“No, I hate that stuff,” she muttered. “It makes me feel freaking crazy.” She flopped back hard against her pillow and pulled another one over her face.
As her parents leveled their “news”—divorce, split homes, a move for Dad to the outer regions of housing tract hell, the “chance of a lifetime” for Mom that moved her across country, they doted on Sawyer and looked at her with troubled expressions. And when a new car and promises of a “good, new start” didn’t make her smile—or sleep at night—it was Dr. Johnson, one hour a week of “and how does that make you feel?” and finally, the Trazadone.
After tossing and turning for another twenty minutes, Sawyer was in the bathroom, filling up a glass of cold water and popping a dose of the medication.
“Just so I can get some sleep,” she mumbled to her sallow, sunken-eyed reflection. Then she crawled into bed and fell into a restless, heavy slumber.
THREE
Chloe fell into step with Sawyer as they walked down the junior hall the following morning. “So I didn’t hear from you last night.”
Sawyer worked the straps on her backpack, her eyes on her shoes. “Sorry. I got busy.”
“Were your dad and Tara howling at the moon or something equally metaphysically odd?”
Sawyer thought about the lone shoe, about Detective Biggs perched on the edge of her couch. “Did a detective come to your house?”
Chloe stopped cold, spinning to face Sawyer. “Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“A detective? No. Never. But the DEA came out to bust my neighbor’s pharmaceutical business once.” She wagged her head. “Leave it to the Feds. Always trying to take down the small businessman. Hey.” She reached out and pinched Sawyer hard on the arm.
“Hey! Ow!”
“You’re zoning out on me.”
“I know, DEA.”
“It was funny. You didn’t laugh.”
Sawyer forced a smile as big as she could muster. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“So unload.” The final bell rang and Chloe shrugged, her hand on the door to her English class. “Later.”
***
It was dark by the time Sawyer made the turnoff to Blackwood Hills Estates. The days were getting shorter, and though Sawyer usually liked the crisp, cozy days of fall, the impending darkness now felt like sheets of doom across the empty housing development. Her father kept promising that the streetlights that now reached out like cold, stiff hands toward the sky would be lit soon. Soon, Sawyer figured, probably meant when another family moved into the housing tract.
Now Sawyer’s headlights made only dim slits in the blackness, obscured even more by the bales of fog rolling over the brand new blacktop. That was the thing about living in a town that billed itself as “oceanside adjacent.” No real ocean views but all the ocean fog and the occasional brackish scent of filthy bay water.
Sawyer zipped through the blackened streets, sighing as she passed empty house after empty house. The Dodd house was the first to be populated, though it sat at the very back of the housing tract. It rested on a gentle slope, and once the rest of the neighborhood was full, the house would have an excellent view of twinkling lights before the miles of cypress trees beyond. The brochures called Blackwood Hills a “forested oasis.” Sawyer called it an annoyingly long distance from civilization and creepy in the dark.
The porch light glimmered at the front door of the Dodd house, and Sawyer picked her way through rocky dirt and a maze of landscape flags and spray-painted future walkways. She sunk her key into the lock, kicked open the front door, and dropped her backpack on the marble foyer floor.
“I’m home.” Her voice echoed in the empty house, ricocheting off the sixteen-foot ceilings and through the new drywall. “Dad? Tara?” Sawyer expected a massive spray of pink or blue balloons or—God forbid—one of each, but there was nothing save for the boxed remains of her old life butting up against her parents’ wedding gifts and cheery stuff for the baby. She toed a floppy giraffe and stepped over the boxes, flipping on the lights in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
Sawyer sucked in a sharp breath, hearing the racing double-thump of her heart when she saw the note on the kitchen table, propped up against a bottle of sparkling cider. She clawed at her chest and laughed a weird, maniacal giggle when she recognized her father’s precise writing on the note.
“It’s a girl!” she read out loud. “Just think of all the things you can teach your new baby sister. Tara and I have gone out to celebrate. There’s pizza in the freezer. Love, your always proud, Papa. Papa?” Sawyer snorted, flicked the note, and eyed the cider.
“Brilliant.” Sawyer flicked on her cell phone and walked to each corner of the professional-grade kitchen, eyes glued to her cell screen. She balanced on one foot near the bay window and then hopped up on the granite countertop, looking for a cell-phone signal. She let out something halfway between a groan and a growl and snatched the landline phone from the wall.