Shaking her head, she decided that this had to be one of those strange waking dreams her dad had a book about—something about feeling completely awake despite being in a totally different state of mind. Vee hadn’t understood a word of what she had read, but she now realized that this must have been what “lucid” meant. A sense of parallel reality, where you know where you are, but aren’t where you should be. It’s just a dream, she thought. Just your imagination. Just the headache twisting up your thoughts. But the steady tap-tap-tapping of wooden beads promised that she was awake.
And then there was the shadow figure in the corner, still as marble and dark as midnight. The curve of a shoulder. The delicate line of an arm.
It wasn’t real. She had to be hallucinating. But her mind screamed, It’s the girl!
She fell into a run. Grabbing the stair banister, she bolted up the steps, winded by the time she reached the landing. The upstairs hallway looked different too. The photos she had hung along the wall were gone, replaced with cheap painted landscapes in wooden frames.
“Dad!” The word left her throat in a sudden burst. She nearly tripped over her feet as she ran for his door and burst into the room. Her father bolted upright in bed. He fumbled with a bedside lamp, his eyes wide when it finally illuminated his face. “Dad, I . . .” I think all our stuff is gone, replaced by other stuff. And there’s a person . . . It was stupid. Ridiculous. Crazy and she knew it.
“What?” Her dad looked as freaked out as she felt. His hair was wild with sleep. His face pulled tight with alarm.
“My head.” It was the first thing that came to mind. “It still hurts.”
He rubbed a hand across his face.
“What if I have a brain aneurysm?” she asked, predicting his reaction before it came.
He leveled his gaze on her, his worry melting into a knowing sort of stare. “Oh, Jeanie. Are you going on that website again?”
She didn’t reply.
“Jeanie . . . I promise, you don’t have a brain aneurysm.”
Except maybe she did. Maybe that was why she’d been experiencing everything since what she saw in the bathroom. It was one thing to think that she’d seen a ghost, but altogether another to see an entire room rearranged. Perhaps her brain was misfiring. The knock she’d taken had jostled something loose.
“Here,” he said, pulling open the bedside table drawer. He lifted out a bottle of Tylenol and shook it at her like a rattle. She dragged her feet along the rug as she approached, held out her hand as he dropped two tablets into her palm.
“But what if you’re wrong?” she asked, staring at the pills. “What if I die in my sleep?”
He watched her for a long while before tossing aside his sheets. “Okay,” he said. “Get dressed.”
“What? Why?” She took a few steps away from his bed.
“Because you’re right,” he said. “I should have taken you to the hospital right off the bat.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, forget it. I’m fine.”
“Except you’re worried about dying? Work with me here, kid—what is it that you want me to do?”
“Just forget it,” she said again. “Really, Dad. It went away earlier. If it was an aneurysm, it wouldn’t have gone away with pills, but it did, which means I’m okay. I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s just a headache, that’s all.”
He frowned at her.
“Sorry for waking you up,” she murmured, closing her fingers around the medicine in her hand. She turned toward his door, and for a split second she hoped he’d tell her to sleep in his room, just in case. But he didn’t. And while she reasoned that he hadn’t offered because she was too old for that sort of babying, she couldn’t help but feel a flash of resentment as she sulked out of the room.
She wandered down the hall that was now devoid of the cheap landscapes she had seen hanging only minutes before. And while she clearly remembered leaving her bedroom door open, it was closed again. She hesitated, forcing herself to step inside despite what may have awaited her.
The room was just the way she left it. Nothing out of the ordinary. And while she should have felt comforted by its familiarity, all she wanted to do was cry.
Because she wasn’t crazy.
The girl in the mirror had been there. That shadow downstairs had probably been her. The house beyond her bedroom door had been all wrong. If there was nothing off with her head, what she’d seen had been real.
14
* * *
SELMA ARRIVED AT the house bright and early the next day, a giant purse hanging off one shoulder and a shopping bag full of leftovers heavy in her right hand. “Hey. Figured you guys would want food,” she told Lucas when he opened the door. “I made way too much for just me and Mark. And I brought over a bunch of Blu-rays. I wasn’t sure if you guys got around to unpacking your stuff yet, so . . .” She smiled, handed him the bag, and brushed her dark Zooey Deschanel bangs away from her eyes.
“Thanks.” Lucas stepped aside to let her in. “Sorry about last night. Jeanie ended up with a pretty wicked headache. I nearly took her to the ER.”
“Is she okay?”
“I think so. Though, if she still has a headache today I’m taking her to the clinic whether she wants to go or not.”
“Mark told me about what happened,” Selma said. “She got lucky. It could have been a lot worse.” She offered him a look of consolation, then glanced around her surroundings. “Wow, Mark wasn’t kidding when he said this place is dated.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit Partridge Family.”
“But it’s charming,” she countered, giving him a red-lipped smile. “I like it. It’s got this cool fifties Americana thing going on, and if anyone loves the fifties . . .” She posed for half a second, letting him get an eyeful of her typical rockabilly style.
Lucas chuckled and led her into the kitchen. She let her eyes sweep the place before she shrugged off her purse—which looked like a small version of a black-and-white bowling bag—and set it on the island.
“Thanks for doing this,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.” She waved away his gratitude.
“No, I want to mention it. It’s a long drive, and we stood you up last night. I feel bad about it.”