“I feel so used.”
“Like you wouldn’t get off on that?” I don’t know where the words come from. They sure as hell don’t sound like me. They’re fast and witty and sultry enough to earn me an appreciative hoot from the guys in the car. They might even be enough to make up for my stupid comment about seeing him around.
“Dude, she has you pegged. Pegged!” says Shotgun Boy.
I wait for Aidan to tell him to shut it or to hit me with a comment as saucy as the one I just gave. Absolutely worst-case scenario, he’ll call me a five-letter word that rhymes with “witch” and we’ll spend the next few weeks awkwardly passing each other in the hall on our way to the bathroom.
He doesn’t do any of those things.
Instead, he adopts an expression that is earnest and angelic, laying it on so thick that it’s hard not to laugh even as his wide gray eyes make things inside of me twist.
Even if I were open to relationships—which I am not for a whole bunch of very good reasons—Aidan is not my type. Sure, he seems interesting and has an appreciation for vintage things, but he’s cocky and pretty. I don’t usually go for guys who are either. That’s always been Lacey’s thing. She always goes after the shiniest one in the room while I secretly crush on artists and geeks. Still, it’s a bit hard to remember that with Aidan standing in front of me, looking at me that way.
“Please.” He takes two steps toward me, invading my personal space without quite touching me, the way he did last night. I get the sudden feeling he does that a lot—steps into spaces to see how far he’s allowed in. “Look . . . Normally, I’m all for duplicity, but I really need my room. If your aunt finds out that I lied for you, she’ll probably kick me out.”
If he knew how desperately my aunt needs the rent checks his parents send, he’d know there’s no way he’d get kicked out over such a small infraction. But if Aunt Jet does put the house up for sale . . . if someone does buy it . . .
I’ve known Aidan for a grand total of thirty minutes—or just over a day if you’re generous and count all of the actual hours since we met—but I believe him when he says he needs his spot in the house. I understand why Jet doesn’t want the lodgers to know she’s thinking of selling, but looking into Aidan’s eyes, it suddenly doesn’t seem fair to keep that information from him.
He mistakes my brief flash of guilt for hesitation. “Come on. It’ll be fun. You’ll meet new people. We’re all harmless.”
“If you weren’t harmless, would you admit it?”
His lip quirks up in another lopsided grin. The girls of Montgomery Falls have probably texted their friends about the precise angles of that smile. “So suspicious. You really are a New Yorker.”
The guy in the driver’s seat leans on the horn. “Dude. She doesn’t want to come. Stop trying to use your charm like it’s a hunk of Kryptonite.”
But maybe Aidan’s smile is Kryptonite, because I find myself stepping past him and sliding into the back seat of the too-hot car. The air inside smells like Cheetos and lavender and hair spray. Aidan slides in beside me and pulls the door closed with a slam.
“That’s Joey,” he says, gesturing toward the driver, “and that’s Chase.” Both boys twist in their seats to get a good look at me. Joey’s thick, black-rimmed glasses slide down his nose, and he pushes them up, absently. He doesn’t smile; he doesn’t even blink. It’s unnerving. Chase, on the other hand, smiles broadly. Given his muscles, backward ball cap, and the fact that he’s wearing a T-shirt with the Riverview mascot on the front, I’m guessing he’s a jock.
A jock whose father, apparently, sleeps with secretaries in the copy room.
“Cat’s from New York,” Aidan says. “Her aunt owns the boardinghouse.”
“Wicked,” says Joey. He still doesn’t smile, but he gives me the tiniest of nods before turning back around and throwing the car into drive.
I haul my seat belt across my chest. “New York?”
“Montgomery House. It’s the fourth most-haunted place in town.”
“What are spots one through three?” I ask.
“University library is three,” says Chase, jumping in. “Fifth floor. A librarian hung herself up there in 1953.”
“Train bridge is number two,” says Joey. “On account of a rail employee who died while a train was crossing. People say he walks the bridge at night with a lantern. They say that if you see the glow, you’ll be dead by morning.”
He sounds so serious that it’s impossible not to laugh. “Somehow, Montgomery Falls doesn’t seem classy enough to have its own banshee.”
Joey’s eyes lock on mine in the rearview mirror. “Banshees haunt specific families.”
“Here we go . . . ,” mutters Aidan.
“And they’re not actually ghosts,” Joey continues, ignoring him. “Amateurs frequently make that mistake.”
“If everyone who sees the glow from the lantern winds up dead, how does anyone know about it?” I counter. I’m pretty proud of my logic, but the look he shoots me is withering.
Chase jumps in before Joey can answer. “People tell people. Joey’s grandpa told his mom he saw lights on the bridge. The next day, he had a heart attack. And Riley Fraser told Amber Preston he saw the light the day before he disappeared.”
“Riley’s missing, not necessarily dead,” says Aidan. He rolls down the back window and drums his fingers on the edge of the door. “And Amber was drunk when she told everyone that.”
“You guys know Riley?” Of course they do, I realize. Montgomery Falls has only two high schools—one English and one French—and neither has more than a few hundred students.
“Everyone knows Riley Fraser,” says Joey darkly. “Varsity athlete. Homecoming king. Center of the universe. Too good for just about everyone and everything.”
Riley? No matter how many years have passed, I can’t imagine Riley as a jock or being comfortable at the center of the universe. Sure, I had thought the picture on the poster looked like it belonged to someone who could be class president or prom king, but that didn’t mean I actually thought Riley had become the kind of guy who would be either of those things.
He could be so quiet and distant—even with me, and he claimed that I knew him better than anyone. Most of that was just him, I think, but some of it was the OCD. He said it was like having a sort of background noise in his head. A lot of the time he could tune it out, but sometimes it got too loud and pulled his attention inward.
That whole summer, his parents—especially his father—kept pushing him to make more friends. Friends who would still be there when school started in the fall. Friends who would help him fit in. “I don’t need other friends,” he kept telling them. “I have Cat.”
“Other people wouldn’t get it,” he told me. “They wouldn’t get me.”
Because we were both different. Because we both had things that made us different.
It’s strange to think that the first boy I ever kissed, the boy who said he didn’t need anyone other than me, had turned into someone who would be a stranger.