“What?” Mom asked, turning to look at me. “What kind of a show has people who are buried alive?”
“It’s not real,” Miles said. He was still sweating but his voice sounded back to normal. “No one is really buried alive on Times of Our Seasons. It’s fake.”
“You’ve been letting Miles watch Times of Our Seasons?” Mom said, and I could tell she was mad. “You shouldn’t even be watching that. Let alone Miles!”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. We watched it one day and got sucked in.”
“That show is trashy,” Mom said. “All soap operas are. And this one sounds sick.”
“Mom,” Miles said, starting to panic now that he was fully awake and knew what he’d done. “You have to let us finish. We need to see what happens to Harley.”
“Absolutely not,” Mom said.
“We won’t watch it anymore,” I told my mom. “I promise.”
“We have to,” Miles said. “We have to see Harley get out!”
“No, you don’t,” Mom said. “You absolutely do not. Cedar Lee, we need to have a talk.”
8.
I was almost late to meet Leo. After my mother grounded me for two weeks from everything except work and running (which basically amounted to my not being grounded since those were the only places I went, but I didn’t point that out), and said that she was canceling our television service this very morning, she did a double take. “Why are you wearing jeans to go running?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I was getting dressed when I heard Miles and I threw on the first thing I found.” It was a pretty good lie. I went over to my drawer and pulled out a pair of old black track pants, the kind that people wear who don’t actually go running.
“You’re going to be too hot,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I promise. I’ve worn these before. It’s fine.”
She went back to bed and I wore the track pants out the door in case she was watching from her window.
“I thought of something else I need from you,” I said when I caught up with Leo.
“What?” he asked.
“My brother and I need a place to watch Times of Our Seasons.”
“What on earth is Times of Our Seasons?”
“A really trashy soap opera,” I said.
“Seriously?”
“I’m very serious,” I said. Miles was never going to get over this if he didn’t see Harley get out of that box. And she would. I knew it.
Wouldn’t she?
9.
In the city where I really lived, there are some pretty fancy hotels. They had nice restaurants, and lobbies with chandeliers, and a couple of them even had ballrooms.
The Iron Creek Hotel, where Lisette Chamberlain died, was not like that.
According to Leo, it also wasn’t like that back in Lisette Chamberlain’s time.
“It was better back then,” he told the people when he gave the tour, “but it was never, like, fancy. It was the best hotel in town, but that isn’t saying a lot.”
Still, the Iron Creek Hotel was the best stop on the tour, and a lot of it was due to Paige, the weekday front-desk clerk.
She worked from six to eleven every morning during the week and she had a crush on one of Leo’s older brothers, so Leo had talked her into letting us bring the tour inside the hotel.
“What does she get in return?” I’d asked him.
“Zach’s phone number,” he said. “At the end of the summer.”
Paige was really fun. She had long, gorgeous hair that she always wore braided in some cool way and she also had glasses and wore motorcycle boots with her hotel uniform. Her voice was really sweet but most of the things she said were not.
It was my turn to lead the hotel part of the tour.
“As you’re aware,” I said, to our clients (this time it was a family, with a mom who was clearly way more into it than her kids and husband, and also an older man, like sixty-five), “Lisette Chamberlain died in the Iron Creek Hotel under mysterious circumstances.”
Someone walked into the lobby and asked Leo where the continental breakfast was.
He pointed them in the right direction.
“What mysterious circumstances?” asked one of the kids. He was about ten and had spiky hair and an attitude. “Like drugs? Suicide?”
“No,” I said.
“Murder?” asked his younger brother.
“Let me show you the room where she died,” I said, “and I’ll finish the rest of the story.”
The hotel hadn’t wanted to turn the room into a shrine or anything and they needed the space, but for a while no one wanted to stay in that room because they thought it was bad luck. So the management had turned it into a housekeeping closet.