling. “I don’t think this is a good time,” I told her, scooting over and looking around.
It’s true that Mrs. Freely was nowhere in sight, but Lee and Leigh were over by the doors, talking to each other, and while Susanna and Wesley were writing in their journals, Garrett and those other two boys were sitting in a circle, talking and laughing in low voices.
Ruby followed my gaze. “They’re not going to tell on us,” she said with her usual Ruby Certainty. “Honor among thieves and all that.”
I whipped my head back around. “I’m not a thief!”
Raising both hands, Ruby widened her eyes at me. “Whoa whoa whoa, relax. I know that. Just a figure of speech. Anyway, let’s go while Lee and Leigh are still flirting.”
They were flirting, I realized now. Leigh kept playing with her hair, and Lee was laughing too much.
Taking a deep breath, I put my journal down on the mat. “Okay,” I told her. “Let’s go.”
Susanna glanced up at us as we rose to our feet, and I saw her exchange a look with Ruby before giving a slight nod and turning back to her journal.
“What was that about?” I asked as we ambled over in the direction of Mrs. Freely’s office as casually as we could. If anyone saw us before we got inside, we could say we were going to the bathroom. It was in the same general direction as the office.
“Susanna said she’d keep an eye out just in case,” Ruby told me, glancing back over her shoulder. Still no Mrs. Freely, and the boys were still talking, Lee and Leigh still too interested in each other to watch us.
“So Susanna knows we’re breaking into the office?”
We’d reached the door by now, and Ruby shot me a look. “We’re not breaking in, Liv, come on.”
As though to prove her point, she pushed on the half-open door to Mrs. Freely’s office and slipped inside.
For the space of a few seconds, I hesitated. I hadn’t actually done the thing that got me sentenced to Camp Chrysalis, but this? This was the real deal. It might not be breaking in, exactly, but it was definitely sneaking and therefore definitely Not Okay.
But I thought again about Live Oak House, about Garrett’s bite, the shape in the attic, the way the house itself seemed to be watching us wherever we were. Was it possible that Mrs. Freely knew something about this? And if she did, didn’t we deserve to find out?
So I took a deep breath and followed Ruby inside.
The overhead fluorescent light was on, which actually made this whole thing feel less sneaky, something Ruby apparently noticed, too.“We should be in here at night, dressed all in black with flashlights,” she whispered, and I frowned at her as she made her way over to the desk.
“That really would be breaking and entering, since we wouldn’t be able to get into the rec center at night,” I reminded her, and Ruby did that finger-guns thing at me.
“That’s my Liv, always thinking. Okay, so file cabinet for me, desk for you?”
Chewing my lower lip, I looked between those two things, then shook my head. “No, reverse it. The file cabinet feels . . .”
“Less personal,” Ruby finished, but she didn’t tease me about it or remind me that whichever one I picked, it was still sneaking. She just nodded and made her way to the desk.
I tiptoed over to the file cabinet, not really sure why I was making such an effort to be quiet. Lee and Leigh were on the other side of the gym from the office, and I felt like Ruby was right in thinking the other kids wouldn’t tell on us. Honor among thieves and all that.
Pulling the top drawer out as quietly as I could, I peered inside.
There was a row of brightly colored folders, all of which had a white sticker label on the top, our names scrawled across each one. Definitely not what we were looking for, but I had to admit, I was tempted to pull out my file and see what was written there. It was probably the paperwork our parents had to sign before we started.
Closing that drawer, I moved on to the second one.
More files.
Ruby was rifling through the top drawer of the desk, pulling out a pack of highlighters and a stack of Post-its. “There has to be something,” she muttered, and I closed my drawer, turning to face her.
“Ruby, this is dumb,” I said. “There’s not going to be anything—”
But before I could finish, the door swung open and Mrs. Freely stood there. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out, and I thought of how we must look, me with my back to the file cabinet, Ruby still holding on to the desk drawer.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
CHAPTER 26
RUBY
Mrs. Freely’s office smelled like overly sweet fruit. Not a fruit I could even place, really, just Generic Gross Fruit Smell pumping out from one of the three air fresheners plugged in around the room.
I couldn’t blame her for all the air fresheners—I’d use them, too, if I had to have boys in my office all the time.
Her chairs were light pink and green, the material scratchy under my legs, and I fought the urge to fidget, especially as Mrs. Freely gave us her best Serious Face from across the desk. It was actually nice to see that face instead of her usual grin.
I was used to this expression from grown-ups.
I didn’t think Olivia was, though. She seemed to be shrinking into her chair, like she could camouflage herself. And honestly, she wears enough pastels that she probably could.
