Of Starlight (6 page)

“Leona, something’s weird about this,” she said, still studying her phone.

“You think someone’s pranking us?”

“I don’t know. Something’s weird.”

“But it was invisible,” I said. “It was wrapped in dark matter. I had it last night. No one else could have possibly gotten their hands on it.”

Megan’s phone buzzed loudly, and we both jumped.

“It’s a text,” she said.

I leaned over her shoulder. “From who?”

Fear flashed in her eyes, and she glanced sideways at me. “From you.”

Her finger wobbled as she tapped open the message, and we read it in silence.

HI LEONA

I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA

As I stared at the text message, an icy tingle drew down my spine. “Who sent that?” I whispered.

“You did,” said Megan.

“I mean, who has my phone? Text them back.”

“What should I say?”

“Here, I’ll do it.” I took the phone from her and typed in my reply:

Who I’d thud?

I sent the text before reading it.

“You couldn’t spell it right?” she said.

“Stupid autocorrect,” I muttered, trying again:

Who is this?

Satisfied the phone hadn’t butchered the message, I tapped send and waited.

“What if he doesn’t text back?” said Megan.

“It could be a girl.”

“It’s probably Tina Wilkes.”

“How’s she texting on an invisible phone?”

“Good point,” she said.

The phone vibrated violently in my hand, nearly giving me a heart attack. Another text bubble appeared on the screen:

I AM DARK

“Okay, that’s just creepy,” said Megan. “What’s with the all caps?”

“I know, it’s annoying,” I said, typing out another text:

Can I have my phone back?

Almost instantly, another bubble flashed on the screen:

I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA

Growing irritated, I typed back:
Obviously, since you’re texting me on it. So can I have it back or are you stealing it from me?

A long pause, then:

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND LEONA I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA HI LEONA I AM DARK LEONA

The words hovered on the screen, and slowly goosebumps prickled down my arms. Who was texting on my phone?

No . . .
what
was texting?

“It has my phone,” I whispered, as a spooky thought occurred to me.

Hands shaking, I tapped out another question:

Are you dark matter?

Another pause. Throat dry, I swallowed and wiped my sweaty palms on my bedsheets. Then came its response:

YES LEONA

Chapter 5

Megan and I
shared a stunned look. We were texting dark matter.
Texting
it. Communicating with it . . . and it was intelligent. Intelligent life. This had to be some kind of landmark event for humanity.

But how was it possible?

I had wrapped dark matter around my phone. It must have gotten inside the case and melded with the electronics, and now it was using my phone to communicate.

Like it had used my brain to communicate.

“Should we talk to it?” I said, my pulse ratcheting up. “What should we say?”

“Let me talk to it,” said Megan.

So many questions . . .

“Leona, let me talk to it,” she persisted.

“Hold on. I’m talking to it.”

“Then say something. It’s waiting.”

I studied the screen, confused. “Do you think it moved my phone? It must still be on the cell network somewhere, right? Since your phone is recognizing it . . . but where is it?”

“Who cares—?” She made a grab for the phone.

I yanked it away. “Stop. We need to think about this.”

“It’s going to get bored. You’re being boring. Let me talk to it, Leona.”

“It wants to talk to me,” I said, distracted.

She scrambled over my lap and grasped for the phone, and I twisted away from her.

“Stop it,” I warned.

“It’s my phone,” she said.

“And it’s communicating from
my
phone,” I said.

“Ask it what it is?”

“Hang on,” I said, trying to think of what I wanted to ask it.

I texted:

Where is my phone?

The reply came instantly:

I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA

“That’s what it just said,” said Megan. “Is that not what it just said
three times?
You’re going to piss it off.”

“Shh! I’m thinking.”

“
Leona
,” she whined, “let me talk to it!”

I shooed her away and typed in another question:

What are you?

A pause, and just when I thought we’d get something good, a text bubble appeared on the screen.

I AM DARK

“Okay, you’re done,” she said, snatching the phone out of my hands. Her fingers raced across the keypad, and I leaned over her shoulder to read her text:

Hi, this is Megan
.
I’m the cool one. Where are you from? We are from planet Earth.

“See, you have to be specific,” she said, sending the message.

We waited, but the dark matter took its time.

I scanned my bedroom. Where was it?

