The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,11
a bigger field a couple miles away.
Instead of climbing the hill on the other side, Becca walked alongside it. Near the end, close to a big fence separating the field from a sidewalk running along the road, the hill curved down. Becca led us single-file down a narrow path until we were past the field, behind a bunch of single-family houses. They all had tall wooden fences, not the chain-link kind we had, so no one could see us. Most of them had big trees, too.
“It’s this one,” Becca said, pointing to the house at the end.
No fence, but it was surrounded by thick hedges taller than my dad. Becca pushed through a small gap halfway down. I went second, the branches scraping my bare arms and legs. Gia came out next, then Rachel, brushing her face and shoulders.
The house was gray stone with tall windows. More hedges surrounded the porch. There were so many trees in the yard, it made it darker than it really was. A FOR SALE sign, with Becca’s mom’s name and phone number printed in big blue letters, was stuck in the ground right next to the driveway.
“What if somebody sees us?” Rachel said, kitten-soft.
“They won’t,” Becca said, fishing the key from the pocket of her shorts. “Look at all the trees and bushes.”
I’d have bet we could dance in the middle of the lawn without being noticed. It wasn’t just private. It was hidden, like we were in the middle of nowhere. I’d lived here all my life and I’d never even known this house was here.
“I can’t believe your mom didn’t catch you taking the keys,” Gia said.
“I was careful. It’s not like she checks all the keys every night. Besides, Heather and I already checked it out.”
I scratched my side. Such a lie. My heart was a moth near a porch light, even when we got inside and locked the door. The daylight disappeared, leaving us in shadow. Since nobody lived here now and we didn’t break a window or kick in the door, we weren’t technically breaking in, but we knew we weren’t supposed to be here.
It was warmer than outside, the air all stuffy. It smelled of paint, and the quiet was bigger than the house itself. We stood in the foyer, still as cats in a sunbeam.
“I can’t believe we did it,” Gia said, her eyes wide. The gloom made them darker than usual, black instead of brown.
Rachel was blinking too fast, but Becca didn’t look scared or worried at all. It was pretty neat, like being in school when almost everyone was gone, but better.
“Let’s check out the upstairs,” Becca said.
The steps went straight up to a wide hallway with six doors, all open but one. We went room by room, our footsteps whisking on the dingy carpet. The four bedrooms, all with window blinds firmly shut, were huge.
“My mom said the people who lived here were old,” Becca said.
“Where are they now?” Rachel asked. “Are they …”
“Nah, they’re still alive.”
Back downstairs, the foyer opened into another hallway, archways on either side leading to empty rooms with heavy curtains. The kitchen cabinets were the color of mud, the tile floor patterned in bright-yellow-and-green flowers. Big-time ugly. No wonder it was still for sale. I’d thought it would be creepy, and it was, but it felt sad, too, like it knew its owners weren’t coming back.
Becca opened a door beside an empty refrigerator-sized space and said, “Come on. We can turn the light on down here and no one will see.”
Even with the fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead, the basement was dreary. The carpet was the same shade of brown as the kitchen cabinets and wood paneling covered the walls, like my Nana’s basement. Dark curtains covered the tiny, high windows, and there was a small half bath back by an old dryer. It smelled like a bunch of wet towels left overnight in a washing machine. Rachel and Gia wrinkled their noses, too, but Becca didn’t seem to notice. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, and after a second, the rest of us did, too. It was a lot cooler down here, and even with the carpet, the floor chilled my legs.
“We would get arrested if anyone found us here,” Rachel said.
Becca huffed out a breath. “No we wouldn’t. We’re not damaging anything. They’d just make us leave.”
“And call our parents,” Gia said.
“Maybe,” Becca said. “Don’t be such a chicken. It’s cool.”