Inbetween

Chapter 16

Emma I stopped pacing to check the clock for the hundredth time. Checked the lock on the door. Made sure there was nothing in my room that could possibly impale or crush me at a moment’s notice. Where the hell was Finn? He said he was here to protect me, but I hadn’t seen him since the kitchen incident this morning. Cash was still giving me space, so I’d spent the whole day alone. Terrified. How was I supposed to deal with knowing some evil soul wanted to hurt me? What if he didn’t show up in time when something happened again?

He may have promised Dad he’d keep me safe, but Finn couldn’t be around 24-7. I couldn’t just sit around waiting to be a victim now that I knew what was going on. I had to figure out how to protect myself. But how was I supposed to fight something I couldn’t see coming?

I grabbed my laptop. There had to be a way to fight this on my own. Or at the very least, a way to help protect myself until help arrived. I didn’t really know where to start, so I Googled how to ward off an evil spirit and cringed at the thought of anyone looking at my history. That thought alone was enough for me to turn on my private browsing. I clicked on the first site that looked halfway legitimate and read an article called “Eighteen Ways to Rid Your Home of Evil Spirits.”

It said you could do things like hang horseshoes above your doors and burn candles. I shook my head. Yeah, I’m sure Mom would go for me hanging horseshoes all over our house. I read on about psychic mediums and exorcists. These might have been one of the better options, but Mom would have me committed for sure if she found out I had someone over trying to cleanse our home of unwanted spirits. There had to be something. I scrolled down and stopped.

Smudge your home with sage. Open all of the windows in your home and light a bundle of dried sage. Sage is thought to clear away negative energy and spirits. Catch the ashes with a plate held underneath the bundle and walk around your home to cleanse it with the smoke.

That one seemed easy enough. Something we kept in the kitchen and it wouldn’t get me committed.

Most of the rest seemed flat-out ridiculous. But really, what didn’t at this point? I clicked on another site, reading incantation chants and prayers, saving them to study later. A few were short enough to memorize on the spot, so I did. Cash would have said this was stupid. Mom would have said it was crazy. But it was all I had. It was all I knew how to do.

Cash poked his head through my window and I slammed my laptop shut. “Is your mom in bed yet?”

Relief washed over me as I glanced at the clock again. It was after nine and she was still on her date. I wondered if she was going to come home at all. I pushed the thought of her with anybody who wasn’t Dad out of my head, nodded, and waved him in.

“Good.” He grinned, tossed a duffel bag through my window, and crawled in after it.

I stared at the bag. “What happened?”

He plopped down onto my bed and dug a DVD out. “Nothing.”

“An overnight bag doesn’t mean nothing.”

He shrugged and fiddled with the DVD case. “Captain Asshat lost a case. I don’t feel like dealing with his crap tonight. That’s all.”

That was all he needed to say. It was all he’d needed to say for the last eleven years. By this point, my room belonged to Cash almost as much as it belonged to me. I sighed and slid his bag under my bed so Mom wouldn’t see it if she came in.

“You’re not taking my good pillow again.” I yanked my pillow out from under Cash’s head and loaded the DVD player. With everything that had happened the night before, I didn’t think I’d be able to watch most of it, but it was still nice to have the distraction and Cash right where I needed him. I lay down next to him and stuffed my pillow behind my head.

The movie started and cheesy cop lines and eighties hair lit up the screen, but I couldn’t concentrate on it. All I could think about was Finn.

“You ready to tell me what’s wrong?” Cash elbowed me in the side. “You’ve had thirteen and a half hours of space to mull it over. Not that I’ve been counting.”

I shook my head. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. Maybe this was something that would always have to be just for me. I didn’t want to ruin the time I spent with Cash trying to convince him of things even I didn’t understand.

“I do have a present for you, though.” I reached over Cash and pulled a little green photo album out of my nightstand drawer. I dropped it in his lap and smiled when he picked it up and started to flip through the pictures. “I printed them today. I can’t use most of them for the yearbook, so you get to keep them. All the blackmail your evil little heart could desire.”

“Are these from the bonfire?”

All of them except the picture of Finn. “Yep.”

“Will I be disappointed?” he asked.

“I doubt it.”

“You…” Cash stopped to laugh at a picture. “Are beyond awesome. You know that, right?”

I shrugged.

“Seriously. You have a future as a card-carrying member of the paparazzi.”

The word “future” dimmed my mood, but I didn’t let it show on my face. Ever since Dad died, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. That fate would get me, too. And now that Finn had confirmed there was a psychotic ghost out there intent on making my life a living hell, I had to wonder what kind of future was in store for me.

Cash flipped through a few pictures, chuckling, then raised his brows and turned the album around to show me the picture of him and Tinley kissing.

“What?” I asked. “You said you wanted entertainment. Just think of the blackmail opportunities.”

Cash grinned and slid the picture out of its sleeve. He folded it up and shoved it in his back pocket.

“Nice try, but that one’s going straight to the incinerator.”

“Don’t you want to keep it so you have something to show the grandkids? I can print you an eight-by-ten if you want.”

Cash shook his head. “Nah, I give this one another week. Maybe two.”

