The Night Sister

Jason was still trying to make sense of what he’d seen in the tower. He kept playing it back in his mind, a broken loop of tape that always ended with Piper looking up and seeing him, just as Margot called his name. And then he thought of Amy. Would she be mad? Was she looking for him right now, ready to wring his neck, to make him swear to forget what he’d seen?

After slipping away from Margot, he’d gone home and played Nintendo for a while, but he couldn’t concentrate. He’d sneaked back through the woods to the motel just in time to catch the girls coming out of the tower, arguing. He stopped where he was, crouched behind a thick maple tree.

Piper was limping, her leg bleeding.

“We need to tell your grandma what we found,” Piper said.

“Maybe call the police,” Margot chimed in.

“No,” Amy ordered. “Not until we know what it means.”

Jason clung to the tree he hid behind.

Call the police? What had they found?

When the girls went into the house, Jason circled around the woods to the motel units and let himself into Room 4.

Room 4 was his favorite to hide in, because the lock was broken and he didn’t have to stop at the office for a key. He’d even hidden some things under the bed: binoculars, an old Coke bottle full of water, a flashlight (just in case he ever came after dark, which he hadn’t been able to pull off yet), and a bag of sunflower seeds. Jason’s mom didn’t believe in junk food, so she fed him bird food instead: nuts, seeds, dried fruit.

In addition to these supplies, he kept his treasures there, too. Things of Amy’s he’d found lying around by the pool: a half-full bottle of Coppertone, a single silver hoop earring, a pair of knockoff Wayfarer sunglasses with red plastic frames. He’d added other relics he’d found around the motel: a book of Tower Motel matches, a page of motel stationery, and a brass key-ring with a single skeleton key that he’d found hidden at the back of a desk drawer in the office.

Sometimes he made believe that he lived at the motel. That he’d just come in after a long day. He’d kick off his Nikes and lie back on the musty bed with its moth-eaten paisley spread, look around the room, and think how good he had it. His own room. His own bathroom, albeit one where the water didn’t turn on anymore and the bathtub was full of broken tiles. Mostly, what he thought of was Amy. Of how, one day, she’d be his girlfriend. He was sure of it. His mom always told him that if you wanted something badly enough you just had to visualize it; if you pictured yourself having it already, soon it would be yours. His mom was big into things like visualization and positive affirmations. There were little sayings taped to the mirrors all over their condo with statements like “I am living my dream” and “Wonderful things are on their way to me.” Jason wasn’t too sure about the power of these tactics: even though she said, “I am wealthy beyond my wildest dreams,” twenty times a day, his mom still had her minimum-wage job over at the nursing home, cleaning drool and pee off old people.

Still, he visualized Amy being his girlfriend. He concentrated so hard on it that his head hurt. And maybe, just maybe, the power of positive thinking was working after all: yesterday Amy Slater had actually kissed him. And it wasn’t just a stupid half-second little peck—it was a real kiss. Their tongues had touched (which was kind of gross, yet thrilling at the same time), and at the end she’d given his lower lip a little nibble. Okay, maybe more than a little nibble. When he looked in the mirror this morning, it still looked slightly puffy and purplish. But he didn’t mind. He kept working his tongue over the swollen place on his lip, remembering what her teeth had felt like.