“There’s plenty of variety, Dad. Don’t worry about me.”
“Okay, okay. None of my business anyway.” He sounded kind of dejected.
I sighed. “Well, I’m done. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“’Night, Beau.”
I tried to make my footsteps drag as I walked up the stairs, like I was super tired. I wondered if he bought my bad acting. I hadn’t actually lied to him or anything. I definitely wasn’t planning on going out tonight.
I shut my bedroom door loud enough for him to hear downstairs, then sprinted as quietly as I could to the window. I shoved it open and leaned out into the dark. I couldn’t see anything, just the shadow of the treetops.
“Edythe?” I whispered, feeling completely idiotic.
The quiet, laughing response came from behind me. “Yes?”
I spun around so fast I knocked a book off my desk. It fell with a thud to the floor.
She was lying across my bed, hands behind her head, ankles crossed, a huge dimpled smile on her face. She looked the color of frost in the darkness.
“Oh!” I breathed, reaching out to grab the desk for support.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Just give me a second to restart my heart.”
She sat up—moving slowly like she did when she was either trying to act human or trying not to startle me—and dangled her legs over the edge of the bed. She patted the space next to her.
I walked unsteadily to the bed and sat down beside her. She put her hand on mine.
“How’s your heart?”
“You tell me—I’m sure you hear it better than I do.”
She laughed quietly.
We sat there for a moment in silence, both listening to my heartbeat slow. I thought about Edythe in my room… and my father’s suspicious questions… and my lasagna breath.
“Can I have a minute to be human?”
“Certainly.”
I stood, and then looked at her, sitting there all perfect on the edge of my bed, and I thought that maybe I was just hallucinating everything.
“You’ll be here when I get back, right?”
“I won’t move a muscle,” she promised.
And then she became totally motionless, a statue again, perched on the edge of my bed.
I grabbed my pajamas out of their drawer and hurried to the bathroom, banging the door so Charlie would know it was occupied.
I brushed my teeth twice. Then I washed my face and traded clothes. I always just wore a pair of holey sweatpants and an old t-shirt to bed—it was from a barbecue place that my mom liked, and it had a pig smiling between two buns. I wished I had something less… me. But I really hadn’t been expecting guests, and then it was probably dumb to worry anyway. If she hung out here at night, she already knew what I wore to sleep.
I brushed my teeth one more time.
When I opened the door, I had another small heart attack. Charlie was at the top of the stairs; I almost walked into him.
“Huh!” I coughed out.
“Oh, sorry, Beau. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m good.”
He looked at my pajamas, and then made a little harrumph sound in the back of his throat like he was surprised.
“You heading to bed, too?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess. I’ve got an early one again tomorrow.”
“Okay. ’Night.”
“Yeah.”
I walked into my room, glad that the bed wasn’t visible from where Charlie was standing, then shut the door firmly behind me.
Edythe hadn’t moved even a fraction of an inch. I smiled and her lips twitched; she relaxed, and she was suddenly human again. Or close enough. I went back to sit next to her. She twisted to face me, pulling her legs up and crossing them.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that shirt,” she said. Her voice was so quiet that I didn’t have any worries that Charlie would hear us.
“I can change.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not you wearing it—its entire existence.” She reached out and brushed her fingers across the smiling pig. My pulse spiked, but she politely ignored that. “Should he be so happy to be food?”
I had to grin. “Well, we don’t know his side of the story, do we? He might have a reason to smile.”
She looked at me like she was doubting my sanity.
I reached out to hold her hand. It felt really natural, but at the same time, I couldn’t believe I was so lucky. What had I ever done to deserve this?
“Your dad thinks you might be sneaking out,” she told me.
“I know. Apparently I look keyed up.”
“Are you?”
“A little more than that, I think. Thank you. For staying.”
“It’s what I wanted, too.”
My heart started beating… not faster exactly, but stronger somehow. For some reason I would never understand, she wanted to be with me.
Moving at human speed, she unfolded her legs and draped them across mine. Then she curled up against my chest again the way she seemed to prefer, with her ear against my heart, which was reacting probably more than was necessary. I folded my arms around her and pressed my lips to her hair.
“Mmm,” she hummed.
“This…,” I murmured into her hair, “… is much easier than I thought it would be.”
“Does it seem easy to you?” It sounded like she was smiling. She angled her face up, and I felt her nose trace a cold line up the side of my neck.