No sooner had I had the thought than the phone buzzed in her hands with a new message:

I’M HERE LEONA

I tensed up, and a nervous tremor passed through my heart. Was it reading my thoughts?

The phone buzzed again:

YES LEONA

I stared at the screen, and unease pooled deep in my stomach.

“It still thinks it’s you,” Megan muttered, shaking me off. “Let go.”

Only then did I realize I was gripping her arm. I let go, leaving a red imprint of my fingers. Before she could type a reply, another text bubble flashed on the screen.

I’M HERE LEONA

Then another one right after:

I’M ALWAYS HERE LEONA

“Stop it,” I whispered. “Stop . . . tell it to stop.”

“I’m not going to type that,” she said. “Let’s ask it what it wants.”

“Block it . . . block my number . . .”

“What?” She stared at me. “
Why?
We’re communicating with it.”

“Give me the phone,” I said, tugging it back from her. Whatever this was, it had gone too far. I pressed my finger into the power button and held it.

“Wait,” she said, hitting my hand away. “One more question. Just one more question.”

“We shouldn’t be talking to it,” I said.

“What’s with you?” she said. “Aren’t you curious? Ask it what it wants. Just one more question.”

I hesitated, then tapped out:

What do you want?

My fingers smeared sweat across the touchscreen. After a pause, the phone gave its answer:

YOU

I was still
staring at the phone in shock when it rang in my hand, making me jump. An incoming call.

“It’s
calling
us?” Megan said.

I studied the digits filling the screen, and each buzz sent jitters of panic into my bones. But it wasn’t a call from my phone—it was another 805 area code, a number that looked only vaguely familiar.

Probably a telemarketer.

“No, it’s . . . it’s not me.” I handed the phone back to Megan so she could take the call and turned away to process what I’d seen, my mouth dry and sticky.

Dark matter had my phone.

But
where?
Where had it taken it?

It wanted me.

The thought made me feel cold.

No, it was messing with my head, playing mind games . . . it probably said that to everybody.

No, Leona,
said the little voice in my head.

Not everybody, Leona.

Just one other.

“Get out,” I spat, whacking my temple.

Megan shook my arm and forced her phone into my hand.

“What? Who is it?” I said.

“It’s for you,” she said, her eyes narrowed.

Fearing it might be dark matter after all, I raised the phone shakily to my cheek. “Hell . . . hello?”

“When I call you six times in a row,” said a guy’s impatient voice. “You pick up.”

“
Emory?
” I almost didn’t recognize him. He sounded different—dazed and excited—and my pulse sped up to match. I hadn’t heard from him in a week. “Yeah, my phone’s acting weird.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “You’re never going to believe this. You’re never going to believe what happened.”

“Believe what?”

“It’s my sister . . . this morning . . . my dad heard something in her room and went to check—” Another voice cut him off—his mom?—and I caught snippets of an animated conversation in the background. He came back a second later, laughing. “Look, I got to go. I’m burning the soufflé. I wanted to be the first one to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” I breathed. “What was in her room?”

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s crazy. My dad opens the door, and then—” Another interruption, followed by clanging in the background and more excited back and forth.

“Emory,
what?
” I clutched the phone so hard to my ear I could hear the plastic squeaking.

He came back. “You ready to have your mind blown?”

“What happened?”

“It was her,” he said. “Just sitting there on her bed like it never happened.”

“
What?
”

“Leona, she came back. She’s
alive.
”

“Your sister?” I croaked, unable to find my voice.

“Here, she’s standing right next to me.” He pulled away from the phone. “Say hi, Ash . . . yeah, it’s Leona.”

And then a girl’s voice, metallic over the phone.
Her
voice.

“Uh . . . hi, girl-named-Leona.”

Chapter 6

I dropped the
phone like it had bitten me. My heart boomed in my ears, obliterating all other sounds. Megan leaned in, clutching my arm, her eyes and mouth wide open in shock. She’d heard.

Alive.

Ashley Lacroix was alive.

Not just a hallucination this time.

Not just a figment of my subconscious reflected back to me by dark matter.

This time she was here in the flesh.

But we’d killed her—Megan and I. We’d dumped her body in the woods. I’d seen her rotting corpse.  

Trembling, I picked up the phone and raised it to my cheek. Emory’s tinny voice continued to hiss excitedly from the speaker.

