Page 20 of Come Find Me
“Your what?”
“Myphone.” She wrinkles her nose, and it makes her look younger, more vulnerable. “I left it behind when…” She shakes her head. “Come on, I know it was you.”
“Whatwas me?”
Lydia widens her eyes at Marco, clearly exasperated, as if this is his part, his line, which he’s forgotten.
Marco clears his throat. “Kennedy,” he says, but he’s not even looking at me. Marco’s expression is far-off, like he’d give anything to be somewhere else, not having to pick sides, navigate the complexities between his best friend and his ex-girlfriend. “Look, we know you do that.” He lifts his chin toward the house. “Move things around, try to freak people out.” He cringes when he says it, still not looking at me straight-on.
I narrow my eyes at his face, but he doesn’t notice. I mean, yes, I do those things, but I still have no idea what this has to do with this moment, and Lydia’s phone. I also had no idea they knew about it. I wonder if they’re out here more often than I realize.
“Seriously,” Lydia begins, emboldened by Marco at her side,onher side. “There’s something wrong with you, even bef—”
She cuts herself off.
Before.My body language suddenly mirrors Lydia’s. Hands on hips; self-righteous anger. A sting of bitterness. “Yeah, I remember. I’ve heard you refer to me as Child of the Corn, Lydia. Evenbefore.”
She cringes and shakes her head, like even she realizes she’s gone a step too far. Which she has. Still, there’s something I like about it, how she doesn’t tiptoe around the things she thinks she shouldn’t say. She lowers her voice. “You just appear sometimes, from nowhere. You make no sound. It’s freaky.”
I look to Marco, who stares at the side of Lydia’s face, like he can’t believe she’s saying this.
She shrugs and continues. “Sometimes I would forget you were there. I’d be talking to Sutton and Marco, and thenboom,there you were, standing in the corner.”
I can feel my voice rising, the anger shaking loose. “So, basically, I freak you out because youforget I exist?”
“Well, this is a little different. This is…” She moves her hands, searching for the word. “Intentional.”
“Kennedy,” Marco says, like he’s suddenly the voice of reason, “we’re sorry, okay?”
Lydia puts her hands out, as if to calm me, to rationalize. “If this is to get back at me and Sutton and Marco for hanging out on your property, I get the picture. We won’t do it again. Okay? But this is seriously messed up.”
“I havenoidea what you guys are talking about. I just got back.”
Marco gazes at me from the corner of his eye. “You weren’t in the house?”
“No.” I fish my visitor badge from the meeting out of my pocket, try to flatten it out so she can see my picture, my name, the time stamp. “See? I was…here.”
Lydia stares at the crumpled paper, her jaw still set. “Well,someonewas here,” she whispers, her eyes widening. Like maybe it’s a ghost, who’s eavesdropping even now. She steps back, staring at the house.
“Oh,” I say, “the Realtors have been in and out. I saw a car before I left. I should’ve mentioned it. But I have every right to be here. I still own the house. They can’t kick us out.” Then I imagine being her, alone atthe Jones House,and hearing someone else. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it,” I mumble. But I don’t get it, what she thinks I did with her phone.
“I thought it was you.”
“Thoughtwhatwas me?”
“The lights. They all went on. Every one of them. In the shed, in the house, like it was brighter than they should’ve been.” She shakes her head. “And then everything shut down.” She looks to the shed. “Everything.”
Realtors, electric company, grid overload—there are a hundred possible causes. We live in an old farmhouse, after all. But she’s staring at the shed like she believes it’s haunted. I’ve lost her. “So where’s your phone?”
She drags her eyes slowly from the shed back to me. “When everything came back online, just for a second, I swear I heard your voice through the headphones.”
“The headphones?”
“Through the audio output? I had just plugged them in, hadn’t done anything with it. Anyway, I just got the hell out in a hurry. Sorry, I feel ridiculous now.”
But she doesn’t step any closer, and her apology feels more for her own benefit, like she’s talking herself out of something, calming her nerves.
“Seriously,” I say, rolling my eyes. I enter the shed, move notebooks around the desk until I find her phone, facedown and silenced, in a pink-and-gold case. I pick it up, see my missed texts, my missed calls. I bring it out to her, and she mumbles her thanks, grabbing Marco by the sleeve, turning to go.
