Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle (i am malala young readers edition .TXT) 📗

“Wesley’s the one who contacted you?”

“Before Wesley, Violet hadn’t been to a doctor in years. This woman was in her late eighties, mind you. Had nobody. I don’t like thinking about it. We tried to convince her to let us clean up. Let us donate all the stuff she didn’t need. She couldn’t bring herself to part with anything, kept saying we could get rid of it after she was gone if we hated her belongings so much. A benefit of moving into the groundskeeper’s cabin was that it’s only a one-bedroom, which meant no extra space to fill up with Amazon splurges.”

My attention wraps around one-bedroom and squeezes tight. “What about the bedroom upstairs?”

“The what? Hold on, Maybell.” I hear a window rolling down. “I’d like a number one, please. With cheese. No pickles or onions. An apple pie, too. Oh, and a Cherry Coke! Thank you very much.” To me, she adds, “Are you talking about the loft? Honey, that’s a closet.”

I stare at the silhouette in the window for one beat. Two beats. Three. The light gutters out, taking Wesley with it.

My thumb is already hovering over end call. “Thank you so much for calling me back, Ruth, I really appreciate it. Good luck with everything.”

“Good luck to you, too. I’m going to park five houses down from mine, listen to a podcast, and enjoy my food in peace.”

“You deserve it. Thank you again for talking to me.”

“Anytime, Maybell. Don’t be a stranger.”

Hanging up, I walk calmly into the cabin. I’m not going to go into his bedroom. I’m not. It’s an invasion of his privacy.

I grab a chair and clamber up, but only because I want to see if I can reach the cord on the ceiling. I won’t pull it.

As it happens, I can reach it. Just to experiment—I’m not actually going to go up—I grab the ladder and slide it down.

Maybe I’ll climb a little bit, but not all the way to the top. This is Wesley’s bedroom. It is indubitably, 100 percent, no-gray-area, none of my business.

Up at the top, I press on the ceiling and it gives way, a warped square of thin wood that pitches forward easily. Invitingly. A wave of hot air slams me upside the head.

I suck in a sharp breath, pressing a hand to my mouth. Oh my god.

It’s not a bedroom.

Exposed beams, exposed insulation, exposed wiring, dust motes eddying in stagnant air. A small window with a hand towel stapled to its frame to block the light that would stream in at sunrise and aim directly at the bed, which isn’t a bed at all. It’s a sleeping bag on the floor.

A sleeping bag that takes up the entire floor, the bottom six inches of it curling up the wall because there’s not enough floor for it to lie completely flat.

A miniature desk fan blows loose sheets of paper as it oscillates, plugged into a surge protector along with a small table lamp resting on a stack of books. There’s a flashlight and a wallet. Three neat piles of clothes at the head of the sleeping bag, functioning as a pillow. Headphones attached to a thin cord that snakes beneath a laptop. A half-empty cup of water.

It’s stuffy, cramped, the ceiling too low—Wesley would have to duck or risk hitting his head, even in the middle of the room, where the vaulted roof slants up to its highest point.

I lock gazes with a familiar pair of blue eyes staring out of Wesley’s sleeping bag and sway, overtaken by dizziness.

It’s me. I’m lying in his bed.

Chapter 10

A TWO-DIMENSIONAL MAYBELL PARRISH PEERS out at me with colored-pencil features, wearing a sunset-colored rocky top tree house splash zone racer-back tank, four black hair bands like bracelets tracking up the left wrist. Glow-in-the-dark nail polish. She’s up close, so close that I can make out the strawberry tints in her wind-disheveled brown hair that you don’t notice unless she’s standing in the full sun. Faint reflections of trees flash in her round glasses, but she’s staring right at me with a guarded expression, and my stomach hits the floor because I know exactly what she’s thinking. I know exactly when she was thinking it, and where she was. It was the day I came to Falling Stars.

I was thinking, You look just like a lie I know.

The hairs on my neck rise, but at the same time I flush, an extraordinary awareness pumping through me. I feel like I’ve had a mask ripped off my face. It would appear that the man who ignores my existence 99 percent of the time has an eye for my every tiny detail. He must have a photographic memory.

There are other sketches in pen, pencils, and oil pastels, of Falling Stars and the woods and flowers I don’t know by name, strewn haphazardly; I envision Wesley with the artwork on his lap, back a crescent slope, profile close to the page. The instrument in his hand races feverishly across the paper in elegant, expert slashes, capturing a flashbulb moment in time. He has to get up suddenly—maybe he checks the time and it’s almost eight in the morning, which means I’m going to be opening my bedroom door soon and coming out. If he wants to avoid bumping into me all day, he’s got to get moving. He rises. The papers go sliding everywhere.

I’m kneeling on Wesley’s sleeping bag, the hard floor beneath it pinching my knee, when the top half of him emerges three feet away from me without warning. I’ll never understand how someone of his size can move without a sound.

“Oh!” I hasten to stand up, but my shoe slides on the slippery material and I knock into his stacks of clothes. Boxers and rolled-up socks topple off, which, in my panic, I pick up and put back. I am touching his underwear now. Wesley’s eyes are unusually hollow; he watches