Something inside me felt sick.

“But . . . but what about the body?” I gasped. “You said you found a body, you said the police identified it . . . you said it was
her
.”

Next to me, Megan squeezed my arm tighter and mouthed, “
Body?
”

She didn’t know I’d led him there.

“Hold on,” said Emory, and I heard a door close—moving to where Ashley couldn’t hear. “That wasn’t her. Some other girl who was dumped in the woods, maybe. My dad says the DNA sample they tested was probably contaminated.”

“Then where has she been for the last three months?” The question came out overly accusing, but I didn’t care.

None of this made any sense.

“Apparently, she hitchhiked to South Carolina to visit some kind of healer about her sleepwalking,” said Emory, chuckling. “That’s where she’s been this whole time.” 

“In South Carolina?” I said in disbelief. “She’s been in South Carolina? For
three months?
And she didn’t call home once to let her family know she wasn’t dead?”

“Leona, I literally just found out this morning that my baby sister is alive after thinking she was dead. I don’t know every little detail, okay? She said the healer insisted she come in secret, that they had some kind of arrangement. So yeah, if you ask me, I’d say this guy sounds shady as hell, but you know what? I’m not going to get on her case about that right now because I love her more than anybody on earth and I’m just grateful she’s alive. I called you because I thought you’d be grateful too. We can work out all the details later.”

I winced at his words, mortified at my own callousness. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This is . . . this is amazing. I’m really, really happy for you.”

“I want you to come over for dinner tomorrow,” he said.

“You . . .
what?
” My heart jolted.

“Yeah, I want you to get to know her.”

Dinner. With Emory and his parents and the sister I’d murdered. The prospect brought instant terror. This couldn’t be allowed to happen. “Tomorrow? I . . . I can’t tomorrow . . .”

“Be here at six,” he said, and hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand, too stunned to close my mouth.

Megan tugged it out of my grip and pocketed it, startling me back to the present. “So . . . Ashley’s alive,” she said calmly. “That’s either really good or really bad.”

She’d heard the entire conversation, no doubt.

I shook my head, lifting my gaze to hers. “But we killed her,” I muttered. “She’s dead. She’s supposed to be dead.”

“But she isn’t.”

“But she
was
. We hit her going fifty miles per hour. You checked her pulse. We dragged her body into the woods and left her there. She was dead.”

“Shh,” she said, glancing in the direction of the kitchen, where my mom was washing dishes. She rose to shut the door.  “Okay, let’s talk about this. Maybe she wasn’t really dead. Maybe she got up right after we left and hiked back to the road. Maybe that was why she was out there. She was hitchhiking.”

But I saw her rotting corpse.
“No, Megan. She was dead. I know she was dead.”

Megan folded her arms and shrugged. “Then Emory just prank-called you and she’s not actually back.”

“Why would he do that?” I said, lip curled. “That’s not funny, that’s morbid. Only
you
would think that’s funny.”

“Then how else do you explain it?” she spat. “Either she’s alive, and we didn’t kill her, or she’s still dead and that wasn’t her on the phone. Make a choice.”

“Maybe we killed someone else,” I murmured.

“Someone else who looked exactly like Ashley?”

“We don’t know that, Megan. It was dark. We were freaking out. Do you remember what she looked like? All I remember is she was blonde and pretty, but the rest is a blur.”

“Not me,” said Megan. “I have a perfect image of her face burned in my brain.”

“Because we saw pictures of Ashley afterward on the internet,” I said. “Sometimes the brain can do that. It changes your memories based on stuff you learn afterward to make things consistent. So we thought we killed Ashley, and later we remember the girl’s face as Ashley’s. That’s textbook psychology.”

Megan stared at me. “So you think we killed someone else?”

“I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”

“Then two girls disappeared that night. How come we haven’t heard of the other one?”

She had a point, but my mind was still too wound-up to stop and think. “Over the phone—you heard her—she didn’t sound like she remembered me. She was like, ‘uh . . . hi, Leona,’ like she had no idea who I was. You heard that, right?”

“Yeah, because you hit her with a car and knocked her out. You probably gave her brain damage.”

I dragged a hand down the back of my neck, now pacing my bedroom. “This is so screwed up . . . so freaking screwed up,” I ranted. “What are we missing?”

