Page 40 of Save the Drama for your Mama
Melody turned to me. “You didn’t write this?”
I threw my palms up. “I was down the hall with you.” I glanced behind the typewriter and saw that it was plugged in. “I unplugged this myself.”
She looked around. “This is weird. Like the first message you said you didn’t write.”
“And I said that because it’s true,” I said.
“Well, Cooper, let’s think this through. It’s your mom’s office, it’s your mom’s typewriter . . .”
“And . . .”
Melody shrugged. “What if . . .” She left the question open-ended, but the mix of curiosity and unease crossing her face made me think she was about to ask if my mom had written the message.
Part of me wanted to believe it, maybe even hoped it was, because how cool would that be to have a mom-ghost? But the skeptical side of my brain still had me thinking that Chad was hiding in the house and playing a hoax on us.
Like that time he told me to hide in the treehouse because the principal of our school was looking for me and on his way over. I ended up staying up there for four hours, while Chad used the opportunity to eat half my Halloween candy I had gotten the night before.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “And my brain is not firing on all cylinders at the moment. I’m going back to bed.”
I turned off the light, and we headed back down the hallway, with Romeo at our heels.
We stopped outside my bedroom door and turned to face each other.
The air felt charged between us.
“Well, goodnight,” I said, wondering if I was going to be able to sleep with her sexy T-shirt on my mind.
“Goodnight,” Melody said softly.
She held my gaze for a moment, gave a lingering glance down at my abs, then headed to her room without another word.
My mind was still racing with thoughts, not of the typewriter, but of Melody, as I crawled back into bed. And some of those thoughts were not suitable for children under thirteen.
I determined that finishing my book would be an arduous task, considering the tempting distraction just down the hall from me.
It was one big problem staring me in the face.
And I had no idea what I was going to do about it.
ChapterNine
MELODY
Two Days Later . . .
Cooper had been avoiding me for the second day in a row and it was really annoying me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I knocked on the library door, ignoring his ridiculous “Do Not Disturb” sign.
Romeo barked inside, but Cooper finally opened the door.
“Hey,” he said, peering through the half-cracked door at me, like a criminal praying I wasn’t the cops.
At least there was enough space for Romeo to sneak through to come out to say hello.
“Hey yourself,” I said, petting the dog along the length of his body, then glancing back up at Cooper. “I haven’t seen you around much, and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t unconscious in there.”
“I’ve been trying to write,” Cooper said. “I have a deadline looming over my head and need to finish this story before it kills me.”
“Do you set a goal each day for a certain number of words?” I asked, remembering how hard it was for me to write some days.
