Impostor

CHAPTER Nineteen


I’m in a strange place.

It’s dark and raining, and tombstones jut out of the ground all around me.

The cemetery.

For a brief moment, I wonder if I’ve slid into someone, but when I look down and see my fraying purple robe and fuzzy slippers, I realize I’ve been hijacked once again.

My first thought is that Lydia is messing with me again, but then I remember I got the picture back from her. I suppose she could have found something else with my imprint on it.

I look down at the grave before me and see my mother’s name etched into the stone. I trace my shivering fingers over the cold, hard rock.



SUSAN BELL



Tears spill down my cheeks, mixing with the rain. I fall to the ground and press my face against the grass. If only she were here. She would know what to do. She’d help me untangle the mess with Scotch and clear up the mystery surrounding Aunt Lydia.

“Mom,” I say hoarsely. My voice becomes louder, turns into a yell. “Mom!” I’m screaming into the wind. It’s a useless noise, my fury against the forces of nature. “Mom! Mom!”

The storm begins to pick up. Lightning spears its way across the sky, and a split second later, thunder slams into my ears. That was close. Too close. But I wonder, maybe it’s a sign. Is she listening to me?

I make myself stand up, and the wind pushes me off balance. It knocks me onto the ground. Mud soaks my clothes, and I start to shiver. For a minute, I just lie there, weeping.

Strong arms encircle me. I smell the familiar scent of Rollins’s leather jacket. Heat from his body pours through my soaked robe and T-shirt and shorts. He’s stroking my hair and whispering to me, but they are angry whispers, full of admonishment.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing out here?” he demands.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I was driving home from the radio station. I saw some crazy girl walking along the road in her pajamas. Took me a minute to figure out it was you. Vee, you had me scared to death. You must be freezing.”

He presses his body against me to warm me up.

Something happens to me in the cemetery.

I become brave.

Beneath Rollins’s jacket, I let my fingers explore the places I’ve never touched before. The muscles on his chest, his back. I nestle my head in the crook of his neck, and we lay there for a second. It just feels right. His hands in my hair, my fingers gliding over the plains and valleys of him.

Panting, I knot my fingers in his hair, pulling him down until his mouth is on my own. For a moment, he hesitates, but then his mouth opens up, and his tongue caresses mine. We writhe against each other, both admitting we need the other in a way we never have before. When thunder crashes around us again, Rollins pulls away. I’m out of breath.

And then I realize.

“Wait. What about Anna?”

Rollins gives me an odd look. “What about her?”

“You’ve been spending so much time with her. I thought you . . .” I let my words dangle.

He stares at me in amusement. “Vee, the reason I’ve been spending so much time with her is because you keep pushing me away. I don’t like her that way.”

I shake my head. “But . . . but the other night, when I tried to kiss you . . . and then someone called, and you rushed out.”

He traces my lips with the tip of his finger. “I was preoccupied. My mother fell out of her wheelchair last week and broke her hip. My uncle called, needing help at home.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling monumentally stupid.

He kisses me again.

Lightning flashes, and a resounding clap from the sky breaks us apart.

“We have to go,” Rollins says, and I nod. I let him pull me to my feet and lead me out of the cemetery, weaving our way through the tombstones. We climb the crest of a hill, and I see his car waiting for us in the parking lot.

Inside, Rollins cranks up the heater. “So explain to me what you were doing in the cemetery just now? Let me guess. You don’t know how you got there.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember leaving the house.” I pause, thinking of Lydia. Did she purposely lead me to my mother’s grave? If she was the one to bring me here, what was the point?

If it wasn’t Lydia, who was it?

I think of the strange woman who drove me home the night of the accident. Diane. Didn’t I see her lurking around my neighborhood again? Could she have something to do with this?

“I don’t want to go home.” I bite my lip, not knowing where Rollins could take me instead. I’ve still never been to his house because he’s so self-conscious about his incapacitated mother.

“Then come home with me,” he says, to my surprise. He shifts his eyes away from the road long enough to look at me and smile shyly. I reach over and grab his hand and squeeze it.

We are silent the rest of the way.



