Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2) Read online

  “I wear it every day, Eli,” I toss back at him, and I turn away to put on my earrings in front of the mirror.

  “You normally don’t get close enough to me that I can smell it,” he admits. “I like it.” He shrugs sheepishly. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Well, don’t get too used to it,” I reply tartly. “This thing we’re doing is over in a few days, after all.”

  He bites his lips together tightly and nods. “Okay, Bess,” he says, his voice soft.

  I walk out to find Aaron standing still right outside our bedroom door. He freezes and so do I. “Are you seriously being a creepy creeper right now?”

  “Guilty,” he chirps.

  “Hear anything juicy?”

  He grins. “He likes your perfume.”

  “So?” I prompt.

  “Nothing else, Bess. He just likes your perfume. I think it’s sweet.”

  “It’s not sweet,” I counter. “It’s weird.”

  “Why is it weird?”

  “It just is.”

  His teasing grin turns into an intense stare. “It only is if you want it to be.”

  “Are you ready to go?” I ask, more than a little flustered.

  “Hey, Eli!” Aaron calls out.

  Eli sticks his head out of the bedroom. “Hey, Aaron!” he yells back.

  Aaron grins. “Sam is in the kitchen with the cat, Miles is at my cabin with Gabby, and Kerry-Anne is up at the big house with Trixie and Katie.”

  “So I only have to keep one of them alive.” He claps his hands together. “I so got this.” He turns to talk to Sam. “What are we doing today?”

  “Can we go fishing?”

  “Of course we can. Go get your pole.”

  She gives the kitten a kiss and a pat, and then she runs out the front door. Eli, fully dressed now, follows her out the door. “I still can’t get used to that,” I say to Aaron. “How did you talk him into it?”

  Aaron says the words very slowly and enunciates them clearly. “I asked him very nicely. You should try it sometime.” He glares playfully at me.

  I roll my eyes at him and start for the car. He follows. I walk to the driver’s side door, but he says “Nuh-uh” as he shakes his head. “I might have to tolerate your driving on the way home, but not on the way there. No way, no how.”

  “Fine,” I say with a mock pout.

  In the car, he turns the satellite radio to a nineties station, and he turns it up when “This is How We Do It” starts to play. He sings along with the radio, song after song, knowing all the lyrics no matter what they play next. I can’t help but laugh at his antics all the way to the clinic.

  They take him in quickly, just like last time, and the nurse takes his vitals, brings him a cup of pills, and hooks up his port. Then he sits back and stares at me.

  “Quit being a perv,” I tell him.

  “I’m not being a perv,” he objects. “I’m just trying to figure you out.”

  “What’s to figure out?”

  He snorts. “Only everything.” His smile fades a little. “You’re a conundrum, Bess,” he says, his voice getting softer. “I just don’t know what to think.”

  “About what?”

  “Hey!” he suddenly says. “Do you remember that night we all rode our bikes in the dark down to the haunted house?”

  Do I remember it? Of course I remember it. “You guys scared the pants off me that night.” But I can’t help but smile at the memory.

  “Jake, Eli, and I had been planning that shit for days.”

  “Planning what?” I ask.

  “The howling wind?” he reminds me. “That was on a tape. And the knocking on the door? That was Little Robbie Gentry. We paid him two dollars to stand there and knock, then slowly open the door so that it creaked really loudly.”

  “You did not!”

  He chuckles. “We totally did.”

  “You paid Little Robbie to do that?” Little Robbie Gentry was called Little Robbie because his dad was called Big Robbie and it just seemed appropriate. He’d never complained, but then he was a few years younger than us and always more than willing to join in our shenanigans—even though his dad Big Robbie was a state trooper.

  “Yep!” Aaron slaps his thigh. “I thought Lynda was going to jump out of her skin. She glued herself to me and never got more than an inch away from me. That was the first time I ever–” He drops his voice down to a whisper. “—touched her boob!”

