Jared filled in the silence. She wants me to stop talking to you.
Kami did not let her dread touch him. And will you stop? she asked, trying to show him nothing but support.
I told her I had to think about it, said Jared wearily.
Kami curled tighter under the covers, feeling cold. Jared said nothing else. There was silence in her head and silence beneath her window, and still she could not sleep.
Chapter Three
The Secret in the Woods
The first issue of The Nosy Parker came out two days later. It was a huge success. Kami was unsurprised, as the entire front page was a certain picture of Angela. Since Angela was wandering around looking like she wanted an excuse to kick someone’s kneecaps, Kami was getting all the compliments.
“I really liked your tell-all article about the cricket camp,” said Holly Prescott, the second-best-looking girl in school. She kept up with Kami as they made their way through the riot that was the hallway at the end of school. “How old were those kids, eleven?”
“Nine,” said Kami. “But old in sin.”
Holly laughed. She’d always been nice to Kami, but since she mostly hung around with a succession of guys, or several guys at once, they never really felt like friends. “I’ve got a few ideas for articles,” Holly offered, to Kami’s surprise.
Kami was struck by the thought of how many copies a picture of Holly’s clear green eyes and clearly dangerous curves would move. “What kind of ideas?” she asked, and smiled.
Holly grinned back and hugged her books to her chest. Ross Phillips stopped in his tracks, obviously wishing he was a biology textbook. “Well, you know I have a motorbike,” Holly said. “I was zipping round past Shepherd’s Corner, by the woods, you know? And there was this dead badger.”
“Animals are always getting knocked down at the Corner,” said Kami, not sure where Holly’s story was going.
“Yeah,” Holly answered. “But this badger hadn’t been hit by a car. I mean, I was on my bike, I didn’t get a good look at it, but I got a better look at it than someone in a car would’ve. It had been cut up.”
Kami recoiled. “Oh my God.”
“I know,” said Holly. “And, I mean, maybe I got it wrong, but it just kept bugging me. I started thinking that if some horrible little kids hurt an animal, it’d be smart to put it at the Corner so it’d get run over by a car and it’d look like that’s why it died.”
Some subtle signal, perhaps the fact that Kami looked like she wanted to be sick, made Holly stop and backpedal. “I’m probably just being paranoid,” she said hurriedly. “God, you must think I’m so strange. Look, forget about it, okay?”
“My house is right next to the woods,” Kami said, thinking out loud. “We keep hearing stuff like yelling at all hours, waking my brothers. I’d been wondering about it. I’ll look into this. Thanks, Holly.”
Holly looked half pleased and half terrified. “No problem,” she murmured. She left Kami at the top of the school steps with a wave, heading for her motorbike.
From her vantage point on the steps, Kami could see Ash Lynburn’s head bent over the exposed engine of a sleek black car, expensive-looking but about twenty years old. It seemed like he was having some issues with it. She went down the steps and came up behind him. “Car trouble?”
Ash banged his head on the car bonnet. “Oh, hey, Kami,” he said, giving her a smile even though she’d practically given him a concussion. “No, no car trouble. The car would have to start for there to be trouble.” He kicked a tire.
Kami stepped forward to take a look. When she was a kid, her grandmother had decided their mechanic was dishonest and had taught herself and Kami the basics of car repair, and since Sobo had died Kami was the only one who knew how to fix anything at home. “Not a problem,” she said. “A wire’s loose, that’s it. Easy fix.” Kami leaned forward and tugged on the offending wire to demonstrate.
Ash puffed out a sharp, frustrated breath. “Right. I’m an idiot.” Kami leaned away and he looked from the car engine to her. “I’m sorry, let me try again,” he said. “Thank you. I’m in a rotten mood, but I really appreciate it.”
“It’s okay,” Kami said. “Though I will take a favor in exchange. Since you did not spill all the incriminating details I desire in your interview, I want you to help me write an article about moving back to England.”
“Moving back?” Ash asked. “I wasn’t even born when my parents left.”
“I’m still calling the article ‘Return of the Lynburns,’ ” Kami informed him. “And we’re taking a picture of you being all lord of the manor, outside on the hill. Do you own, like, an old-fashioned white shirt? Because you should wear it, and maybe it should be all wet, as if you were swimming in the lake.”
Ash laughed. “What lake would that be?”
“Any lake. There are two lakes in the woods. Doesn’t matter.”
“Fixing the car wasn’t that big a favor,” Ash said. “If you want me in a wet white shirt, you’re going to have to do something else for me.”
Kami raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“Show me around?” Ash suggested. “I hear this place called Claire’s is good. Uh, how watchful is your mum?”
Kami let herself be swayed by his easy charm. “She neglects me horribly. It’s kind of tragic.”
Ash’s eyes lit up. “Great.”
Kami’d had exactly one boyfriend in her entire life, and Claud had been a college friend of Angela’s brother and a terrible mistake with a goatee. Sometimes guys thought she was cute. But sometimes they measured her up and visibly found her chubby or dressed weirdly or—always a risk—looking like she was listening to the voice in her head.
