The Devil You Know (10 page)

I have no idea what time it is when the air mattress shifts under Noah's weight and he wraps himself around me the way he did last night. We fall asleep, and I don't wake again until the morning sun makes the tent seem as if aglow from the inside—and my phone vibrates with an incoming text message.

I had to go home. Sorry. -L

At first my sleep-fogged brain can't decipher the message because I can't think of anyone I know whose name begins with
L.
Then I realize it's Lindsey, but that doesn't make any sense, either, because we're going to Disney World so there's no way she would leave. My phone flashes a reminder that I need to charge the battery as I text a message back to her.

Everything okay?

A minute passes. Then two. Noah shifts, and Molly shakes, her collar jingling before she gets to her feet and nudges her nose into my hand. But I get no answer from Lindsey.

“Noah.” I say his name softly so I won't scare him
awake, but his eyes pop open immediately and they have that slightly wild look. “Sorry. It's just—Lindsey left.” “She left?”

I show him the text screen on my phone.

“Weird.” He sits up, rubs the back of his head, disrupting the sunbeams that hang in the air behind him, and yawns. “She was really stoked about Disney. It's all she could talk about last night when we walked the dog.”

“I hope it wasn't an emergency.”

“My guess is that it wasn't,” Noah says. “I mean, she would have woken us up for an emergency, right? And I could have driven her anywhere she needed to go quicker than waiting for a ride to come. Maybe she changed her mind and was too embarrassed to admit it.”

I unzip the tent and step out with bare feet. The ground is warm, and Matt is cracking eggs into a cast-iron skillet just the way my dad used to do it. Matt's even toasting the bread over the fire, which makes it feel like he's been digging around inside my head. He smiles at me as if last night's kiss never happened. “ 'Morning. Coffee is on the table, and breakfast should be ready in a minute or so.”

“Lindsey left.”

“What? Seriously?” His eyebrows register confusion as he turns over the toast to get the top as golden brown as the bottom. “I just assumed she was already up, taking a shower or something. Why did she leave?”

“I don't know.” I tell Matt about her text and share Noah's theory.

“Yeah, maybe.” Matt transfers the eggs and toast onto a plate and carries them over to the picnic table. “Or maybe she was worried about money.”

Truth be told, I'm a little worried about the money myself, so he definitely makes a good point.

Noah comes out of the tent with Molly following, her leash dragging on the ground behind her. The state park has regulations about dogs being on leashes, but Molly rarely ventures far away from Noah. I mean, who can blame her? I've only known him a little more than a day, and I want to follow him everywhere.

“Now that Lindsey's bailed, what are you going to do?” he asks. “Do you still want to come with us?”

My dad will be annoyed if I tell him I'm not coming home today. And I worry about who will take care of Danny, because even if I'm not his mother, he's still my little boy. I feel selfish, but I nod anyway. “Just let me make some calls.”

My phone complains at me again about my battery, so I text Dad that I'm taking another day off. It's the coward's way out—and one more reason I can see why Lindsey may have left without telling us in person—but I don't want to fight with my dad. Being a coward suits me just fine.

Then I message Duane to ask if he and Jess would
mind helping out with my brother today. It's early so I don't expect it when Duane calls me back right away. “Where ya going, Cadie?”

“The Devil's Chair.” I am changing the plan because Noah doesn't want to go to Disney. “It's in—”

“Cassadaga, I know. Me and the Kendricks and some people went looking for it last year,” he says, and it hits me that I wasn't invited on that road trip. I expected to be left out of stuff by my ex-boyfriend, but not my best friend. That kind of stings. “Who are you going with?” Duane asks.

“Two guys from Maine I met at the campfire party. The ones with the '69 Cougar.”

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?” he asks. “Cadie that I know doesn't go road-tripping with strangers.”

“Cadie that you know doesn't do much of anything,” I say. “Please, Duane? I don't know how much more I can take before I actually will go crazy. Just—when was the last time I did anything like this?”

He's quiet for a couple of beats. “Never, I guess.”

“Then have a little faith, okay?”

“How long you fixin' to be gone?”