  I can’t keep the smile off my face. “She told me about it. She said it was just a graze.”

  “It was everything, I tell you. Everything!” He grins. “I already was in awe of breasts, but ever since that night I’ve been entranced by them!”

  “Well, according to her, it wasn’t that big of a deal,” I say, teasing him.

  He pauses and his eyes narrow at me. “Didn’t Eli kiss you for the first time that same night?”

  I let out a long breath. “Yes, he did.”

  “Tell me about that.” He watches me closely.

  “I’d rather not,” I reply flippantly, and I pick up a magazine to riffle through it.

  He points to his port. “Hell-o!” he sings out. “Che-mo! I get to pick the topics. So you better start talking, girl, or I’m going to tell the doctor you’re not holding up your end of the bargain.”

  “Fine!” I snap. I throw my magazine down with much more force than is necessary. “What is it you want to hear? That the haunted house was perfectly terrifying? Because it was.”

  “Keep going,” he says, as his eyelids grow heavier. He doesn’t fall asleep, though. He just settles deeper into his chair.

  19

  Bess

  We biked most of the way to the old shack in the woods, but it was so deep in the forest that we couldn’t bike the whole way. So we all walked the rest of the way in the dark, the trees above us blocking out all the stars, the gentle blowing of the wind our only company as we traversed through the forest. This was, by far, the most daring thing I’d ever done.

  The house was an old fishing cabin that Jake’s great-great-grandfather had built many years ago. Now it was a crumbling mess with a sagging roof and warped floorboards. Kids had broken into it years ago and painted graffiti on the walls, knocked holes in the wood paneling, and made a general mess of the place. Now only Jake and his family knew about it, and I was sure Mr. Jacobson didn’t want anyone going there. If he knew we were going there to summon the ghosts of Jacobsons past, he’d have all of us scrubbing the bathhouses with our toothbrushes as punishment.

  But after dinner, Jake had walked up to us as we sat around the campfire, leaned over and whispered to Katie, who had whispered to Lynda, who had whispered to Aaron, who had whispered to me that we should all go up to the old haunted cabin in the woods.

  “What’s that?” I whispered to Eli after I imparted the invitation to him.

  “It’s an old cabin in the woods that’s haunted by some of Jake’s ancestors,” he said. “Not a big deal.”

  “Where is it?”

  He poked at the fire with a stick, making a shower of sparks rain down near the rocks that lined the fire. “A couple of miles into the woods,” he said.

  “Have you ever been there?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Do you want to go?”

  “What are we going to do there?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “No idea. But Jake is always interested in summoning ghosts.”

  I shivered at the thought. “Do you want to go?” I asked hesitantly. Jake and Katie were already getting up and dusting off the butts of their shorts, and Lynda and Aaron were debating about it. “I’m not sure if my mom and dad will let me.”

  “They’re playing cards with my mom and dad,” Aaron reminded me. “They’ll never know.”

  I nibbled on my thumbnail until Eli gently reached up and pulled it away from my mouth. He held my hand tightly and gave it a squeeze. “We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” he said quietly. He stared i
nto my eyes as we stood there in the dark, and he offered me an out. I didn’t take it, though.

  Instead, I said, “I’ll go.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. He gave my hand that squeeze again.

  “I want to go,” I said a little more loudly.

  So Jake had gone and gotten us all flashlights, and we’d ridden our bikes until the road ran out. Then we left them leaning against two posts that blocked the way to the little shack, a heavy cable pulled between them. Eli reached out to hold me steady as I climbed over it, and I remembered him being larger than life in that moment. He was everything.

  The cabin wasn’t much farther, but the darkness and unfamiliarity made it seem like it took hours to get there. The steps creaked as we walked up the rickety entryway to the little cabin.

  “My great-great-grandfather used to come here when he wanted to get away from my great-great-grandmother,” Jake said as he turned the handle to the door. It didn’t open, so he gave it a push and turned a little harder, and the door handle freed up. “Nobody has been here in a long time,” Jake said in a hushed tone.

