When you went inside you saw towels folded on white shelves. Bright blue bottles of Windex shining like jewels. Jugs of bleach. You smelled fake lavender, the scent of the soaps and lotions they used to stock the bathrooms. It was a huge closet. You could definitely tell it had once been a room, and the bathroom was still one the hotel staff could use.
“This is where Lisette Chamberlain died,” I said. “It didn’t look like this, of course. The bed was over there, where the towels are now. But the bathroom is similar. They’ve changed the tile and the fixtures, but the footprint of the room is the same.”
“Did she die in the bathroom?” the older boy asked. The younger one cracked up.
“No,” I said. I glanced back at Leo and he rolled his eyes. “She died in her bed. They found her there when she didn’t check out on the day she was supposed to leave.”
“So how did she die?” asked the older boy. “Are you sure it wasn’t drugs?” The old man gave him the evil eye.
“She died of a heart attack,” I said. “She was all alone.”
The older boy gave a big sigh of boredom. The dad checked his watch. The mom asked Leo a question about Lisette. The old man’s eyes met mine, and for a second, there was that odd understanding that happens sometimes between perfect strangers.
It would be terrible to die of a heart attack, and all alone.
It’s terrible to die.
Everyone filed out and Leo started telling them about our next stop, the cemetery.
I was the last one left so I closed the door.
10.
“This guy is a really bad actor,” Leo said.
“We know,” Miles and I said.
“His hair is so weird,” Leo said.
“We know,” Miles and I said.
We sat in Leo’s basement, on his couch. He had turned on Times of Our Seasons for us. We came fifteen minutes before the show started with our sandwiches and our chocolate milk. I’d made a sandwich for Leo too. He peeled off the top piece of bread and looked at the peanut butter and banana and said, “You guys are so weird,” but he ate it anyway.
It was the first time I’d met some of Leo’s family. His parents were at work but he had two older brothers who were both in high school and who played football. Jeremy and Zach. They were huge. They were sweaty. They paid almost no attention to us or to Leo at all after they said Hi. But they weren’t mean or anything. They made their own sandwiches and then sat down at the table in the dining room.
“We’re using the TV downstairs,” Leo called out to them as we left the kitchen.
“What are you watching?” one of them, I think Jeremy, called back.
“Times of Our Seasons,” Leo said.
His brothers started laughing.
We got the show turned on in time to see the people finish walking on the beach and the clock ticking. Miles leaned forward.
It didn’t start with Harley’s story. It started with another story, one about a twin who was pretending to be his brother in order to steal his girlfriend and money. His brother was on a business trip, which was really not a business trip, but something involving some kind of super-secret spy activity.
“You kiss differently,” the girlfriend murmured to the twin.
“Really?” he said. “Better?”
Miles buried his face in a pillow in embarrassment and I stared straight ahead. This was mortifying. I hadn’t thought about what this would be like to watch RIGHT NEXT to Leo.
But Leo didn’t seem uncomfortable. He was cracking up. “This doesn’t even make sense.”
“We know,” Miles and I said.
“We only care about the Harley storyline,” I said.
The bad-twin couple finally finished kissing and then there she was. In the coffin.
“That’s Harley,” Miles said, pointing to her.
“I figured,” said Leo.
“We still don’t know how she goes to the bathroom,” Miles said, and that made Leo laugh again.
“Shhhh,” I hissed at them both, and they went quiet.
It was a big day.
We found out how Celeste had managed to make Harley look dead long enough to fool everyone for the funeral and everything.
Herbs.
“Wow,” Miles said, sitting back when the scene had finished. “That was a good one.”
“It was?” Leo asked.
“Information-wise,” I said, “yes. We found out something we didn’t know before.”
“Harley’s not a very good actor either,” Leo said, and when I glared at him he put his hands in the air. “I’m just saying.”
“Was Lisette Chamberlain a good actor when she was in soap operas?” I asked. “I’ve only seen her in her movies.”
“Wait,” Leo said. “You mean you’ve never seen footage of her actually onstage at Summerlost?”
“No,” I said. “Have you? Does that exist?”
“I have and it does,” Leo said.
One of Leo’s brothers rumbled down the stairs and we went quiet for a second.
“You can check out the old plays from the Summerlost film archives,” Leo said. “I have a card. My mom helped me get it.”
“Is your family really into Lisette Chamberlain or something?”
“No,” Leo said. “Only me.”
“But they’re really into the Summerlost Festival, then.”