“Late tonight, maybe, or early tomorrow?” My words are a question as I look at Noah and he nods.

“Jess is off today, so she can go pick up the rug rat.” Duane sighs, and inside it I hear everything he's not saying.

“I know this is asking a lot—” I say.

“Just be careful, Cadie. And if you get in a jam—I mean anything at all—you call me right away. Got it?”

“Yep.”

“Have fun, crazy girl.” “Thanks, Duane. Love you.”

He tells me to shut up, and then he's gone. It's just me and Noah and Matt, and they're both looking at me.

“We're not going to Disney World,” I say.

A matched set of grins is what I get in return as I shovel a fork filled with yolky toast into my mouth, but it's Matt who speaks first. “So what's next? Devil's Chair?”

I nod. “Let's go hear what the devil has to say.”

Mom used to keep a little box of cards printed with questions and quotes. Conversation starters, she'd call them, and she'd take them out at the dinner table whenever I was having a one-word-answer day or if Dad carried on too long with work-related gripes. It wasn't as much a family bonding exercise as it was a way for her to force us to talk to her about something after she'd spent most of her day alone. Usually I didn't mind, even the times I rolled my eyes. But when she was pregnant and riddled with cancer, she was the one who didn't want to talk sometimes. Dad and I never pulled out the box for her, and after she was gone … well, I don't even know where the cards are. We don't talk like that anymore, my dad and me. More often than not our conversations are night ships.

Did you do your homework?

Yeah.

There's a plate in the oven for you.

Thanks.

The grass is looking long.

I'll mow it after school.

I appreciate that my dad's life sucks sometimes, too. There are nights I lean against the wall outside his door, wanting to knock. Touching the pencil mark on the frame from the last time he measured me there. Wanting him to invite me in. Pressing my ear against the wood grain as if I might hear his thoughts. Wanting to share in the bit of Mom that's still left in that room. But I'm afraid I'll break him more than he's already been broken.

All of this is why, when I finally hear from Dad, I'm not surprised that his reply is a text message telling me I've had my fun, but now it's time to come home, preferably in time to make dinner. Keeping the confrontation as short and impersonal as possible. Like father, like daughter. Only we're halfway to Cassadaga and I'm not asking Noah to turn the car around now.

I'm typing a response when I'm interrupted by an incoming text from Lindsey.

Everything's okay. Just a family thing I forgot about.

Before I can find out what was more important to her than Disney World, my phone powers off. Dead.

Perfect.

I lean forward between the seats to tell Noah and Matt about Lindsey's response.

“Bummer,” Matt says, but he doesn't sound especially upset. Noah doesn't say anything and I wonder if Lindsey even matters to them. If I matter. Maybe I'm just another Florida tourist attraction. Then again, how could I be anything more?

“My phone died,” I say. “Do either of you have a charger?”

But they have expensive, gadgety phones that talk to them and play hours of music. Not compatible with my old model that only makes calls and texts. I'm not complaining about it. Just that of all the things I remembered to bring, my charger wasn't one of them.

“Do you need to make a call?” Noah offers me his phone, but I decide I'll wait until we reach Cassadaga. A few more miles isn't going to keep my dad from being upset when I tell him I'm not coming home.

The backseat of the Cougar is comfortable, but the one thing I've learned about convertibles since we left High Springs is that at sixty miles per hour they aren't as romantic as they seem. I've peeled the same strand of hair out of my mouth about 642 times, the music just
wah-wah-wahs
from the speakers, and unless we're shouting, talking isn't all that easy. Of course, in the grand scheme of problems, these are not bad ones to have—and it gets
infinitely better after we stop outside Ocala for gas and a bathroom break for the dog. Noah tosses the keys to Matt and hops over the side of the car into the backseat with me and Molly.

“Hey!” Matt protests. “Am I the chauffeur now?”

“You wanted to drive Miss Kitty.” Noah stretches his arms out along the top of the seat, tilting his face to soak up the sun. I feel his fingertips tapping out a rhythm on my shoulder, and I'd swear to it that my heart starts beating in time. “And I want to sit back here with Cadie. I'd call that a win for everybody.”

