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I wake to find Dare seated on the edge of my bed, calmly watching me sleep.
“How did you…” I breathe, and I’m confused and startled and afraid. He smiles again and his black eyes glint in the morning light.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re here.”
He arcs an eyebrow. “It seems so.”
Happiness bubbles up in me, through my belly and into my chest.
“I’m glad,” I murmur.
“Me too.”
Dare finds the funeral home fascinating, and I take him on a tour. Through the embalming rooms, the Viewing Rooms, the chapel. I show him where we keep the caskets when they come in, where my father keeps the hearse and the family cars. The things that other people find so creepy, and that I find just a normal part of life.
“It smells like flowers here,” Dare observes, his large slender body filling the doorway.
“It does,” I agree. “It gets into your clothes and then you smell like a funeral home all day.”
“Nope,” he answers. “Just flowers.”
I let it go because I’d rather smell like lilies than death any day of the week.
I show him the beaches and the ocean and our sailboat. I show him the Carriage House and the forest and the cliffs. “Watch your step here,” I tell him seriously. “The ledge is thin.”
“Will do, mate,” he answers.
Mate?
I don’t want to be his mate. I want to be…
I don’t know what I want to be.
But when I show Dare the old abandoned amusement park the next day, Joyland, I take a minute to scratch our initials into the wood.
DD and CP.
It’s Valentine’s Day so it feels appropriate.
Dare smiles, and rolls his eyes.
“You’re 13. I’m 16.”
I lift my chin. “So? In a couple of years, we’ll be 16 and 19. And I’m the only one who knows you exist.”
That feels so strange to say, and I briefly think that he’s my imaginary friend. Don’t most children have them?
But staring at him makes warmth gush to my girl parts, and I don’t think imaginary friends do that.
Dare chuckles and we leave the park. “So talk to me about it when you’re 16,” he suggests. But his voice is filled with somethingsomethingsomething.
Interest?
Promise?
