Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,46
dark form struts off ahead of me, moving from the cover of the trees to the driveway. She bends down next to the house, and plucks a gray—almost blue—elephant statue out of the red mulch. It has yellow swirls painted across its bulging stomach, and ruby-red gems forming a little triangle that dips from the top of its head down its trunk. It’s one of the most normal things in Nadine’s collection, cozied up next to what looks like a praying mantis statue. Sidney smiles triumphantly as she hoists it into her arms and cradles it—just as a light flicks on overhead, bathing her in bright white light. Motion lights. That’s the kind of thing we’re supposed to be scouting.
Shit.
Sidney
When I was a kid, I was a big believer in the T-Rex method of hiding. You know, the whole Don’t move and they won’t see you approach. My mom loves to tell stories about how she’d catch four-year-old me doing something, and I’d freeze in place, convinced that I was invisible if I could just stay still. Apparently my parents thought it was so hilarious that they played along, and I was eight before I fully grasped that this was actually the worst method of hiding ever. But ten years later it’s still my first instinct when the light flashes on. I’m as still as the stone statue in my hands as the halo of light floods down around me.
Asher whispers my name so loudly he might as well just be talking. “Move.” Then louder. “Sidney, move.” And louder. “Run.”
The word snaps me out of it and I start sprinting across the yard like someone’s just fired a starting pistol. Asher takes off after me, and I can hear his feet padding on the grass behind me. The elephant is cradled under my arm like a football as we hit the sidewalk next to Lake House B, both of us on the same side for once, and it’s not until I hit the stairs and am barreling downward, toward the water, that I realize this probably wasn’t what Asher had in mind. I should have run toward the car, not away from it.
Where the stairs descend past the row of dense bushes, I come to a stop, practically throwing myself onto the ground beside them. Asher is two seconds behind me, and we’re lying on our stomachs behind the bushes, in a row: Asher, me, and the elephant—I’m going to call her Edith—next to me. If we had rifles we’d look like something straight out of a WWII movie. Well, except for the elephant.
Asher looks over at me, to where I have one arm draped over Edith. “What were you doing?” His face is so close to mine I can feel his breath.
I scrunch up my nose in mock disgust. “Brush your teeth next time there’s potential that we’re trapped next to each other.”
“We wouldn’t be trapped”—he rolls his eyes as he says the word—“if you would have just waited to hear the plan.”
“Because you’re the leader?”
“You asked me what to do!”
He’s right, but I can’t give him the satisfaction. Across the yard a door slams, and we both freeze. Through the gaps of the bush I can make out a silhouette in front of the house.
“We have to leave,” Asher mutters.
Obviously. I get up slowly, hunched over so I stay below the tall bushes.
“This way,” Asher says, jerking his head at the water.
“You want to swim?” I shake my head at him. “That’s how people die, Asher. You don’t swim across a lake in the dark, are you nuts? We should at least take a canoe or rowboat and go that way.”
He shakes his head, looking at me like I’ve completely lost it. Maybe I have. I’m feeling very Bonnie and Clyde right now, like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff, being closed in on by the police. I think that’s what happened. Except the police are Nadine and the sirens are her yippy little dog circling the yard on its leash. The cliff is this lake I love so much, and I’m so worked up right now, I’d swan-dive off the edge for drama’s sake if I wasn’t sure I’d break my neck in the eighteen inches of water along the shore.
“We’re not swimming. And we’re not stealing a boat.” He mutters what sounds like, Are you kidding me? “We’re going to walk down a few houses”—he says it slowly, like if he talks too fast