I studied the side of Cash’s face as he flipped through the pictures, stopping at every other one to laugh to himself. Everyone thought he was perfect. Nobody knew what I knew. He was damaged, just like me. Maybe not in the same way, but when he was a sad little six-year-old on my front porch, something inside him broke. I wondered if he’d ever find a girl who could fix it.

“When are you going to stop doing this?” I asked.

“Doing what?” Cash squinted at a picture.

“Treating girls like they’re disposable,” I said. “You know they’re not all like—” His eyes snapped up, a flash of anger flared behind them, before he managed to cover it up. “Like Mom?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

He blew out a sigh and shook his head, dropping the album onto my comforter. “I know. Look at my dad, though,” he said, staring at the ceiling, clasping his hands over his stomach. “He’s miserable.

He’s been miserable for eleven years because of a woman. He’s probably going to be miserable for the rest of his life. What have I ever seen that would make me want that?”

“It’s not always like that.”

He laughed at me. “How would you know? As far as I know, you’ve never even kissed a guy.”

I winced and put some space between us. I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me on purpose, but reminding me about how I’d been stuck in a mental institution while he was screwing half of the girls in Lone Pine didn’t make it sting any less.

Cash got quiet, probably realizing what he’d said. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair.

“Em, I’m sorry. That was a chickenshit thing for me to say.”

“It’s fine.” I bit my lip, thinking about the board last night. And Finn. Seriously, what guy would want to date me? I was a walking freak show. The only guy who had ever looked at me like I was something more than crazy or a friend was dead. “I know I’m screwed up.”

“It’s not fine,” he said. “You just wait. You’re going to get a clean slate when we go to college next year. Guys will be beating down your dorm door. I’ll have to kick all of their asses of course, but at least the opportunity will be there.”

My bedroom door swung open and Cash jumped up. Mom stood in the doorway, dark circles framing her blue eyes. “What’s going on in here? You know you are not allowed to have boys in here after nine.”

I sat up and sighed. “He’s not a boy. He’s Cash.”

“Boys?” Cash raised a brow. “Do you even talk to any besides me? Bet she had to brush the dust off that rule.”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”

Mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose like she was fending off a headache. “Go home, Cash. You are more than welcome to come back during visiting hours, but if I catch you in here again this late, I’m having a conversation with your father.”

Cash looked out the window toward his house. “I…I guess I’ll see ya tomorrow, Em.”

I nodded, trying not to smile. That was code for, I’ll wait outside until your mom goes to bed before I sneak back in and get us both grounded.

“Sorry,” I said once I was alone with Mom. “We were just watching a movie. It’s not a big deal.”

Mom leaned against the doorframe looking exhausted and every bit her age. Without her usual caffeine buzz, it was easier to read her. She was worried. And mad. “Honey, you’re not nine anymore.

You can’t be with that boy all hours of the night. What would the neighbors say if they saw him crawling though your window in the middle of the night?”

I sighed and began braiding a strand of hair that hung over my shoulder. “He is the neighbors, Mom.”

She threw her hands up in the air . “I’m not in the mood for this tonight. I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow.”

“You’ve got an early meeting or you’ve got another date?”

The words came out more bitter than I’d expected, but there it was. She stared out into the empty hall. It seemed so much emptier without Dad here. Everything felt emptier. I just wished she wasn’t in such a hurry to fill that emptiness with someone else.

“It’s been two years,” she said softly. “I can’t be alone forever just because you want me to be.”

“That’s not what I want.”

She turned around, her eyes glistening. “Then what do you want? Because I’m trying to find a way to be happy. I don’t understand why you can’t try to find that, too.”

I stared at the floor. “I do want you to be happy. I just…I miss him.”

She sighed, and a few seconds later I felt her palm smoothing the hair over the back of my head.

She kissed my forehead. “I miss him, too, but he’s not coming back. It’s awful and it’s not fair, and there’s nothing I can do to fix that. You’re not going to be happy until you can learn to let go. Until you stop wishing you’d died along with him.”

Sometimes the truth was a lot harder to hear than a lie. And hearing the truth from my mom was like pouring lemon juice on an open wound. When I didn’t say anything else, she stood up, shaking her head. “Good night, Emma.”

“’Night, Mom.”

She shut off my light and darkness swallowed the room. I curled into a ball on my side to compress the pain in my chest. I lay there thinking about Dad. Thinking about Finn, and praying with everything in me that he’d come back. I lay there hurting until Cash crawled in beside me.

“You want me to sleep on the floor in case she comes back?”

“No.”

His arm brushed mine and it felt like ice. I scooted over to make room and felt him slip under the comforter.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“What?”

“You did the Ouija board thing, didn’t you?”

I pressed my face into my pillow. “Why?”

He chuckled and his shoulder blades knocked into mine. “Because the box is sticking out from under your bed, Einstein.”

I cringed. “Yeah. I tried it.”

“Well,” he turned over on his side to look at me but I kept my face buried in the cool safety of my pillow. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Nothing happened.”

Cash didn’t say anything. He snuggled down into the blankets and pressed his back against mine. I soaked in his heat and fought off sleep. I would have given anything not to dream, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I could already feel it pulling me under.