Liv twists her hair hard near her ear. “Did the joint make him, you know, talky?”
“Mainly he was jonesing to play his video game. He was worried other players would steal his weapons and his prey.” I raise myself on my elbows. “You know about Prey better than I do. That’s what he was playing, in his sick mind. But you know that.”
Liv ignores my mild dig, releasing her hair and winding it around her fingers again, tighter. “How do they happen? The daymares.”
“A trigger sometimes. Sometimes nothing at all. This last time, it was the cold.”
She drops her hair. “This last time? How often do they happen?”
“Too often. In Ricker-speak they’re called intrusive.” I don’t mention that I haven’t gotten around to telling Ricker I have them.
“Can you make them stop?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t been able to yet.”
“You never told me about them in your e-mails.”
The back door slams and the old Victorian house quakes. Keys clatter in a china bowl, the antique rimmed with gold Greek keys on the hall curio. Liv groans and rakes her hair with both hands.
“Olivia!” Deborah screams up the stairs.
“Should we go?” I say.
“I need a minute,” she says.
“Then it’s your turn,” I say quickly. “Speaking of things unmentioned: Shane Cuthbert? When did that start? And why?”
She tips her head forward until her hair waterfalls onto the desk, and kneads her scalp. “I’m just fooling around.” Her voice is muffled. “It’s not serious.”
“With Shane Cuthbert? You could have anyone!”
“Shane Cuthbert happens to be an exceptionally effective way of pissing off Deborah.”
“I heard he got thrown out of McLean for stabbing an orderly. Is that true?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re seeing him! He called you his girl.”
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“Seeing Shane Cuthbert is not nothing. He’s always been obsessed with you. Even if it’s nothing to you, it’s something to him, I’m sure of that. What happens after you use him to piss off Deborah? How will you ever get rid of him?”
She draws her hands through her hair hard. “I know exactly what I’m doing with Shane.”
“Olivia! I know you’re up there!”
She flips her hair back. “Down in a second!”
Deborah murmurs something sharp below. Liv fans her fingers in front of her, examining hair like floss—lots of it—threaded through each set of fingers, catching the desklamp light.
“Liv?”
She shakes her hands above the wire trash can under her desk.
“Your hair!” I say.
“Come down now, we have no time!” Deborah’s voice is clearer now; she’s moved to the gilt mirror at the bottom of the stairs. Liv slowly pushes away from her desk and trudges down the bare stairs, her steps hollow, the runner long ago stripped to wood and staples and left that way. I wait, wondering if I should bother to come, wondering if I want to. Slanted rain pelts the quarter moon–shaped window. Barring Deborah’s box-of-chocolates persona (never know what you’re gonna get), I’ve always felt at home here, especially in the cool, quirky attic bedroom, with its secret eaves and its Amityville Horror window. Now the house seems as if the rain might poke straight through. Before the woods, Deborah constantly renovated the Victorian like it was another whole being she cared for in reverse proportion to how much she cared for Liv. Now the repairs have ground to a halt. Curlicues of yellow paint speckle the tops of shrubs overtaking the porch, worn silver in spots. Today, the front doorknob fell off in my hand.
I stash my book in my backpack and head for the landing.
“That idiot hairdresser took forever and it was pouring by the time I left, and I had to wear my hood, and now I have static.” From my spot, I can see Deborah leaning toward the hallway mirror, glaring at hair plastered against her cheek. “How will I ever fix this?”
“It gets worse if you touch it,” Liv says, taking the last few stairs.
“I’m going to have to leave it alone, because we have less than two hours, and I still need to write down what I’m going to say to that reporter. I am so perpetually rushed. You could have started your own hair while I was out; you know how to mix the chemicals by now. Honestly, everyone on the planet is so selfish with my time.”
Liv follows her into the kitchen and leans against the doorframe. The TV on the kitchen wall plays a commercial. I recognize the sounds: a savvy mom whips up a fancy chicken dish using a jar of mayonnaise, and the teenage son goes from dour to amazed. My stomach rumbles. In most homes in the Northeast region, it is the dinner hour.
“I had a terrible day at work. No one is satisfied with the schedule—the dentists want it full, the hygienists want breaks, and the assistants want time to clean the instruments. I have no energy left and a million things to do in less than two hours.” Deborah pauses her rant. “Do not expect me to make some lavish dinner right now.”