Famous Last Words Read online

  It was so horribly hopeless that I almost laughed.

  Just one line? It might as well have been a hundred pages.

  I flipped the empty journal shut and put it away.

  “It’s about to boil,” Wyatt said.

  I glanced at the beaker suspended above our Bunsen burner. “Nah, it’s okay.”

  It was the end of my first week at Langhorn. We had a lab project to do, so Wyatt Sheppard was finally forced to talk to me. And every word he spoke implied that I was a complete moron.

  He let out a frustrated sigh. “If it boils, it’ll ruin the experiment,” he explained. “You may not care if we fail, but I have an academic standard to maintain.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Wyatt was apparently just as obsessed with his GPA as he was with the Hollywood Killer. But I wasn’t in the mood for micromanagement. I’d spent a week of sleepless nights tossing and turning, and the days between the nights obsessing over the fact that I seemed to be losing my mind.

  “If you stop it too early, it won’t be hot enough,” I snapped, my patience expired. “I’ll handle the beaker, you write the lab report. If it gets ruined, you can tell Mr. Hiller it was all my fault.”

  A moment later, when I saw a bubble appear, I reached over and turned the burner down.

  “Are you happy now?” I asked.

  “Ecstatic.” He scowled down at the lab report.

  We argued our way through the rest of the experiment. Then, after demonstrating our results for Mr. Hiller, we sat back down, facing away from each other.

  Wyatt had been in a terrible mood all week, and I was pretty sure I knew why.

  Because he couldn’t find his notebook.

  My initial plan had been to give it back to him as soon as I saw him Tuesday morning outside the school. But that was before he greeted me with a glare, and Marnie pulled me away by the elbow, trying to do me a favor by keeping me out of his path.

  And when I’d walked to our table in Chem that day, and spent a second studying him, to gauge if the moment was right, he looked at me and snapped, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I’d said, turning away. “Never mind.” And I hadn’t tried to bring up the subject for the rest of the week.

  Did I feel bad about hanging on to someone else’s personal property, when he was clearly desperate for its return? Well, yeah. Did I find the notebook disturbing and want it away from me as soon as possible? A million times yeah.

  But why couldn’t Wyatt show even the smallest hint of compassion or empathy toward me — a new student who’d just had her life turned upside down and been paired with the most hostile lab partner in the history of high school chemistry?

  I’d done absolutely nothing (well, nothing he was aware of) to deserve that kind of treatment. So I decided to let him freak out about his stupid notebook for a while.

  First thing Monday morning, I’d turn it in to the lost and found. But until then, he could just suffer.

  That night, Jonathan and Mom made plans to go out to dinner and a movie. My mother was clearly worried about leaving me home alone, but I convinced her I’d be okay.

  What I said was, “Of course I’ll be fine. I’ll call if I need anything.” What I didn’t say was, OMG! A whole night where I don’t have to worry about doing or saying the wrong thing in front of Jonathan? Sign me up yesterday.

  That just seemed impolitic.

  A tiny piece of me was kind of skittish about being in the house alone, but that was nothing I was willing to share with Mom anyway.

  My big plans for the night included lounging on the big comfy couch in the den, neutralizing my general sense of anxiety with trashy TV shows. First, I went upstairs to put on my pajamas. As I moved my schoolbag from the bed to the floor, Wyatt’s red notebook caught my eye.

  Ignore it, I told myself. Don’t waste a single second thinking about him.

  But I couldn’t suppress a mental slideshow of images of someone carrying dead girls around, posing them like dolls, taking care to get every detail correct….

  Worst of all, I couldn’t shake the awful, hopeless feeling of actually being Brianna, scared and alone. Even though I knew the vision I’d had on Monday hadn’t been real, it had felt so real. I’d been dodging miserable memories of it all week.

  My room wasn’t cold, but I shivered as I changed into my pajamas. Then, without thinking, I reached for the ring and candle — but just as my fingers brushed the suede bag, I stopped. I’d wasted, what, ten minutes a day? For almost two years? All in a desperate attempt to reach someone who probably didn’t even want to hear what I had to say — and that’s if there even was such a thing as ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them.

  Why did I even bother — because one stupid book I’d found at a used bookstore said it would work?

  Forcing myself to leave the ring untouched in the drawer, I walked to the sink in the bathroom to splash water on my face. My thoughts raced. What if I’m quitting one day too soon? What if this would have been the night Dad found me?

  But I knew I could do this. I could sweat it out. I just needed to think about something more relaxing, that’s all. Something more pleasant.

  The image that came into my mind when I closed my eyes was Reed’s face. His crooked smile and his clear green eyes, calm and confident. We’d had a couple of chance encounters during the week. I was finding that the hope of spending a few minutes talking to him was one of the things that got me through the days and the long, torturous nights.

  Then, out of nowhere, I heard a voice.

  “This is …”

  I didn’t want to hear the words, but it was like when you get some random idea in your head, and you can’t get it out. The harder you try not to think about it, the more it haunts you.

  “This is the kind of …”

  The words came together like leaves tumbling around in the wind, meaningless sounds until they coalesced for a brief moment, long enough to fill the room with the whispered phrase — and then broke apart again.