  “He died here, you know,” Aaron added, his voice little more than a stage whisper.

  I froze. “Who died?”

  “The great-great-grandfather,” Aaron said.

  “How did he die?” I asked, and my teeth started to chatter. Eli’s hand landed solidly on my back and I felt it all the way to my bones. I willed my teeth to stop chattering, but it was hard.

  “Somebody killed him, I think,” Aaron said casually. “Man, this place is creepy.” He gave a dramatic shiver that I could see in the dim light from the moon through the window.

  The cabin wasn’t very big. It was just one room with a rusty old cook stove on one side, a dilapidated canvas cot on the other, and it didn’t even have electricity or running water or a bathroom.

  “I think there’s a candle here somewhere,” Jake said, and he went to a cabinet and opened it up, shining his flashlight into the opening. He reached in, pulled something out, and turned to face us. His eyes lit up as he flicked a lighter and lit the candle, his face distorted by the flame. “That’s better.”

  “It is not,” Katie said quietly. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  An eerie moan filled up the little room. “Do you hear that?” Jake whispered. He looked around, his face even more grotesque as the flame’s pattern on his skin changed when he turned his head.

  I grabbed onto Eli’s arm and plastered myself against his side. “What’s that noise?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  “They say that you can hear him calling for help,” Jake said. “He does it for hours on end.”

  The moans grew louder, and then suddenly softer, more like a whisper. Then they started all over again.

  “I don’t like it here,” I said, beginning to tremble.

  “People say that sometimes my great-great-grandmother comes and knocks on the door, looking for him. He died before she did, and she never got over it.” At once a knock sounded on the front door. It was a harsh, fireman’s knock that seemed like it shook all the walls.

  Everyone jumped.

  A faint high-pitched voice called out, “Jasper, are you here?”

  “Oh shit,” Jake whispered. “Jasper was his name!”

  Lynda squealed as Aaron grabbed her and put her between him and the door. She batted at him behind her, but he deflected her blows, holding tightly to her hips to keep her between him and the entryway. He laughed out loud as he did it, and she just got angrier and angrier.

  I wanted desperately to run out the door, but that’s where the knock and the voice had come from. I looked around frantically, but there was no second exit. “I want to go,” I insisted. Eli thrust me behind him, and I buried my face between his shoulder blades, my hands clenching fistfuls of his shirt.

  “Jasper’s not here!” Jake called out loudly.

  The knocking stopped, and so did the voice.

  “She must have left,” Jake said with relief.

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Lynda added quickly. “Let’s do that too.” She slapped at Aaron’s hands. “I can’t believe you, you coward,” she hissed at him.

  “What if she’s still out there?” Aaron whispered loudly.

  “I think she left,” Jake repeated.

  “I’m leaving,” Eli said. “This is bullshit.” He walked toward the door and I followed, my face still buried in his shirt. I followed him all the way to the edge of the porch, where I had to finally open my eyes, afraid I’d fall. I walked down the steps, my legs trembling with each creak of the boards.

  At the bottom of the steps, Eli stopped and said, “We should wait for everybody else.”

  I saw the room go dim through the open door as Jake blew out the candle, and the others all rushed out of the cabin. They all got to the bottom of the stairs, and then that tiny voice asked again from behind us: “Jasper, is that you?” A shadow moved on the porch.

  I never ran so fast in my life. I ran all the way back to the bikes. Then I pedaled like the devil was chasing me all the way back to the campground. When we got there, I jumped off my bike, threw it to the ground, and looked up to find Mr. Jacobson standing there. He shined that humongous spotlight he had on each of us in turn.

  “Where the hell have y’all been?” he bellowed, more bark to his bite than usual.

  “Just riding bikes,” Jake replied breathlessly, heaving from our mad dash back to the campground.

