and slow. Becca shoved the ice cream container, lid only half closed, toward me, and I put it in the freezer.
“Are you girls watching television?”
“Come on,” Becca said, nudging my foot.
“I’m not finished talking to you.”
“Our ice cream’s going to melt,” Becca said.
Mrs. Thomas laughed, the sound like a glass dropped on pavement. “Go then,” she said. She took a couple steps forward, moving in a zigzag rather than a straight line. Wine crested the edge of the glass and ran down her hand.
“Let’s go,” Becca hissed, and slammed the basement door shut behind us.
I tensed, waiting for her mom to yell, but she didn’t. We sat between the coffee table and sofa, ate our ice cream, and didn’t say anything. Her mom banged around in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, before thumping up the main staircase.
Becca dropped her spoon in her bowl. “I wish she’d stop. I hate her this way.”
I hated her that way, too.
Becca stalked over to the shelves and came back with a book I recognized from the picture on the front. Rachel said Ted Bundy was cute, which was gross because he was a killer and old enough to be our dad, but his eyes freaked me out.
When Becca finished reading aloud the part about the bloodstained sheets on Lynda Ann Healy’s bed, she said, “You can’t ever tell anyone about her. Promise?”
I knew she wasn’t talking about Lynda Ann Healy. “I told you a gazillion times, I won’t.”
“Promise again,” she said. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”
I made an X over my chest. “I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She grabbed her bowl and told me to bring mine. We could faintly hear her mom’s television playing and didn’t speak while we rinsed our dishes. After, she grabbed the wine bottle from the fridge.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Shhh.” She unscrewed the cap, spit in the bottle, and pushed it toward me.
I stepped back. “I can’t do that.”
“If you’re my friend, you will,” she said.
“I am your friend.”
She shoved the bottle in my direction again.
“Fine.” I had to try three times, but I spit a little. My mom would kill me if she knew. It didn’t matter that Mrs. Thomas was the way she was.
“Ugh.” She took the bottle back and spit in it twice more. “Want to go to the house?”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s probably asleep and won’t wake up, or if she does, it’ll only be to get more spit-wine.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I half wanted to go and half didn’t. Her mom was acting really strange tonight—I’d never been scared of her before—so maybe going wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But it was late and the house seemed safer when it was all four of us, not just two.
“Oh, come on. I’ve done it by myself.”
“You have?” I said.
“Yes.”
But she’d be too scared to go in the house by herself, wouldn’t she? Except sometimes when she was lying, her face said she was, no matter what her mouth said. This time, I couldn’t tell.
“What if I promise to tell you more of the story?” she said.
“Gia and Rachel will be mad.”
“Not if you don’t tell them.”
Five minutes later, shoes on, we were outside. The neighborhood was all shadows and cricket chirps and we walked fast. By the time we got to the house, we were panting. When Becca locked the door behind us, my arms went all-over goose bumps. The house was pitch-black. I waved in front of me and felt air on my nose but couldn’t see at all. There was nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light, but it felt different. It felt alive. It felt hungry.
“Scared?” Becca said.
“No,” I said, but my mouth was dry and papery.
“Liar.”
We fumbled through the darkness, Becca in front, groping the walls.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Let’s go back,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s creepy,” I said.
“It’s not that scary.”
“Yes it is. I can’t see anything.”
“We’re near the kitchen,” she said. “Once I turn the light on, it’ll be fine, and we’re together, so …”
I squeezed again, trying to make her stop, but she kept moving. “Don’t you remember the house in Florida where Ted bashed all those girls in the head? They were together, too.”
“They were sleeping, and there’s no Ted Bundy in Towson.”
“How would we know?” I said.
“Because there’d be bodies and missing girls.”
“There was one last year.”
“She ran away and they found her and brought her back,” Becca said.