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“You ought to scan that all in and give a copy to the Starling Falls Historical Society,” Barnaby told him.
Priscilla yawned daintily and covered her mouth. “We’d better go, I suppose.”
“Good night, you two,” said Barnaby.
“Good night,” Tom and I said, waving like a couple and then turning to one another in contempt as soon as our door closed behind us.
“So! Imagine that! They did have our packet,” I said. “Our secret packet that’s no one’s business but ours. All this time that I’ve wondered about it and looked for it, they’ve had it.”
“I would have told you, but I knew this was how you’d react.”
“They get to read our secret packet, before I’ve even seen it?”
“Stop calling it a secret packet,” he said. “It’s just a packet. Say it with me: A packet. Try it, Courtney. Say it. A packet.”
“Stop it,” I said.
He snort-laughed.
“And,” I said, “you’ve never ever mentioned that they had a second tour?”
“What difference does it make?”
“The bizarre, impossible thing is, I knew. I knew all along.”
“You did not.”
“But I did!”
“You’re a joke.”
“What’s happened to you, Tom?” I asked him. “Since the moment we moved here, I don’t feel like I even know you.”
“What now?” he asked, his tone implying he was accustomed to and bored by my predictable, angsty insecurities.
“Why did you tell them about the Feng Shui and the crystals and incense?” I asked. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror hanging on the wall, and I was embarrassed at how ugly I had become. Especially compared to how perfect Priscilla had just looked. My hair was a mess and my shirt had a stain on the front of it. Buried, forgotten feelings of my youth resurrected themselves. Once again I was the irritating girl that no boy would ever like. The pizza face with oozy zits and gullible, zany beliefs and ideas.
“Are you ashamed?” he asked me.
Yes. I’m ashamed, I thought. “Not at all,” I said. “But it’s none of their business.”
“If you want to have a conversation about something, let’s talk about how rude you were tonight.”
“Rude?” I asked. Of course I knew what he meant. Even I thought I sounded like I was lying.
“Yes. Rude,” he said.
I was following him to the kitchen. As usual, he was on his way to the refrigerator for a beer. I realized he was drinking about a six-pack each night, usually starting around nine or ten and going until long after I fell asleep. “You know, you’ve started drinking a lot,” I said.
“Are you going to start in on me about that, too?”
I took a deep breath, suddenly feeling too defeated to fight. “I’m just concerned,” I said. “And it’s expensive. Between that, and the dinners with the McGhees, and the trips to the laundromat…”
Tom had recently stopped doing laundry at home. He said it was because it was so much more efficient saving it up and doing it all at once. So this meant now it was my chore, since the original reason he was going to handle it—so I didn’t have to spend time in our creepy basement—had been removed. At first I thought he was j
ust being lazy, but when we blew a fuse and he became enraged about having to go downstairs to change it, I began to wonder if the laundry switch-up was more about avoiding the basement than avoiding that chore.
“We’re not spending that much,” he said.
