The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(19)

“So am I.”

He must’ve heard the trouble in my voice, because his changed, too, got more serious. “Why now? You don’t seem like … you don’t seem interested much in talking about her. Your grandmother. What changed?”

I opened my mouth, and the awful confusion of it pressed in. The red-haired man, the stench, the empty apartment.

“I got home from school today,” I began.

Finch waited. We looked at each other in the warm library light. His eyes were brown and guileless.

“I got home, and someone had been there—someone had broken in. There was this weird smell, and I could just tell.”

“A smell? Was there—was that it?”

“No, that’s not it. Whoever it was had left something for me. On my bed.”

He recoiled when I said the word bed. “Oh, god. What was it?”

I pulled out the envelope, flattened the title page onto the table. He grew still, then reached for it. He touched it like it was a relic. “No way,” he breathed.

“And my mom.” Something in me didn’t want the words said aloud, like it might make them true. “She’s not there. I can’t reach her. I can’t reach any of them. I don’t know what to do. And weird shit has been happening, stuff that’ll sound stupid if I try to explain…”

Finch’s eyes were trained on the page. He looked like he wanted to grind it up and snort it.

“Finch?”

He looked up at me and I saw the shift, when he went from geeked-out fan back to friend, I guess. “Wait, wait.” He grabbed my hand, gently. He wasn’t much taller than me—our eyes were almost level. “Someone broke into your apartment and left something very rare and, in context, very creepy in your room, and now you can’t reach your mom. What if she’s filling out a police report somewhere? I’m so sorry this happened to you, but I don’t think you have to panic. Have you thought about calling your grandmother? Just in case?”

I pulled my hand sharply from his. “I can’t call her. She’s dead.”

He startled back. “What? No. I would’ve heard something.”

“Why would you have heard something?”

“Because there’s this thing called the internet, and she’s famous. Or was. Everyone gets an obituary. She can’t be dead.”

My chest burned. “I can’t have you telling me my dead grandmother isn’t dead right now, Finch. That’s like the second or third worst thing you could pick to argue about.”

“Shit. You’re right, that was a stupid thing to say. This is very, very weird.” He stared at me for a minute, like he was calculating something. “Okay. Okay. Your mom is fine, I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, no matter where they are, you shouldn’t go back to your place alone. Let’s go together—maybe they’re already back. Or maybe I’ll see something you didn’t.”

And there it was. Behind his gentle expression of concern, a bright curiosity. A hunger. My vow to Ella kept me away from Althea fans, rare as they were, but that didn’t mean they kept away from me.

“Forget it,” I said, standing suddenly. I lurched away from the table clumsily, shouldering my bag.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t talk to fans.”

I thought the ice in my voice would make him shrivel, or tell me to fuck off, I’m just trying to help you. Instead, he looked confused. “Why?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. If talking to a fan was a betrayal, the betrayal had happened. It was too late to turn back.

“I don’t know,” I said finally.

“Then how about getting over it? I don’t think you have anyone else you can go to with this.” He said it gently, but I felt pinpricks of shame anyway.

“That’s not true. I could go stay at my friend Lana’s.” I probably could, too, but Lana already lived with two other sculptors and half a klezmer band in a stuffed Gowanus flat. And calling her my friend was pushing it.

“But you didn’t go to Lana,” he said. “You came to me.”

In that moment, I wondered when the last time was that I’d made eye contact with someone for this long. Someone who wasn’t Ella. I wanted so badly to not need him, but the idea of going back out into the city alone sent a feeling of cold desolation blowing through me. In my mind Harold’s apartment was an alien landscape—something had passed through it, something that didn’t belong. I couldn’t be alone there with that feeling.

I hated needing something from someone when I had absolutely nothing to offer back. You’d think, after the upbringing I’d had, I’d at least be used to it.

“Fine,” I managed, relief crashing in. “Sorry it’s a school night.”

Finch looked at me like I’d said something colossally stupid—which I guess I had, but it still rankled—then sprinted to his bedroom door. He slid through like he didn’t want me to see inside, which made me reassess my guess at what he was hiding in there. Bikini babes on Ferraris, lots of suspicious balled-up socks?

Or, wait. That was the bad boy from a teen comedy, not a rich New York kid with a Vonnegut quote tattooed up his arm.