When we pull up to his trailer, it is dark with only the flickering light of a television coming from within. I follow him up the crumbling cement path and climb the steps. Rollins shuts the door quietly behind me, and I turn to survey the scene.

A skinny man sits on a raggedy old couch with his feet up on a milk crate that’s been repurposed as a coffee table. He’s watching Nick@Nite. He looks from the television to Rollins to me, and then returns to his show, taking a swig of his Budweiser.

Rollins leads me toward the back of the trailer. He nods at a door, saying, “My mother’s asleep.” We continue to the next room, which I recognize instantly as Rollins’s. The makeshift bookcase, the jeans slung over the back of a chair, the tattered Stephen King novel lying on his bed. It is so very Rollins.

“Sorry about my uncle,” he says. “He’ll be leaving for the hospital soon. He always has to psych himself up with a few beers before he goes and cleans up vomit and crap all night. Or at least that’s what he says.” Vaguely, I remember Rollins telling me his uncle works as a custodian at the hospital.

I sit down on the bed, and he disappears into the hallway, returning a moment later with a faded orange towel. I dab my face and hair dry, but no amount of patting with a little towel is going to dry off my clothes. Pulling off the robe, I realize my white T-shirt has become completely transparent. I feel my face go red as I cross my arms over my chest.

Rollins must have noticed, too, because he looks away, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He pulls open a chipped drawer and finds a Sonic Youth T-shirt to pass my way. From another drawer, he grabs a pair of athletic shorts. I take them gratefully.

“I’m going to duck in the shower,” he says. “Be right back.”

Once the door closes, I strip off my wet T-shirt and shorts. My whole body is covered in goosebumps. I rub the towel over my skin until I’m reasonably dry and then throw on Rollins’s T-shirt and shorts. Then, shivering, I jump into his bed and pull the comforter up to my chin. It takes several minutes for my teeth to stop chattering.

There’s a soft rap at the door, and Rollins opens it just wide enough to whisper, “Are you decent?”

“I’m dressed,” I say. “The decent thing is debatable.”

He laughs and opens the door the rest of the way. I suck in my breath when I see that he’s dressed in only a light blue towel, which is knotted around his waist. He goes to his chest of drawers and starts to search for some clothes. I watch the muscles in his back move under his skin. Never have I realized how built Rollins is. I guess he’d have to be, to lift his mother out of her wheelchair all the time.

Rollins slides on some shorts beneath his towel and then pulls on a plain black T-shirt. “My uncle went to work,” he says, jutting his thumb in the direction of the living room. “I’ll be on the couch if you need anything.”

I open my mouth and then—not sure what to say—close it again. I guess I thought he’d sleep in here with me. If not in the bed, then on the floor or something. The thought of sleeping here, by myself, freaks me out. Rollins flips off the light and shuts the door before I can protest.

Turning onto my side, I stare at the sliver of light beneath the door. It’s okay. He’s only in the next room. I snuggle up in his blankets and breathe in the scent of him. Leather and spice. And something else—something indescribable. Something so Rollins. Like the essence of him.

Seconds pass.

Minutes.

I realize there’s no way I’m going to sleep after everything that’s happened. My life is such a mess. Someone keeps sliding into me and manipulating me into doing strange things and going weird places. If the police keep searching, they’re going to nail me for a crime I didn’t commit. I could be put in prison. And now I’m realizing I’m in love with my best friend.

I peel back the covers and slip out of Rollins’s bed. Not wanting to wake his mother, I tiptoe across the room and carefully twist the doorknob. The door eases open, and I hurry through the hallway and into the room where Rollins’s uncle was watching television only an hour ago.

“Rollins,” I whisper.

The lump on the sofa shifts. Rollins opens one eye.

“You okay, Vee? You need some water or something?”

I go to the side of the couch and kneel beside him. “Rollins, can you come back to your room? Please? I can’t sleep.”

He sits up and yawns.

“Sure. I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“I know,” I say, smiling. “But I’d be a lot more comfortable with you there.”

Rollins stands, his blanket around his shoulders. I retrace my steps back to his room and wait for him to follow me. I close the door behind us. He starts to arrange the blanket on the floor, but I put my hand on his wrist to stop him.