“Would the two of you like to tell me what you were doing in my office during Journal Time?” she asked, and I glanced over at Liv again, wondering if she’d go along with the fib I was working on.
“We were looking through your stuff for information about the house,” Liv blurted out, and okay, so we weren’t gonna go with fibbing, apparently.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t turn this around with a little thing I liked to call the How Dare You! Defense. This is a move where, when you’ve done something wrong, you act like the person who caught you was in the wrong. It’s bold and can sometimes go badly, but in this case, I thought it was worth a shot.
“It’s not like we don’t know what you’re doing at Live Oak House,” I said to Mrs. Freely, sitting up straight in my chair, pushing my shoulders back. “We were looking for proof.”
Mrs. Freely’s stern look gave way to something like confusion.
Real confusion, too.
Uh-oh.
“What I’m doing at Live Oak House? Other than trying to get it straightened up and letting you kids play a valuabl
e part in bringing something beautiful to our community?”
Uggghhhh, that was a really good answer, and one that I didn’t know how to reply to, really.
Luckily, Olivia had no problems with that. “No, we know that,” she said, “and we really appreciate it. It’s just that the house is . . .”
Mrs. Freely folded her hands on top of her desk and leaned forward. “The house is what?”
“It’s super freaking creepy and haunted, and we’re not going to let you feed us to it!” I said, and Olivia turned her head to look at me with wide eyes.
Seriously? she mouthed, but hey, we needed to get this all out in the open, and now that we were busted, it felt like the right time to call some bluffs.
“You knew there was something wrong with the house, and you put us all in there anyway,” I went on, ignoring how both Mrs. Freely and Olivia were staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
“And why now? That house has been shut up forever, but all of a sudden, this summer, ‘Ooooh, let’s let the bad kids inside a house that bites people.’”
“Ruby,” Mrs. Freely said, her voice sharp and strong. “First of all, the house does not bite, that’s . . .” She shook her head, blinking, like that was such a bizarre idea, she didn’t even know where to start. “And secondly, you’re not ‘bad kids.’”
“Of course we are,” I argued, flopping back in my chair. “Why else would we be here at Camp Chrysalis? It’s Bad Kid Camp, everyone knows that.”
And then something really, really awful happened.
Mrs. Freely looked . . . sad. Like, the corners of her mouth turned down, and something went soft in her eyes, and I could see her fingers fluttering, clenching and unclenching.
I had made a grown-up sad.
Even if she was a grown-up who wanted to feed us to an evil house, that didn’t feel good, and when I looked over at Olivia again and saw that she was scowling at me, the slithery feeling in my stomach got even worse.
“I’ve never thought of this as ‘Bad Kid Camp,’” Mrs. Freely said at last. “I’ve thought of it as a place where kids who might have some trouble fitting in could feel like they were useful. Could make new friends, much like you and Olivia have done.”
She gestured to Liv, who’d gone back to trying to sink into her chair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but when we started the summer, I don’t think you two were all that close, and now every day, I see you with your heads together, sitting next to each other in the van. Haven’t you become friends?”
I opened my mouth to say that sure, we had, but that didn’t take away from the “house eating us” thing, but then Liv said, “No, we’re not. We were working together on finding out what was going on with the house, but that was stupid. We were stupid. And we’re sorry we went through your stuff, Mrs. Freely, we really are. It won’t happen again.”
With that, she got up and nearly ran from the office, leaving Mrs. Freely and me to stare after her. That feeling in my stomach was worse now, and I muttered my own apology to Mrs. Freely before running out after Olivia.
I found her on the sidewalk outside the double doors, her arms across her chest.
“So we’re not friends?” I said, because I think being direct is always the best plan, and my feelings were hurt. More hurt than I would’ve thought they could’ve been when it came to Olivia Willingham.
To my surprise, Liv rounded on me, her eyes bright. “No,” she said. “You never really wanted to be my friend, anyway. You just wanted someone to go along with you on this . . . this . . .” After a second, she shook her head. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Like, why you’re with me, or why you’re at Camp Chrysalis?” I asked, and I could feel my face getting hotter, like that hollow feeling in my stomach was clawing its way up my neck. “Because I don’t know why you’re here with me, hanging out and getting yogurt and stuff, if I’m apparently some user who was pulling you down for my own schemes or whatever it is that you think.”
Olivia was watching me with her lips clamped shut, her arms still crossed, but I thought she flinched a little. Maybe that meant I was getting to her, and I was glad.
And maybe that’s why I wanted to make her flinch even harder, and said, “And you’re at Camp Chrysalis because your sister used you to get out of being in trouble. Just like she always said she would.”
