Meg ducks her head back outside. I inch over to the window, keeping my own head inside the house as I glance past the roof to the ground. A hard cement sidewalk winds its way across the lawn, much too far below Meg’s striped-socked feet.
If I fell the right way, feetfirst, I’d probably only break a limb. But if I was caught off guard—and, let’s face it, if I’m falling, I was probably caught off guard—I could fall headfirst and crack my head open on the sidewalk, tendrils of brain scattered about like the seeds from the cantaloupes Meg wanted to spatter across the walk.
Meg peeks back around the window frame. “Hurry up and—” She breaks off and stares at me. “Are you scared?”
Scared? No, I just get completely uncontrollable panic attacks. Which I’m not admitting to Meg the Fearless. Well, fearless except when it comes to LotS. “No, of course not.” My hands tremble involuntarily, stupid things. I hide them behind my back. One spaghetti . . . two submarine . . . three scrambled eggs . . . four scrambled brains . . .
Meg clambers back through the window and pushes past me. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.” She disappears into the hall, and when she bursts back into the room a minute or two later, she’s carrying two long cloth jump ropes, the double-dutch kind, which she ties together. “Thread this through your belt loops,” she commands, handing one end to me.
“Through my—what? Why?”
“Here, just—” She grabs my waist and starts to shove the end of the rope through one of the loops of my jeans.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it!” I say, swatting her hand away. “No need to molest me.” When I’ve threaded it through the last of the loops, she grabs it again and twists the ends together into some weird knot. I give it a tug, expecting it to unravel at the slightest hint of tension, but instead it tightens. “How’d you learn to do that?”
“What? Oh, the knot? From a book. I used to—” She breaks off and her face sags, as if her mind has disappeared to some dark corner that requires all her concentration and she has none left to control the muscles in her face. Then they tighten into a smile. “I’ve got lots of weird books on all sorts of topics. Ventriloquism, sign language, astronomy—or is it astrology? I forget which is which.”
“Ventriloquism? Really?”
“Well, I didn’t get far with that one. Lizard balls, that crap is hard! I made it to about page five before giving up.”
“You learned to sign, though? That’s cool.”
“Well, like two words. Sea turtle and dog.”
“I guess I should feel real confident about this knot then,” I say, tugging it again. She has tied the other end of the rope to the bottom post of her heavy wood bed.
“It’s fine. See?” She gives the rope a good yank. The rope goes taut. The knot holds firm. The bed barely even trembles.
“Come on,” she says, only a little bossily. She clambers out the window, then reaches back in and grabs my sweaty hand. She waits for a minute while I breathe—one iguana . . . two name-changing turtle—then steadies me as I crouch and inch slowly over the smooth white sill and onto the coarse black surface. She doesn’t let go until I am seated firmly on the roof, legs stretched out ahead of me.
The tree above our heads is bare, but it still whispers as the last warm winds of autumn weave through it. I have to admit: as long as I don’t look at the ground, it’s actually pretty nice up here.
Meg hands me a plum. For some reason, she has a whole bowl of them sitting up here on the roof. I bite into it and have to hurriedly cup my other hand under it to keep the sugary juices from dripping onto my jeans.
“This is really good,” I mumble, mouth full of plum.
“Just don’t eat too many. They’ll give you the runs.”
I laugh—one spastic puff of air—and almost choke. “Shut up.”
“It’s true. I know from experience.”
“TMI, Meg,” I think about saying, but don’t because I can’t decide if it would come across as übercool or übernerdy.
“Where are your siblings today? Nolan didn’t take my coat.”
“Half siblings. It’s their weekend with their dad.” She bites savagely into a plum, juice spurting everywhere. A slow trickle of it drips onto her pant leg, painting a small, dark circle.
“Right.” I have no idea what to do. Ask more questions? Stop prying and shut up? Offer her a Kleenex? I don’t even have a Kleenex.
Thankfully, Meg is not the kind of person who needs questions in order to provide answers. “Stephen-the-Leaver.” She bites the pit out of her plum and spits it toward the ground. It bounces once off the roof, then plummets below. “He lived with us for seven years. I called him Dad and everything. Those books I mentioned—ventriloquism, sign language, oh, and this one about how to make your own lightsaber—they were all from him. Instead of making me read the boring books they assigned at school, he’d take me to the bookstore and let me pick out any book on any topic I wanted. I can read for hours if it’s something I actually care about, which I hadn’t realized before. Of course, then he got tired of us and left.”
“I’m sure he didn’t get tired of you.”
“He applied for custody of the halflings, but not of me. ’Cause I’m not his real daughter.” Her grip tightens on the plum, and more juice drips onto her pants, though she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh,” I say.
Meg ignores my profound contribution and rambles on. “It’s ironic because people used to always think I was his real daughter, since we look so alike, and he never ever corrected them. But I guess he was always correcting them in his head.” She wipes her hands on her pants. “The one upside is that Mom feels sorry for me. On weekends when he has the halflings, I can get Mom to agree to pretty much anything. Watch.” She sticks her head back through the window. “Mom! Hey, Mom!” she yells. The window’s wide enough for me to join her, so I do—though not in the yelling.
After a moment, there’s an echoing thumping on the stairs, and then the door opens and Meg’s mother pokes her head inside. “Meg, dear, you don’t have to yell,” she says, showing no surprise at our bodiless twin heads.
“Sorry, Mom, I just—can Kat stay over?”
My heart races, and I sit up, pulling out of the window. Stay over? I didn’t bring my toothbrush, or my earplugs, or my face mask. Where would I sleep? What if I can’t sleep? What if Meg snores? What if I snore? One toothbrush . . . two conditioner . . . three sleeping bag . . .
“Of course,” Meg’s mom says, her voice loud enough to reach out here on the roof. “If Kat’s parents say it’s okay. Anything else?”
“Brownies!” Meg declares.
Her mom must nod her agreement, because when Meg reclaims her head, she’s grinning. “See?” she says.
Eleven vampires . . . twelve darkness . . . thirteen insomnia . . .
Meg jumps to her feet, right there on the roof. She stretches fearlessly, then crouches down and heads back toward the window.