The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

“Did you seriously not know that the house was haunted? On your vlog, I mean. Was that fake?”

Amber decides to let Rudy and Cecily take this one. She and Jada exchange looks as Cecily shakes her head. “I mean, I guess our dad knew, but the rest of us had no idea. Honestly, we’re still sketchy on details. She . . . killed her mom, right?”

“Stabbed her, then took a swan dive straight through the window,” Trent says, whistling cartoon-style as he draws the flight trajectory in the air with his finger.

“Trent,” Jada starts. “Come on.”

“Come on, what?”

She shrugs. “I mean, the girl’s dead.”

“And won’t care what anyone says about her anymore,” another boy, Brennan, says, laughing. “Besides, I heard she was a psycho. Hey, Trent, remember when you dared Miles to sneak in and spend the night? How was that sleepover?”

Miles laughs. “Dude, it was terrifying. I coulda sworn I heard someone walking around all night.”

“Sure,” Trent says, laughing.

“Wait—” Cecily starts. “You slept in the house? The one we’re renovating?”

“Oh, we used to sneak in,” Bella explains. “You know, on dares. Haunted house shit. I remember in eighth grade, I bet Tommy McCalister twenty bucks he couldn’t spend the night there. Dude lasted about twenty minutes.”

“But you guys have been there for almost a week now,” Alicia chimes in. “How is it?”

“Honestly, I’m kind of spooked,” Cecily admits, and all eyes are on her. Amber watches her sister channel “camera mode.” “I am definitely not looking forward to renovating the turret room.”

“Do you know anything about her?” Rudy asks

“Dude, I heard she was a Carrie,” Trent says. “Super disturbed. Social misfit, picked on at school, all that stuff. Drove her totally batshit crazy. Finally snapped, but the house is so isolated that the only people around to hurt were her mom and then, well, herself.”

“Nah, I heard she lost some track scholarship and had a total meltdown,” Miles interjects.

“Wasn’t she homecoming queen?”

“So was Carrie—”

“I heard that someone put a curse on the house,” Miles continues. “Think about it! First the Grables, then that boy—”

Rudy cuts in. “Yeah—there was someone else, right? Police said it was an accident.”

Bella nods. “Evan Andrews,” she whispers.

“Who was he?” Cecily asks.

Amber is surprised when Jada breaks her silence to answer. “His family moved into the house about . . . a decade or so after the Grables died. In 2009, maybe? They started repainting it, and there was some kind of accident with the scaffolding. Their oldest kid, Evan, fell and died. I think he was sixteen.”

“They’d only been living there for, like, a month,” Miles adds. “The house has had a pretty . . . bad reputation since then. No one has lived there since.”

There’s a second of silence as everyone takes the story in. The fire crackles. The other groups of teenagers drinking and smoking and laughing seem strangely far away.

“Honestly, I’m glad we’re just flipping it,” Cecily admits. “It’s got a weird vibe. I definitely wouldn’t want to live there, either. Too creepy.”

“Hey, Trent, remember that night sophomore year when we pitched baseballs into the third-floor windows?” Miles asks, and just like that the conversation veers away from Alex and Evan and into dares, drinking, sports, and other teenage stuff. Amber and her siblings are caught in a flood of high school gossip, complaints about local law enforcement, and dirt on nosy neighbors. The nervous feeling Amber had earlier has passed, and she starts to relax.

The bottle gets passed around, and Amber takes a long swig. Before she knows it, Rudy’s talking music, Cecily is deep in conversation about the chemical formula for some kind of foundation or another. And then Amber finds herself seated by the fire again, next to Jada. They talk about anything and everything. About bad part-time jobs, colleges in California, and the pros and cons of homeschool. Every time Jada laughs, Amber feels her tension ease, her self-consciousness dissolve. Talking to Jada is easy. Effortless. And it doesn’t hurt that Jada is . . . cool. When Amber listens to her gush about high school drama or the robotics team, it almost makes her wish that she went to a regular high school. Jada cracks a joke about hicks and social media, and Amber finds herself laughing along. It’s been ages since she’s bonded so easily with another girl like this. It’s got to mean something, she tells herself.

The bottle is finished and a new one appears, as if by magic. Someone turns up the music again, and soon half the kids are up and dancing around the fire. Then, three quarters of them. Some of the couples slink off into the woods.

Amber swallows her courage and is about to mention an ex-girlfriend when Jada’s hand skitters across her upper thigh. Just the lightest touch. That little touch confirms what Amber dared to suspect. To hope. Jada is into her, too.

Amber doesn’t realize that Jada has stood up to dance until she’s extending her hand.

“Come on,” Jada says. If she were sober, Amber would be afraid of getting caught like this, tipsy-drunk and dirt-streaked and dancing close with someone new. Self-conscious. But she isn’t. The alcohol has made everything feel warm and fuzzy. And Jada—Jada has made everything warm, too. With a jolt, Amber realizes that she doesn’t really care about how any of the other kids at the bonfire see her or think of her. Not as long as she’s dancing with Jada.

So Amber takes Jada’s hand and stands, and suddenly they are dancing, close—so close that Amber can make out each individual eyelash. There’s one on Jada’s cheek. She reaches out to brush it away, and then they are kissing. Lightly. Nervously, at first. Then harder.

Her lips are soft and warm. Amber’s mind goes blissfully blank.

A song changes. Then another. And another. Rudy and Cecily and the party itself fade into a meaningless blur.

When Jada’s eyes stray toward the shadows beyond the tree line, Amber’s follow. Her hand puts the smallest bit of pressure on Amber’s lower back. Amber feels herself nodding.

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