She crosses the kitchen, the ice in her glass clinking. She pulls a bottle of something clear out of the freezer, and when she bends over, her robe gapes open and I have to avert my eyes to keep from seeing her bare chest.
“You girls having fun?” Mrs. Howard asks.
“A blast,” Riley deadpans. “Come on, Sofia. We’ll have more privacy in my room.”
“Nice to meet you,” I mutter, then follow Riley upstairs, wondering if her father is behind one of the heavy doors lining the hallway. The thickly carpeted floor quiets our footsteps.
Riley pushes open a door at the end of the hallway, revealing a bedroom larger than the master suite at my house. Old-fashioned floral wallpaper covers the walls, and heavy velvet curtains hang over the windows. It’s so dark I have to squint to see the edges of the furniture. An ornate wooden cross hangs above her door.
“Make yourself at home.” Riley crosses the room to turn on a light and settles herself in the faded pink armchair in front of a vintage vanity table. Glass bottles of makeup cover the table, along with half-burned candles and lacy fabric that looks like a scarf. Alexis’s and Grace’s pictures crowd the mirror, leaving only a tiny circle in the center uncovered. I stop in front of the vanity, smoothing a dog-eared snapshot. If I weren’t here for such an awful reason, I’d make Riley tell me the story behind every photograph. I’d take pictures of the two of us on my phone, hoping I’d make it to the mirror, too.
To the left of the mirror stands an old porcelain doll with a cracked face and brown curls like Riley’s. The doll’s cloudy glass eyes follow me as I perch on the edge of Riley’s bed.
I open my mouth and try to speak, but I can’t say the words out loud. Your boyfriend is cheating on you.
“Sof?” Riley leans forward, putting a hand on my knee. “What is it?” Something passes over her eyes, and she leans away, her back ruler-straight. She speaks in a whisper, “Did something happen at the party?”
I take a deep breath. “Riley, you have to break up with Josh,” I blurt out.
A crease forms between Riley’s eyes. “What?”
“I saw him,” I say, quickly so I don’t lose my nerve. “With Brooklyn just now.”
Understanding passes over Riley’s face, and the crease disappears from between her eyes. She opens her mouth, then closes it again.
“You saw them together,” she says, her voice steady. She squeezes her eyes shut, and I expect her to start crying, but her eyes are dry when she blinks them open again. “Were they having sex?”
“No. Just kissing.” Brooklyn’s words echo in my head as soon as I say this. Ever done it in a hot tub?
Riley nods. She pushes herself out of her chair and starts pacing the length of her room. She stops in front of the door and presses a hand against the wood, closing her eyes. I push myself to my feet to give her a hug when her lips start to move silently. She’s not crying—she’s praying.
“Amen,” she whispers, and her eyes flicker open. She stares at her door without saying a word.
“Riley, I’m so sorry.” My shoulders tighten, and I stand a little straighter. “I came right here after I saw them. I just thought you should know.”
“Sof, it’s okay,” Riley says. “I prayed, and I think it’s obvious what we need to do. Brooklyn is lost. We have to help her.”
“You want to help Brooklyn?” I gape at Riley, confused. “But what about Josh? Aren’t you pissed?”
“Josh strayed from God,” Riley says. “Yeah, it hurts, but I believe he’ll find his way back to the Lord. But Brooklyn . . . don’t you get it, Sofia? This just proves she needs our help. Brooklyn has to be fixed.”
A smile flutters across Riley’s face. It reminds me of when I first met her, when her smile never seemed to spread past her lips, leaving her eyes cold and empty. Now, though, her eyes are bright with a kind of manic energy. When she talks again, her words tumble into one another, like they’re racing to get out of her mouth.
“We thought Brooklyn was rebelling, but this is worse. Some people have evil inside them, Sofia. Brooklyn needs us.”
The word evil still seems too strong to me, but I can’t argue with Riley after what I saw. If this is what she needs to get over Josh, I can be there for her. I squeeze her arm. “How do we do that?”
“Don’t worry.” Riley places her hand over mine and squeezes back. “You don’t have to do anything. I have a plan.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A floorboard creaks somewhere in the house, jerking me from sleep. I force my eyes open, not sure if what I heard was real or an echo from a dream.
A heavy footstep thuds against the floor downstairs. Then silence.
I sit up, my comforter falling to my lap. My heart pounds in my ears. It could be Mom going downstairs for a glass of water. But that’s unlikely. Most nights she takes insanely strong sleeping pills and is out like the dead till morning.
I push back the rest of my blankets and slip from the bed. The floor freezes my bare feet, and I shiver as I stumble for the door. There’s no moon tonight, leaving my room so dark I can’t see my arms stretched in front of me.
The house falls silent. I’m being silly. Even if it wasn’t Mom, that sound could have been a million things: the house settling or wind pounding at the windows. Still, I hold my breath until I find the door with my fingers. I press my ear to the wood, listening for a sound in the hallway.
The top stair groans: another footstep. Someone’s out there.
I stumble backward and crash into my desk. There’s another creak, this one outside my door.
“Who’s there?” I whisper. I step away from my desk, forcing myself toward the door. Louder, I ask, “Mom? Is that you?”
It’s too dark to see, but I hear my door latch click and feel the air move as the door swings open. A fingernails-on-sandpaper scratch cuts through the silence, and I smell sulfur. Blue-orange light flickers to life.
I blink against the sudden brightness, and, as my eyes focus, I make out a lit match and a face. Light dances in Riley’s eyes. She puts a finger to her lips. Quiet.
“You scared me to death!” I take a deep breath to get rid of the last of my fear and lean against my desk, my heart still thudding like crazy. “How did you get in?”
She doesn’t answer, but her eyebrow twitches higher. Her eyes are manic, wide and dark, her pupils dilated in twin black pools. An emotion I can’t place flickers across her face, and my question changes from how she got in to why.
“Hurry,” she whispers. The match burns down to her fingertips, and she shakes it out. A silver curl of smoke stretches to the ceiling. “I want to show you something.”
This has to be about Josh. I bet the others are waiting at the house for us, and we’ll spend the night eating ice cream and complaining to one another about what jerks guys are. My fear flips into relief.
I grab my sneakers, then push my bedroom door open. Riley follows silently. Once in the hallway I hesitate, glancing at my mom’s door. I motion for Riley to keep quiet as we start down the stairs.
We hurry out of my house, stopping for Riley to grab a pair of gray sneakers she’d hidden behind the potted plant on our front porch. She slides them onto her bare feet without untying them first, and we head down the street.
The wind slices through the sleeves of my sweater and coaxes goose bumps from my skin. I press my lips together to keep my teeth from chattering and pull my sweater over my hands. Despite Riley’s bare legs, she doesn’t shiver.
I notice a shadow crouched on the porch steps as we near the abandoned house: Grace. She looks plainer than I’ve ever seen her, in a black T-shirt, jeans, and faded sneakers. The hood of her giraffe-print sweatshirt hides her hair.