Cole gave me a thumbs-up and went off to retrieve the yearbooks. I waited in the kitchen and looked around. The place was very simple, but clean. Honey-colored cabinets and off-white Formica counters. The kitchen looked dated, like something out of the eighties, when Amber was my age, and I suddenly remembered that Cole’s grandmother had known my former self. Still, as I gazed around the kitchen, I couldn’t say that it looked familiar, but maybe there was something about the general layout that tugged at my memories. Or Amber’s memories.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to picture the house. I was sort of surprised to realize that I knew that if I walked out of the kitchen and through the living room, there’d be a set of stairs to the left that led up to Mrs. Spencer’s room, and little Stacey’s. Spence’s room would be at the front of the house, off a short hall leading to the bathroom.
So weird.
“Got ’em,” Cole said, and I jumped, opening my eyes to see him in the doorway with three leather-bound books very similar in color and style to the ones on his own bookshelf.
“Thank God,” I said, turning to the door and rushing back outside. I quickstepped to the gate and was about to open it when I heard a car pull up the drive on the other side. Behind me, Cole was busy locking the door.
“Cole!” I whispered. I pointed to the gate, and mouthed, Someone’s here!
Cole’s eyes widened, and he rushed to lock the door and shove the key back under the flowerpot. Darting down the steps, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the side of the house, where we flattened ourselves against the aluminum siding.
From that angle we had a view of the car in the driveway through a crack in the gate.
“It’s my gram,” he whispered. “What the hell is she doing home?”
My heart was pounding against my rib cage. “What do we do?” I said softly.
“Follow me,” he said. Grabbing my hand, he pulled me to the back of the yard and over to a small shed. We ducked behind it, and not a moment later, we heard the squeak of the back gate opening, and then the clang as it closed. Footsteps told us that Mrs. Spencer had moved up the stairs to the door, and then we heard it open and close.
I looked at Cole and he mouthed, Let’s go! and just like that we were off and running for the gate. Keeping low, we hustled through it and dashed to the left down the driveway. We didn’t stop running until we’d made it to Cole’s car.
Cole handed me the yearbooks as he struggled to retrieve his keys from his pocket. I made it around the side and into the passenger seat by the time he pulled open his door.
And that’s when a sharp, clear voice rang out from across the street. “Cole!”
He froze, but I crouched down as far as I could, tucking the yearbooks on the floor mat by my feet.
To my surprise, Cole adopted an easy smile, shut the door, and turned around to face his grandmother.
“Hey, Grammy!” he said, moving toward where she stood in the doorway of her house. “I came over to see if your grass needed a mow.”
Cole’s grandmother was fairly tall. She had salt-and-pepper curly hair, glasses, and a little bit of a gut. To my relief, she hadn’t seemed to notice me ducking down in the car. Still, she put her hands on her hips and snapped, “You just mowed it Wednesday.”
Cole rubbed the back of his neck lazily and said, “Yeah, but I’m gonna have to put you back on a Saturday rotation now that school’s started. I’m gonna have a lot of homework this year. Less time to mow lawns after school.”
“I don’t like you here when I’m not around,” she said tersely.
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry, Gram. What’re you doing home, anyway? You sick?”
She held up a large prescription bottle. “Forgot my blood-pressure pills.”
An awkward sort of silence followed and Cole said, “Okay, Grams, I’ll let you go. If I can’t make a Wednesday, then I’ll have one of my guys take care of you.”
“I don’t like strangers, Cole,” she snapped again. She didn’t seem to like much of anything.
“I’ll get Tyler to do it,” Cole said easily. “You’ve met him.”
All she did was frown.
“Okay, Gram,” Cole said, backing up toward the car again. “Don’t work too hard today.”
She went back inside and shut the door without so much as a good-bye. The second the door was closed, Cole pivoted and rushed to get into the car, inserting his key into the ignition and getting us the hell out of there.
“You can sit up now,” he said when we’d reached the end of the street. I couldn’t help noticing that he was grinning.
“Do you think she saw me?” I asked, inching my way up from my crouched position.
He shook his head. “She would’ve said something if she had.”
“She seemed mad.”
He laughed. “She’s always like that. You can’t take it personally.”
I marveled at how easily he shrugged it off. My own grandmother’s terse and domineering personality set me right on edge, but Cole rolled with it.
“Do you think she’ll notice that the yearbooks are gone?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” he replied, but then his smile faded and he looked a little nervous. “At least I hope she doesn’t. I’ll catch hell for it.”
I stared at the bound volumes still at my feet. “Maybe we should take them back? I mean, she was heading to work again, right? Maybe we can put them back before she notices.”