I stiffened at the comment and felt the blood rushing back to my apple cheeks. There went that. In an instant my self-esteem nosedived (and it was never even high to begin with).
I tried to laugh it off. “Well, I lost a bit of weight since then.”
Patrick kept laughing. “I mean, you look better now, but wow. Good job, Perry. No longer that little chubby girl who used to stare at me all day.”
Oh my God, kill me now. Seriously, who says that to someone?
I watched him laugh and was even more appalled when Debbie joined in too. Not that she knew me back then, but I could see how she’d find that funny. That bitch always hated me.
“You learn something new every day!” Debbie smirked. “But seriously, you look great, Perry.”
Patrick wiped the smile off of his face and gave Dex a quick glance. “So, where are you headed?”
“The coast,” I said quickly before Dex actually filled them in. Not that he was saying much but if he did start to explain what we were really doing, I would have looked even more stupid.
“Us too.” Debbie smiled mischievously. “One-year anniversary celebration at Cannon Beach. Are you guys on a little romantic rendezvous?”
I opened my mouth to say something (what, I wasn’t sure, but it probably wasn’t the truth) but Dex beat me to it.
“Nothing says romance like storm watching,” he winked at them. OK, I was not expecting him to say that. I was suddenly warm with gratefulness. It was a simple thing—he didn’t lie; he just didn’t correct them—but it made me feel like at least one good fa?ade was still intact.
Debbie gave us an approving look. “Oh, very true. Well, good to see you, Perry. Don’t be a stranger.”
Patrick said roughly the same thing and they both waved at us in unison.
As soon as we got in Dex’s SUV, I let out the biggest sigh of relief and thunked my head down on the dash.
Dex patted me lightly on the back.
“You survived,” he said with a chuckle. I looked up at him, feeling both embarrassed and relieved.
“Thank you so much for…well, not telling them the truth. About us. I mean, there is no us, but you know,” I rambled.
He shrugged and started the car. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo. You’ll just owe me.”
I straightened up and fastened my seatbelt as Dex brought the car back on the highway.
“Owe you?” I asked with caution.
He thumbed at the backseat. “Those are for you.”
I turned in the seat and looked. There was a stack of books behind me that weren’t there before.
I brought them onto my lap and looked them over. They were from the Seattle Public Library.
“What are these?” I said.
“Books, Perry, books! The backbone of civilization. And our homework.”
I eyed them curiously. Famous Oregon Shipwrecks, Mysteries of the Oregon Coast, Folklore and Myth in 20th Century Oregon, Shanghai City: The True Portland, Lighthouses of the West Coast, Charles Berlitz’s World of Strange Phenomena. It was a veritable treasure trove of local supernatural history.
“This is your homework?” I asked and started flipping through them.
He laughed. “No, it’s your homework. I’ve already read them.”
“Why do I need to read these?”
“Because,” he said sternly. I caught a slight blaze in his eye as his brows swooped down.
“Ohhh, because,” I mocked him. “That’s my favorite reason of all!”
The seriousness behind his eyes faded and he grinned. He had such a lovely smile when he was using it for good and not evil.
“You can’t just head into a situation blind. You have to know the background, the history of a place if you want to exploit it. If we head into that lighthouse and see a bunch of weird whatnots and such and such, it’s not going to make any sense unless we know the how, the why, and the when. Following?”
“Yes,” I lied.
He knew it too. He spoke slower, “If this lighthouse is truly haunted, we won’t be able to make any sense of it until we know why it’s haunted. Things don’t happen without reason. There is a story to be told at this place, and you’ll only recognize it if you’ve read it. Hence, the books. That lighthouse isn’t just a random tower of wood and concrete. It had a birth, it had a death and many comings-of-age in between.”
“Well, you already seem to know so much about it, like Old Roddy and whatever that nonsense was, so why don’t you tell me about it?”
He sighed. “I’m not the host here. You are. And you don’t seem to believe a single word I say.”
“That’s not true,” I said. Of course, he was right.
“Just read them.”
“All of them?”
He reached over and flipped open a page with a Post-It note stuck to it. “I’ve marked and highlighted everything you need to know. We have two hours before we hit your uncle’s place. Now go!”