Vee’s voice sounded hollow, and I wondered what kind of crazy messed-up nightmares plagued her. “You mean good real … like when I’m playing Glinda in the Broadway revival of Wicked? ’Cause I dream about that at least once a week. Or bad real, like that time I got caught in the zombie apocalypse in my underwear?”
Vee’s already pale face blanched ghostly proportions as she answered, “I don’t mean a dream exactly … More like a vision you see during the day—so rich and colorful, the person so real that you feel like they’ve been there all your life, only you just couldn’t see them before.”
“Wait. Are we talking about Kilt Boy again?” When she nodded, I shoved my coffee into her trembling hands. She obviously needed it more than I did. What I needed was to tread carefully. Vee had the same haunted look from the previous evening. It was eerily similar to the phase where she saw her MIA dad around every corner and driving every passing car. “I think some people have more vivid imaginations than others. Aunt Gracie was like that. She used to capture all her dreams in a journal. Then in the margins, she would scribble all kinds of crazy notes.”
“Journal? What did it look like?” She drained the coffee in one long gulp, set the mug on a nearby table, and crouched down to dig through the mound of books.
“You expect me to describe it? I was eleven the last time I was here.”
“Like this?” She stood, holding up a thick book of worn, dark brown leather. In the center, a Celtic knot-like heart bore the letters G. L. for Gracie Lockhart. Vee flipped it over, regarding the rawhide tie that fastened the flaps. “Wow, it looks really old.”
“It might be.”
Vee stood and walked over to the bay window, cradling the book like a wounded bird. “I could go through it … if you want. See if it contains anything important … give you the CliffsNotes … like when we were in school. I know how much you hate to read … unless it’s for a role. Which this isn’t.”
I didn’t have to read her face to see through her act. She’d been a terrible liar when she’d tried the dog-ate-my-homework excuse on Mrs. Trimble in the third grade, and age hadn’t improved her performance skills. The babbling was a dead giveaway.
She thought the journal had something to do with Kilt Boy. If I didn’t find some way to distract her from her new obsession, she’d spend the whole summer with her nose buried in my aunt’s journal and we’d never meet any actual boys in kilts. Feigning indifference, I held out my hand until she surrendered her treasure and made a show of flipping through the pages. “I’ll look through it. But I doubt it will make any sense—Gracie cornered the market on cryptic. I used to think she was wonderfully mysterious, like Norma Desmond.”
“Who?”
“Norma Desmond. From Sunset Boulevard?” My bestie shook her head blankly as I readied a smart remark. But the reply died on my lips when I realized she wasn’t paying attention to our conversation. Instead, she stared at the seven-by-five-inch volume of leather and paper like it contained the cure for cancer.
The front bell chimed, causing Vee to leap into the air like a very nimble, and very startled, cat. She pressed one hand to her heart and then raked the other through her hair. “That’s probably the caretaker, right? Ally’s mom?”
“Adelaide Dell.” Using my best Mary Poppins accent to loosen her up, I added, “Ally said her mum would ‘pop round’ today to see how we were getting on.”