Matt's hand reaches between the front bucket seats, his middle finger extended, but his reflection in the rearview mirror is laughing as he pulls the Cougar back out onto Route 40.

“Miss Kitty?” I slide up against Noah so I can talk without my words getting blown away. “Is that really the name of your car?”

“Yep,” he says. “She belonged to our granddad, but she's been garaged ever since he died. Grandmother MacNeal would probably be rolling over in her grave if she knew we had it out on the road.”

“Were you close to her?”

“Not even a little bit.” He smiles to himself and shakes his head. “The first time I met her I had a foot-high, bright-red Mohawk. She looked me up and down, wrinkled her
nose like she was smelling something bad, and told me I looked just like my father. So I did the same thing. Looked her up and down, wrinkled my nose, and said, ‘He is quite a handsome son of a bitch, isn't he?' ”

I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, but I laugh anyway. “And she still willed Miss Kitty to you?”

“Maybe in the end she was proud of me for getting myself straight and going to college,” he says. “Maybe she felt bad because Matt's family inherited everything else, which makes sense because my dad can't be trusted with money or nice things. Or maybe she liked that I didn't take her shit. I don't know, but I do know I love this car.”

“It's pretty hot.”

Noah leans down close so his lips brush against my earlobe, and my insides feel as if someone has set off a string of firecrackers. “I haven't made out with anyone in the backseat yet. Wanna break it in?”

I can't keep from smiling. “Might be fun.”

“I guarantee it.” Noah's hand comes up and curls softly around the back of my neck as his mouth touches mine. No one has ever kissed me the way he does. Intense, but not hard. Sweet, but not soft. Like if he drew his lips away right now a piece of my soul might just follow along behind. Which sounds completely insane in a head with
a history of being level, but I can't help thinking it. And wanting more, even if I'm just a tourist attraction.

“I'm still in the car, you guys! I can see you!” Matt shouts, his words wedging themselves between Noah and me, pulling us apart. “Have pity on the guy whose date abandoned him, would ya?”

Noah rolls his eyes, but the two of them grin at each other in the rearview mirror.

I shift positions, lying on the back bench-style seat with my feet propped on the door frame, my head on his thigh. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind your head on my thigh?”

“No, I meant feet on the door,” I say. “If it's a problem …”

“I never gave a shit what Grandma thought when she was alive, so you”—Noah leans down and kisses me again, quick, like we're doing it in secret—“can put your feet anywhere you want.”

My imaginary road trip had us holding hands and kissing at stoplights, but in reality, Molly and I both fall asleep against Noah and I don't wake until his voice burrows its way into my brain. “Cadie, we're here.”

My eyes open and his face hovers above mine, and I smile because I'm pretty sure I could get used to looking at that face. “Hi, you.”

“Hey,” he says, as I sit up and finger-comb through the
snarls in my windblown hair. My face is warm from the sun, and my nose stings a little, making me wonder if it's burned.

“So what do we do until midnight?” Matt asks, as we pass the welcome post for the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp. Established in 1894 by a medium who was led to the area by three ghosts after being told during a séance he would found his own spiritualist community. The whole thing sounds hokey to me, but the street is lined with new age shops—with names like Purple Rose and Sixth Sense—offering gemstones, spiritualist books, and psychic readings. Clearly there are many here who believe.

Tarot. Palm. Crystals. Astrology. Some of the mediums even claim to be able to contact loved ones on the other side. The thought of being able to talk to my mom again cuts a keen sadness through my heart.

“We could take a ghost tour or go to a psychic.” I don't really believe I could communicate with my mother through a medium, but having my palm read or my tarot done might be fun. I've never done anything like that before, except the time Hallie Kernaghan brought an old Ouija board to soccer camp and a bunch of us tried to make it do something. We spent half the night accusing each other of pushing the pointer and just gave up. “Maybe a psychic can tell us who tied Jason to a tree,” I
say. “Or maybe she can channel your grandma's spirit so we can ask her how she feels about you driving the car.”