Page 118 of Life and Death

I sighed. “Well, I’m done. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“’Night, Beau.”

I tried to make my footsteps drag as I walked up the stairs, like I was super tired. I wondered if he bought my bad acting. I hadn’t actually lied to him or anything. I definitely wasn’t planning on going out tonight.

I shut my bedroom door loud enough for him to hear downstairs, then sprinted as quietly as I could to the window. I shoved it open and leaned out into the dark. I couldn’t see anything, just the shadow of the treetops.

“Edythe?” I whispered, feeling completely idiotic.

The quiet, laughing response came from behind me. “Yes?”

I spun around so fast I knocked a book off my desk. It fell with a thud to the floor.

She was lying across my bed, hands behind her head, ankles crossed, a huge dimpled smile on her face. She looked the color of frost in the darkness.

“Oh!” I breathed, reaching out to grab the desk for support.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Just give me a second to restart my heart.”

She sat up—moving slowly like she did when she was either trying to act human or trying not to startle me—and dangled her legs over the edge of the bed. She patted the space next to her.

I walked unsteadily to the bed and sat down beside her. She put her hand on mine.

“How’s your heart?”

“You tell me—I’m sure you hear it better than I do.”

She laughed quietly.

We sat there for a moment in silence, both listening to my heartbeat slow.I thought about Edythe in my room . . . and my father’s suspicious questions . . .and my lasagna breath.

“Can I have a minute to be human?”

“Certainly.”

I stood, and then looked at her, sitting there all perfect on the edge of my bed, and I thought that maybe I was just hallucinating everything.

“You’ll be here when I get back, right?”

“I won’t move a muscle,” she promised.

And then she became totally motionless, a statue again, perched on the edge of my bed.

I grabbed my pajamas out of their drawer and hurried to the bathroom, banging the door so Charlie would know it was occupied.

I brushed my teeth twice. Then I washed my face and traded clothes. I always just wore a pair of holey sweatpants and an old t-shirt to bed—it was from a barbecue place that my mom liked, and it had a pig smiling between two buns. I wished I had something less . . . me. But I really hadn’t been expecting guests, and then it was probably dumb to worry anyway. If she hung out here at night, she already knew what I wore to sleep.

I brushed my teeth one more time.

When I opened the door, I had another small heart attack. Charlie was at the top of the stairs; I almost walked into him.

“Huh!” I coughed out.

“Oh, sorry, Beau. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m good.”