Imaginary Girls(63)

I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. Had London just gone down to pay a visit to Olive while my sister sat there watching?

The phone in my pocket buzzed then, as if her eyes hung like stars in the night to record my every move through her town.

Her text said: wrk sucks. home soon. hope u want ice pops! bringing some for dinner

My fingers went to the keys of my phone to text her back. But what could I say—i saw u. i know ur not at work? Lie and make pretend and just go, ice pops for dinner yum?

I slipped the phone back in my pocket without a reply.

I crept out from behind the rock, fully intending to head back up to the house and wait for her to return home from “work,” thinking how I’d love an ice pop, hoping she brought back cherry, when there was a splash at my back. I turned to find the water settling, as if someone had shot up and plunged down before I could catch them.

I stepped closer to the water, until I was too close, until I was right there, the soles of my sandals up against its mouth. It was breathing.

Ruby had been clear when she said she didn’t want me swimming; I wasn’t going to defy her and dive in. I sure wasn’t going to come back up to the house all wet and have to explain how that happened, in case she got home before I could dry off.

All I did was slip one foot out of my sandal and dip in a single toe.

I let it touch the surface. I let it hold there, and I didn’t take it away.

The water was cold, as I’d heard London say, colder than you’d expect on a hot summer night. I let my foot dangle, the chill creeping up the length of me. Then, quick, I pulled my toe back and slipped on my sandal and stepped off the rocks.

Nothing happened tonight. Nothing I needed to tell Ruby about. Nothing with Owen. Nothing having to do with the reservoir. Nothing.

I was waiting to cross the road, letting a truck pass, when I heard the sound coasting through the trees. A low, creeping whistle choking and hissing and coughing out from the darkness.

I turned around to face the trees, and it decided to take that moment to stop.

But when I crossed the road, it started up again—growing fainter, the more distance I put between me and the reservoir, but still wanting to be heard. It reminded me of the shrieking hiss my sister had made when she was trying to imitate the old steam whistle. It sounded almost like that.

If it was a trick of my ears, it lasted all the way back up the hill, down the long length of porch the guys had been hammering at all day, and into the house, ever so faintly there even when I closed the door behind it, the sound seeping in through the window screens along with the chirps of the crickets.

I was still listening for it in the living room when my sister came in.

When she found me, her eyes narrowed. London wasn’t with her—maybe Ruby drove her home first. Her motorcycle boots were dripping with mud and her hair was partly wet and so was the hem of her slip and she smelled of it, the reservoir, she smelled of deep, dark things and untold secrets and all of what she was keeping from me, the first being that she never had a shift at Cumby’s. But she was the one to look at me all suspicious and say, “What are you doing, Chlo?”

“Nothing,” I said. I watched her carefully to see if she could hear it, too, but she made no mention of it, the wheezing, whining hiss seeping in through the window. It was growing fainter now, letting the crickets drown it out.

“Did something happen while I was at work?” she said. “You look different.”

“No, of course not.” I immediately thought of my room upstairs. If any evidence of what happened was in there . . . if she’d been upstairs, if she’d seen. “Did you just get home?” I asked, thinking fast.

“Yeah, did you?”

“No, I mean, yeah, I mean I was only outside and I only just came in.”

She circled the love seat, coming closer.

“I think I’m ready for bed,” I said, going the other way and heading for the stairs. “I’m tired.”

“But the ice pops. They’re in the freezer.”

“It’s okay. I’ll make sure to have one for breakfast.”

She eyed me as I walked the stairs to the landing. She eyed my legs as they climbed. She eyed my back and, through it, my beating heart. I turned at the landing before the next set of stairs, before I’d leap the gate and slip back into my room to check my sheets. I said, as casually as I could, “I think I’m gonna sleep in my room tonight.”

All week, we’d been sharing the big bed in the master bedroom, lounging up on the high mattress like royalty, if overheated royalty, since there was no air-conditioning and we had to use electric fans. Sleeping in that room was one of the perks of having the gate up and making Jonah stay downstairs.