Megan’s eyes lit up. “Wait . . . if we didn’t kill her, if we didn’t actually kill her, then we’re off the hook, right? We don’t have to feel guilty anymore . . .
right?
”

The same hope had crossed my mind, but I’d already snuffed it out. “We killed
someone
, Megan. There’s a body rotting in the woods, and we put it there. Someone is dead because of us. Maybe not Ashley, but someone.”

“Why do you keep talking about a body?” she said. “
What
body? If she got up and walked away, then there’s no body.”

I looked at her and licked my dry lips. “She was dead, Megan.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. We’ve been wrong before.”

“What if we were set up?” I said. “What if someone was trying to make another girl disappear and make it look like we killed her?” I flipped around and stomped across the room. “Never mind. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Clearly,” she said.

“She wasn’t breathing,” I said. “She didn’t have a pulse. For like forty minutes, she didn’t have a pulse. If you don’t have a pulse for forty minutes, that means you’re dead.”

“Did you check her pulse?” said Megan. “
I
checked her pulse. Maybe she had a weak pulse and I couldn’t feel it. I’m not a doctor.”

“This is so screwed up,” I muttered.

“How come it’s Ashley that shows up while we’re wearing dark matter?”

Dark matter. I’d almost forgotten.

We’d been talking to it when Emory called. The reminder left a chill.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe our brains are filling that in too.”

“Maybe it’s because the girl who looks like Ashley and sleepwalks like Ashley and jumps out in front of our car the same night Ashley goes missing, is in fact Ashley.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Why don’t I just ask her when I have dinner with her tomorrow.”

Ding-dong.

The sound of the doorbell tied my stomach in a knot. Inside Emory’s house, footsteps pounded into the foyer, and a blonde blur streaked past the side windows, pausing just long enough to peek out onto the porch. The door unlatched and swung inward, revealing Ashley Lacroix.

My stomach dropped out from underneath me.

She was identical to the girl I’d seen in my bedroom and at Tina’s party, identical down to every perfect freckle on her sun-kissed face. Details I couldn’t have possibly known.

How?

“Hi . . .” she said awkwardly, shuffling her feet. She lowered her eyes shyly and shouted toward the kitchen. “Emory! Your friend’s here.” Then to me, playing with her hair. “You can come in if you want.”

She didn’t hate me.

She didn’t know me.

I studied the side of her face, and a memory jolted into focus, stinging me like an electric shock—blood trickling down
that
face,
her
neck Megan had checked for a pulse,
those
blue eyes staring lifelessly as we piled her into my trunk.

It was her. It had to be her.

She caught me staring at her and blushed a little. “Emory,” she whined, as if she didn’t want to be alone with me.

I paid attention to everything.

Emory emerged from the kitchen, expertly kneading some kind of dough between his palms, his ruddy cheeks glowing with a thin sheen of sweat. The smell of something delicious wafted out from behind him. He flashed a crooked smile, and a strange ache formed in my heart, making me feel heavy and light at the same time. I’d never seen him like this before . . . happy.

Oh God, he was gorgeous.

“Leona, get in here. You’re on parmesan duty.” When I appeared confused, he waved me into the kitchen. “Ash, you going to help us cook or not?”

“Uh . . . I’m good,” she said, eying me warily before she shirked away, leaving me to follow Emory into the kitchen with an uncomfortable knot in my throat.

I shouldn’t be here.

Something very weird was going on.

At the range, Emory manned several boiling pots, each exuding a different heavenly smell.

“Give her some time,” he said, tossing the dough onto a baking sheet so he could taste test a spoonful of sauce. “She just got back. She’ll warm up to you.”

“You look really happy,” I said.

“Catch,” he said, tossing me a huge wedge of cheese, which bounced off my fingers and thudded on the ground, picking up a few stray dog hairs. Embarrassed, I picked them out hurriedly. He watched me, amused, and pointed to a cheese grater and a bowl on the center island. “Give me half a cup.”

“So am I your assistant?” I said, smiling despite myself.

“Quit wasting time, Leona. I needed that cheese ten minutes ago. Chop chop.” He grabbed the ball of dough and began tossing it and catching it, his hands shaping it smoothly, stretching it into a disc.

“Are we making a pizza?” I said.

