Pretend She's Here(65)

“Then … what?”

“They’re going to keep you in here,” she said. “Lock you in this room forever. They’ll say you’re going to the hospital to get well, and when you get back, they’re going to homeschool you. That’s the story.”

“I can’t,” I said, trying to set the bowl on the bedside table, missing the edge, dropping it on the floor. The china shattered and the soup splashed everywhere.

“They know you can’t be Lizzie out in the world,” Chloe told me. “You proved that when you lost it and said Lizzie died. But they still think you can be Lizzie here in the house. With us. Well, my mom does.”

“No,” I said, staring down at the floor and the soup spreading around my feet, shaking my head. “It’s impossible.”

“I know,” Chloe said. “Get dressed.”

“What?”

“Hurry,” she said, throwing some clothes at me.

They were mine—my wonderful, comfy, non-Lizzie clothes. In a blur, I threw on my old jeans, my Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt, and my ratty sweater and green army jacket. Chloe must have pulled them out from wherever her parents had hidden them. My sweater sleeve was frayed. Lizzie would never have worn anything so shabby. Her clothes were always perfect. It’s strange the things you notice even when you’re moving fast.

“Come on,” Chloe said.

Chloe and I ran up the stairs. With the Porters gone, the living room felt empty, cold and dank, as funereal as if another death had occurred in the family. Chloe went to the window, looking left and right, up and down the street.

“Let’s get going,” she said. “I should never have taken the time to give you that soup, but I didn’t want you fainting again.”

“Where are they really?” I asked.

“School, I told you!”

My heart seized. I didn’t believe her.

“They’ve gone to Black Hall, haven’t they?”

“Aren’t you listening to me?”

“She’s going to kill my mother!” I said. Just then we heard tires crunching the snow outside. The car stopped behind the back door, between the house and the barn. In a minute, the Porters would walk into the kitchen.

“They’re back,” Chloe said. She grabbed my hand, pulled me toward the front door.

“They’ll see us.”

“Just hurry!”

Was she really helping me? Or was this a sick trap? She opened the front door, let me out, then muted the latch as she silently closed it behind us. I had no choice, so I followed her down the steps.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Casey’s. He’s waiting for us. But if we cut through the trees, they’ll see our tracks.”

The yard was three feet deep with snow. Every second felt eternal, and I imagined the Porters’ eyes on our backs as we ran down the hard-packed driveway toward the street.

Circling around the woods and thicket between our houses seemed to take forever. It was late afternoon, and the light was fading. The snow was purple with long shadows. I felt the encroaching darkness trying to hide me.

We tore up the trail to Casey’s house, and I looked for his father’s SUV. That had been half our deal: We would wait for Mr. Donoghue to get home, and for the Porters to be busy, and then we’d call for help. But the vehicle wasn’t there, and the Porters had probably already discovered that I wasn’t in the basement and were anything but distracted.

Casey’s front door was open. I saw smoke wisp out of the chimney, dissolve in the frigid air. Chloe and I ran up the steps. Casey was inside waiting. With one hand he slammed the door behind us and with the other he pulled me close. My heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t breathe.

“She’s not safe!” Chloe said, pacing the front hall. “They’ll figure it out; they’ll be here in a minute.”

Casey double-locked the door. He led Chloe and me through the living room, turning off lights behind him. We climbed two creaky flights of stairs. The third floor was frigid, like walking into a freezer. The walls weren’t insulated; you could see lines of blue ice through the cracks between boards. But there were storage chests tucked under the eaves, and Casey pulled out two blankets. He gave one to Chloe, wrapped the other around me and himself. Shivering, we knelt by the small window facing the Porters’ house. Even though I knew we were up in the mansard roof, and the attic was dark and we wouldn’t be silhouetted, I imagined Mrs. Porter with supernatural eyesight, homing in on me, coming to get me.

“I should go back,” Chloe said. “I can play dumb.”

“No, she’ll get it out of you,” I said.

“I will never tell,” she said.

“Why are you helping me? They’ll be so mad at you.”

“Because Casey said you told him everything,” Chloe said. In the half light streaming through the tiny window, I saw her eyes pool with tears. “He told me what it’s doing to you.”

You’ve been living with me, seeing it all along, I wanted to say. Why didn’t you help before? Why didn’t you see it’s been killing me? Instead, I took her hand, filled with a surprising rush of love.

“What are we going to do now?” Chloe asked.

“Wait for my dad,” Casey said. “He’s driving back from New York. When he gets here, he’ll help.”