  I fought and pushed and shook my head, like I could dislodge the sound from my brain.

  But the voice grew louder.

  “THIS IS THE KIND OF —”

  Stop, stop, stop.

  “THIS IS THE KIND OF DREAM —”

  I tried to grab on to thoughts of something else, anything else — school, Mom, Reed. Even my painful memories of Aiden. It didn’t work.

  Then the whole thing came whooshing toward me, ringing in my ears like a bell.

  “THIS IS THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM, HENRY.”

  I had no idea who Henry was. Or whose voice I was hearing. Or why this particular message was being delivered to me.

  The back of my neck prickled and my head ached. In desperation, I threw open my nightstand drawer. But instead of grabbing the ring, I yanked my journal out and flung it onto the bed.

  Just one line, huh? For once, I was too frustrated to agonize over whether I had anything worth saying. In huge, blocky letters, I filled a whole page with one sentence:

  I WOULD JUST LIKE FOR THINGS TO BE EASY FOR A LITTLE WHILE.

  Then I slammed the journal shut and shoved it back in the drawer, my chest heaving.

  I went downstairs, determined to distract myself for at least a few hours. But when I turned on the TV, the opening credits of a movie were playing.

  I kid you not, the movie was The Birds.

  So I did what any crazy person would do … I sat down and watched it.

  It was ten past midnight. I was in bed and — surprise, surprise — I wasn’t even close to sleeping. Watching a horror movie about homicidal birds definitely hadn’t helped.

  I flopped back onto my pillow and caught two flashes out of the corners of my eyes — the kind that usually mean a huge headache is about to sink its claws into my skull.

  The wind picked up. Whenever a particularly strong gust blew, the branches of the huge walnut tree outside my room hit the windows with a smattering of sharp soun
ds. If you closed your eyes and blurred your brain just right, you could imagine a raging horde of birds clawing at the glass, desperate to get inside.

  Don’t be silly. They’d just break the glass.

  In the movie, they’d pecked through a roof, for heaven’s sake.

  So then I pictured teeny tiny birds — baby birds. Gnashing their needle-size beaks and banging against the glass with all the force they could muster. Before long, one of them would hit hard enough to crack it, and then they’d come flying in like a horde of vampire bats — or how I imagined vampire bats when I was a kid, swarming around me and drinking my blood, like they’d done to Tippi Hedren, leaving her catatonic in the attic —

  Okay, nope. Not helping.

  After a few minutes, the wind died down, and the scratching subsided, leaving a sudden silence.

  In the quiet, I became aware of another noise — a soft, steady sound, so persistent in its rhythm that soon I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it before:

  Drip … drip … drip …

  I told myself to ignore it. I mean, there were like twelve bathrooms in the house — one of them was bound to spring a leak at some point, right?

  I buried my face in my pillow.

  Drip … drip … drip …

  It was the type of sound that could drive a person bonkers.

  Finally, I got up and checked the bathroom that adjoined my room. All the faucets were off. I opened my bedroom door and looked down the silent, empty hall stretching before me, its polished floorboards lustrous in the moonlight.

  I took a deep breath. Then I ducked into each of the upstairs bathrooms, inspecting all the faucets, but found nothing that could have caused the dripping noise.

  Finally, I stood at the far end of the hall and stared at the door to the only room I hadn’t checked yet: Jonathan’s office.

  I should really, really go back to bed.

  But as I hesitated …

  Drip.

  Let’s be clear — simply being in Jonathan’s house seemed like more than enough of an imposition. I wasn’t exactly dying to bust into my stepfather’s office uninvited — but —

  Drip.

  — it wasn’t like I was going to go sit at his desk and mess with his stuff. I just wanted to tighten a faucet handle and get out. No rational person would get upset about that. Even thinking that Jonathan might get upset made me feel irrational.

  Drip.

  I opened the office door and paused to look around. The room felt like a time warp, a glimpse at life back in the golden age of movies. The walls, covered in luxe dark green wallpaper, were decorated with posters from classic movies like Casablanca and Sunset Boulevard, as well as posters of Jonathan’s own movies, signed by some of the biggest stars in the world: Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow, Denzel Washington. Jonathan’s laptop sat on the desk, the single modern-looking element.

  The dripping was louder in here.

  I opened the bathroom door and hit the light switch, but no light came on. Maybe the bulb had gone out. In the shadowy darkness, I walked over to the old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub.

  When I saw it, I froze.

  The tub was full of water.

  When I say full, I mean filled up 100 percent. Its upper brim was a perfectly flat and motionless layer of water. And on the side closest to me, water crept over the edge and dripped to the floor, one slow drop at a time.

  Drip … drip … drip …

  The echoes of the plinking water were like something from a scary movie about a creature dwelling in a subterranean cave.

  I stood over the tub, holding my breath and studying my dim, distorted reflection. Every time a drop slipped over the edge, it sent a tiny shudder through my face.

  If I reached in to pull out the drain stopper, it would send a gush of water over the side. I’d have to bail some out first. I found an empty glass on the counter and dipped it into the tub, a stream of droplets spilling over and splashing my feet. I repeated the process about ten times, filling the glass and dumping it in the sink, until the water level had gone down an inch.

