“Okay,” she whispered.
Walker brought her hand up to his mouth and turned it over, exposing the inside of her wrist. He pressed his lips against the road map of blue veins visible beneath her translucent skin. The kiss was a risk, throwing into view a hilly, forested section of Darkside that was studded with rocks. Keira closed her eyes against the vision, trying to focus on the smooth door handle in her palm and the scent of the Maine air flowing into the car. Trying not to slip into Darkside. When she opened her eyes, she saw only the car, Walker, and Susan’s house.
“Go on in,” he said, releasing her hand. “I’ll wait here.”
Feeling light-headed, Keira swung herself out of the car, her new shoes chafing against her sockless feet. As she trudged up the familiar front path to Susan’s house, she tried to clear her head, to get rid of all the chaos, so that she could be the same Keira she’d always been. The sort of Keira that Susan was expecting.
And then the door was in front of her and there was nothing to do but lift her hand and knock. Keira’d done it a thousand times before, but now it seemed like the hardest thing in the world. Still, she’d never been one to back down from a challenge.
She took a deep breath and rapped on the door.
? ? ?
Susan opened the door. The pinched expression on her face evaporated into surprise when she saw Keira’s disheveled hair and filthy clothes. Those hadn’t gone back to their original state when she’d crossed back and forth from Darkside.
Keira watched her best friend take in her ripped sleeve. Verifying Keira’s story.
“Can I come in?” Keira asked.
Susan glanced behind Keira, her gaze riveted on Walker’s sleek car, waiting at the curb. “I can’t believe you ditched school to be with him. That’s not like you at all! Is he just going to lurk out there?”
“You skipped last week to hang out with Smith,” Keira said simply. “And he’s not lurking. He’s my ride.”
“I know. Sorry. I’m just really freaked out. Smith won’t answer my texts, you’re acting weird and you asked me to lie to your parents. You’ve never done that before. I want to know what’s going on.”
Smith wasn’t answering Susan’s texts? Worry nibbled at her as Keira sagged against the door frame. “Susan, I’m sorry. I never meant to put you in this position. Please, let me come in and explain? And maybe change out of these clothes?”
Susan wrinkled her nose. “Those clothes need to be burned. What have you been doing, exactly?”
Keira paused, sorting through the lies she could tell. None of them seemed believable. Besides, she was going to ask Susan to give her clothes, to cover for her, and more than that, she was asking Susan to trust her. To understand. A lie wasn’t going to earn her any of that. Not even a good lie.
There was only one way to solve this—only one way that Susan would understand why she’d done all the inexplicable things she’d done. After all her insistence that she could trust Susan, it was time to act like she actually did.
She had to tell her best friend the truth.
Keira looked Susan straight in the eye. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll tell you everything.”
Susan glanced at the kitchen, where her mother was pointedly banging around pots and pans. “Fair enough.”
The two of them trudged up the stairs and Susan pointed to a pile of clothes on the bed.
“That’s all the stuff that’s a little bit too long for me. Help yourself.”
Keira felt her chin quiver as she stared at the neatly washed and ironed fabric, smelling like the floral detergent Mrs. Kim loved. It didn’t seem like anything to get upset over, but the sight of something so simple and familiar made her realize how far from normal her life had become.
Keira pulled a pair of black yoga pants and a long-sleeved shirt out of the pile. She shucked off her filthy jeans and T-shirt and slid into the clean clothes with a groan of relief.
Susan handed her a hairbrush. “You look like you got caught in a hurricane,” she said. “So? You were going to tell me what was going on? Since apparently Jeremy’s story that you slept together isn’t true?”
Keira froze halfway through pulling the ponytail out of her hair. “He said what?”
Susan winced. “He texted Tommy that he’d ‘done you’ ”—she added air quotes with her fingers—“but that it, um . . . ” She trailed off, squirming uncomfortably in the chair.
“It what?” Keira asked, biting off the end of each word.
“He said it was like humping a dead fish.” Pink bloomed in Susan’s cheeks. “And then Tommy sent the text to me and—well, pretty much to everyone, actually.”