Page 28 of A Heart So Haunted
“You know I’m not the dating type,” I told her. Heat started in the middle of my back. Tingles through my fingers, but not from butterflies.
“He’s a nice guy, Lan.” She started stirring the stripping concoction with a couple of toothpicks, then unpacked the rest of her finds. A packet of switchblades, a new set of screwdrivers, and a box of 120-grit sanding pads. “If nothing really happened back at graduation, why don’t you just talk to him? He doesn’t have hard feelings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked about you.”
I left the roosters to grab the shipping tape. I ripped three long strips off and plastered the rooster box shut. “I told you. We went different ways. It would be awkward.”
“But people reconnect all the time—and he said he’d already run into you.” She paused. “You didn’t tell me.”
I prickled. “There was nothing to tell. He said hi. I said hi. I left.”
The air grew charged. Metallic shards, jittering between us.
“Lan—”
A crash from the second floor broke Emma’s sentence. The dingy kitchen light fixture, dangling and centered above the island, rattled.
Both of us stood frozen. I turned, ready to storm the steps and see what had happened, when there was a rustle. Not as loud, but similar to shoes scuffing over hardwood. A low grunt followed. Almost meek, Sayer called down, “Uh … guys.”
The music Sayer had been playing quieted. Then clicked off.
“Can you, uh, come up here for a second?”
“What … is that?”
The three of us stared at the hole in a lengthy, detached silence. Walls were easy to patch. I’d done it before. Still, my lips parted, then shut. Over and over, until I swept my hair off the back of my neck and sighed in defeat.
“I don’t know,” Emma whispered. Her fingers drummed against her cheek.
“There’s something behind the wall?” My stomach pulled into itself like I might throw up. The hole gaped large enough to see through, but dark enough that I couldn’t exactly tell what it was.
“I’m so sorry,” Sayer said, hands in his hair. He started to pace. I shook my head, eyes shuttering. “I can fix it.”
“I don’t care about the strip,” I said. “Areyouokay?”
“So I was pulling, right.” He bent down and grabbed the broken transition strip in both hands to re-create the image. “The strip broke and I fell backward into the hall and my head hit the wall and—” He splayed both hands open and shook them in emphasis. “This happened. I swear I didn’t mean to. It was really hard to pull up.” He held out the transition strip, as if proof were needed.
“Sometimes they can be.” I winced.
Emma stepped between us, arms out, then took Sayer’s cheek in one hand and grabbed the back of his nape with the other. “Are you dizzy? Can you tell me what day it is?”
“What are you doing?” He tried to pull away. “Stop. It. I’m fine.”
“There’s plaster in your hair.”
“It’s sheet rock, not plaster,” he corrected. He brushed himself off, then batted Emma’s hands away when she tried to grab his head again.
“Recite the date and time.” She took him by the shoulders instead and looked him dead in the eye. Sayer barely stood an inch taller than Emma. “I mean it. Pronto.”
He blinked. “June, uh, twelfth? Maybe four o’clock—”
“Wrong. It’s four thirty.”
“You know what I mean.”
I knelt while they bickered to get a better look. Sure enough, there was something on the other side.
She shook him a bit. “Sayer.” Held up her index finger. “Follow it.”
“What are you—”
