B00B9FX0MA EBOK (13 page)

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lood rushed to my brain and thrummed in my ears. I saw spots in front of me, felt my heart and my stomach thud to a halt before jackhammering in double-speed that made me sure I was about to throw up.

I had a twin. My twin was dead. The two ideas bumped up against each other. They didn’t make sense. And yet …

“You’re saying I killed her,” I said dully.

“No!” Mom shook her head, but she didn’t look at me. “There was nothing that could be done. You were alive, and that’s what counted.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I have?” Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t make a move to brush them away. She didn’t look at me. “What would I have said? It was the worst and best day of my life. The adoption fell through, and I was glad. I wanted you. I wanted both of you. But you were there, and you were alive, and you were mine. And since the moment you were born, I made it my mission to never let you know, to make sure you were raised in happiness and peace. Because what good would the truth do?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. A cloud passed over the sun and I shivered. I had a million questions.
Why didn’t you tell me? Why is she haunting me? What can I do now?

“It’s a lot. I didn’t want you to know. Don’t you see that
sometimes, some secrets are just better left unsaid? And James couldn’t deal with any of it. He couldn’t handle the fact that she’d died. He couldn’t handle a lot,” she said bitterly.

I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t believe that I’d had a twin. And that she
died
. Maybe, even in utero, I’d been jealous, had killed my sister so I could live. And maybe now, my sister was enacting her ghostly revenge.

I twisted my bracelet around and around my wrist. I wanted Mom to hold me, to say everything was all right, to tell me that I was still perfect. Instead, she stood up and pulled her cardigan around her shoulders.

“I haven’t thought about this in a long time. It’s hard for me. Especially now, with Geofferson …” Mom’s face twisted. “I have a chance to be really, truly happy. Can you understand why I want to forget the past?”

“Yeah,” I said in a strangled voice.
But what if she’s haunting me?

“I care about you so much, Hayley,” she said softly.

“Well, you have an odd way of showing it. Lying to me? I can never trust you again! What mother
does
that?”

Mom set her lips into a tight, angry line.

“It’s so messed up.
You’re
so messed up. You expect me to be okay, after that. What am I supposed to do? I wish I’d been the one to die!”

Mom looked at me as though she’d been slapped. She grimaced, her mouth twisting. Then, as though she had to force herself to do it, she reached toward me.

“No!” I yanked my arm away from her. “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone.”

Mom nodded. “Fine. Fine, Hayley. I love you. But I can’t … you need to stop. Before you say something you’ll regret.”

I didn’t look at her. I hugged my arms to my body, wrapping my frame in my sweatshirt. I wanted her to tell me everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t be. It wasn’t.

I heard the sound of leaves crunching underneath Mom’s feet. I didn’t look up. Didn’t move. And when I finally did, she’d disappeared. The playground had also emptied, and the only sign of life was a group of ducks cutting a V along the dark pond water.

I’d killed my sister. Yes, it was an accident. Yes, it had happened before I was born. But the fact remained that there had been two of us, and I’d survived. That fact was as much a part of me as my drive and determination. It was the dark shadow part of me that woke me up in my sleep, that made me pull away when Matt kissed me. And whether that shadow self was the actual ghost of my twin or the ugly, twisted part of my brain that caused me to go to parties in my sleep or imagine people that weren’t there, it didn’t matter. This shadow was out to destroy me. And unless I did something fast, it would succeed.

I sat on the bench for hours. There, I didn’t have to think or react. I didn’t have to run. I could sit.

“Hey,” I said, looking up at the sky. I thought back to when I used to go to sleepovers at Keely’s house. We’d hold séances and I always was pretty sure Emily was not-so-secretly pushing the planchette so it’d land on
Yes
when she asked if her crush liked her. We’d scare one another, but it was the good kind of scared that made us push our sleeping bags together and giggle into the night. This fear was heavy and made it hard to breathe,
made me hope that something would
happen
. “If you’re here, you should, you know, show yourself.”

I paused. How did you talk to a ghost?

“I know you’re here,” I tried again. “And I want to say … I’m sorry. For anything I did. Just know that. But that doesn’t mean you should be punishing me.”

Punishing me?
I sounded like a kindergarten teacher. I coughed. “Just please tell me what you want me to do. Seriously.”

I closed my eyes and waited. Nothing.

Then, I heard footsteps. Felt a tap on my shoulder.

I screamed.

“Whoa! It’s all right!”

A police officer shined a light at me. I blinked and realized another cop was standing behind him. I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or annoyed.

“What are you doing? Waiting for your boyfriend?”

“No.” I shook my head, my eyes adjusting to the artificial light in my face.

“So you’re just sitting here all alone?”

“I was thinking,” I said in a small voice.

“Just thinking,” he repeated. “All right. Well, the park’s closed now. Locks up at dusk. So it’s best to do your thinking somewhere else.”

I trailed behind the officer. Beside me, the trees lining the winding path formed shadows on the concrete beneath my feet. She — my twin — wasn’t here.
Of course she’s not, because she’s dead.

“What?” the officer asked.

“Nothing.” Had I spoken out loud? I mashed my lips together and stared at the ground.

“Where’s your car?” the officer asked as he clicked the padlock in place on the iron gate. The parking lot was empty except for a lone squad car.

“Just down the street. I’ll be fine.”

He nodded and I headed to where I’d parked, hours earlier, on Main Street. I slid into the front seat and headed toward the house. It was time to face the inevitable.

