“Oh, my God, it's like that part in Empire Strikes Back where they can never get into light speed,” Alona said with a disgusted sigh.
I stared at her.
Catching sight of me, she scowled. “What?
“Nothing. I just…” I tried to find the words. “Alona Dare making a Star Wars reference. I never thought I'd live to see the day.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “At least one of us did.”She crossed the small room to the tiny hallway, which presumably led to a kitchen and bathroom. “Besides, it's only because you made me watch it, like, a hundred times,”she called back, her voice sounding hollow in the empty space.
“It's a classic, and it was twice,” I said, following her to a minikitchen. If I stood with my arms outstretched, I probably could have touched both walls. “And only because you fell asleep in the middle the first time.”
She shrugged dismissively. “The Dagobah stuff was so boring. No Han Solo.”
She looked around the room at the cabinet doors hanging open and sighed. “There's nothing here.”
I should have figured that. He had, after all, been packing up to leave town.
“All right,” she said in the tone of someone done messing around. “Phone.” She held her hand out.
I pulled my phone from my pocket but held on to it. “Who are you — who am I calling?” I asked cautiously. I'd saved the number the rental company receptionist had given me for Edmund, but I didn't think calling was a good idea. “Malachi… Edmund, whatever, he's not going to be thrilled to hear from us.” In fact, I was afraid calling him might make him bolt farther than he already had.
Alona shook her head. “I'm not calling anyone.” She peered with a grimace into an open drawer. “We're going to—”
Before she could finish explaining her plan, my phone rang, echoing loudly in the empty apartment and startling both of us.
I looked at the number. Uh-oh. I felt a renewed surge of panic. “Uh, Al, did you have your phone on you when Erin—”
“No. Mrs. Turner still has it confiscated,” she said, bumping the drawer shut with her hip and moving closer to me. “Why?”
I held up my phone and showed her the words lily's cell flashing on the screen. “Someone's noticed you're not where you're supposed to be.”
Her eyes widened. “Answer it!” She reached for the phone.
I lifted it over my head, away from her grasping hand. “No way; it has to be the Turners,” I said. If Mrs. Turner had dropped Ally off at Misty's this morning, it wouldn't have taken much for her to connect the dots. Mrs. Turner had probably called Misty, and Misty had told them about their newly recovered daughter leaving with the guy Mrs. Turner hated most. Great.
“Exactly. You have to tell them I'm okay.” She crossed her arms and glared at me. Interesting that she cared so much about them now, when all she'd talked about before was how difficult it was to be around them.
“Except I don't actually know if you are okay. The version of you that they know, anyway. And they might get a call about you — her—being very not okay at any time.” I didn't know much about our legal system, but vouching for the safety of a girl who later turned up hurt or in jail or something struck me as a particularly bad idea.
She bit her lip.
There was a loooong gap between the final ring and the voice-mail signal, and even the happy little chime sounded angry.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Are you going to listen to it?” she asked, seeming more anxious than I would have imagined.
“No,” I said, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. No sense in confirming things were as bad as, or worse than, I figured they already were.
“They're going to be worried,” she mumbled, sounding annoyed; but she wouldn't look at me, focusing instead on a splotch of something on the chipped and fading tile floor and kicking at it with the tip of her gym shoe. After all this time, she couldn't fool me. If she was annoyed at anyone, it was at herself for caring.
“I know.” I looped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her toward me. She didn't resist. What was it about family that had such an immense hold on you, even if it wasn't your own, even if they didn't understand who you really were?
And suddenly, pieces of what I knew about Edmund Harris connected in a new way. I turned away from Alona and started for the hallway.
Alona followed me. “Where are you going?”
“I know where Malachi, Edmund, whatever his name is — I know where he went,” I said over my shoulder. It's where I would have gone if I'd been in his situation, or what I knew of it, anyway. But I wasn't sure how long he would stay.
“Where?” Alona persisted.
I picked up speed, feeling like every second that passed was vital and one we could never get back.
“Home.”
Except, as it turned out, Will meant his home, at least as a first stop.
“I can't believe you don't have Internet on your phone.” I flopped back in the passenger seat of the Dodge. We needed more information about Edmund — like another address — and without the ability to look it up on the go, which had been my plan, returning to his house and his computer was the fastest option.
“Do you know how much that costs every month?” he demanded.
Actually, I didn't. When I'd been alive (the first time), I hadn't worried about it, and I hadn't yet regained phone privileges in my new reality, obviously. I thought about the message sitting in his voice mail from Mrs. Turner and flinched again.
“You have to promise me that no matter what happens, you're going to try to talk to the Turners, to tell them none of it was their fault,” I said quietly. Mr. Turner was barely over feeling guilty for the first time something bad had happened to Lily, and I knew Mrs. Turner would probably blame herself — after she got done blaming Will for being a bad influence or something. And after yesterday's blowup, Tyler would probably take on his share of responsibility, too, if something happened to his sister. Or if she simply never came home. God, we needed to find this Erin chick… and soon. “It's important, okay? You need to promise me you'll talk to them.”
Will frowned at me and tightened his grip on the wheel until his knuckles went white. “Stop it. Stop acting like you're not going to be fine.”
Did he think I hadn't noticed when I'd gone all see-through back there? I opened my mouth to point that out, but what good would it have done? He was still angry, and right now it seemed he was determined that I would be sticking around, if only so he could yell at me some more.
The car bumped up over the curb into the driveway, taking out a portion of the dried-out yard with it.
“Wait here.” Will unbuckled his seat belt and got out, leaving the car running.
“Yeah, right,” I said. I switched off the engine, snagged the keys before he got too far away, and scrambled after him.
He caught a glimpse of me following him and sighed heavily. “Do you ever listen?” he asked.
“When someone's trying to tell me what to do? Uh, no. Besides, who died and made you the boss of me?”
He shot me an unhappy look as he rounded the corner.
“Oh, touchy, touchy,” I muttered. “Like I'm going to just sit out there while you waste time online,” I said in a louder voice. In truth, I didn't want to be by myself at the moment. It felt like if Will wasn't there to glare at me, I might slip away. And while I'd accepted that was a possibility, I… I didn't particularly want to be alone if/when it happened. Besides, it wasn't like we'd be disturbing anyone. His mom's car wasn't in the driveway.