—and Beck moves toward the door.
“What’re you doing?” I demand in as low a voice as I can manage while expressing my indignation.
“I’m checking the peephole thing,” she whispers back. “We should at least know what kind of person we’re dealing with before we call the cops. I’d prefer not to do that.”
I know it’s fine for her to look through the peephole. I know. But everything inside me curdles at the thought of someone stabbing a weapon right through that peephole into her eye socket like in the movies. “Beck, please, don’t go near the door!” I say, my voice rising. But I don’t care anymore. “It could be anyone! This is how people die!”
Beck shakes her head. “Emma, I appreciate you deeply, but we’re not in a horror movie. It’s all gonna be fine. Go call the front desk guy while I check.”
With a hand still clutching the lamp, I dial the front desk from the room’s landline. Despite everything going on, my introvert heartbeat slams in my chest.
“Yeah?” the front desk guy says.
“There’s someone banging on our room door.”
There’s crackling on the other end. “It’s just some stupid girl. I’ll tell her to go. Hold on.”
A stupid girl.
Evan was the one who did all of this. Yet I can’t shake the feeling from being entrenched so long in this town. My whole body heaves wishing itweren’ta fucking girl.
“Beck, don’t—” I say.
Beck looks through the peephole.
All the color drains from her face. She stumbles back, fallingagainst the side of the bed, dropping onto her ass on the stained carpet we both agreed we’d never touch.
“Fuck,” she says. Her hands rise to her mouth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”
I fall to my knees beside Beck, place a hand on her shoulder. “What?” I say. But she doesn’t answer. I clutch her shirt. “Beck, what’s going on?”
She buries her face into her knees. “No. No, no, no.”
“Beck!”
But Beck is gone, and someone is still terrorizing our door. Where’s the front desk guy?
I stand on wobbly knees, the vision tunneling into one image: the front door.
Like Beck before me, I suddenly feel the need to be closer to the door. Like some entity beyond me is pulling me toward it. My fingers twitch, preparing to settle around the doorknob.
“Beck! Emma! Please, open up!”
And I suddenly understand Beck’s intense reaction. My own world turns on its side, panic and fear and—
—and relief flooding my overtired system.
That’s Paisley’s voice.
I don’t believe in witches; I don’t believe in ghosts. I should believe in fearing what’s behind that door, but I practically rip the door off its hinges to see who’s on the other side.
After being with Beck so much the past few weeks, I stopped remembering Paisley as herself and started remembering her through Beck’s features. Paisley’s eyes became the dark blue of Beck’s. Paisley’s hands were the slender, strong hands of Beck. Paisley’s voice evengot deeper in my mind; she got taller, her skinny frame muscular and strong.
But no, Paisley is all her own. Her own cupid’s bow on chapped lips, her own golden hair knotted into a bird’s nest, her own perfect smooth skin covered in cuts where it’s not hidden by a stranger’s worn-out clothing. Something that you’d steal out of a motel lost and found.
But most damning of all, Paisley’s fingertips are bandaged up.
Thirty-Five
