Day 12
Asher
You’d think a truce would mean Sidney and I could just act like normal people.
The kind who can sit around and talk about normal things, like how to prank their former landlord.
You would be wrong. Less than forty-eight hours into our truce, it’s become very clear that we don’t know how to act like normal people.
We know how to annoy and avoid. And how to ride in a car in total silence.
So I guess we’re going to wing our first night at Nadine’s.
We’ve only been out of the Five Pines houses for a few days, but already it feels like we don’t belong here.
Lake House A and B are dark—lights off, blinds drawn.
There are no cars at either house. Even the air smells different—like it’s missing the soft tang of fish that usually wafts out of the little hut next to Nadine’s house, where the dads clean their catch.
After Sidney weaponized that smell, I can’t say I miss it.
“Creepy,” Sidney says from behind me. Her eyes are fixed on the tall blue elf that peers at us from beside a little bush, with a red hat slumped on his head.
I’ve always thought Nadine’s statue collection was the weirdest thing ever.
I swear their eyes follow you, like creepy little concrete Mona Lisas.
And it’s not just gnomes, it’s frogs and dragons, and there’s even a red brontosaurus statue.
A brontosaurus. There were a few here when I first came, tucked in around the tiny cabins that used to sit in a row here, but since the house went up last summer they seem to be multiplying exponentially.
Sidney shakes her head in mock disgust, and I want to laugh, but I don’t.
We’re behind Nadine’s house, in the strip of trees that runs along the driveway and separates her property from the next.
It isn’t the time or place to be amused by Sidney, truce or not.
We parked down the road, at The Little Store, which had been closed for hours by the time we arrived, and then we walked the half-mile to Five Pines.
“What do we do now?” Sidney whispers.
“We scout.”
“Okay…” Her voice is sarcastic. “And what exactly does that entail? You know, for those of us who aren’t expert-level lurkers.”
“As if you’d qualify,” I scoff. “All hail Sidney, Queen of the Lurkers,” I mutter. Why can’t she just talk to me like a normal person?
“Whatever.” She takes a step ahead of me and I grab her arm, but she shakes away roughly.
“Sidney,” I whisper-yell as her dark form struts off ahead of me, moving from the cover of the trees to the driveway.
She bends down next to the house, and plucks a gray—almost blue—elephant statue out of the red mulch.
It has yellow swirls painted across its bulging stomach, and ruby-red gems forming a little triangle that dips from the top of its head down its trunk.
It’s one of the most normal things in Nadine’s collection, cozied up next to what looks like a praying mantis statue.
Sidney smiles triumphantly as she hoists it into her arms and cradles it—just as a light flicks on overhead, bathing her in bright white light.
Motion lights. That’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to be scouting.
Shit.
Sidney
When I was a kid, I was a big believer in the T-Rex method of hiding.
You know, the whole Don’t move and they won’t see you approach.
My mom loves to tell stories about how she’d catch four-year-old me doing something, and I’d freeze in place, convinced that I was invisible if I could just stay still.
Apparently my parents thought it was so hilarious that they played along, and I was eight before I fully grasped that this was actually the worst method of hiding ever.
But ten years later it’s still my first instinct when the light flashes on.
I’m as still as the stone statue in my hands as the halo of light floods down around me.
Asher whispers my name so loudly he might as well just be talking. “Move.” Then louder. “Sidney, move.” And louder. “Run.”
The word snaps me out of it and I start sprinting across the yard like someone’s just fired a starting pistol.
Asher takes off after me, and I can hear his feet padding on the grass behind me.
The elephant is cradled under my arm like a football as we hit the sidewalk next to Lake House B, both of us on the same side for once, and it’s not until I hit the stairs and am barreling downward, toward the water, that I realize this probably wasn’t what Asher had in mind.
I should have run toward the car, not away from it.
Where the stairs descend past the row of dense bushes, I come to a stop, practically throwing myself onto the ground beside them.
Asher is two seconds behind me, and we’re lying on our stomachs behind the bushes, in a row: Asher, me, and the elephant—I’m going to call her Edith—next to me.