It was too far. I knew it the second the words left my lips, and I had never wanted to call anything back as badly as I did that last sentence. But it was too late, the words out now, every bit as sharp as I could have wanted them to be.
Liv wasn’t like me. She didn’t get angry like that, she just got hurt, and there was plenty of that in her big green eyes as she stared at me.
“What?” she nearly whispered, and I shook my head, mad at myself now.
“Nothing. I was just being a jerk.”
And I was, but Liv was too smart—or knew me too well now—to just let it go. “She said that to you before, didn’t she.” It wasn’t a question, and if my words had shot out, barbed and stinging like a dart, Liv’s just fell from her mouth, flat and sad. “She said that she was going to do something and blame it on me.”
“Not exactly,” I said, moving a little closer to her, my hand flailing out like it wanted to pat her or hug her, but instead, just sort of waved near her. “She didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna shoplift some lipstick and blame Olivia!’” And she hadn’t. I could say that with confidence.
“So what did she say?” Liv asked, turning wounded eyes to me, and ugh, for someone who could be so good at the occasional white lie, this one just didn’t want to come out.
“Just that . . . I mean, she was joking, she was totally joking, but she had said before that one of the good things about having a twin was that there was always someone who looked just like you to blame things on if you had to.”
I said the words really fast, like they were a Band-Aid I was ripping off, but they hurt anyway. I could see it in the way Liv held her elbows tighter and seemed to do that shrinking thing again.
“She didn’t ask me to do it,” Liv replied, and lifted her hand to tug a strand of hair off her sweaty cheek. “So it wasn’t her fault, anyway—it was mine for saying something.”
“Yes!” I nearly shouted, relieved. Then I thought for a second. “Well, no, it wasn’t your fault, it was just . . . you know, all mixed up and stuff. It was one of those things that happen sometimes.”
That was the dorkiest thing I’d ever said, and if anyone ever gave me the old “these things happen!” spiel, I might have punched them. But Liv just nodded and turned her head, looking down the drive for her mom’s car.
I stood there, my hands hanging at my sides, waiting for the right thing to say to suddenly spring to my lips. There had to be something, right? Some magic words that would fix whatever it was that had just gone wrong between me and Liv?
But there was nothing. We just stood there in silence until Liv’s mom’s car came rolling up the drive, and when Liv climbed in the passenger seat, she didn’t even look at me.
CHAPTER 27
OLIVIA
Chester’s Gap was famous for its Christmas parade, but the town also did one for the Fourth of July. It wasn’t nearly as big as the one they held during the holidays (or as fun to watch—last year, our Christmas parade had had little teacup Pomeranians riding on llamas, and that was hard to beat), but it was fun, and it was our family tradition to go eat at the Italian place at the edge of downtown before walking down to Main Street to watch the parade.
It was hot, of course, like it was every year, but this summer seemed especially brutal as we made our way from the restaurant to the parade route.
“Ugh, why do we always do Italian?” Mom wondered, moving her purse from one shoulder to the other.
“Tradition,” replied Dad, and Mom shot him a look.
“But one w
e made up, right? One we could change? Maybe trade out for . . . I don’t know, something lighter before we slog through nine thousand percent humidity.”
Dad laughed, reaching out to take her hand, swinging their arms together in a way that was both embarrassing and also kind of sweet. “We’ll hold a family meeting about it when Emma gets back.”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “What do you think, Livvy? Italian or something new?”
I shrugged, and I saw my parents catch each other’s eye.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked for what was probably the hundredth time in the past few days.
We had the week off from Camp Chrysalis for the Fourth, and to my surprise, Mrs. Freely hadn’t called Mom about what had happened in her office.
I’d spent a few days waiting for the call, and when it hadn’t come, I’d stopped feeling worried and started feeling . . . sad. About all of it, really: Ruby, getting in trouble, that thing she’d said about Emma.
That’s why I’d been ignoring all of Em’s calls, not sure what to say to her. “Did you do it on purpose?” was the only thing I wanted to know, but at the same time, I almost didn’t want to know. What if she had? What would that mean?
Now I made myself smile at Mom, and said, “Too full to think about any food, I guess.”
I wasn’t sure if she believed that, but she dropped Dad’s hand to take my shoulder, pulling me in between them. “This is weird, isn’t it?” Mom asked. “Just the three of us, going to the parade.” Then she gave me a little squeeze. “But nice.”
I made myself smile at her. “Totally.”
We found the spot we usually liked on the parade route, right down from Books on Main, near the fountain. There was a thick stretch of grass there, and the nice kind of grass, the expensive type that felt soft and didn’t make the backs of your legs itch.
I sat down there and pulled my phone out of my pocket.