  I rolled up my sleeve and returned the glass to its spot next to the sink.

  Then I turned back to the tub.

  The water was perfectly level with the top again.

  Okay, no.

  I stepped closer and peered down into the bathtub.

  A face peered back at me — pale, with dark circles under the eyes. A slack, sullen mouth. A halo of short curls.

  Not my face —

  That is not my face.

  I jumped back, slamming into the wall behind me — and the light switch — flooding the room with bright light. For a second, I searched my reflection in the mirror, praying I’d see dark circles, lips sullenly parted, a hint of curl in my hair. Anything to convince me that the face I’d just seen had been my own … and not the face of a stranger.

  It didn’t work.

  Forget this. You’re beyond tired. You’re completely lacking any sense of judgment.

  I started to back out of the bathroom. I should never — never ever ever — have come in here. And I never ever ever planned to do so again.

  I pulled the office door open.

  A shadow blocked the doorway.

  I shrieked and stumbled backward, losing my balance and crashing to the floor, nearly taking a table lamp with me.

  When I looked up, the shadow was directly over me, like a monster about to destroy its cornered victim.

  “Willa?”

  The voice did not belong to a monster. It belonged to Jonathan.

  He flipped on the lamp and stood watching me, his expression wary. My mother hurried to his side. “Willa? What’s going on? We heard someone walking around.”

  I shielded my eyes from the sudden brightness. “I heard something dripping.”

  Jonathan had his arms crossed, waiting for me to get to the part about why I was in his office.

  I sat up and dusted my hands off on my pajama pants. “I checked all of the other bathrooms first — but I could tell it had to be coming from in here.”

  “How could you tell that?” Jonathan asked.

  “With my ears.” I hadn’t meant it to sound disrespectful, but judging by the way Jonathan’s brow furrowed in annoyance, I knew it had come out that way.

  “Did you find anything?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And it’s weird.”

  I thought it would be easier if they just looked for themselves, so I pointed to the bathroom. They filed in, Jonathan first.

  I got to my feet and listened for their exclamations of surprise.

  But there was silence.

  “Willa?” Mom asked. “What is it? What did you find?”

  Some part of me knew, as I came around the corner and peered through the doorway, that something was wrong.

  The bathtub was perfectly empty and dry.

  Words probably needed to be said, but none presented themselves. I felt like I had a mouthful of dirt.

  “Where’s the leak?” Jonathan’s dark eyes flashed. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he carried himself with so much authority that he seemed to loom above me like the monster I’d mistaken him for.

  For the second time in a week, I found myself scrambling to cover my tracks.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I found … nothing. And that’s weird, because I definitely heard something.”

  “You heard something,” Jonathan said. “Here. In my office bathroom.”

  I nodded.

  “Behind the closed door,” he said. “From all the way across the house.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I swear.”

  My mother inhaled. I waited for the exhale, but it started to seem like she was going to hold her breath forever.

  I decided to break the silence. “How was the movie?”

  “Not bad,” Mom said.

  “Terrible,” Jonathan said. “Painfully derivative.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Well … I guess I�
��ll go back to bed.”

  I led the way back to the hall, and they followed behind me, like my own private security detail.

  “Good night,” I said, starting to duck into my room.

  “Hold on,” Jonathan said. “Please.”

  I turned around. They stood at the top of the stairs, shrouded in shadows.

  “In the future,” he said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go in my office without permission. There are sensitive papers in there. Confidential.”

  “Right.” My voice came out as a puff of air. “Sorry.”

  “No harm done.” His voice sounded easy and relaxed, but his body language was rigid. “We’ll call a plumber tomorrow to check things out.”

  I nodded and watched as he and Mom went downstairs together. Mom clutched his arm like she could hold on to him and keep him from bolting out of our lives.

  I went into my room and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, for hours.

  And the house was silent the whole time.

  Saturday afternoon, my phone buzzed with a text from Marnie: Hey Connecticut. Hangsies today? 2ish? Your house?

  I’d spent the morning hiding out in my room, avoiding Mom and Jonathan. In spite of my resolution to swear off, um, hangsies and live a miserable, isolated existence for the good of everyone around me, the boredom was already getting old.

  So I replied, Sure.

  A half hour later, Marnie steered a pale blue convertible BMW into the driveway. The top was automatically closing itself over her head as I came out to meet her.

  I was curious to see what she’d wear outside of school. Based on what little I knew of her, I’d imagined her to be an all-black-and-combat-boots type. But she was wearing skinny jeans and a ruffly white tank top with flip-flops. Her sunglasses were sparkly blue. I was a little disappointed, to be honest — I’d expected something more dramatic.

  She checked out my outfit, too, which had to be a huge bummer for her. I had on an olive-green long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of overalls my mom had owned since the early ’90s. My hair was in a low, sloppy bun. My feet were bare, but during my time alone that morning, I’d painted my toenails bubble-gum pink.

  So I had that going for me, I guess.

  Marnie hugged me, then stood back. “You look like a boy,” she said. “Not in a bad way. A cute boy.”