“No. I want you to sleep with me.”

His gaze is steady. “Are you sure?”

I nod.

I climb into bed first, and then he tucks himself in beside me. Though I feel like I know Rollins better than almost anyone in the world, I feel like there’s so much history I don’t know about. What was his life like before he came to Iowa? Who is his father? What happened to his mother to put her into a wheelchair?

Resting my head on his shoulder, I say, “Tell me about your mom.”

He is quiet, and I’m afraid I’ve pushed too far. Rollins is so protective of his mother. I know he doesn’t like to talk about her.

“She had me when she was a teenager,” Rollins says. “I never met my dad. He was a drug addict who dumped my mom when he found out she was pregnant. So we lived with my grandparents. My mom worked nights doing custodial work, and when I was big enough to go to school, she got a job with this telemarketing firm. Of course, this was before the accident.”

I feel him tense up.

The accident.

“She was riding her bike home from work. She didn’t see the car, and the driver didn’t see her. At least that’s what he said. It was bad. I thought she was going to die. In fact, I remember holding her hand in the hospital, trying not to let her see how scared I was. I was eight years old.”

His fingers have gone limp. I knead them, trying to make them come back to life.

“My grandparents took care of her as long as they could. Bathed her. Fed her. But then my grandmother passed away during my freshman year. She died of a heart attack. And my grandfather died soon after, like he didn’t have any reason to live anymore. Then it was just me and my mom. My uncle’s my only other relative. So we came here. And you . . . you saw the rest.”

I think of that day I slid into Rollins, how his uncle screamed at him to give his mother a bath. How gently Rollins undressed her, washed her. It was an act of pure love.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, pushing a lock of hair out of his eyes.

He shrugs. “You should know better than anyone else. Life isn’t always fair.”

I turn his face toward mine. His eyes are dark as night. The metal of his lip ring gleams in the moonlight. Running my hands through his hair, I lean in and touch my lips to his. He follows my movements, opening his mouth and letting his tongue caress mine gently.

Before I’m ready for the kiss to be over, Rollins pulls back. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what?” I ask, snuggling close to him, trying to entice him into a longer make-out session. But he pulls back and looks at me with serious eyes.

“Your turn to come clean about what’s going on. I’m not stupid, Vee.”

Every ounce of desire drains out of me as I remember last night, how Scotch’s body looked, crumpled and broken. At least he’s still alive. At least there’s that.

I look at Rollins and realize I can’t keep secrets from him any longer. I’m overcome with an urge to tell him everything.

So I do. I describe our plan to teach Scotch a lesson. Then I explain how it went wrong and I’m terrified the police are going to find out that we were there when Scotch fell.

“I didn’t see it happen. Someone slid into me right before. I’m afraid whoever it was pushed Scotch.”

Rollins doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I’m terrified about what he thinks of me. Who lures a guy out into the woods in the middle of the night and leaves him alone and bleeding and maybe even dead? What if Rollins doesn’t believe me and thinks I’m making up the story about someone sliding into me to cover up the fact that I pushed him myself?

“Maybe he just fell,” he says reassuringly, smoothing my hair.

“There’s more. I found something in Lydia’s room. The picture of my mother, the one I thought I lost. It was on her bureau. She says she just found it, but I’m not sure I believe her. What if she was using it to slide into me?”

Rollins freezes, his fingers tangled in my hair.

“Shit. That does sound suspicious.”

I push myself up on my elbow to get a better look at his face. “So you believe me? I don’t sound crazy?”

“Well, the whole situation is messed up. And your aunt sounds psycho. But, no, I don’t think you’re crazy.” I look into his eyes and see that he’s telling the truth.

“Will you help me figure out what’s going on?”

“Of course I will.”

I’m so grateful that Rollins doesn’t think I’m insane that I practically pounce on him, nuzzling his neck and earlobe and then his mouth. He grabs me around the waist and flips me onto the bed, hovering above me.

“What are you waiting for?” I ask.

“No more waiting,” he says, and then he leans down for a long, warm kiss.