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

“We’re already famous,” Rudy says.

Amber shows them the phone. “We’re still trending. Still. We’ve never trended this long. And all the posts are doing ah-mazing. You’re welcome.”

“Welcome?” Cecily asks. “You’re barely in any of them. Rudy and I are carrying the team.”

“I do every single one!” Amber half-slurs, half-shouts. Seriously? Cecily is going to accuse her of not pulling her weight when—

“Okay, quiet down,” Rudy mutters, flicking the lights on and steering the girls inside. Their parents are definitely asleep by now.

But Amber doesn’t want to let it go. “Every. Single. One,” Amber repeats as she teeters up the stairs. But she’s not an angry drunk. She’s veering toward sad instead.

“You’re drunk,” Cecily says.

“You’re perfect,” Amber retorts. It’s the best insult she can think of.

Together, they stumble up the staircase, Rudy in the middle, looking like entrants in a designer-brand three-legged race.

Rudy steers them toward their rooms. “All right you two,” he says. “It’s time for bed.” At her room, Amber detaches, stumbling for the doorknob. Rudy opens it for her and she collapses, face-first onto her bed.

“Good night, Ambs,” he says, then closes the door behind him.

Amber’s door creaks as it shuts, and she finds herself looking upward, imagining for a strange second that the noise she’d just heard wasn’t her door creaking but had come from somewhere above her. That it was a different sound altogether. It almost sounded like . . . a step.

No. She’s just buzzed, that’s all. A little buzzed and a little tired and maybe a little . . . happy. She closes her eyes and replays the first kiss, the night, the dancing in her head as she pulls the covers over herself. Then, she switches to a vision of Cecily, screaming at the house that she isn’t afraid of it. Well, maybe it’s time that Amber stop being afraid, too. Of the house, of Mom, of ruining their precious engagement. Because being in Rudy’s impromptu livestream had felt . . . good. She’d felt powerful. Seen. And someone had seen her.

We need more of her.

If Rudy could splatter paint over the walls, she could at least take a selfie, she could at least stop hiding . . . She smiles to herself, letting the last dregs of alcohol fill her with confidence as she falls asleep. Amber isn’t going to be afraid of this house, either.

At first, she’s not sure what wakes her.

It’s late. Her mouth feels dry, her head heavy. She sits up in bed, listening to the sounds of the house, trying to figure out what woke her up. Trying to tell what is wrong.

Amber slides out of bed and turns on the light, peering into the dark hallway. No one is awake. Then why does she hear the sound of running water? She turns on the hall light then tiptoes downstairs.

The sink, the only functional aspect of the kitchen, is silhouetted by a window against the moonlight, through a desert of broken flooring and naked beams.

And it is running. Water is just beginning to spill over the edge.

Amber walks over and turns it off. The kitchen is so, so quiet without the noise. Too quiet. She reaches into the murky water and pulls the plug, listening to the strained noises of water trying to recede before she realizes that there is something clogging the drainage. Something in the garbage disposal.

She wishes she’d gotten someone else up. Rudy, Cecily . . . but it’s just a sink, right? She can take care of it herself.

She flicks the grinder on and is met with the horrible grating noise of something that cannot be processed. She turns it off. The darkness is complete around her as she reaches down into the blades beneath the sink and yanks her hand out with a yelp. There is something in there—something that shouldn’t be. And there is something stuck to her hand.

She turns the light on and screams.

The water in the sink is a murky and rusty red, and on Amber’s hand—on Amber’s hand is a piece of red, matted fur. Bloody fur. She stares back down into the water and watches in horror as the disturbance made by her hand swirls some of it down the drain, as the water eddies and flows.

There is a large mass half-crammed into the garbage disposal. A large mass that Amber knows, a large mass that used to be soft and warm . . .

Bile collects in Amber’s throat as something rises to the water’s surface. All that is left of a single long velveteen ear. All that is left of Cecily’s rabbit.

She turns and throws up all over the demolished floor.

CHAPTER 11

Rudy

Amber and Cecily are inconsolable. Cecily has locked herself in her room, wailing, telling anyone who will listen that she locked the cage, she knows she did, she did, she did. Downstairs, Rudy listens to his other sister dry-heave into the garbage can. Even hours after removing the poor creature from the sink, Amber can’t stop shivering and whispering, “I touched him.”

Their parents, while horrified, insist that Cecily’s rabbit must have gotten loose and mistakenly fallen into the water and become stuck, but Rudy can’t stop thinking about returning home last night. The sink hadn’t been on. Had Amber or Cecily woken up in the middle of the night to get a drink? They swore they hadn’t, and Rudy believed them.

Their parents don’t know what to think. Eventually, they conclude that, with his cage in the kitchen and a clear pile of renovation tools, debris, and odds and ends all over the floor, Speckles could have hopped his way up onto the counter. Dad had even checked, and there were no signs of a break-in. Besides, Rudy’s parents had been home all night and hadn’t heard anything.

All the same, the next morning workers arrive to install a security system just as the sheriff recommended. It’s another cost, but they can’t afford to take any risks with this renovation.

So their parents expedite the security system installation,