If we had rifles we’d look like something straight out of a WWII movie. Well, except for the elephant.
Asher looks over at me, to where I have one arm draped over Edith. “What were you doing?” His face is so close to mine I can feel his breath.
I scrunch up my nose in mock disgust. “Brush your teeth next time there’s potential that we’re trapped next to each other.”
“We wouldn’t be trapped”—he rolls his eyes as he says the word—“if you would have just waited to hear the plan.”
“Because you’re the leader?”
“You asked me what to do!”
He’s right, but I can’t give him the satisfaction. Across the yard a door slams, and we both freeze. Through the gaps of the bush I can make out a silhouette in front of the house.
“We have to leave,” Asher mutters.
Obviously. I get up slowly, hunched over so I stay below the tall bushes.
“This way,” Asher says, jerking his head at the water.
“You want to swim?” I shake my head at him. “That’s how people die, Asher. You don’t swim across a lake in the dark, are you nuts? We should at least take a canoe or rowboat and go that way.”
He shakes his head, looking at me like I’ve completely lost it.
Maybe I have. I’m feeling very Bonnie and Clyde right now, like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff, being closed in on by the police.
I think that’s what happened. Except the police are Nadine and the sirens are her yippy little dog circling the yard on its leash.
The cliff is this lake I love so much, and I’m so worked up right now, I’d swan-dive off the edge for drama’s sake if I wasn’t sure I’d break my neck in the eighteen inches of water along the shore.
“We’re not swimming. And we’re not stealing a boat.” He mutters what sounds like, Are you kidding me? “We’re going to walk down a few houses”—he says it slowly, like if he talks too fast I won’t comprehend any of it—“and then we’ll circle back up to the road.”
“Oh.” That’s a much better idea. A much simpler and safer idea. He doesn’t need to know that.
“Follow me.”
“So you can run ahead and leave me to get snatched?”
“Snatched? By what exactly?” His eyes are wild. “We’re not going to jail tonight, Sidney. I mean, unless you decide to go rogue again.”
“Fine, let’s go. Lead the way, Oh Wise One.”
Asher looks down at my feet. “We can’t just leave it here.” He’s eyeing the squatty little statue still lying on the grass.
“I can’t steal it.”
“Oh, so jacking a boat for your big escape is fine, but tacky yard sculptures is where you draw the line?” He rolls his eyes. “Can you just stop arguing with me for ten seconds?”
I start mouthing one … two … three …
“We’re not stealing it. We’ll bring it back when we can actually put it where it goes.” He waves his hand toward the house. “It was sort of hidden behind that bush, I doubt she’ll even notice it’s gone.”
I squat down and secure Edith under my arm again. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Asher
Along the lake, everyone has a dense crop of trees that divides their property from the next.
They’re great for privacy and crap for walking through.
My legs are getting torn up as we make our way through the long patch of trees and undergrowth a few houses down from Nadine, cutting our way back to the road.
Maybe it’s the branch that cuts a thin slice along my knee that finally pushes me over the edge.
“Just pretend I’m someone else.” I can hear Sidney behind me, swearing under her breath as she probably gets her own cuts and scrapes, but I don’t look at her.
I’m tired of the scowl she’s had permanently plastered on her face all night.
“Excuse me?” she says, her voice aimed at my back like an arrow.
“I’ve seen you talk to people like a normal human being.
I’ve seen you be nice to Kara, to Caleb, to a random person who checks out your groceries.
” My voice is level. “I know you’ve got it in you, somewhere deep down.
So when we get back to the house, just pretend I’m not me…
” I hold a branch up to pass under it, and let Sidney go ahead of me.
She gives me a skeptical side-eye glance as she passes under it.
As if I’d snap her with a freaking tree branch.
The look on her face makes me want to. “… if that’s what you need, to make this truce work. ”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“I don’t need to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sidney … just keep walking.” I let her get a few steps ahead of me. It’s not like we’re getting lost in this twenty-foot stretch of trees. “And stop thinking about it.”