Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1) by Emily Kazmierski (summer reads .txt) 📗

might as well have shot a cannonball through my chest for the amount of pain firing through me.

“Taryn, please. You’re all I have left.” We’re going to get out of this. I’m going to get you out of this.

“How, prey tell?” Taryn bites off, making me realize I’d spoken that last bit aloud.

“With these.” I scan the workbench, unfamiliar with most of the tools abandoned there. They’re old, rusty and dirty. Falling apart with disuse, but there has to be something we can use to get the aged door open.

Esau stays where he is, watching.

Ridged metal bites into my palms, but I don’t stop. I can’t. This chisel, or whatever it is, has to work. It’s the fourth or fifth tool I’ve grabbed to try to pry the door open, but it’s not budging. Taryn is pacing around the small room, anger coming off her in waves. I want to say something, anything, but I’m not willing to get yelled at any more.

Esau leans against the workbench, arms crossed, saying nothing. I have no idea what is going on in that calculating head of his. I’ve never been able to read him.

I wonder if they’ve kissed yet. Glancing at my sister over my shoulder, I consider it. She was always more confident with guys than me. More sure of herself. She was the blond cheerleader involved in every aspect of school, surrounded by friends and admirers. I was the quiet one who worked hard and kept my head down. Despite our differences, we were best friends. If she and her friends schemed to drive to San Diego for a can’t-miss concert, I was always included. There were no barriers, no questions between us. We were sisters. Twins.

Until we weren’t.

Pushing off the workbench, Esau comes over to the door. “Let me try.”

Instinctively, I hand him the rusted tool and step aside. He bends to work.

Taryn mutters something under her breath, and Esau glances over his shoulder in her direction. That I can understand. I’m sure there’s a lot that he’d like to say, to ask her. Because somehow, ever since Mr. Baugh locked them in this room with me, Esau has been carefully focused on her. Somehow, even though he’s only known we’re twins for mere minutes, he knows that she is his match. She’s the one who snuck out to see him that night in the orchard.

“Theater was her. Photography was you.” Esau’s dark eyes catch mine for a breath, and then he’s back to attacking the door’s hinge.

“Yes. She’s always been… more than me.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he growls, still angry. “You picked everything up pretty quickly. You had everyone’s lines memorized too, after a while.”

A corner of my mouth flicks up. “Yeah.”

“And she learned how to use a camera.” It comes out more like a curse than a statement of fact.

My eyebrows scrunch up. I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s true. In order to maintain the illusion, we had to meet in the middle of ourselves. Become each other when we stepped outside the old house. At the end of each day, whichever one of us had been to school handed the recorder off to the other for listening. Taryn may not have been our face every day, but she experienced all of it, just as I did. Taryn had to work at being Megan just as much as me, if not more. While I had to step outside my comfort zone, she had to stifle herself. Make herself smaller. The realization makes me feel even worse, if that’s possible.

“Why?” It’s a rough whisper on Esau’s tongue.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Taryn says. I didn’t know she’d been listening to our hushed conversation.

Both Esau and I turn to look at where she stands with her hands on her hips. “Made any progress on that door yet?” Her body is rigid as if she’s fighting its instinct to cross to where we are. And why should she give in to it? All of this is my fault.

Our parents’ death.

The long, painful scar that’s faded to a white line along her cheek.

The Mayday Killer’s presence here in Hacienda.

His threats against Noah’s parents.

Esau looks at Taryn, his expression cool. A handsome statue chiseled out of granite. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

She scowls at him. “You love it.”

Yanking viciously at the rubber band on his wrist, he mumbles something.

“What was that?” Taryn’s eyes are locked on him.

He clears his throat. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” For the first time tonight, she sounds less sure of herself.

“You were using me the whole time. It was all a power play.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, Taryn. I thought you and I were building something together. I thought we made a great team. The lighting. The blocking. Hell, the performances you’ve gotten out of all of the actors this semester. The play would have been fantastic. It would have been more than enough to give me a shot at film school. But none of it was real. The whole time, you were using me. Trying to take the play for yourself. Weren’t you?”

Taryn’s face flashes white and then red. “I admit it started that way. I lost everything, Esau. Everything. But if I could take one play and put my own spin on it, it would mean that I wasn’t completely lost. That there is some of the old me buried inside somewhere. But as I got to know you, everything changed. You said it yourself. We make a great team.”

“Made.”

“What?”

“We made a great team. No more.” His hand slashes the air between them.

Taryn’s jaw clenches. She glares at him, breathing hard. “That’s really what you want?”

Esau’s harsh look silences her.

I stand between them, torn. Half of me wants to explain to Esau that we only lied because we were forced into it. The other half wants to wrap my arms around my sister and beg her forgiveness.

A low rattle comes from somewhere outside the concrete room. Something skitters over the floor. A shaft of