last night, so I got home late. I was starving, and I went straight to the kitchen, but before I could open the fridge there were footsteps behind me and a hand on my elbow.
“Hey,” I said softly. I knew it was Sharon before I turned around.
“Hey.” She let go of my elbow, but she wasn’t smiling. “You need to come upstairs.”
I wanted to be pleased—I’ve been living here for almost three weeks, but it still feels as if I’m trespassing in Sharon’s bedroom. She hasn’t hidden the fact that she doesn’t want to be alone with me. But from her dark look, I knew something was wrong.
“Come quick,” she said. “My brother’s out, but he could come home any minute, and I don’t want him to hear.”
By then I was getting really worried. “All right.”
I followed Sharon up the stairs to her room. It was dark, with only the distant light of a street lamp from the window to see by. My sleeping pallet was rolled up on the floor beside the dresser, where I always tuck it after I get up in the morning, and there was a folded piece of notebook paper on top of it. Sharon bent down and grabbed the paper, holding it out to me.
I sat on the floor, my back against the dresser. Sharon sat on the bed across from me as I unfolded the letter and smoothed it out on my knees, tilting it so I could read it in the faint light. I was wearing a pair of jeans I’d bought at a secondhand store Sharon took me to, and the denim at the knees was almost threadbare against the crinkled paper. It was strange to read a letter from Sharon while she sat there, watching my reaction.
As I read, though, I quickly forgot how strange it was. Twice, I put down the paper and locked eyes with Sharon, silently pleading with her to tell me what she’d written wasn’t true, but both times she only said, “Keep going,” and folded her arms tighter across her chest. By the time I got to the end, I was trembling.
“She seriously called you,” I said.
It wasn’t a question, but Sharon nodded anyway. “It was bizarre. She talked as if I was incredibly important and completely beneath her at the same time.”
“Yeah. She can almost hypnotize you into believing she really does have your best interests at heart.” My hands shook as I refolded the paper. I blinked hard, trying to focus on what mattered here, when focusing was the last thing I wanted to do. “She didn’t ask if I was here?”
Sharon shook her head, glancing toward the door as though she was afraid my aunt might be standing on the other side at this very moment. “I wouldn’t have told her, anyway, but…no. How did she get my phone number? How does she know who I am?”
Now I was half-afraid Aunt Mandy was hiding outside the door. But there was only one possible answer to Sharon’s question. “She must’ve found the letters.”
She went rigid. “My letters?”
“After I sent you that diary entry by accident, I started carrying them in my purse.” I shut my eyes. I knew exactly what this could mean for Sharon and Peter. Now I had to wait for her to realize it, too. “But when there got to be too many, I hid them in my sisters’ old room, in the space under the top dresser drawer. No one would’ve found them, even if they opened the drawers. Unless they were determined to search the whole room from top to bottom.”
Sharon frowned. I could see her trying to work it out. “Is that what you think happened?”
I nodded slowly. “Once they had the letters, Aunt Mandy could’ve gone into the school rolls to get your phone number. Or she could’ve just called information. She had your address already.”
“How?”
“I…kept your envelopes.”
I knew it was ridiculous, saving envelopes just because Sharon had touched them. But I hadn’t had much to hold onto back then.
“If she found…” Sharon’s face had shifted from confusion to alarm. “If she read