Page 12 of Some Kind of Haunted

Though I can’t really imagine that chiseled face of his allowing such a desecration, so maybe I’m exaggerating.

But the truth is, there’s something about this that’s exhilarating, because I can’t think of a single time in my entire life that a man has ever reacted like this to me. Even the ones who approach me and try to play their little reverse psychology mind games on me because they listen to way too many “alpha male” podcasts usually wilt at the first sight of my smile. It is the one piece of sunshine Logan and I share.

“I can come back if you aren’t ready,” the man says after what seems like a tense moment to me, though Logan is blissfully unaware, his face in his phone. Fully missing the way Jack is speaking to me.

I can feel my temper brewing into a full-on tantrum. I open my mouth, ready to eviscerate him. “Listen, Jack—”

“Where’s your restroom?” Logan interrupts.

The waiter jabs a thumb behind him at a large sign on the wall that reads Restroom with an arrow pointing down a narrow hall.

“There you go, Lex,” Logan says, smiling broadly at me. Paying attention to all the wrong things, which, I know without having to ask, is in this moment my tone. “You can go take care of that problem.”

I do not have many problems beside him, but he says that so meaningfully. As in go away so I can eat without you causing your usual brand of drama.

His smile is annoying and not for my benefit. “I’ll order for you,” he says.

I want to argue. I want to spar with Jack and maybe punch my brother in the face, but I push myself up to my feet instead. Because I am starving, and I need caffeine, and Logan will smooth it over with Jack so that no food will be spit on. The two of them will likely be best friends in five seconds flat.

He’ll probably even get me a dairy alternative, and, if all goes well, join Jack in assorted windows tonight to creep around and stare.

That thought brings another shiver, and I am sure that I feel Jack’s hard green gaze follow me as I head down the hallway.

But my self-righteous march only takes me so far before I start to get that prickly back-of-the-neck feeling, to be distinguished from a shiver. A shiver is a reaction. This is a warning.

I whirl around, half expecting Jack to be lurking behind me, butcher knife in hand like Psycho minus the shower, but there’s nothing but the hallway. I turn back again and then stop dead still at the sight of a window beside me.

That seems to frame the clock tower perfectly.

A scream wants to burst free of my lungs, but I manage to swallow it back. I am not going to stand here and be haunted by a clock tower so that every stranger in this small-town diner can stare and whisper and wonder.

Somewhat blindly, I keep going until I find a door. Assuming it’s the one I’m looking for, I push my way through and then suddenly I’m . . . in an antique shop.

Just like it said on the sign, when I’d started to think maybe the decor was the antique in question.

Since I don’t actually have to go to the bathroom, I decide I can poke around here for about ten minutes and then return to the table to eat, avoiding Jack entirely.

I think of the way his head jerked back and take a surreptitious sniff of myself but can’t detect any odor. Apparently, I alone have that effect on him.

Midas wins again.

I look around the first little area. It’s a lot of dirty, splintering window frames stacked together and randomly hung up on the wall to frame nothing. Not exactly the kind of antiques I’m interested in. I peer into a box that houses broken picture frames for a nickel a piece. I try to remember the last time I actually saw a nickel. In a corner there is a pile of . . . spurs, maybe? All I know for sure is it looks like a heap of rusted metal.

“Garbage, garbage, and more garbage,” I mutter irritably.

Then I hear a squeak. I turn to find an elderly man getting up out of a chair behind a counter I didn’t even notice was there. His glasses have slipped down his nose. He seems a little shaky as he gets to his feet, but he has to be the proprietor.

And I’ve just been muttering about his garbage.

“One man’s garbage is another’s treasure. I believe that’s how the saying goes anyway.” He says this with a kindness that immediately makes me feel ashamed. An emotion usually only my father can manage to elicit from me.

“I . . .” But the best I can do is a sheepish smile.

He gestures me deeper into the store. “I think I’ve got something you might like.” He grabs a cane, then walks around the counter and starts hobbling deeper into the store.

Part of me is intrigued that he thinks he knows what I would like.

Part of me—the part with the neck that won’t stop prickling—knows the start of a Dateline special when I see one.