“Shh. Don’t ask questions,” he said, laying the circular dough on a baking sheet.

I peeked into the nearest pan and saw what looked an awful lot like pizza sauce. “Yep. We’re making a pizza.”

He faced me and planted his fists on the island, eyes impatient. “Okay, Sherlock Holmes, you figured it out. Now how about some cheese? Unless you just want crust and tomato sauce?”

“Someone’s touchy.” I tried to stare him down, but his stern face made me crack up. Suppressing a smirk, I grabbed the grater and started grating, taken by the sudden urge to giggle.

Satisfied that I was being a good assistant, he went back to tending the pizza sauce. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, the way his strong triceps tensed against his long sleeves as he balanced a dainty spoon in front of his lips to blow on it. The contrast was almost comical.

My hand got tired fast, so I switched to my left hand and kept grating. “I can’t believe you cook,” I said. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would cook.”

“Come here,” he said, touching the spoon to his lips. “Tell me what this needs.”

“I’m not done with the cheese,” I said.

He glanced back and dropped the spoon. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He rushed over and snatched the parmesan out of my hands and pried the grater from my grip. Grated cheese overflowed onto the granite counter. “I said half a cup, not the whole block.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, heat rushing to my cheeks.

“It’s okay. Make up for it. Tell me what this needs.” He led me by the hand over to the range and dipped another spoon into the pizza sauce, which he blew on for a few seconds. He took a taste himself and narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the taste. “Hmm . . . open your mouth.”

I parted my lips, feeling strangely excited. I knew there was something else I should be doing right now, a nagging doubt at the back of my mind, but I could barely think.
His fault.
He held the spoon to my lips, and I licked a little bit off, watching for his reaction.
Okay, that was unnecessarily sensual
.

He had just spoon-fed me pizza sauce.

Which meant . . . what?

Were we dating or something?

“Well?” he said, peering at me intently. “What does it need?”

I swallowed and realized I’d forgotten to even taste the sauce. I’d been too focused on him. To me it tasted perfect.

“Maybe some parmesan cheese?” I guessed.

He smirked. “The cheese goes on top, Leona, not in the sauce.”

Duh, Leona.
I knew that.

He nibbled at the spoon himself, eyes thoughtful. Yep, we just shared saliva. He’d done that on purpose, tasted from the same spoon on purpose. He was playing mind games.

After great deliberation, he announced, “Black pepper,” and reached for a pepper grinder.

I called him out on that shit. “You already knew it needed black pepper . . . you didn’t need me to taste it,
did
you?” I accused.

“Nope.” He held my gaze. “But then, I didn’t need you to grate parmesan cheese either. But I wanted you to.”

For a moment I got lost in his eyes, and my mind went infuriatingly blank. When he didn’t look away, I felt my cheeks flush.

He nodded to the pan and the baking sheet. “Now you’re going to spread this sauce on that dough. I’ll show you how.”

“Do you ever ask people to do things? Or do you just order people around all the time?

“I was a quarterback,” he said. “Those habits die hard.”

“I don’t like being told what to do,” I said.

“Yes, you do.”

I felt warmth on the back of my neck, but not from his sharp stare. His gaze flicked to something over my shoulder, and he smiled. I spun around.

Ashley stood in the doorway, her face flat.

“What’s up, Ash?” Emory said brightly. “Want to help us cook?”

“Mom wants to know when dinner is.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “We’re making your favorite. Four-cheese pizza.”

Her gaze flicked to mine, and she rolled her eyes and slunk back upstairs, leaving my skin crawling.

How long had she been watching us?

“Come on, let’s get this baby done.” Unfazed, Emory set the steaming pan of sauce down on the counter and whacked a spoon into my hand, and together we spooned the pizza sauce onto the dough and sprinkled cheese on top—he’d already grated a bunch of mozzarella, asiago, and fontina cheese to go with my parmesan—and finally he opened the oven and slid the pizza onto the rack.

“Hey, Em.” Emory’s dad bustled into the kitchen and took a satisfied sniff. “What’s on the menu?”

“Pizza, salad, meatballs . . . nothing special.”

“What kind of wine should I pair with it?”

“Since the pizza’s heavy on the parmesan—” Emory threw me a pointed look, “I’d go with something medium-bodied and crisp . . . the Pino Grigio would be perfect.”