The lights were on, but Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway. There was a note on the rough-hewn table. I grimaced, relieved when I saw my mother’s familiar handwriting.

I picked up the paper and crumpled it in a tiny ball. At my feet, Sadie chased her tail in circles, the way she always did when she expected a treat.

I grabbed a dog biscuit from the cupboard, broke it in two, and threw the pieces on the floor. Sadie gobbled them up eagerly, licking the linoleum floor for good measure.

“That’s a sweet girl,” I murmured. I looked up the stairs to my bedroom. The stairwell looked dark and foreboding and I felt my stomach clench in dread.

It was now or never. If something was going to happen, it would happen. Or it wouldn’t. I took a tentative step on the stairs. The wood creaked and I jumped.
It’s nothing.
I took another step, and another.

“Hello?” I called loudly as I walked across the threshold into my bedroom. I flipped on the light and glanced around. Everything was the same as it had been on Saturday morning, before the Ainsworth interview. There was a half-drunk mug of coffee. The messy pile of interview outfits. My laptop.

I jostled the trackpad of the laptop and logged into my e-mail, not sure what to expect. But everything was normal. A few messages from the Yearbook listserv that I couldn’t unsubscribe from, even though I’d made the list in the first place, an invite to a potential students’ weekend at UPenn, a Kendra-sent link to Flickr pictures from Alyssa’s party. I read through each quickly, was relieved to see that none of Kendra’s pictures included me, and then reached the top of the list.

And then I shrieked.

CONGRATULATIONS!
screamed the subject line. But what I noticed was the sender name:
Lucinda Ainsworth.

I clicked.

I blinked at the message, half expecting it to disappear. But it didn’t.

Oh my God.

I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to call someone, to scream into the phone, to pop a bottle of champagne and toast to my dreams coming true. I rifled through my purse, but my phone wasn’t there. Weird. Then I remembered how I’d dropped my bag in the parking lot. Had my phone fallen out, and I hadn’t noticed?

I glanced back at the message, reading it again just to make absolutely sure that I hadn’t imagined anything. And then, an instant message popped up on my laptop screen.

The avatar next to the message was the same as the one from the original Facebook profile — complete with a bikini, sunglasses, and a flirty, secret-hiding smile. It was her.

“Sadie!” I called sharply. Sadie barked once, then dropped to the ground, continuing to gnaw on a sock. If something was wrong, she certainly didn’t know. Couldn’t dogs sense ghosts?

I slammed the laptop shut and ran to the kitchen, turning on all the lights along the way. I knew I couldn’t run. I
couldn’t
. Because she — it — knew who I was. Knew where I was. Still, I grabbed a bread knife from the kitchen and inched upstairs to my computer. A new message was blinking on the screen.

“Where are you?” my voice echoed. The heater hissed in the corner. The wind rattled against the windows.

The green message window flashed. I clutched the bread knife more tightly as another message popped up on the screen.

I took a deep breath, fingers poised over the keyboard, a million thoughts rushing through my head:
I’m sorry. Don’t kill me. Did you kill Leah? What is happening?

Finally, I typed: Are you my sister?

The message box was empty. A minute passed. I placed the knife on the desk. Glanced at the curtains fluttering over the window. Massaged my temples. Repeated
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry
like a mantra. Then, when the message box stayed dormant, I typed a single question mark.

And then, another message popped up.

I paused and took a deep breath. The wind slammed against the windows, louder and harder. I typed back, What do you want?

Instantly, a message appeared. What do I want …

“Yes,” I said out loud. I clutched the knife again. “Yes!”

It was a shriek that caused the windows to rattle. Sadie barked, three short, raspy, alarm-like sounds.

“Tell me,” I said in a quieter voice. I sounded like I was begging.

And then, the words appeared on the screen — slowly and deliberately, as if whoever was typing them knew my heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and my pupils were dilating with each letter.

And then, the icon disappeared.

“Hello?” I called. Nothing.

Sadie glanced up at me curiously.

“Hello?” My voice was shaky. “What do you want me to do?”

I glanced at the computer screen. Nothing.

“Fine.” If this was the game that I was supposed to play, I’d do it. Clearly, the spirit or ghost or whatever expected me to be afraid. It probably expected me to run away. But I wouldn’t.

Instead, I took the stairs, two at a time, to my mother’s room.

Tucked under the eave of the attic, my mother’s oddly shaped room wasn’t one I often went in. It wasn’t one she often went in, either, preferring to sleep on the couch. It didn’t have any sense of her the way that her office did at The Sound and the Story.

I tugged on a drawer and glanced down at piles of folded shirts. The next drawer held ancient notebooks. I picked one up:
Get Motivated to Go Back to College Project
read the lines on the first page. The rest of the pages were blank.

Then, I tugged out the third drawer. It was stuck, the edge of the wood being held back by a yellow swath of fabric.

I tugged harder. The wood creaked and pain shot through my finger. I looked down to see a large splinter sticking out from my skin, blood dripping onto the fabric. Wincing, I yanked out the sliver of wood with my teeth, then resumed pulling.

The drawer fell to the floor with a clatter, causing an eruption of children’s clothing from when I was little.

I picked up a frayed blue sundress. It had been my favorite until I’d dropped an ice-cream cone on it at the county fair when I was five. I touched the still-visible stain, remembering how my mother had spent half an hour at the sink in the crowded, hot restroom trying to scrub it out.