She certainly wasn’t used to attention from guys this attractive. She looked away from Ash and down at the gravel of the parking lot. “So,” she said, keeping her tone casual, “why are you in a rotten mood? Someone bullying you at school? You can talk to me, I know how it is. Everyone’s always so cruel to the glamorous guy who lives in the big mansion.”
“My aunt and my cousin just moved in with us,” Ash said, his voice back to its usual light tone. “We’re still getting things sorted out so he can go to school, so you haven’t had the doubtful pleasure of meeting him yet. We don’t exactly get on.”
Kami glanced up and saw Ash was studying her. His habitual pleasant expression had returned. “Let me reference the mansion again,” Kami said. “Put the jerk in the south wing, you won’t see him for weeks at a time. Or lock him in the attic. The law will not be on your side, but literary precedent will.”
Ash looked mildly puzzled, but smiled at the joke anyway. “I’ll take that into consideration. Can I offer you a lift home?”
“Nah. I don’t really trust your car, buddy,” Kami said. “Heard you’ve been having trouble with it.”
She always talked to Jared on her walks home. She reached for the connection to him as she left the school gates, letting him know that the next time there were screams in the woods, they were investigating.
Neither of them mentioned their last conversation.
That night Kami was so jumpy waiting for a scream and trying not to think about Jared that she couldn’t sleep. As a result, she spent the following day staggering from one class to the next. Angela gave up asking her what was wrong and just steered her in the right direction through the halls. Kami was wearily relieved when the last bell rang and she could stumble home.
Kami’s day wasn’t over yet. Her father greeted her at the door and asked if she could watch her younger brothers while he finished up a big project. Kami was used to this. Luckily, Ten and Tomo were absorbed in front of the television, so she was able to drift in and out of a doze while curled up in the window seat.
Kami’s mind was turned toward Jared, without her normal barriers up between them. She could not help thinking of how soon she might lose him, and she kept reaching for him without meaning to. If he was gone, she would stop being distracted at odd times, would be a little more normal. Her mother would be so pleased. Everyone would think it was the best thing for her. Except that Kami couldn’t think of it as the best thing for her. Not when every time she thought of losing Jared, her heart beat out an insistent rhythm of sheer desolate misery and all she could think about was how she would miss him.
If she thought about him as if he was real, insane though that was, it was different. If cutting ties would make his life better, she could bear it.
I was thinking maybe …, Kami said, and thought about him, what was best for him, steadily so he knew she was sure. Maybe things would be better for you if you do what your mother wants. Maybe it’s the right thing to do.
Jared said, I don’t care.
Too many of their walls were coming down with their shared distress, blazing a channel open between them. She should pull back. She would in a moment.
I don’t want to be sane. I don’t want to be normal, said Jared. I just want you.
Kami rested her cheek against the cool glass of the window. It was as if he was real for a moment, as if he was close, with just a windowpane between them. Hardly any barrier at all.
Then Tomo laughed at something on the television. Kami turned back to the real world, to share Tomo’s laugh and catch Ten’s usually solemn eyes glinting with appreciation behind his glasses, to home.
That night Kami woke to the sound of screaming again. She flailed herself awake, knocking her alarm clock and her latest mystery novel, The Nefarious Mezzanine, off her bedside table in the process. Then she cast away her bedclothes and seized her flashlight. It was exactly where she’d left it, wedged between books and her nightlight.
Kami grabbed her coat, shoved her feet into shoes, and launched herself down the stairs, terrified that the screaming would stop before she could get there.
The door of their house tended to stick, but now the latch lifted easily, the door swung open smoothly, and the night air blew cool through her hair.
Jared, Kami said, reaching out for him. Want to go on an adventure?
You even have to ask?
Kami was fiercely glad he was still there. She stepped out onto the garden path, shutting the door carefully behind her. Where the garden ended, the woods began. It was almost autumn, and the trees were still thick with leaves but more subdued, closed off as if they were keeping secrets. In the darkness Kami couldn’t see the trees for the forest. She switched on her flashlight and the circle of light finally found a path into the woods.
Kami set off. The night had a different quality here, as if the trees curving over her head gave weight to the air. The sound of screaming was fainter. It was a far-off sound, but now that Kami was really listening she thought she heard a whine to it. She didn’t know how she had mistaken it for kids’ voices.
Kami hurried, feet flying over logs and leaves almost before her flashlight beam found them.
Because God forbid we miss the screaming, said Jared, growing more guarded as they drew closer, the feeling like an arm held out protectively in front her.
The sound was terrible, this near.
I don’t want to miss the screaming, Kami told him. She slid her hand into her coat pocket and found her phone in there beside her keys as she ran. I want to catch them in the act.
Kami ducked and just missed banging her head on a low-hanging branch. She almost dropped her flashlight and the beam went wide.
The scream stopped abruptly.
The yellow circle of light caught on a wall.
It was rough wood, unpolished, the wall sagging a little. But it was a wall. As Kami drew closer, she was able to make out the shape of something like a sagging hut or maybe a shed, something that had been built.