Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Because they were a bunch of fucking dorks, Sloane’s friends threw a viewing party.
There weren’t, like, invitations or anything, but they got YouTube up on the TV at Ronnie’s house, bought beer, popped popcorn, and crammed five people onto a couch and a recliner.
They all cheered and applauded every time Sloane came on the screen, which she found both heartwarming and horrifying, and paused for five minutes to argue about which laundry symbol was on the pentagram.
“Wait,” Ronnie said when the video finished. “So, who did all that stuff?”
“Ghosts, duh,” said Leo, who was sprawled in the armchair like bones were a suggestion, not an anatomical fact. “Were you paying any attention at all?”
“I thought it was demons,” said Jess. “There was a pentagram and everything.”
“We figured it was probably the manager who invited Max in the first place,” Sloane said, ignoring half her friends. “That makes the most sense, right?”
“So he switched you out of a room with a haunted AC unit and into a room with…a haunted AC unit,” Leo said.
“We did have haunted air conditioning on our minds,” Sloane pointed out.
“Did you get him fired?” asked Jess. “You probably could have, with the rats.”
“There were rats?” asked Ronnie, alarmed.
“What did you think made those peanut butter footprints on the Spookytown book?” asked Leo.
“Rats love peanut butter,” offered Eric, who’d been quiet up until now. “It’s the best thing to use in rat traps.”
Ronnie leaned forward on the couch to look around Sloane and make a horrified face at Eric. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve…had to trap rats?” he said.
“Where?”
“My old apartment in Hollywood.”
Ronnie made a tragic face, and Leo laughed.
“I’ve got terrible news for you about urban living,” he told her. “But as long as they stay outside, it’s not a big deal.”
“It was a really shitty apartment,” Eric offered.
“Personally, I liked the pre-melted candles,” Jess said, changing the subject. “Good for Manager Brian, summoning demons without burning the whole place down.”
“Fire codes are important,” agreed Leo.
“And yen.”
“And the symbol for Tumble dry low.”
“It was Do not iron. We just went over this—”
Sloane rolled her eyes and stood before they could start another argument about laundry symbols. “Does anyone else want another drink?”
“So,” Leo said a couple hours later, back on the armchair and sprawled in a new position. “You know Max from your hometown?”
“Last Chance,” Jess offered.
“For what?”
“I love when you make that joke,” Sloane deadpanned.
Ronnie and Eric had both left, and now she and Jess were on opposite ends of the couch, their feet on the rickety coffee table.
Also on the coffee table was Priscilla, Leo’s roommate’s large gray cat.
The roommate had gone out for the night, and Sloane suspected Priscilla would be reporting back to him.
“He’s not what I expected,” Leo admitted. “He had all his teeth and everything.”
Sloane turned to look at him. “What about me makes you think that no one in my hometown has teeth?”
“You make it sound like it’s nothing but backwoods hicks who drink moonshine and play in abandoned mineshafts,” Jess pointed out.
“Or credulous yokels who think every weird sound in the woods is Bigfoot,” said Leo.
“They don’t think that—they just say they do so tourists will come spend their money,” Sloane said. Then she sighed and rubbed her face. “Some of them think that. But it’s not, like, everyone.”
“I just wasn’t expecting a cute, sassy boy with pretty hair,” Leo said, and Sloane felt herself blush.
“Last Chance is fine, honestly,” she said, out of some deep-seated, perverse need to defend the place where she’d grown up.
“I mean, it’s got a cute downtown area, and there’s a library, and it’s right in the national forest, so it’s pretty and everything.
And they’ve done a lot to preserve historical stuff in the last thirty years or so.
And it’s only about an hour from Sacramento, so it’s not like it’s the ass-end of nowhere. ”
“Great, so you’re moving back?” Jess asked. She was nearly horizontal by now, Priscilla delicately sniffing at her feet where they were propped on the coffee table.
“God, no,” Sloane said. “I’ll take rats over running into people from high school at the post office any day of the week.”
“They were surprised you have teeth,” Sloane said later, once she and Jess had returned to their place and Jess had gone to bed. She was sitting on a plastic chair on the concrete slab that passed for their outdoor space, talking on the phone.
“The fuck did you tell them about me?” Max asked, laughing.
“Just that we’re from the same weird town.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I know,” Sloane admitted, slouching further in the uncomfortable chair. “They also called you cute and sassy, if that helps.”
“I like your friends already.”
“They’re pretty good,” Sloane admitted, which was an understatement. They fell quiet for a moment, and Sloane knew that she should hang up and go to bed. Instead she sat there and listened to the delicate sounds of Max’s breathing.
“What are you up to?” she finally asked, inanely.
“Talking to you.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re an incredible conversationalist?”
“I’m not the one who led with What are you up to,” Max pointed out, and Sloane realized that she was grinning at the sky like an idiot. “I think I’m doing great, given the circumstances.”
“Fine. I’m sitting outside my apartment, in the dark, while my neighbors have a party. Or, like, maybe a get-together. I can’t tell—there’s a fence,” she said.
“I’m reading in bed,” Max offered, and Sloane wanted to ask Alone?
but didn’t. She couldn’t hear anyone else, and besides, it wasn’t her business and she didn’t care.
“Interior Chinatown, because my mom’s been telling me to read it for six months and if I haven’t by the time I see them in a couple weeks at Thanksgiving, she might actually kill me. ”
“Is it good?” Sloane asked, and then, “Do you go back for Thanksgiving every year?”
“I go visit them, like, once a month. It’s only an hour,” Max said. “And I’m on chapter two, so I don’t know yet.”
“I haven’t been back since last Christmas,” Sloane admitted. “It’s a long drive, and I don’t get much time off.” Even though she’d taken three days off to go to San Diego. That wasn’t as long of a drive, at least.
“Do you ever go up for Thanksgiving?” Max asked. Sloane heard rustling in the background, the sound of a book being put on a bedside table.
“I never have,” she said. “Well, I did my first year that I lived here. But it was a pain in the ass, so I haven’t gone again.”
“It’s a long drive,” he agreed, voice warm in the cool night. Sloane wondered if he always slept in nothing but boxer briefs or if that had been just for her benefit at the Bellwether. “Worse over Thanksgiving weekend.”
“If I took the Wednesday off and left Tuesday, it might not be so bad,” she said. It was the first time she’d had that thought, and it had gone straight from her id to her mouth, bypassing the useful part of the brain. “I mean, the traffic. It’s still, what, ten hours?”
“Yeah,” Max said, voice drifting down the line. “Less miserable if you stopped somewhere on the way.”
Neither of them spoke. Sloane couldn’t, because her brain had filled up with the sentence Somewhere like Sacramento? and wouldn’t let anything else in.
“Like, for example, I could send you some pictures to entertain you at a rest stop,” Max finally said, and Sloane exhaled. Thank god she hadn’t mentioned Sacramento.
“What kind of pictures?” Sloane asked, letting her eyes close.
“It’s probably better if I show you an example.” Sloane could have sworn his breathing picked up. “If you don’t mind.”
She didn’t.