Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(15)

It’s a person out in the rain, knocking on my window.

I start to scream for Mom, but then some weird instinct kicks in. I know that silhouette. I pick up my phone, activate the flashlight function, and shine it right at her.

It’s Vera Crockett—Vee, to her friends. Vee from Wolfhunter. What the hell?

Vee’s a little older than me, but only by months. She’s survived as much bad shit as I have, but maybe she hasn’t come through it as well. She lost her mom, for one thing, and that was after a rough childhood and even rougher teen experience. Vee’s one of the few people I can trade top-this trauma stories with, and she wins. Hey, at least I haven’t been put in jail and falsely accused of murder.

But Vee’s supposed to have a new home with some aunt or something out of state. How the hell is she here, and why, especially at this time of night?

Doesn’t matter. I like Vee. And she’s out there soaked and shivering and far, far from home.

I grab a piece of paper and write in black marker, Wait there. I press it to the window glass, and she signals she’s gotten the message. Then I slip out of my room and into the hall. I listen at the door to Mom and Sam’s bedroom. I hear nothing. They’re asleep.

I move quietly down the hall to the keypad by the front door, and I hesitate for a few seconds. Mom probably won’t hear me bypassing my window sensor when I enter the code. But the question is, should I? Or should I tell Mom that Vee’s here, outside? But I know what will happen. Mom will be worried, and she’ll send Vee away. Okay, maybe she wouldn’t; she saved Vee in the first place, back in Wolfhunter. But I can’t take the chance.

A big part of me really wants to hear what Vee has to say.

Screw it.

I put in the code to take my window out of the alarm system, wincing at the beeps the keypad makes, but it’s in the front room and Mom’s bedroom is all the way at the back. If she hears something, I can say I was just checking to make sure it was on.

I hover near Mom’s bedroom door, breathless, until I’m sure she and Sam have slept through it, then go back to my room and slide the glass up. The rain is cold, and it cascades in all over my bare feet; it’s all I can do not to yelp. Vee’s taken off the screen already. She slithers in fast and dumps a soaked duffel bag on the rug by my bed. “Quiet!” I hiss, and slide the window shut again. When I turn around, Vee’s hugging me, and I freeze up for a second before I relax. She’s really, really wet, and even with that she doesn’t smell great, but she feels great. “What are you doing here?” I keep it a fierce whisper.

When I pull back, I don’t like the shine in her eyes. She looks weird. And kind of high. Her wet hair’s dirty and matted. “I need to use your bathroom,” she whispers back. “Can I take a shower?”

Oh man. I think about it, biting my lip. “Make it fast,” I tell her. I’m hoping that the sound of the rain will mask the shower noise. “Keep it quiet. And, uh, maybe wash your hair?”

She smiles at me, and boy, I like her smile. I always have since the first minute I saw her in jail. She was trying to be all cool and strong, but I’d seen something under that too. Somebody worth getting to know. Vee’s got problems, I know that, but I always thought she kind of liked me too. And here she is.

But why?

Vee doesn’t tell me. She turns and digs in her duffel bag and comes up with sweatpants, underwear, a T-shirt. I take her to the door and point out the bathroom down the hall, and she waves and heads that way. I wait until she’s in there with the door locked before I go back to the alarm system and put my window sensor back online.

The rain covers the shower sound pretty well; I can barely hear it myself, and it’s even farther away from Mom and Sam. Vee’s quiet, at least.

I wait tensely, chewing my fingernails, until she comes back. She’s showered and changed, and she sinks down on my bed with a sigh. Her dark hair is wet and dripping on the T-shirt, turning spots transparent. She looks better. And a little less high.

I lean close and say, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well,” she says, and her rural accent drags the word out. “The courts said they’d put me with my aunt, but she couldn’t take me after all, so then they put me in a foster home, and I ain’t taking that shit. Would you, Lanta?”

Vee is the only one who calls me Lanta, short for Atlanta; everybody else just says Lanny. I kind of like her version. And I’m also afraid of liking it. “Probably not,” I reply. “Were the foster people mean or something?”

She shrugs. “They told me when to go to bed, when to get up, what to wear, what to eat. Didn’t care for that shit.”

“And you came here? Have you met my mom?”

“Your momma’s a badass bitch,” Vee says. “And she saved my life when the cops would have killed me back there in Wolfhunter. So did you.” She says that casually, but I feel it. I feel the look she gives me too. “I been thinking about you a lot, Lanta.”

I don’t say I’ve been thinking about her, too, but it would be true. I have. Not in a serious way; I thought she was long gone out of my life. But there’s something about Vee. Maybe it’s just that dangerous edge I like.

“So what are you doing?” I ask her.

“In general?” Her shoulders rise and fall. “You know. Bummin’ around.”