  “You expect me to believe you were riding bikes in the dark?” the old man asked. He shined the light on Jake’s face, which made Jake squint and try to block the light with his hand. “I think you’re lying. And I hate a liar.” He pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it into the corner of his mouth.

  “We’re not lying,” Jake said, but he was visibly shaken by the inquisition, so Aaron took over.

  “We rode our bikes down to the haunted shack in the woods.” He grunted as Lynda elbowed him in the side, bending over a little in the middle. He let out a gurgle.

  “I told you kids to stay away from there!”

  “We were only there for a minute,” Jake said. One thing Jake refused to do was lie to Mr. Jacobson. He said he always found out anyway, and if Jake told the truth, it would go easier on him. “We just wanted to see what it looked like.”

  “And? What’s it look like?” Mr. Jacobson asked.

  “Like dead people live there,” Lynda muttered.

  I shivered again, and Eli’s arm wrapped around me, holding me close.

  “You kids stay away from there,” he said firmly. He shined his spotlight in each of our faces, one by one, and waited until we’d all nodded.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. He didn’t have to worry about me ever going up there again.

  “Do I need to tell your parents where you’ve been?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” we all said at once.

  “Good enough,” he said, and he’d turned off the powerful light and walked back into the house, not quite slamming the door but definitely closing it firmly behind him.

  I sagged against Eli, who leaned against me, his chest shaking. “Are you laughing?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said, sobering a little. “Just trying to catch my breath.”

  He sank down onto the grass, and we all sat down with him. I leaned on him, as Katie and Jake and then Aaron and Lynda all sat close together.

  “I’m never following you guys anywhere again,” Lynda said.

  “Me either,” Katie added.

  I knew for sure that I would never go back out there to that spooky cabin.

  Lynda punched Aaron on the shoulder so hard that even I flinched. “You shoved me between you and the door, you ass!”

  “I didn’t want it to get me,” Aaron replied over a choked laugh.

  We all sat together for about forty-five minutes, just talking quietly. And then Katie jumped to her feet. “My dad is going to kill me,” she said. “It’s after ten.”


  Jake shined his flashlight at her watch and cursed softly. “I’ll walk you back,” he said to her.

  “I have to go, too. We can walk together. ’Night, y’all,” Lynda called out, and she and Aaron left with Jake and Katie, until it was just me and Eli.

  He looked down at me, and I could see the smile in his eyes. His laugher was always a constant, as was his calmness. Where I was always worked up about something, Eli was just the opposite. I got up and started to walk back to my cabin, but he gave a quick tug against my fingers, and I realized that he was still holding my hand.

  He pulled me closer to him, his hands lifting to bracket my face, and then he kissed me. His lips were soft and moist, and he opened his mouth so wide that my face got wet. But he figured it out after a second or two, and his kiss became sweeter rather than frantic. He pulled back, brushed my hair from my forehead with gentle fingers and said, “How was that for a first kiss?”

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “It was a little slobbery, to be honest,” I answered.

  Not offended in the least, he chuckled and tugged my hand, leading me toward my cabin. “I’ll do better next time.”

  Next time? “Hey, Eli?”

  “Hey, Bess.”

  “I don’t think it could be any better,” I whispered, with what felt like a perma-grin on my face.

  “I don’t think so either,” he replied.

  He walked me all the way back to my cabin, and then he kissed me again, this time more tender lips than slobber, and it was perfect.

  I went inside and my mom met me in the kitchen. She stopped and stared at me. She smiled a knowing smile. “Did you have a good night?” she asked.

  “It was the best,” I whispered. And I went to bed, still thinking about that kiss and what it meant.

  20

  Bess

  Aaron clutches his stomach as he doubles over, and the guy getting chemo in the chair next to him leans over to be sure he’s still breathing. “Is he all right?” he asks.

  “He’s just an idiot,” I reply, absolute fury in my veins. I kick his shin and he jumps, covering his leg with his hand.